The psychology of beauty

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TR1NITYCOLLEGE TORONTO

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
BEAUTY

BY

ETHEL D. PUFFER

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • DALLAS
SAN FRANCISCO

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COPYRIGHT 1905 BY ETHEL D. PUFFER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published May 1905

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A

MAY 2

7 193,

PKEFACE

THE human being who thrills to the experience of
beauty in nature and in art does not forever rest
with that experience unquestioned. The day comes
when he yearns to pierce the secret of his emotion,
to discover what it is, and why, that has so stung
him — to defend and to justify his transport to him
self and to others. He seeks a reason for the faith
that is in him. And so have arisen the speculative
theories of the nature of beauty, on the one hand,
and the studies of concrete beauty and our feelings
about it, on the other. Speculative theory has taken
its own way, however, as a part of philosophy, in
relating the Beautiful to the other great concepts
of the True and the Good ; building up an archi
tectonic of abstract ideas, far from the immediate
facts and problems of the enjoyment of beauty.
There has grown up, on the other hand, in the last
years, a great literature of special studies in the
facts of aesthetic production and enjoyment. Ex
periments with the aesthetic elements; investiga
tions into the physiological psychology of aesthetic
reactions ; studies in the genesis and development
of art forms, have multiplied apace. But these are
still mere groups of facts for psychology; they
have not been taken up into a single authoritative

vi PREFACE

principle. Psychology cannot do justice to the im
perative of beauty, by virtue of which, when we say
" this is beautiful," we have a right to imply that
the universe must agree with us. A synthesis of
these tendencies in the study of beauty is needed,
in which the results of modern psychology shall
help to make intelligible a philosophical theory of
beauty. The chief purpose of this book is to seek
to effect such a union.

A way of defining Beauty which grounds it in
genera] principles, while allowing it to reach the
concrete case, is set forth in the essay on the Nature
of Beauty. The following chapters aim to expand,
to test, and to confirm this central theory, by show
ing, partly by the aid of the aforesaid special stud
ies, how it accounts for our pleasure in pictures,
music, and literature.

The whole field of beauty is thus brought under
discussion ; and therefore, though it nowhere seeks
to be exhaustive in treatment, the book may fairly
claim to be a more or less consistent and complete
aesthetic theory, and hence to address itself to the
student of aesthetics as well as to the general reader.
The chapter on the Nature of Beauty, indeed, will
doubtless be found by the latter somewhat technical,
and should be omitted by all who definitely object
to professional phraseology. The general conclu
sions of the book are sufficiently stated in the less
abstract papers.

Of the essays which compose the following vol-

PREFACE vii

ume, the first, third, and last are reprinted, in more
or less revised form, from the " Atlantic Monthly "
and the " International Monthly." Although writ
ten as independent papers, it is thought that they
do not unduly repeat each other, but that they
serve to verify, in each of the several realms of
beauty, the truth of the central theory of the
book.

The various influences which have served to
shape a work of this kind become evident in the
reading; but I cannot refrain from a word of thanks
to the teachers whose inspiration and encourage
ment first made it possible. I owe much gratitude
to Professor Mary A. Jordan and Professor H.
Norman Gardiner of Smith College, who in litera
ture and in philosophy first set me in the way of
aesthetic interest and inquiry, and to Professor
Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University, whose
philosophical theories and scientific guidance have
largely influenced my thought.

WELLESLEY COLLEGE, AprU 24, 1905.

CONTENTS

PAGB

I. CRITICISM AND ^ESTHETICS .... 1

II. THE NATURE OF BEAUTY .... 27

III. THE ^ESTHETIC REPOSE 57

IV. THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART .... 89

A. THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM . . 91

B. SPACE COMPOSITION AMONG THE OLD

MASTERS 128

V. THE BEAUTY OF Music 149

VI. THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE . . . 203

VII. THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 229

VIII. THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 263

I

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS

IT is not so long ago that the field of literary
criticism was divided into two opposing camps.
France being the only country in the world where
criticism is a serious matter, the battle waged most
fiercely there, and doubtless greatly served to bring
about the present general interest and understand
ing of the theoretical questions at issue. The com
batants were, of course, the impressionistic and
scientific schools of criticism, and particularly en
lightening were the more or less recent controversies
between MM. Anatole France and Jules Lemaitre
as representatives of the first, and M. Brunetiere as
the chief exponent of the second. They have planted
their standards ; and we see that they stand for ten
dencies in the critical activity of every nation. The
ideal of the impressionist is to bring a new piece of
literature into being in some exquisitely happy char
acterization, — to create a lyric of criticism out of
the unique pleasure of an aesthetic hour. The strong
hold of the scientist, on the other hand, is the doc
trine of literary evolution, and his aim is to show
the history of literature as the history of a process,

4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

and the work of literature as a product ; to explain
it from its preceding causes, and to detect thereby
the general laws of literary metamorphosis.

Such are the two great lines of modern criti
cism ; their purposes and ideals stand diametrically
opposed. Of late, however, there have not been
wanting signs of a spirit of reconciliation, and of
a tendency to concede the value, each in its own
sphere, of different but complementary activities.
Now and again the lion and the lamb have lain
down together ; one might almost say, on reading
a delightful paper of Mr. Lewis E. Gates on Im
pressionism and Appreciation,1 that the lamb had
assimilated the lion. For the heir of all literary
studies, according to Professor Gates, is the appre
ciative critic ; and he it is who shall fulfill the true
function of criticism. He is to consider the work
of art in its historical setting and its psychological
origin, " as a characteristic moment in the devel
opment of human spirit, and as a delicately trans
parent illustration of a3sthetic law." But, " in
regarding the work of art under all these aspects,
his aim is, primarily, not to explain, and not to
judge or dogmatize, but to enjoy ; to realize the
manifold charms the work of art has gathered unto
itself from all sources, and to interpret this charm
imaginatively to the men of his own day and gen
eration."

Thus it would seem that if the report of his per-
. i Atlantic Monthly, July, 1900.

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 5

sonal reactions to a work of literary art is the in
tention of the impressionist, and its explanation
that of the scientist, the purpose of the appreciative
critic is fairly named as the illuminating and inter
preting reproduction of that work, from material
furnished by those other forms of critical activity.
Must, then, the method of appreciation, as combin
ing and reconciling the two opposed views, forth
with claim our adherence ? To put to use all the
devices of science and all the treasures of scholar
ship for the single end of imaginative interpretation,
for the sake of giving with the original melody all
the harmonies of subtle association and profound
meaning the ages have added, is, indeed, a great
undertaking. But is it as valuable as it is vast ?
M. Brunetiere has poured out his irony upon the
critics who believe that their own reactions upon
literature are anything to us in the presence of the
works to which they have thrilled. May it not also
be asked of the interpreter if his function is a neces
sary one ? Do we require so much enlightenment,
only to enjoy? Appreciative criticism is a salt to
give the dull palate its full savor ; but what literary
epicure, what real book-lover, will acknowledge
his own need of it? If the whole aim of appre
ciative criticism is to reproduce in other arrange
ment the contents, expressed and implied, and the
emotional value, original and derived, of a piece of
literature, the value of the end, at least to the
intelligent reader, is out of all proportion to the

6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

laboriousness of the means. Sing, reading 's a joy I
For me, I read.

But a feeling of this kind is, after all, not a reason
to be urged against the method. The real weakness
of appreciative criticism lies elsewhere. It teaches
us to enjoy ; but are we to enjoy everything? Since
its only aim is to reveal the " intricate implica
tions " of a work of art ; since it offers, and professes
to offer, no literary judgments, — having indeed
no explicit standard of literary value, — it must, at
least on its own theory, take its objects of apprecia
tion ready-made, so to speak, by popular acclaim.
It possesses no criterion ; it likes whate'er it looks
on ; and it can never tell us what we are not to like.
That is unsatisfactory ; and it is worse, — it is self-
destructive. For, not being able to reject, apprecia
tion cannot, in logic, choose the objects of its atten
tion. But a method which cannot limit on its own
principles the field within which it is to work is con
demned from the beginning ; it bears a fallacy at its
core. In order to make criticism theoretically possible
at all, the power to choose and reject, and so the pro
nouncing of judgment, must be an integral part of it.

To such a task the critic may lend himself with
out arousing our antagonism. We have no pressing
need to know the latent possibilities of emotion for
us in a book or a poem ; but whether it is excellent
or the reverse, whether " we were right in being
moved by it," we are indeed willing to hear, for we
desire to justify the faith that is in us.

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 7

If, then, the office of the judge be an essential
part of the critical function, the appreciative critic,
whatever his other merits, — and we shall examine
them later, — fails at least of perfection. His scheme
is not the ideal one ; and we may turn back, in our
search for it, to a closer view of those which his was
to supersede. Impressionism, however, is at once
out of the running ; it has always vigorously repu
diated the notion of the standard, and we know,
therefore, that no more than appreciation can it
choose its material and stand alone. But scientific
criticism professes, at least, the true faith. M. Brune
tiere holds that his own method is the only one by
which an impersonal and stable judgment can be
rendered.

The doctrine of the evolution of literary species
is more or less explained in naming it. Literary
species, M. Brunetiere maintains, do exist. They
develop and are transformed into others in a way
more or less analogous to the evolution of natural
types. It remains to see on what basis an objective
judgment can be given. Although M. Brunetiere
seems to make classification the disposal of a work
in the hierarchy of species, and judgment the dis
posal of it in relation to others of its own species,
he has never sharply distinguished between them ;
so that we shall not be wrong in taking his three
principles of classification, scientific, moral, and
aesthetic, as three principles by which he estimates
the excellence of a work. His own examples, in-

8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

deed, prove that to him a thing is already judged
in being classified. The work of art is judged, then,
by its relation to the type. Is this position tenable ?
I hold that, on the contrary, it precludes the possi
bility of a critical judgment ; for the judgment of
anything always means judgment with reference to
the end for which it exists. A bad king is not the
less a bad king for being a good father ; and if his
kingship is his essential function, he must be judged
with reference to that alone. Now a piece of litera
ture is, with reference to its end, first of all a work
of art. It represents life and it enjoins morality,
but it is only as a work of art that it attains con
sideration ; that, in the words of M. Lemaitre, it
" exists " for us at all. Its aim is beauty, and beauty
is its excuse for being.

The type belongs to natural history. The one
principle at the basis of scientific criticism is, as
we have seen, the conception of literary history as
a process, and of the work of art as a product.
The work of art is, then, a moment in a necessary
succession, governed by laws of change and adap
tation like those of natural evolution. But how can
the conception of values enter here? Excellence
can be attributed only to that which attains an
ideal end ; and a necessary succession has no end
in itself. The "type," in this sense, is perfectly
hollow. To say that the modern chrysanthemum is
better than that of our forbears because it is more
chrysanthemum-like is true only if we make the

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 9

latter form the arbitrary standard of the chrysan
themum. If the horse of the Eocene age is inferior
to the horse of to-day, it is because, on M. Brune-
tiere's principle, he is less horse-like. But who
shall decide which is more like a horse, the original
or the later development ? No species which is con
stituted by its own history can be said to have an
end in itself, and can, therefore, have an excellence
to which it shall attain. In short, good and bad
can be applied to the moments in a necessary evo
lution only by imputing a fictitious superiority to
the last term ; and so one type cannot logically be
preferred to another. As for the individual speci
mens, since the conception of the type does not
admit the principle of excellence, conformity thereto
means nothing.

The work of art, on the other hand, as a thing
of beauty, is an attainment of an ideal, not a pro
duct, and, from this point of view, is related not
at all to the other terms of a succession, its causes
and its effects, but only to the abstract principles
of that beauty at which it aims. Strangely enough,
the whole principle of this contention has been ad
mitted by M. Brunetiere in a casual sentence, of
which he does not appear to recognize the full sig
nificance. " We acknowledge, of course," he says,
" that there is in criticism a certain difference from
natural history, since we cannot eliminate the sub
jective element if the capacity works of art have
of producing impressions on us makes a part of

10 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

their definition. It is not in order to be eaten that
the tree produces its fruit." But this is giving
away his whole position ! As little as the conform
ity of the fruit to its species has to do with our
pleasure in eating it, just so little has the conform
ity of a literary work to its genre to do with the
quality by virtue of which it is defined as art.

The Greek temple is a product of Greek reli
gion applied to geographical conditions. To com
prehend it as a type, we must know that it was an
adaptation of the open hilltop to the purpose of
the worship of images of the gods. But the most
penetrating study of the slow moulding of the type
will never reveal how and why just those propor
tions were chosen which make the joy and the
despair of all beholders. Early Italian art was
purely ecclesiastical in its origin. The exigencies
of adaptation to altars, convent walls, or cathedral
domes explain the choice of subjects, the compo
sition, even perhaps the color schemes (as of fres
coes, for instance) ; and yet all that makes a Giotto
greater than a Pictor Ignotus is quite unaccounted
for by these considerations.

The quality of beauty is not evolved. All that
comes under the category of material and practical
purpose, of idea or of moral attitude, belongs to
the succession, the evolution, the type. But the
defining characters of the work of art are inde
pendent of time. The temple, the fresco, and the
symphony, in the moment they become objects of

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 11

the critical judgment, become also qualities of
beauty and transparent examples of its laws.

If the true critical judgment, then, belongs to an
order of ideas of which natural science can take no
cognizance, the self-styled scientific criticism must
show the strange paradox of ignoring the very
qualities by virtue of which a given work has any
value, or can come at all to be the object of aesthetic
judgment. In two words, the world of beauty and
the world of natural processes are incommensurable,
and scientific criticism of literary art is a logical
impossibility.

But the citadel of scientific criticism has yet one
more stronghold. Granted that beauty, as an ab
stract quality, is timeless ; granted that, in the judg
ment of a piece of literary art, the standard of value
is the canon of beauty, not the type ; yet the old
order changeth. Primitive and civilized man, the
Hottentot and the Laplander, the Oriental and the
Slav, have desired differing beauties. May it, then,
still be said that although a given embodiment of
beauty is to be judged with reference to the idea
of beauty alone, yet the concrete ideal of beauty
must wear the manacles of space and time, — that
the metamorphoses of taste preclude the notion of
an objective beauty? And if this is true, are we
not thrown back again on questions of genesis and
development, and a study of the evolution, not of
particular types of art, but of general aesthetic feel
ing ; and, in consequence, upon a form of criticism

12 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

which is scientific in the sense of being based on
succession, and not on absolute value ?

It is indeed true that the very possibility of a
criticism which shall judge of aBsthetic excellence
must stand or fall with this other question of a
beauty in itself, as an objective foundation for
criticism. If there is an absolute beauty, it must
be possible to work out a system of principles
which shall embody its laws, — an a3sthetic, in
other words ; and on the basis of that a3sthetic to
deliver a well-founded critical judgment. Is there,
then, a beauty in itself ? And if so, in what does
it consist ?

We can approach such an aBsthetic canon in two
ways: from the standpoint of philosophy, which
develops the idea of beauty as a factor in the sys
tem of our absolute values, side by side with the
ideas of truth and of morality, or from the stand
point of empirical science. For our present purpose,
we may confine ourselves to the empirical facts of
psychology and physiology.

When I feel the rhythm of poetry, or of perfect
prose, which is, of course, in its own way, no less
rhythmical, every sensation of sound sends through
me a diffusive wave of nervous energy. I am the
rhythm because I imitate it in myself. I march to
noble music in all my veins, even though I may be
sitting decorously by my own hearthstone ; and
when I sweep with my eyes the outlines of a great
picture, the curve of a Greek vase, the arches of a

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 13

cathedral, every line is lived over again in my own
frame. And when rhythm and melody and forms
and colors give me pleasure, it is because the imi
tating impulses and movements that have arisen in
me are such as suit, help, heighten my physical
organization in general and in particular. It may
seem somewhat trivial to say that a curved line is
pleasing because the eye is so hung as to move best
in it ; but we may take it as one instance of the
numberless conditions for healthy action which a
beautiful form fulfills. A well-composed picture
calls up in the spectator just such a balanced rela
tion of impulses of attention and incipient move
ments as suits an -organism which is also balanced
— bilateral — in its own impulses to movement,
and at the same time stable; and it is the cor
respondence of the suggested impulses with the
natural movement that makes the composition good.
Besides the pleasure from the tone relations, —
which doubtless can be eventually reduced to some
thing of the same kind, — it is the balance of
nervous and muscular tensions and relaxations, of
yearnings and satisfactions, which are the subjective
side of the beauty of a strain of music. The basis,
in short, of any aesthetic experience — poetry, mu
sic, painting, and the rest — is beautiful through
its harmony with the conditions offered by our
senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and through
the harmony of the suggestions and impulses it
arouses with the whole organism.

14 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

But the sensuous beauty of art does not exhaust
the aesthetic experience. What of the special emo
tions — the gayety -or triumph, the sadness or
peace or agitation — that hang about the work
of art, and make, for many, the greater part of
their delight in it? Those among these special
emotions which belong to the subject-matter of a
work — like our horror at the picture of an execu
tion — need not here be discussed. To understand
the rest we may venture for a moment into the realm
of pure psychology. We are told by psychology
that emotion is dependent on the organic excita
tions of any given idea. Thus fear at the sight of
a bear is only the reverberation in consciousness
of all nervous and vascular changes set up instinc
tively as a preparation for flight. Think away our
bodily feelings, ard we think away fear, too. And
set up the bodily changes and the feeling of them,
and we have the emotion that belongs to them even
without the idea, as we may see in the unmotived
panics that sometimes accompany certain heart
disturbances. The same thing, on another level,
is a familiar experience. A glass of wine makes
merriment, simply by bringing about those organic
states which are felt emotionally as cheerfulness.
Now the application of all this to aesthetics is
clear. All these tensions, relaxations, — bodily
" imitations " of the form, — have each the emo
tional tone which belongs to it. And so if the
music of a Strauss waltz makes us gay, and Han-

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 15

del's Largo serious, it is not because we are re
minded of the ballroom or of the cathedral, but
because the physical response to the stimulus of
the music is itself the basis of the emotion. What
makes the sense of peace in the atmosphere of the
Low Countries ? Only the tendency, on following
those level lines of landscape, to assume ourselves
the horizontal, and the restfulness which belongs
to that posture. If the crimson of a picture by
Bocklin, or the golden glow of a Giorgione, or the
fantastic gleam of a Rembrandt speaks to me like
a human voice, it is not because it expresses to me
an idea, but because it impresses that sensibility
which is deeper than ideas, — the region of the
emotional response to color and to light. What is
the beauty of the " Ulalume," or " Kufyla Khan," or
" Ueber alien Gipfeln " ? It is the way in which
the form in its exquisite fitness to our senses, and
the emotion belonging to that particular form as
organic reverberation therefrom, in its exquisite
fitness to thought, create in us a delight quite un
accounted for by the ideas which they express.
This is the essence of beauty, — the possession of
a quality which excites the human organism to
functioning harmonious with its own nature.

We can see in this definition the possibility of
an aesthetic which shall have objective validity be
cause founded in the eternal properties of human
nature, while it yet allows us to understand that
in the limits within which, by education and envi-

16 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

ronment, the empirical man changes, his norms of
beauty must vary, too. Ideas can change in inter
est and in value, but these energies lie much deeper
than the idea, in the original constitution of man
kind. They belong to the instinctive, involuntary
part of our nature. They are changeless, just as
the " eternal man " is changeless ; and as the basis
of aesthetic feeling they can be gathered into a
system of laws which shall be subject to no essen
tial metamorphosis. So long as we laugh when we
are joyful, and weep when we are sick and sorry ;
so long as we flush with anger, or grow pale with
fear, so long shall we thrill to a golden sunset,
the cadence of an air, or the gloomy spaces of a
cathedral.

The study of these forms of harmonious function
ing of the human organism has its roots, of course,
in the science of psychology, but comes, neverthe
less, to a different flower, because of the grafting
on of the element of aesthetic value. It is the study
of the disinterested human pleasures, and, although
as yet scarcely well begun, capable of a most de
tailed and definitive treatment.

This is not the character of those studies so
casually alluded to by the author of " Impressionism
and Appreciation," when he enjoins on the apprecia
tive critic not to neglect the literature of 33sthetics :
" The characteristics of his [the artist's] tempera
ment have been noted with the nicest loyalty ; and
particularly the play of his special faculty, the im-

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 17

agination, as this faculty through the use of sensa
tions and images and moods and ideas creates a
work of art, has been followed out with the utmost
delicacy of observation." But these are not pro
perly studies in aesthetics at all. To find out what
is beautiful, and the reason for its being beautiful,
is the esthetic task ; to analyze the workings of
the poet's mind, as his conception grows and rami
fies and brightens, is no part of it, because such a
study takes no account of the aesthetic value of the
process, but only of the process itself. The same
fallacy lurks here, indeed, as in the confusion of
the scientific critic between literary evolution and
poetic achievement, and the test of the fallacy is
this single fact : the psychological process in the
development of a dramatic idea, for instance, is,
and quite properly should be, from the point of
view of such analysis, exactly the same for a Shake
speare and for the Hoyt of our American farces.

The cause of the production of a work of art may
indeed be found by tracing back the stream of
thought ; but the cause of its beauty is the desire
and the sense of beauty in the human heart. If a
given combination of lines and colors is beautiful,
then the anticipation of the combination as beauti
ful is what has brought about its incarnation. The
artist's attitude toward his vision of beauty, and the
art lover's toward that vision realized, are the same.
The only legitimate aesthetic analysis is, then, that
of the relation between the aesthetic object and the

18 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

lover of beauty, and all the studies in the psycho
logy of invention — be it literary, scientific, or
practical invention — have no right to the other
name.

-^Esthetics, then, is the science of beauty. It will
be developed as a system of laws expressing the
relation between the object and aesthetic pleasure in
it ; or as a system of conditions to which the ob
ject, in order to be beautiful, must conform. It is
hard to say where the task of the aesthetician ends,
and that of the critic begins ; and for the present,
at least, they must often be commingled. But they
are defined by their purposes : the end and aim of
one is a system of principles ; of the other, <;he
disposal of a given work with reference to those
principles ; and when the science of aesthetics shall
have taken shape, criticism will confine itself to
the analysis of the work into its aesthetic elements,
to the explanation (by means of the laws already
formulated) of its especial power in the realm of
beauty, and to the judgment of its comparative
aesthetic value.

The other forms of critical activity will then find
their true place as preliminaries or supplements to
the essential function of criticism. The study of
historical conditions, of authors' personal relations,
of the literary " moment," will be means to show
the work of art " as in itself it really is." Shall we
then say that the method of appreciation, being an
unusually exhaustive presentment of the object as

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 19

in itself it really is, is therefore an indispensable
preparation for the critical judgment ? The modern
appreciator, after the model limned by Professor
Gates, was to strive to get, as it were, the aerial
perspective of a masterpiece, — to present it as it
looks across the blue depths of the years. This is
without doubt a fascinating study ; but it may be
questioned if it does not darken the more important
issue. For it is not the object as in itself it really
is that we at last behold, but the object disguised
in new and strange trappings. Such appreciation
is to aesthetic criticism as the sentimental to the
naive poet in Schiller's famous antithesis. The vir
tue of the sentimental genius is to complete by the
elements which it derives from itself an otherwise
defective object. So the aesthetic critic takes his
natural meed of beauty from the object; the
appreciative critic seeks a further beauty outside of
the object, in his own reflections and fancies about
it. But if we care greatly for the associations of
literature, we are in danger of disregarding its
quality. A vast deal of pretty sentiment may hang
about and all but transmute the most prosaic ob
ject. A sedan chair, an old screen, a sundial, — to
quote only Austin Dobson, — need not be lovely in
themselves to serve as pegs to hang a poem on ; and
all the atmosphere of the eighteenth century may
be wafted from a jar of potpourri. Read a lyric
instead of a rose jar, and the rule holds as well.
The man of feeling cannot but find all Ranelagh

20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

and Vauxhall in some icily regular effusion of the
eighteenth century, and will take a deeper retro
spective thrill from an old playbill than from the
play itself. And since this is so, — since the in
terest in the overtones, the added value given by
time, the value for us, is not necessarily related
to the value as literature of the fundamental note,
— to make the study of the overtones an essential
part of criticism is to be guilty of the Pathetic Fal
lacy ; that is, the falsification of the object by the
intrusion of ourselves, — the typical sentimental
crime.

It seems to me, indeed, that instead of courting
a sense for the aromatic in literature, the critic
should rather guard himself against its insidious
approaches. Disporting himself in such pleasures
of the fancy, he finds it easy to believe, and to
make us believe, that a piece of literature gains in
intrinsic value from its power to stimulate his his
torical sense. The modern appreciative critic, in
short, is too likely to be the dupe of his " sophisti
cated reverie," — like an epicure who should not
taste the meat for the sauces. A master work, once
beautiful according to the great and general laws,
never becomes, properly speaking, either more or
less so. If a piece of art can take us with its own
beauty, there is no point in superimposing upon it
shades of sentiment ; if it cannot so charm, all the
rose-colored lights of this kind of appreciative
criticism are unavailing.

CRITICISM AND ESTHETICS 21

The " literary " treatment of art, as the " emo
tional " treatment of literature, — for that is what
" appreciation " and " interpretation " really are, —
can completely justify itself only as the crowning
touch of a detailed aesthetic analysis of those
" orders of impression distinct in kind " which are
the primary elements in our pleasure in the beau
tiful. It is the absence — and not only the absence,
but the ignoring of the possibility — of such analy
sis which tempts one to rebel against such phrases
as those of Professor Gates : " the splendid and
victorious womanhood of Titian's Madonnas," " the
gentle and terrestrial grace of motherhood in those
of Andrea del Sarto," the " sweetly ordered come
liness of Van Dyck's." One is moved to ask if the
only difference between a Madonna of Titian and
one of Andrea is a difference of temper, and if the
important matter for the critic of art is the moral
conception rather than the visible beauty.

I cannot think of anything for which I would
exchange the enchanting volumes of Walter Pater,
and yet even he is not the ideal aBsthetic critic
whose duties he made clear. What he has done is
to give us the most exquisite and delicate of inter
pretations. He has not failed to " disengage " the
subtle and peculiar pleasure that each picture, each
poem or personality, has in store for us ; but of
analysis and explanation of this pleasure — of which
he speaks in the Introduction to " The Renaissance "
— there is no more. In the first lines of his paper on

22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Botticelli, the author asks, " What is the peculiar
sensation which his work has the property of excit
ing in us?" And to what does he finally come?
" The peculiar character of Botticelli is the result
of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity
in its uncertain conditions . . . with his conscious
ness of the shadow upon it of the great things from
which it sinks." But this is not aesthetic analysis !
It is not even the record of a " peculiar sensation,"
but a complex intellectual interpretation. Where
is the pleasure in the irrepressible outline, fasci
nating in its falseness, — in the strange color, like
the taste of olives, of the Spring and the Pallas?
So, also, his great passage on the Mona Lisa, his
" Winckelmann," even his " Giorgione " itself, are
merely wonderful delineations of the mood of re
sponse to the creations of the art in question. Such
interpretation as we have from Pater is a priceless
treasure, but it is none the less the final cornice,
and not the corner stone of aBsthetic criticism.

The tendency to interpretation without any basis
in assthetic explanation is especially seen in the
subject of our original discussion, — literature. It
is indeed remarkable how scanty is the space given
in contemporary criticism to the study of an au
thor's means to those results which we ourselves
experience. Does no one really care how it is done ?
Or are they all in the secret, and interested only in
the temperament expressed or the aspect of life en
visaged in a given work ? One would have thought

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 23

that as the painter turned critic in Fromentin at
least to a certain extent sought out and dealt with
the hidden workings of his art, so the romancer or
the poet-critic might also have told off for us " the
very pulse of the machine." The last word has not
been said on the mysteries of the writer's art. We
know, it may be, how the links of Shakespeare's
magic chain of words are forged, but the same can
not be said of any other poet. We have studied
Dante's philosophy and his ideal of love ; but have
we found out the secrets of his "inventive han
dling of rhythmical language " ? If Flaubert is uni
versally acknowledged to have created a masterpiece
in " Madame Bovary," should there not be an inter
est for criticism in following out, chapter by chap
ter, paragraph by paragraph, word by word, the
meaning of what it is to be a masterpiece? But such
seems not to be the case. Taine reconstructs the
English temperament out of Fielding and Dickens ;
Matthew Arnold, although he deals more than
others in first principles, never carries his analysis
beyond the widest generalizations, like the require
ment for ''profound truth" and "high serious
ness," for great poetry. And as we run the gamut
of contemporary criticism, we find ever preoccupa
tion with the personality of the writers and the ideas
of their books. I recall only one example — the
critical essays of Henry James — where the crafts
man has dropped some hints on the ideals of the
literary art ; and even that, if I may be allowed the

24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

bull, in his novels rather than in his essays, for in
critical theory he is the most ardent of impression
ists. Whatever the cause, we cannot but allow the
dearth of knowledge of, and interest in, the pecul
iar subject-matter of criticism, — the elements of
beauty in a work of literature.

But although the present body of criticism con
sists rather of preliminaries and supplements to
what should be its real accomplishment, these
should not therefore receive the less regard. The
impressionist has set himself a definite task, and he
has succeeded. If not the true critic, he is an artist
in his own right, and he has something to say to
the world. The scientific critic has taken all know
ledge for his province ; and although we hold that
it has rushed in upon and swamped his distinctly
critical function, so long as we may call him by his
other name of natural historian of literature, we can
only acknowledge his great achievements. For the
appreciative critic we have less sympathy as yet,
but the " development of the luxurious intricacy
and the manifold implications of our enjoyment "
may fully crown the edifice of aesthetic explanation
and appraisal of the art of every age. But all these,
we feel, do not fulfill the essential function ; the
Idea of Criticism is not here. What the idea of
criticism is we have tried to work out : a judgment
of a work of art on the basis of the laws of beauty.
That such laws there are, that they exist directly
in the relation between the material form and the

CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS 25

suggested physical reactions, and that they are
practically changeless, even as the human instincts
are changeless, we have sought to show. And if
there can be a science of the beautiful, then an ob
jective judgment on the basis of the laws of the
beautiful can be rendered. The true end of criti
cism, therefore, is to tell us whence and why the
charm of a work of art : to disengage, to explain,
to measure, and to certify it. And this explanation
of charm, and this stamping it with the seal of
approval, is possible by the help, and only by the
help, of the science of aesthetics, — a science now
only in its beginning, but greatly to be desired in
its full development.

How greatly to be desired we realize in divining
that the present dearth of constructive and destruc
tive criticism, of all, indeed, except interpretations
and reports, is responsible for the modern mountains
of machine-made literature. Will not the aesthetic
critic be for us a new Hercules, to clear away the
ever growing heap of formless things in book
covers? If he will teach us only what great art
means in literature ; if he will give us never so
little discussion of the first principles of beauty,
and point the moral with some " selling books," he
will at least have turned the flood. There are sto
ries nowadays, but few novels, and plenty of spec
tacles, but no plays ; and how should we know the
difference, never having heard what a novel ought
to be ? But let the aesthetic critic give us a firm

26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

foundation for criticism, a real understanding of
the conditions of literary art ; let him teach us to
know a novel or a play when we see it, and we
shall not always mingle the wheat and the chaff.

II

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY

II

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY

TTWERY introduction to the problems of aesthet-
Tj ics begins by acknowledging the existence
and claims of two methods of attack, — the gen
eral, philosophical, deductive, which starts from a
complete metaphysics and installs beauty in its
place among the other great concepts; and the
empirical, or inductive, which seeks to disengage a
general principle of beauty from the objects of
aesthetic experience and the facts of aesthetic en
joyment: Fechner's "aesthetics from above and
from below."

The first was the method of aesthetics par ex-
cellence. It was indeed only through the desire
of an eighteenth-century philosopher, Baumgarten,
to round out his " architectonic " of metaphysics
that the science received its name, as designating
the theory of knowledge in the form of feeling,
parallel to that of " clear," logical thought. Kant,
Schelling, arid Hegel, again, made use of the con
cept of the Beautiful as a kind of keystone OP
cornice for their respective philosophical edifices.
^Esthetics, then, came into being as the philosophy
of the Beautiful, and it may be asked why this

30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

philosophical aesthetics does not suffice — why
beauty should need for its understanding also an
aesthetics " von unten."

The answer is not that no system of philosophy is
universally accepted, but that the general aesthetic
theories have not, as yet at least, succeeded in an
swering the plain questions of " the plain man " in
regard to concrete beauty. Kant, indeed, frankly
denied that the explanation of concrete beauty, or
" Doctrine of Taste," as he called it, was possible,
while the various definers of beauty as " the union
of the Real and the Ideal," " the expression of the
Ideal to Sense," have done no more than he. No
one of these aesthetic systems, in spite of volumes
of so-called application of their principles to works
of art, has been able to furnish a criterion of beauty.
The criticism of the generations is summed up in
the mild remark of Fechner, in his " Vorschule
der Aesthetik," to the effect that the philosophical
path leaves one in conceptions that, by reason of
their generality, do not well fit the particular cases.
And so it was that empirical aesthetics arose, which
does seek to answer those plain questions as to the
enjoyment of concrete beauty down to its simplest
forms, to which philosophical aesthetics had been
inadequate.

But it is clear that neither has empirical aesthet
ics said the last word concerning beauty. Criticism
is still in a chaotic state that would be impos
sible if aesthetic theory were firmly grounded.

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 31

This situation appears to me to be due to the in
herent inadequacy and inconclusiveness of empiri
cal aesthetics when it stands alone; the grounds
of this inadequacy I shall seek to establish in the
following.

Granting that the aim of every a3sthetics is to de
termine the Nature of Beauty, and to explain our
feelings about it, we may say that the empirical
treatments propose to do this either by describing
the aesthetic object and extracting the essential ele
ments of Beauty, or by describing the aesthetic ex
perience and extracting the essential elements of
aesthetic feeling, thereby indicating the elements of
Beauty as those which effect this feeling.

Now the bare description and analysis of beauti
ful objects cannot, logically, yield any result; for
the selection of cases would have to be arbitrary,
and would be at the mercy of any objection. To
any one who should say, But this is not beautiful,
and should not be included in your inventory, an
swer could be made only by showing that it had
such and such qualities, the very, by hypothesis,
unknown qualities that were to be sought. More
over, the field of beauty contains so many and so
heterogeneous objects, that the retreat to their only
common ground, aesthetic feeling, appears inevit
able. A statue and a symphony can be reduced to
a common denominator most easily if the states
of mind which they induce are compared. Thus
the analysis of objects passes naturally over to

32 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

the analysis of mental states — the point of view
of psychology.

There is, however, a method subsidiary to the
preceding, which seeks the elements of Beauty in
a study of the genesis and the development of art
forms. But this leaves the essential phenomenon
absolutely untouched. The general types of aes-
thetic expression may indeed have been shaped by
social forces, — religious, commercial, domestic, —
but as social products, not as aasthetic phenomena.
Such studies reveal to us, as it were, the excuse
for the fact of music, poetry, painting — but they
tell us nothing of the reason why beautiful rather
than ugly forms were chosen, as who should show
that the bird sings to attract its mate, ignoring the
relation and sequence of the notes. The decorative
art of most savage tribes, for instance, is nearly
all of totemic origin, and the decayed and degraded
forms of snake, bird, bear, fish, may be traced in the
most apparently empty geometric patterns ; — but
what does this discovery tell us of the essentially
decorative quality of such patterns or of the nature
of beauty in form ? The study of the Gothic cathe
dral reveals the source of its general plan and of
its whole scheme of ornament in detailed religious
symbolism. Yet a complete knowledge of the char
acter of the religious feeling which impelled to this
monumental expression, and of the genesis of every
element of structure, fails to account for the essen
tial beauty of rhythm and proportion in the finished

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 33

work. These researches, in short, explain the reason
for the existence, but not for the quality, of works
of art.

Thus it is in psychology that empirical aesthetics
finds its last resort. And indeed, our plain man
might say, the aesthetic experience itself is inescap
able and undeniable. You know that the sight or
the hearing of this thing gives you a thrill of plea
sure. You may not be able to defend the beauty
of the object, but the fact of the experience you
have. The psychologist, seeking to analyze the
vivid and unmistakable aesthetic experience, would
therefore proceed somewhat as follows. He would
select the salient characteristics of his mental state
in presence of a given work of art. He would then
study, by experiment and introspection, how the
particular sense-stimulations of the work of art in
question could become the psychological conditions
of these salient characteristics. Thus, supposing
the aesthetic experience to have been described as
" the conscious happiness in which one is absorbed,
and, as it were, immersed in the sense-object," a the
further special aim, in connection with a picture,
for instance, would be to show how the sensations
and associated ideas from color, line, composi
tion, and all the other elements of a picture may,
on general psychological principles, bring about
this state of happy absorption. Such elements
as can be shown to have a direct relation to the

1 M. W. Calkins : An Introduction to Psychology, 1902, p. 278.

34 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

aesthetic experience are then counted as elements
of the beauty of the aesthetic object, and such as
are invariable in all art forms would belong to the
general formula or concept of Beauty.

This, it seems to me, is as favorable a way as
possible of stating the possibilities of an independ
ent aesthetic psychology.

Yet this method, as it works out, does not exhaust
the problem the solution of which was affirmed to
be the aim of every aesthetics. The aesthetic expe
rience is very complex, and the theoretical conse
quences of emphasizing this or that element very
great. Thus, if it were held that the characteristics
of the aesthetic experience could be given by the
complete analysis of a single well-marked case, —
say, our impressions before a Doric column, or the
Cathedral of Chartres, or the Giorgione Venus, — it
could be objected that for such a psychological ex
perience the essential elements are hard to isolate.
The cathedral is stone rather than staff ; it is three
hundred rather than fifty feet high. Our reaction
upon these facts may or may not be essentials to
the aesthetic moment, and we can know whether
they are essentials only by comparison and exclu
sion. It might be said, therefore, that the analysis
of a single, though typical, aesthetic experience is
insufficient ; a wide induction is necessary. Based
on the experience of many people, in face of the
same object? But to many there would be no aes
thetic experience. On that of one person, over an

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 35

extensive field of objects? How, then, determine
the limits of this field? Half of the dispute of
modern aesthetics is over the right to include in the
material for this induction various kinds of enjoy
ment which are vivid, not directly utilitarian, but
traditionally excluded from the field. Guyau, for
instance, in a charming passage of his " Problemes
de 1'Esthetique Contemporaine," argues for the
aesthetic quality of the moment when, exhausted by
a long mountain tramp, he quaffed, among the slopes
of the Pyrenees, a bowl of foaming milk. The same
dispute appears, in more complicated form, in the
conflicting dicta of the critics.

If we do not know what part of our feeling is
aesthetic feeling, how can we go farther? If the
introspecting subject cannot say, This is aesthetic
feeling, it is logically impossible to make his state
of mind the basis for further advance. It is clear
that the great question is of what one has a right
to include in the aesthetic experience. But that one
should have such a " right " implies that there is
an imperative element in the situation, an absolute
standard somewhere.

It seems to me that the secret of the difficulty
lies in the nature of the situation, with which an
empirical treatment must necessarily fail to deal.
What we have called " the aesthetic experience " is
really a positive toning of the general aesthetic atti
tude. This positive toning corresponds to aesthetic
excellence in the object. But wherever the concept

36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

of excellence enters, there is always the implication
of a standard, value, judgment. But where there is
a standard there is always an implicit a priori, — a
philosophical foundation.

If, then, a philosophical method is the last resort
and the first condition of a true esthetics, what is
the secret of its failure? For that it has failed
seems to be still the consensus of opinion. Simply,
I believe and maintain, the unreasonable and illogi
cal demand which, for instance, Fechner makes in
the words I have quoted, for just this immediate
application of a philosophical definition to concrete
cases. Who but an Hegelian philosopher, cries Pro
fessor James, ever pretended that reason in action
was per se a sufficient explanation of the political
changes in Europe? Who but an Hegelian phi
losopher, he might add, ever pretended that " the
expression of the Idea to Sense " was a sufficient
explanation of the Sistine Madonna ? But I think
the Hegelian — or other — philosopher might an
swer that he had no need so to pretend. Such a
philosophical definition, as I hope to show, cannot
possibly apply to particular cases, and should not
be expected to do so.

Beauty is an excellence, a standard, a value.
But value is in its nature teleological ; is of the
nature of purpose. Anything has value because it
fulfills an end, because it is good for something in
the world. A thing is not beautiful because it has
value, — other things have that, — it has value be-

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 37

cause it is beautiful, because it fulfills the end of
Beauty. Thus the metaphysical definition of Beauty
must set forth what this end of Beauty is, — what
it serves in the universe.

But to determine what anything does, or fulfills,
or exemplifies, is not the same as to determine
what it is in itself. The most that can be said is
that the end, or function, shapes the means or con
stitution. The end is a logical imperative. Beauty
does, and must do, such things. To ask how, is at
once to indicate an ultimate departure from the
philosophical point of view ; for the means to an
end are different, and to be empirically determined.

Now the constitution of Beauty can be only the
means to the end of Beauty, — that combination
of qualities in the object which will bring about
the end fixed by philosophical definition. The end
is general ; the means may be of different kinds.
Evidently, then, the philosophical definition cannot
be applied directly to the object until the possi
bilities, conditions, and limitations of that object's
fitness for the purpose assigned are known. We
cannot ask, Does the Sistine Madonna express the
Idea to Sense ? until we know all possibilities and
conditions of the visual for attaining that expres
sion. But, indeed, the consideration of causes and
effects suggests at once that natural science must
guide further investigation. Philosophy must lay
down what Beauty has to do ; but since it is in our
experience of Beauty that its end is accomplished,

38 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

since the analysis of such experience and the study
of its contributing elements is a work of the natu
ral science of such experience — it would follow
that psychology must deal with the various means
through which this end is to be reached.

Thus we see that Fechner's reproach is unjus
tified. Those concepts which are too general to
apply to particular cases are not meant to do so.
If a general concept expresses, as it should, the
place of Beauty in the hierarchy of metaphysical
values, it is for the psychologist of aesthetics to
develop the means by which that end can be reached
in the various realms in which works of art are
found.

Nor can we agree with Santayana's dictum 1 that
philosophical aesthetics confuses the import of an
experience with the explanation of its cause. It
need not. The aesthetic experience is indeed caused
by the beautiful object, but the beautiful object
itself is caused by the possibility of the aesthetic
experience, — beauty as an end under the con
ditions of human perception. Thus the Nature of
Beauty is related to its import, or meaning, or end,
as means to that end; and therefore the import of
an experience may well point out to us the con
stitution of the cause of that experience. A work
of art, a piece of nature, is judged by its degree
of attainment to that end ; the explanation of its
beauty — of its degree of attainment, that is — is
1 The Sense of Beauty, 1898. Intro.

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 39

found in the effect of its elements, according to
psychological laws, on the aesthetic subject.

Such a psychological study of the means by
which the end of Beauty is attained is the only
method by which we can come to an explanation
of the wealth of concrete beauty. The concept of
explanation, indeed, is valid only within the realm
of causes and effects. The aim of aesthetics being
conceded, as above, to be the determination of the
Nature of Beauty and the explanation of our feel
ings about it, it is evident at this point that the
Nature of Beauty must be determined by philoso
phy ; but the general definition having been fixed,
the meaning of the work of art having been made
clear, the only possible explanation of our feelings
about it — the aesthetic experience, in other words
— must be gained from psychology. This method
is not open to the logical objections against the
preceding. No longer need we ask what has a right
to be included in the aasthetic experience. That
has been fix^d by the definition of Beauty. But
how the beautiful object brings about the aesthetic
experience, the boundaries of which are already
known, is clearly matter for psychology.

The first step must then be to win the philoso
phical definition of Beauty. It was Kant, says
Hegel, who spoke the first rational word concern
ing Beauty. The study of his successors will reveal,
I believe, that the aesthetic of the great system of
idealism forms, on the whole, one identical doctrine.

40 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

It is worth while to dwell somewhat on this point,
because the traditional view of the relation of the
aesthetic of Kant, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel
is otherwise. Kant's starting-point was the discov
ery of the normative, " over-individual " nature
of Beauty, which we have just found to be the
secret of the contradictions of empirical sesthetics.
Yet he came to it at the bidding of quite other
motives.

Kant's sesthetics was meant to serve as the key
stone of the arch between sense and reason. The
discovery of all that is implicit in the experience
of the senses had led him to deny the possibility of
knowledge beyond the matter of this experience.
Yet the reason has an inevitable tendency to press
beyond this limit, to seek all-embracing, absolute
unities, — to conceive an unconditioned totality.
Thus the reason presents us with the ideas — be
yond all possibility of knowledge — of the Soul,
the World, and God. In the words of Kant, the
Ideas of Keason lead the understanding to the con
sideration of Nature according to a principle of
completeness, although it can never attain to this.
Can there be a bridge across this abyss between
sense and reason ? then asks Kant ; which bridge
he believes himself to have found in the aesthetic
faculty. For on inquiring what is involved in the
judgment, " This is beautiful," he discovers that
such a judgment is " universal " and " necessary,"
inasmuch as it implies that every normal spectator

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 41

must acknowledge its validity, that it is " disin
terested " because it rests on the " appearance of
the object without demanding its actual existence,"
and that it is " immediate " or " free," as it ac
knowledges the object as beautiful without definite
purpose, as of adaptation to use. But how does
this judgment constitute the desired bond between
sense and reason ? Simply in that, though applied
to an object of the senses, it has yet all the marks
of the Idea of Reason, — it is universal, necessary,
free, unconditioned ; it has " the principle of com"
pleteness." And as for the object itself, it is judged
as if it were perfect, and so fulfills those demands
of reason which elsewhere in the world of sense
are unsatisfied.

The two important factors, then, of Kant's aes
thetics are its reconciliation of sense and reason in
beauty, and its reference of the " purposiveness "
of beauty to the cognitive faculty.

Schiller has been given the credit of transcend
ing Kant's " subjective " aesthetic through his em
phasis on the significance of the beautiful object.
It is not bound by a conception to which it must
attain, so that it is perceived as if it were free.
Nor do we desire the reality of it to use for our
selves or for others ; so that we are free in relation
to it. It, the object, is thus " the vindication of
freedom in the world of phenomena," that world
which is otherwise a binding necessity. But it would
seem that this had been already taught by Kant

42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

himself, and that Schiller has but enlivened the
subject by his two illuminating phrases, " aesthetic
semblance" and the "play-impulse," to denote
the real object of the aesthetic desire and the true
nature of that desire ; form instead of material
existence, and a free attitude instead of serious
purpose. Still, his insistence on Beauty as the re
alization of freedom may be said to have paved
the way for Schelling's theory, in which the aesthe
tic reaches its maximum of importance.

The central thought of the Absolute Idealism of
Schelling is the underlying identity of Nature and
the Self. In Nature, from matter up to the organ
ism, the objective factor predominates, or, in Schel
ling's phrase, the conscious self is determined by
the unconscious. In morality, science, the subjec
tive factor predominates, or the unconscious is de
termined by the conscious. But the work of art is
a natural appearance and so unconscious, and is
yet the product of a conscious activity. It gives,
then, the equilibrium of the real and ideal factors,

— just that repose of reconciliation or " indiffer
ence " which alone can show the Absolute. But —
and this is of immense importance for our theory

— in order to explain the identity of subject and
object, the Ego must have an intuition, through
which, in one and the same appearance, it is in it
self at once conscious and unconscious, and this
condition is given in the aesthetic experience. The
beautiful is thus the solution of the riddle of the

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 43

universe, for it is the possibility of the explicit con
sciousness of the unity of Nature and the Self — or
the Absolute.

So Beauty is again the pivot on which a system
turns. Its place is not essentially different from
that which it held in the systems of Kant and
Schiller. As the objective possibility for the bridge
between sense and reason, as the vindication of
freedom in the phenomenal world, and as the vin
dication of the possible unity of the real and the
ideal, or nature and self, the world-elements, its
philosophical significance is nearly the same.

With Hegel Beauty loses little of its command
ing position. The universe is in its nature rational ;
Thought and Being are one. The world-process is
a logical process ; and nature and history, in which
spirit of the world realizes itself, are but applied
logic. The completely fulfilled or expressed Truth
is then the concrete world-system ; at the same time
the life or self of the universe ; the Absolute. This
Hegel calls the Idea, and he defines Beauty as the
expression of the Idea to sense.

This definition would seem to be as to the letter
in accord with the general tendency we have already
outlined. It might be said that it is but another
phrasing of Schelling's thought of the Absolute as
presented to the Ego in Beauty. But not so. For
Schelling, the aesthetic is a schema or form, — that
is, the form of balance, equilibrium, reconciliation
of the rational ideal, — not a content. But Hegel's

44 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Beauty expresses the Idea by the way of informa
tion or association. That this is true any one of
his traditional examples makes evident. Correggio's
Madonna of the St. Sebastian is found by him
inferior to the Sistine Madonna. Why ? " In the
first picture we have the dearest and loveliest of
human relations consecrated by contrast with what
is Divine. In the second picture we have the Divine
relation itself, showing itself under the limitations
of the human." l Dutch painting, he tells us, ought
not to be despised ; " for it is this fresh and wake
ful freedom and vitality of mind in apprehension
and presentation that forms the highest aspect of
these pictures." And a commentator adds, " The
spontaneous joy of the perfect life is figured to this
lower sphere." His whole treatment of Art as a
symbol confirms this view, as do all his criticisms.
Art or Beauty shall reveal to our understanding
the eternal Ideal.

On comparing this with what we have won from
Kant, Schiller, and Schelling, the divergence be
comes apparent. I have tried to show that there is
no essential difference between these three either in
their general view of the aesthetic experience, or in
the degree of objectivity of their doctrine of Beauty.
They do not contradict one another. They merely
emphasize now the unity, now the reconciliation of
opposites, in the aesthetic experience. The experi
ence of the beautiful constitutes a reconciliation of
k* Kedney's Hegel's Esthetics, 1892, p. 158.

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 45

the warring elements of experience, in a world in
which the demands of Reason seem to conflict with
the logic of events, and the beautiful object is such
that it constitutes the permanent possibility for this
reconciliation.

But the attempt to include Hegel within this
circle reveals at once the need of further delimita
tion. The beautiful is to reveal, and to vindicate in
revealing, the union of the world-elements, that is,
the spirit of the world. On Hegel's own principles,
the Idea should be " expressed to sense." Now if
this expression is not, after all, directly to sense,
but the sense gives merely the occasion for passing
over to the thought of the Divine, it would seem
that the Beauty is not after all in the work of art,
but out of it. The Infinite, or the Idea, or the
fusion of real and ideal, must be shown to sense.

Is there any way in which this is conceivable ?
We cannot completely express to sense Niagara
Falls or the Jungf rau, for they are infinitely be
yond the possibilities of imitation. Yet the par
ticular contour of the Jungfrau is never mistaken
in the smallest picture. In making a model of
Niagara we should have to reproduce the rela
tion between body of water, width of stream, and
height of fall, and we might succeed in getting the
peculiar effect of voluminousness which marks that
wonder of Nature. The soaring of a lark is not
like the pointing upward of a slender Gothic
spire, yet there is a likeness in the attitudes with

46 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

which we follow them. All these cases have certain
form-qualities in common, by virtue of which they
resemble each other. Now it is these very form-
qualities which Kant is using when he takes the
aesthetic judgment as representative of reason in
the world of sense because it shows the qualities
of the ideas of reason, — that is, unconditional to
tality or freedom. And we might, indeed, hope to
" express the Idea to sense " if we could find for
it a form -quality, or subjectively, in the phrase of
Kant, a form of reflection.

What is the form of reflection for the Absolute,
the Idea ? It would appear to be a combination of
Unity and Totality — self -completeness. An object,
then, which should be self -complete from all possible
points of view, to which could be applied the " form
of reflection " for the Absolute, would, therefore,
alone truly express it, and so alone fulfill the end of
Beauty. The Idea woidd be there in its form ; it
would be shown to sense, and so first fully expressed.

With this important modification of Hegel's defi
nition of Beauty, which brings it into line with the
point of view already won, I believe the way is
at last opened from the traditional philosophy of
aesthetics to a healthy and concrete psychological
theory.

But must every self -complete object give rise to
the aesthetic experience ? An object is absolutely
self -complete only for the perceiving subject ; it is
so, in other words, only when it produces a self -com-

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 47

plete experience for that subject. If reconciliation
of the warring elements of the universe is the end
of Beauty it must take place not for, but in, the
human personality ; it must not be understood, but
immediately, completely experienced ; it should be
such that the Unity of the World should be re
alized in the subject of the aesthetic experience,
the lover of beauty. The beautiful object would
be not that which should show in outline form,
or remind of, this Unity of the World, but which
should create for the subject the moment of self-
completeness ; which should inform the aesthetic
subject with that unity and self-completeness which
are the " forms of reflection " of the Infinite.
The subject should be not a mirror of perfection,
but a state of perfection. Only in this sense does
the concept of reconciliation come to its full mean
ing. Not because I see freedom, but because I am
free ; not because I think of God, or the Infinite, or
the one, but because I am for the moment complete,
at the highest point of energy and unity, does the
aesthetic experience constitute such a reconciliation.
Not because I behold the Infinite, but because
I have, myself, a moment of perfection. Herein
it is that our theory constitutes a complete con
tradiction to all " expression " or " significance "
theories of the Beautiful, and does away with the
necessity those theories are under of reading ser
mons into stones. The yellow primrose needs not
to remind us of the harmony of the universe, or

48 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

to have any ulterior significance whatever, if it
gives by its own direct simple stimulation a mo
ment of Unity and Self -completeness. That imme
diate experience indeed contains in itself the " form
of reflection" of the Absolute, and it is through
this that we so often pass, in the enjoyment of
Beauty, to the thought of the divine. But that
thought is a corollary, a secondary effect, not an
essential part of the aesthetic moment. There is
a wonderful bit of unconscious aesthetics in the
following passage from Senancour, touching the
" secret of relation " we have just analyzed.

" It was dark and rather cold. I was gloomy, and
walked because I had nothing to do. I passed by
some flowers placed breast-high upon a wall. A
jonquil in bloom was there. It is the strongest ex
pression of desire : it was the first perfume of the
year. I felt all the happiness destined for man.
This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of
the ideal world, arose in me complete. I never felt
anything so great or so instantaneous. I know not
what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation
it was that made me see in this flower a limitless
beauty. ... I shall never inclose in a conception
this power, this immensity that nothing will ex
press ; this form that nothing will contain ; this
ideal of a better world which one feels, but which
it would seem that nature has not made." 1

1 Translation by Carleton Noyes : The Enjoyment of Art, 1903,
p. 65.

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 49

Our philosophical definition of Beauty has thus
taken final shape. The beautiful object possesses
those qualities which bring the personality into a
state of unity and self-completeness. Lightly to
cast aside such a definition as abstract, vague,
empty, is no less short sighted than to treat the
idea of the Absolute Will, of the Transcendental
Reason, of the Eternal Love, as mere intellectual
factors in the esthetic experience. It should not
be criticised as giving " no objective account of
the nature and origin of Beauty." The nature
of Beauty is indicated in the definition ; the origin
of Beauty may be studied in its historical develop
ment ; its reason for being is simply the desire of
the human heart for the perfect moment.

Beauty is to bring unity and self -completeness
into the personality. By what means ? What causes
can bring about this effect ? When we enter the
realm of causes and effects, however, we have al
ready left the ground of philosophy, and it is fit
ting that the concepts which we have to use should
be adapted to the empirical point of view. The
personality, as dealt with in psychology, is but the
pyschophysical organism ; and we need to know
only how to translate unity and self-completeness
into psychological terms.

The psychophysical organism is in a state of unity
either when it is in a state of virtual congealment
or emptiness, as in a trance or ecstasy ; or when it
is in a state of repose, without tendency to change.

50 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Secondly, the organism is self -complete when it is
at the highest possible point of tone, of functional
efficiency, of enhanced life. Then a combination of
favorable stimulation and repose would characterize
the esthetic feeling.

But it may be said that stimulation and repose
are contradictory concepts, and we must indeed ad
mit that the absolute repose of the hypnotic trance
is not aesthetic, because empty of stimulus. The only
aesthetic repose is that in which stimulation result
ing in impulse to movement or action is checked
or compensated for by its antagonistic impulse ;
inhibition of action, or action returning upon itself,
combined with heightening of tone. But this is ten
sion, equilibrium, or balance of forces, which is
thus seen to be a general condition of all aesthetic
experience. The concept is familiar in pictorial
composition and to some extent also in music and
poetry, but here first appears as grounded in the
very demand for the union of repose with activity.

Moreover, this requirement, which we have de
rived from the logical concepts of unity and totality,
as translated into psychological terms, receives con
firmation from the nature of organic life. It was
the perfect moment that we sought, and we found
it in the immediate experience of unity and self-
completeness ; and unity for a living being can only
be equilibrium. Now it appears that an authori
tative definition of the general nature of an or
ganism makes it " so built, whether on mechanical

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 51

principles or not, that every deviation from the equi
librium point sets up a tendency to return to it." 1
Equilibrium, in greater or less excursions from the
centre, is thus the ultimate nature of organic life.
The perfect equilibrium, that is, equilibrium with
heightened tone, will then give the perfect moment.

The further steps of aesthetics are then toward
analysis of the psychological effect of all the ele
ments which enter into a work of art, with refer
ence to their effect in producing stimulation or
repose. What colors, forms, tones, emotions, ideas,
favorably stimulate ? What combinations of these
bring to repose ? All the modern studies in so-
called physiological aesthetics, into the emotional
and other — especially motor — effects of color,
tone-sensation, melodic sequence, simple forms, etc.,
find here their proper place.

A further important question, as to the fit
ting psychological designation of the aesthetic state,
is now suggested. Some authorities speak of the
aesthetic attitude or activity, describing it as " sym
pathetic imitation" or "absorption;" others of the
aesthetic pleasure. But, according to our definition
of the aesthetic experience as a combination of favor
able stimulation with repose, this state, as involv
ing " a distinctive feeling-tone and a characteristic
trend of activity aroused by a certain situation," 2
can be no other than an emotion. This view is

1 L. T. Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution.

2 Baldwin's Diet, of Phil, and PsychoL Art " Emotion."

52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

confirmed by introspection ; we speak of aesthetic
activity and aesthetic pleasure, but we are conscious
of a complete arrest, and sometimes of a very dis
tinct divergence from pure pleasure. The expe
rience is unique, it seems to defy description, to be
intense, vivid, and yet — like itself alone. Any
attempt to disengage special, already known emo
tions, even at the play or in hearing music, is often
in vain, in just those moments when our excitement
is most intense. But the hypothesis of a unique
emotion, parallel to those of joy, fear, etc., and with
a psychological basis as outlined, would account for
these facts. The positive toning of the experience
. — what we call aesthetic pleasure — is due not only
to the favorable stimulation, but also to the fact
that the very antagonism of impulses which consti
tutes repose heightens tone while it inhibits action.
Thus the conditions of both factors of aesthetic
emotion tend to induce pleasure.

It is, then, clear that no specific aesthetic pleasure
need be sought. The very phrase, indeed, is a mis
nomer, since all pleasure is qualitatively the same,
and differentiated only by the specific activities
which it accompanies. It is also to be noted that
those writers on aesthetics who have dwelt most on
aesthetic pleasure have come in conclusion only to
specific activities, like the " imitation " of Groos, for
instance. In the light of the just-won definition
of aesthetic emotion, it is interesting to examine
some of the well-known modern aesthetic theories.

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 53

Lipps defines the aesthetic experience as a " thrill
of sympathetic feeling," Groos as "sympathetic
imitation," evidently assuming that pleasure accom
panies this. But there are many feelings of sym
pathy, and joyful ones, which do not belong to the
aesthetic realm. In the same way, not all " imita
tion " is accompanied by pleasure, and not all of
that falls within the generally accepted aesthetic
field. If these definitions were accepted as they
stand, all our rejoicings with friends, all our inspi
ration from a healthy, magnetic presence must be
included in it. It is clear that further limitation
is necessary ; but if to this sympathetic imitation,
this living through in sympathy, we add the de
mand for repose, the necessary limitation is made.
Physical exercise in general, or the instinctive
imitation of energetic, or easy (in general favor
able) movements, is pleasurable, indeed, but the
experience is not aesthetic, — as is quite clear, in
deed, to common sense, — and it is not aesthetic
because it is the contradiction of repose. A par
ticular case of the transformation of pleasurable
physical exercise into an aesthetic activity is seen in
the experience of symmetrical or balanced form ;
any moderate, smooth exercise of the eye is plea
surable, but this alone induces a state of the whole
organism combining repose with stimulation.

The theories of Kiilpe and Santayana, while
they definitely mark out the ground, seem to me in
need of addition. "Absorption in the object in

54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

respect to its bare quality and conformation " does
not, of course, give the needed information, for
objective beauty, of the character of this conforma
tion or form. But yet, it might be said that the
content of beauty might conceivably be deduced
from the psychological conditions of absorption.
In the same way, Santayana's " Beauty as objec
tified pleasure," or pleasure as the quality of a
thing, is neither a determination of objective beauty
nor a sufficient description of the psychological
state. Yet analysis of those qualities in the thing
that cause us to make our pleasure a quality of it
would supplement the definition sufficiently and
completely in the sense of ou1* own formula. Why
do we regard pleasure as the quality of a thing ?
Because there is something in the thing that
makes us spread, as it were, our pleasure upon it.
This is that which fixates us, arrests us, upon it,
— which can be only the elements that make for
repose.

Guyau, however, comes nearest to our point of
view. " The beautiful is a perception or an action
which stimulates life within us under its three forms
simultaneously (i. e., sensibility, intelligence, and
will) and produces pleasure by the swift conscious
ness of this general stimulation." 1 It is from
this general stimulation that Guyau explains the
a3sthetic effect of his famous drink of milk among
mountain scenes. But such general stimulation

1 Problemes de VEstMtique Contemporaine, 1902, p. 77.

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY 55

might accompany successful action of any kind,
and thus the moral and the aesthetic would fall
together. That M. Guyau is so successful in his
analysis is due rather to the fact that just this dif
fused stimulation is likely to come from such exer
cise as is characterized by the mutual checking of
antagonistic impulses producing an equilibrium.
The diffusion of stimulation would be our formula
for the aesthetic state only if interpreted as stimu
lation arresting action.

The diffusion of stimulation, the equilibrium of
impulses, life-enhancement through repose ! — this
is the aesthetic experience. But how, then, it will
be asked, are we to interpret the temporal arts?
A picture or a statue may be understood through
this formula, but hardly a drama or a symphony.
If the form of the one is symmetry, hidden or not,
would not the form of the other be represented by
a straight line ? That which has beginning, middle,
and end is not static but dynamic.

Let us consider once more the concept of equi
librium. Inhibition of action through antagonistic
impulses, or action returning upon itself, we have
denned it ; and the line cannot be drawn sharply
between these types. The visual analogue for equi
librium may be either symmetrical figure or circle ;
the excursion from the centre may be either the
swing of the pendulum or the sweep of the planet.
The return is the essential. Now it is a common
place of criticism — though the significance of the

56 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

dictum has never been sufficiently seen — that the
great drama, novel, or symphony does return upon
itself. The excursion is merely longer, of a differ
ent order of impulses from that of the picture. The
last note is the only possible answer to the first ; it
contains the first. The last scene has meaning only
as the satisfaction of the first. The measure of the
perfection of a work of temporal art is thus its im
plicit character. The end is contained in the begin
ning — that is the meaning of " inevitableness."

That the constraining power of drama or sym
phony is just this sense of urgency, of compulsion,
from one point to another, is but confirmation of
this view. The temporal art tries ever to pass from
first to last, which is first. It yearns for unity.
The dynamic movement of the temporal arts is
cyclic, which is ultimately static, of the nature of
equilibrium. It is only in the wideness of the sweep
that the dynamic repose of poetry and music differs
from the static activity of picture and statue.

Thus the Nature of Beauty is in the relation of
means to an end ; the means, the possibilities of
stimulation in the motor, visual, auditory, and
purely ideal fields ; the end, a moment of perfection,
of self-complete unity of experience, of favorable
stimulation with repose. Beauty is not perfection ;
but the beauty of an object lies in its permanent
possibility of creating the perfect moment. The
experience of this moment, the union of stimulation
and repose, constitutes the unique aesthetic emotion.

Ill

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE

Ill

THE JESTHETIC REPOSE

popular interest in scientific truth has
always had its hidden spring in a desire for
the marvelous. The search for the philosopher's
stone has done as much for chemistry as the legend
of the elixir of life for exploration and geograph
ical discovery. From the excitements of these sug
gestions of the occult, the world settled down into
a reasonable understanding of the facts of which
they were but the enlarged and grotesque shadows.
So it has been with physics and physiology, and
so also, preeminently, with the science of mental
life. Mesmerism, hypnotism, the facts of the
alteration, the multiplicity, and the annihilation of
personality have each brought us their moments of
pleasurable terror, and passed thus into the field
of general interest. But science can accept no
broken chains. For all the thrill of mystery, we
may not forget that the hypnotic state is but
highly strung attention, — at the last turn of the
screw, — and that the alternation of personality is
after all no more than the highest power of vari
ability of mood. In regard to the annihilation of
the sense of personality, it may be said that no

60 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

connection with daily experience is at first appar
ent. Scientists, as well as the world at large, have
been inclined to look on the loss of the sense of
personality as pathological; and yet it may be
maintained that it is nevertheless the typical form
of those experiences we ourselves regard as the
most valuable.

The loss of personality ! In that dread thought
there lies, to most of us, all the sting of death and
the victory of the grave. It seems, with such a
fate in store, that immortality were futile, and life
itself a mockery. Yet the idea, when dwelt upon,
assumes an aspect of strange familiarity ; it is an
old friend, after all. Can we deny that all our
sweetest hours are those of self-forgetf ulness ? The
language of emotion, religious, aesthetic, intellectu
ally creative, testifies clearly to the fading of the
consciousness of self as feeling nears the white
heat. Not only in the speechless, stark immobility
of the pathological " case," but in all the stages of
religious ecstasy, aesthetic pleasure, and creative
inspiration, is to be traced what we know as the
loss of the feeling of self. Bernard of Clairvaux
dwells on " that ecstasy of deification in which the
individual disappears in the eternal essence as the
drop of water in a cask of wine." Says Meister
Eckhart, "Thou shalt sink away from thy self
hood, thou shalt flow into His self-possession, the
very thought of Thine shall melt into His Mine ; "
and St. Teresa, " The soul, in thus searching for

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 61

its God, feels with a very lively and very sweet
pleasure that it is fainting almost quite away."

Still more striking is the language of aesthetic
emotion. Philosopher and poet have but one ex
pression for the universal experience. Says Keats
in the " Ode to a Nightingale : " —

" My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethewards had sunk :

*T is not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness."

And in Schopenhauer we read that he who con
templates the beautiful " forgets even his individu
ality, his will, and only continues to exist as the
pure subject, the clear mirror of the object."

But not only the religious enthusiast and the
worshiper of beauty " lose themselves " in ecstasy.
The " fine frenzy " of the thinker is typical. From
Archimedes, whose life paid the forfeit of his im
personal absorption ; from Socrates, musing in one
spot from dawn to dawn, to Newton and Goethe,
there is but one form of the highest effort to pene
trate and to create. Emerson is right in saying of
the genius, " His greatness consists in the fullness
in which an ecstatic state is realized in him.'*

The temporary evaporation of the consciousness
of one's own personality is then decidedly not a
pathological experience. It seems the condition,
indeed, and recognized as such in popular judg-

62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

ment, of the deepest feeling and the highest achieve
ment. Perhaps it is the very assumption of this
condition in our daily thoughts that has veiled the
psychological problem it presents. We opine, easily
enough, that great deeds are done in forgetf ulness
of self. But why should we forget ourselves in
doing great deeds ? Why not as well feel in every
act its reverberation on the self, — the renewed
assurance that it is / who can ? Why not, in each
aesthetic thrill, awake anew to the consciousness of
myself as ruler in a realm of beauty ? Why not,
in the rush of intellectual production, glory that
" my mind to me a kingdom is " ? And yet the
facts are otherwise : in proportion to the intensity
and value of the experience is its approach to the
objective, the impersonal, the ecstatic state. Then
how explain this anomaly ? Why should religious,
aesthetic, and intellectual emotion be accompanied
in varying degrees by the loss of self -consciousness ?
Why should the sense of personality play us so
strange a trick as to vanish, at the moment of
seemingly greatest power, in the very shadow of its
own glory ?

If now we put the most obvious question, and
ask, in explanation of its escapades, what the true
nature of this personality is, we shall find ourselves
quite out of our reckoning on the vast sea of meta
physics. To know what personality is, " root and
all, and all in all," is to " know what God and man
is." Fortunately, our problem is much more simple.

THE ESTHETIC REPOSE 63

It is not the personality itself, its reality, its mean
ing, that vanishes ; no, nor even the psychological
system of dispositions. We remain, in such a mo
ment of ecstasy, as persons, what we were before.
It is the feeling of personality that has faded ;
and to find out in what this will-o'-the-wisp feeling
of personality resides is a task wholly within the
powers of psychological analysis. Let no one object
that the depth and value of experience seem to dis
integrate under the psychologist's microscope. The
place of the full-orbed personality in a world of
noble ends is not affected by the possibility that
the centre of its conscious crystallization may be
found in a single sensation.

The explanation, then, of this apparent incon
sistency — the fading away of self in the midst of
certain most important experiences — must lie in
the nature of the feeling of personality. What
is that feeling ? On what is it based ? How can
it be described? The difficulties of introspection
have led many to deny the possibility of such self-
fixation. The fleeting moment passes, and we
grasp only an idea or a feeling ; the Ego has slipped
away like a drop of mercury under the fingers.
Like the hero of the German poet, who wanted
his queue in front,

" Then round and round, and out and in,
All day that puzzled sage did spin;
In vain ; it mattered not a pin ;
The pigtail hung behind him,"

64 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

when I turn round upon myself to catch myself in
the act of thinking, I can never lay hold on any
thing but a sensation. I may peel off, like the
leaves of an artichoke, my social self, — my pos
sessions and positions, my friends, my relatives ;
my active self, — my books and implements of
work ; my clothes ; even my flesh, and sit in my
bones, like Sydney Smith, — the / in me retreat
ing ever to an inner citadel ; but I must stop with
the feeling that something moves in there. That is
not what my self is, but what the elusive sprite
feels like when I have got my finger on him. In
daily experience, however, it is unnecessary to pro
ceed to such extremities. The self, at a given
moment of consciousness, is felt as one group of
elements which form a background of conscious
ness as over against another group of elements
which form a foreground. The second group is, we
say, before the attention, and is not at that moment
felt as self ; while the first group is vague, undif-
f erentiated, not attended to, but felt. Any element
in this background can detach itself and come into
the foreground of attention. I become conscious
at this moment, for instance, of the weight of my
shoulders as they rest on the back of my chair :
that sensation, however, belongs to my self no more
than does the sensation of the smoothness of the
paper on which my hand rests. I know I am a
self, because I can pass, so to speak, between the
foreground and the background of my conscious-

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 65

ness. It is the feeling of transition that gives me
the negative and positive of my circuit ; and this
feeling of transition, hunted to its lair, reveals itself
as nothing more nor less than a motor sensation
felt in the sense organs which adapt themselves to
the new conditions. I look on that picture and on
this, and know that they are two, because the
change in the adaptation of my sense organs to
their objects has been felt. I close rny eyes and
think of near and far, and it is the change in the
sensations from my eye muscles that tells me I have
passed between the two ; or, to express it otherwise,
that it is in me the two have succeeded each other.
While the self in its widest sense, therefore, is co
extensive with consciousness, the distinctive feeling
of self as opposed to the elements in consciousness
which represent the outer world is based on those
bodily sensations which are connected with the rela
tions of objects. My world — the foreground of
my consciousness — would fall in on me and crush
me, if I could not hold it off by just this power to
feel it different from my background ; and it is felt
as different through the motor sensations involved
in the change of my sense organs in passing from
one to the other. The condition of the feeling of
transition, and hence of the feeling of personality,
is then the presence in consciousness of at least two
possible objects of attention ; and the formal con
sciousness of self might be schematized as a straight
line connecting two points, in which one point repre-

66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

sents the foreground, and the other the background,
of consciousness.

If we now accept this view, and ask under what
conditions the sense of self may be lost, the answer
is at once suggested. It will happen when the " two-
ness " disappears, so that the line connecting and
separating the two objects in our scheme drops out
or is indefinitely decreased. When background or
foreground tends to disappear or to merge either
into the other, or when background or foreground
makes an indissoluble unity or unbreakable circle,
the content of consciousness approaches absolute
unity. There is no " relating " to be done, no
" transition " to be made. The condition, then, for
the feeling of personality is no longer present, and
there results a feeling of complete unity with the
object of attention ; and if this object of attention
is itself without parts or differences, there results
an empty void, Nirvana.

Suppose that I gaze, motionless, at a single bright
light until all my bodily sensations have faded.
Then one of the "points" in our scheme has dropped
out. In my mind there reigns but one thought.
The transition feeling goes, for there is nothing to
be "related." Now "it is one blaze, about me
and within me ; " I am that light, and myself no
longer. My consciousness is a unit or a blank, as
you please. If you say that I am self-hypnotized,
I may reply that I have simply ceased to feel
myself different from the content of my conscious-

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 67

ness, because that content has ceased to allow a
transition between its terms.

This is, however, not the only possible form of
the disappearance of our " twoness," and the result
ing loss of the self-feeling. When the sequence of
objects in consciousness is so rapid that the feeling
of transition, expressed in motor terms, drops be
low the threshold of sensation, the feeling of self
again fades. Think, for instance, of the Bacchanal
orgies. The votary of Dionysus, dancing, shriek
ing, tearing at his hair and at his garments, lost in
the lightning change of his sensations all power of
relating them. His mind was ringed in a whirling
circle, every point of which merged into the next
without possibility of differentiation. And since he
could feel no transition periods, he could feel him
self no longer ; he was one with the content of his
consciousness, which consciousness was no less a
unit than our bright light aforesaid, just as a circle
is as truly a unit as a point. The priest of Diony
sus must have felt himself only a dancing, shouting
thing, one with the world without, " whirled round
in earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and
trees." And how perfectly the ancient belief fits
our psychophysical analysis ! The Bacchic enthu
siast believed himself possessed with the very ecstasy
of the spirit of nature. His inspired madness was
the presence of the god who descended upon him,
— the god of the vine, of spring ; the rising sap,
the rushing stream, the bursting leaf, the rippling

68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

song, all the life of flowing things, they were he !

" avTLKa ya Trcura xopeiwrei," was the cry, " soon the

whole earth will dance and sing! "

Yes, this breaking down of barriers, this melt
ing of the personality into its surroundings, this
strange and sweet self-abandonment must have its
source in just the disappearance of the sensation of
adjustment, on which the feeling of personality is
based. But how can it be, we have to ask, that
a principle so barren of emotional significance
should account for the ecstasy of religious emotion,
of aesthetic delight, of creative inspiration ? It is
not, however, religion or beauty or genius that is the
object of our inquiry at this moment, but simply
the common element in the experience of each of
these which we know as the disappearance of self-
feeling. How the circumstances peculiar to reli
gious worship, aesthetic appreciation, and intellect
ual creation bring about the formal conditions of
the loss of personal feeling must be sought in a
more detailed analysis, and we shall then be able
to trace the source of the intensity of emotion in
these experiences. What, then, first of all, are the
steps by which priest and poet and thinker have
passed into the exaltation of selfless emotion ? For
tunately, the passionate pilgrims to all three realms
of deep experience have been ever prodigal of
their confessions. The religious ecstasy, however,
embodies the most complete case, and allows
the clearest insight into the nature of the experi*

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 69

ence ; and will therefore be dealt with at greatest
length.

The typical religious enthusiast is the mystic.
From Plotinus to Buddha, from Meister Eckhart
to Emerson, the same doctrine has brought the
same fruits of religious rapture. There is one God,
and in contemplation of Him the soul becomes of
his essence. Whether it is held, as by the Neopla-
tonists, that Being and Knowledge are one, that
the procedure of the world out of God is a process
of self-revelation, and the return of things into
God a process of higher and higher intuition, and
so the mystic experience an apprehension of the
highest rather than a form of worship ; or whether
it is expressed as by the humble Beguine, Mech-
thild, — " My soul swims in the Being of God as a
fish in water,"- — the kernel of the mystic's creed is
the same. In ecstatic contemplation of God, and,
in the higher states, in ecstatic union with Him,
in sinking the individuality in the divine Being, is
the only true life. Not all, it is true, who hold the
doctrine have had the experience ; not all can say
with Eckhart or with Madame Guyon, " I have seen
God in my own soul," or " I have become one with
God." It is from the narratives and the counsels of
perfection of these, the chosen, the initiate, who have
passed beyond the veil, that light may be thrown
on the psychological conditions of mystic ecstasy.

The most illuminating account of her actual
mystical experiences is given by Madame Guyon,

70 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

the first of the sect or school of the Quietists. This
gentle Frenchwoman had a gift for psychological
observation, and though her style is neither poetic
nor philosophical, I may be pardoned for quoting
at some length her naive and lucid revelations.
The following passages, beginning with an early
religious experience, are taken almost at random
from the pages of her autobiography : —

" These sermons made such an impression on
my mind, and absorbed me so strongly in God,
that I could not open my eyes nor hear what was
said." " To hear Thy name, O my God, could put
me into a profound prayer. ... I could not see
any longer the saints nor the Holy Virgin outside
of God ; but I saw them all in Him, scarcely be
ing able to distinguish them from Him. ... I
could not hear God nor our Lord Jesus Christ
spoken of without being, as it were, outside of
myself [hors de moi~\. . . . Love seized me so
strongly that I remained absorbed, in a profound
silence and a peace that I cannot describe. I made
ever new efforts, and I passed my life in beginning
my prayers without being able to carry them
through. ... I could ask nothing for myself nor
for another, nor wish anything but this divine
will. ... I do not believe that there could be in
the world anything more simple and more unified.
... It is a state of which one can say nothing
more, because it evades all expression, — a state
in which the creature is lost, engulfed. All is God,

THE ESTHETIC REPOSE 71

and the soul perceives only God. It has to strive
no more for perfection, for growth, for approach to
Him, for union. All is consummated in the unity,
but in a manner so free, so natural, so easy, that
the soid lives in and from God, as easily as the
body lives from the air which it breathes. . . . The
spirit is empty, no more traversed by thoughts;
nothing fills the void, which is no longer painful,
and the soul finds in itself an immense capacity
that nothing can either limit or destroy."

Can we fail to trace in these simple words the
shadow of all religious exaltation that is based on
faith alone ? Madame Guyon is strung to a higher
key than most of this dull and relaxed world ; but
she has struck the eternal note of contemplative
worship. Such is the sense of union with the divine
Spirit. Such are the thoughts and even the words
of Dante, Eckhart, St. Teresa, the countless mystics
of the Middle Age, and of the followers of Bud
dhism in its various shades, from the Ganges to the
Charles. Two characteristics disengage themselves
to view : the insistence on the unity of God — in
whom alone the Holy Virgin and the saints are
seen — from a psychological point of view only ;
and the mind's emptiness of thought in a state of
religious ecstasy. But without further analysis, we
may ask, as the disciples of the mystics have always
done, how this state of blissful union is to be
reached. They have always been minute in their
prescriptions, and it is possible to derive therefrom

72 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

what may be called the technique of the mystic
procedure.

"The word mystic," to quote Walter Pater, "has
been derived from a Greek word which signifies to
shut, as if one shut ones lips, brooding on what
cannot be uttered ; but the Platonists themselves
derive it rather from the act of shutting the eyes,
that one may see the more, inwardly." Of such is
the counsel of St. Luis de Granada, " Imitate the
sportsman who hoods the falcon that it be made
subservient to his rule ; " and of another Spanish
mystic, Pedro de Alcantara : " In meditation, let
the person rouse himself from things temporal, and
let him collect himself within himself. . . . Here
let him hearken to the voice of God ... as though
there were no other in the world save God and him
self." St. Teresa found happiness only in " shutting
herself up within herself." Vocal prayer could not
satisfy her, and she adopted mental prayer. The
four stages of her experience — which she named
" recollectedness," " quietude " (listening rather
than speaking), "union" (blissful sleep with the
faculties of the mind still), "ecstasy or rapture"
— are but progressive steps in the sealing of the
senses. The yoga of the Brahmins, which is the
same as the " union " of the Cabalists, is made to
depend upon the same conditions, — passivity, per
severance, solitude. The novice must arrest his
breathing, and may meditate on mystic symbols
alone, by way of reaching the formless, ineffable

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 73

Buddha. But it is useless to heap up evidence ; the
inference is sufficiently clear.

The body is first brought into a state either of
nervous instability or irritability by ascetic prac
tices, or of nervous insensibility by the persistent
withdrawal of all outer disturbance ; and the mind
is fixed upon a single object, — the one God, the
God eternal, absolute, indivisible. Recalling our
former scheme for the conditions of the sense of
personality, we shall see that we have here the two
poles of consciousness. Then, as the tension is
sharpened, what happens ? Under the artificial con
ditions of weakened nerves, of blank surroundings,
the self-background drops. The feeling of transi
tion disappears with the absence of related terms ;
and the remaining, the positive pole of conscious
ness, is an undifferentiated Unity, with which the
person must feel himself one. The feeling of per
sonality is gone with that on which it rests, and its
loss is joined with an overwhelming sense of union
with the One, the Absolute, God I

The object of mystic contemplation is the One
indivisible. But we can also think the One as the
unity of all differences, the Circle of the Universe.
Those natures also which, like Amiel's, are " bedaz
zled with the Infinite " and thirst for " totality " at
tain in their reveries to the same impersonal ecstasy.
Amiel writes of a " night on the sandy shore of
the North Sea, stretched at full length upon the
beach, my eyes wandering over the Milky Way.

74 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Will they ever return to me, those grandiose, im
mortal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to
carry the world in one's breast, to touch the stars,
to possess the Infinite ! " The reverie of Senan-
cour, on the bank of the Lake of Bienne, quoted by
Matthew Arnold, reveals the same emotion : " Vast
consciousness of a nature everywhere greater than
we are, and everywhere impenetrable ; all-embrac
ing passion, ripened wisdom, delicious self-abandon
ment." In the coincidence of outer circumstance
— the lake, the North Sea, night, the attitude
of repose — may we not trace a dissolution of the
self-background, similar to that of the mystic wor
shiper? And in the Infinite, no less than in the
One, must the soul sink and melt into union with
it, because within it there is no determination, no
pause, and no change.

The contemplation of the One, however, is not
the only type of mystic ecstasy. That intoxication
of emotion which seizes upon the negro camp meet
ing of to-day, as it did upon the Delphic priestesses
two thousand years ago, seems at first glance to
have nothing in common psychologically with the
blessed nothingness of Gautama and Meister Eck-
hart. But the loss of the feeling of personality
and the sense of possession by a divine spirit are
the same. How, then, is this state reached? By
means, I believe, which recall the general formula
for the disappearance of self-feeling. To repeat
the monosyllable om (Brahm) ten thousand times ;

THE ESTHETIC REPOSE 75

to circle interminably, chanting the while, about
a sacred fire ; to listen to the monotonous magic
drum ; to whirl the body about ; to rock to and
fro on the knees, vociferating prayers, are methods
which enable the members of the respective sects
in which they are practiced either to enter, as they
say, into the Eternal Being, or to become informed
with it through the negation of the self. The sense
of personality, at any rate, is more or less completely
lost, and the ecstasy takes a form more or less pas
sionate, according as the worshiper depends on the
rapidity rather than on the monotony of his exci
tations. Here, again, the self-background drops,
inasmuch as every rhythmical movement tends to
become automatic, and then unconscious. Thus
what we are wont to call the inspired madness of
the Delphic priestesses was less the expression of
ecstasy than the means of its excitation. Perpetual
motion, as well as eternal rest, may bring about
the engulf ment of the self in the object. The most
diverse types of religious emotions, in so far as
they present variations in the degree of self-con
sciousness, are thus seen to be reducible to the
same psychological basis. The circle, no less than
the point, is the symbol of the One, and the " de
vouring unity" that lays hold on consciousness
from the loss of the feeling of transition comes
in the unrest of enthusiasm no less than in the
blissful nothing of Nirvana.

At this point, I am sure, the reader will interpose

76 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

a protest. Is, then, the mystery of self-abandon
ment to the highest to be shared with the meanest
of fanatics? Are the rapture of Dante and the
trance of the Omphalopsychi sprung from the same
root ? There is no occasion, however, for the revolt
of sentiment because we fail to emphasize here the
important differences in the emotional character
and value of the states in question. What interests
us is only one aspect which they have in common,
the surrender of the sense of personality. That is
based on formal relations of the elements of con
sciousness, and the explanation of its disappearance
applies as well to the whirling dervish as to the
converts of a revivalist preacher.

The mystic, then, need only shut his senses to the
world, and contemplate the One. Subject fuses
with object, and he feels himself melt into the In
finite. But such experience is not the exclusive
property of the religious enthusiast. The worshiper
of beauty has given evidence of the same feel
ings. And yet, in his a3sthetic rapture, the latter
dwells with deliberation on his delights, and while
luxuriating in the infinite labyrinths of beauty can
scarcely be described as musing on an undifferenti-
ated Unity. So far, at least, it does not appear
that our formula applies to a3sthetic feeling.

^Esthetic feeling arises in the contemplation of a
beautiful object. But what makes an object beau
tiful ? To go still further back, just what, psycho
logically, does contemplation mean? To contem-

THE ESTHETIC REPOSE 77

plate an object is to dwell on the idea or image of
it, and to dwell upon an idea means to carry it out
incipiently. We may go even further, and say it
is the carrying out by virtue of which we grasp the
idea. How do we think of a tall pine-tree ? By
sweeping our eyes up and down its length, and
out to the ends of its branches ; and if we are for
bidden to use our eye muscles even infinitesimally,
then we cannot think of the visual image. In short,
we perceive an object in space by carrying out its
motor suggestions ; more technically expressed, by
virtue of a complex of motor impulses aroused by
it ; more briefly, by incipiently imitating it. Con
templation is inner imitation.

Now a beautiful object is first of all a unified
object ; why this must be so has been considered in
the preceding chapter. In it all impulses of soul
and sense are bound to react upon one another,
and to lead back to one another. And all the ele
ments, which in contemplation we reproduce in the
form of motor impulses, are bound to make a
closed circle of these suggested energies. The sym
metrical picture calls out a set of motor impulses
which " balance," — a system of energies reacting
on one centre ; the sonnet takes us out on one wave
of rhythm and of thought, to bring us back on an
other to the same point ; the sonata does the same
in melody. In the " whirling circle " of the drama,
not a word or an act that is not indissolubly linked
with before and after. Thus the unity of a work

78 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

of art makes of the system of suggested energies
which form the foreground of attention an impreg
nable, an invulnerable circle.

Not only, however, are we held in equilibrium
in the object of attention ; we cannot connect with
it our self-background, for the will cannot act on
the object of aesthetic feeling. We cannot eat the
grapes of Apelles or embrace the Galatea of Pyg
malion ; we cannot rescue Ophelia or enlighten
Juliet ; and of impulse to interfere, to connect the
scene with ourselves, we have none. But this is a less
important factor in the situation. That the house
is dark, the audience silent, and all motor impulses
outside of the aesthetic circle stifled, is, too, only a
superficial, and, so to speak, a negative condition.
The real ground of the possibility of a momentary
self-annihilation lies in the fact that all incitements
to motor impulse — except those which belong to the
indissoluble ring of the object itself — have been
shut out by the perfection of unity to which the
aesthetic object (here the drama) has been brought.
The background fades ; the foreground satisfies,
incites no movement ; and with the disappearance
of the possibility of action which would connect
the two, fades also that which dwells in this feel
ing of transition, — the sense of personality. The
depth of aesthetic feeling lies not in the worthy
countryman who interrupts the play with cries for
justice on the villain, but in him who creates the
drama again with the poet, who lives over again in

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 79

himself each of the thrills of emotion passing before
him, and loses himself in their web. The object is
a unity or our whirling circle of impulses, as you
like to phrase it. At any rate, out of that unity the
soul does not return upon itself ; it remains one
with it in the truest sense.

The loss of the sense of personality is an integral
part of the aesthetic experience ; and we have seen
how it is a necessary psychological effect of the unity
of the object. From another point of view it may
be said that the unity of the object is constituted
just by the inhibition of all tendency to movement
through the balance or centrality of impulses sug
gested by it. In other words, the balance of im
pulses makes us feel the object a unity. And this
balance of impulses, this inhibition of movement,
corresponding to unity, is what we know as aesthetic
repose. Thus the conditions of aesthetic repose and
of the loss of self -feeling are the same. In fact, it
might be said that, within this realm, the two con
ceptions are identical. The true aesthetic repose is
just that perfect rest in the beautiful object which
is the essence of the loss of the sense of personality.

Subtler and rarer, again, than the raptures of
mysticism and of beauty worship is the ecstasy
of intellectual production ; yet the " clean, clear
joy of creation," as Kipling names it, is not less
to be grouped with those precious experiences in
which the self is sloughed away, and the soul at
one with its content. I speak, of course, of intel-

80 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

lectual production in full swing, in the momentum of
success. The travail of soul over apparently hope
less difficulties or in the working out of indifferent
details takes place not only in full self -conscious
ness, but in self -disgust ; there we can take Carlyle
to witness. But in the higher stages the fixation of
truth and the appreciation of beauty are accompa
nied by the same extinction of the feeling of indi
viduality. Of testimony we have enough and to
spare. I need not fill these pages with confessions
and anecdotes of the ecstatical state in which all great
deeds of art and science are done. The question
is rather to understand and explain it on the basis
of the formal scheme to which we have found the
religious and the a3sthetic attitudes to conform.

Jean Paul says somewhere that, however labori
ous the completion of a great work, its conception
came as a whole, — in one flash. We remember
the dreams of Schiller in front of his red curtain
and the resulting musikalische Stimmung, — form
less, undirected, out of which his poem shaped it
self ; the half-somnambulic state of Goethe and his
frantic haste in fixation of the vision, in which he
dared not even stop to put his paper straight, but
wrote over the corners quite ruthlessly. Henner
once said to a painter who mourned that he had
done nothing on his picture for the Salon, though
he saw it before him, " What ! You see your pic
ture! Then it is done. You can paint it in an
hour." If all these traditions be true, they are

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 81

significant ; and the necessary conditions of such
composition seem to be highly analogous to those
of the aesthetic emotion. We have, first of all, a
lack of outward stimulation, and therefore possible
disappearance of the background. How much bet
ter have most poets written in a garret than in a
boudoir ! Goethe's bare little room in the garden
house at Weimar testifies to the severe conditions
his genius found necessary. Tranquillity of the
background is the condition of self -absorption, or
— and this point seems to me worth emphasizing —
a closed circle of outer activities. I have never
believed, for instance, in the case of the old tale of
Walter Scott and the button, that it was the sur
prise of his loss that tied the tongue of the future
author's rival. The poor head scholar had simply
made for himself a transitionless experience with
that twirling button, and could then sink his con
sciousness in its object, — at that moment the mas
ter's questions. It is with many of us a familiar
experience, that of not being able to think unless
in constant motion. Translated into our psycho
logical scheme, the efficiency of these movements
would be explained thus: Given the "whirling
circles," — the background of continuous move
ment sensations, which finally dropped out of
consciousness, and the foreground of continuous
thought, — the first protected, so to speak, the
second, since they were mutually exclusive, and
what broke the one destroyed the other.

82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

But to return from this digression, a background
fading into nothingness, either as rest or as a closed
circle of automatic movements, is the first condition
of the ecstasy of mental production. The second is
given in the character of its object. The object of
high intellectual creation is a unity, — a perfect
whole, revealed, as Jean Paul says, in a single
movement of genius. Within the enchanted circle
of his creation, the thinker is absorbed, because
here too all his impulses are turned to one end, in
relation to which nothing else exists.

I am aware that many will see a sharp distinc
tion here between the work of the creator or
discoverer hi science and the artist. They may
maintain, in Schopenhauer's phrase, that the aim
and end of science is just the connection of objects
in the service of the will of the individual, and
hence transition between the various terms is con
stant ; while art, on the other hand, indeed isolates
its object, and so drops transitions. But I think
where we speak of " connection " thus, we mean
the larger sweep of law. If the thinker looks be
yond his special problem at all, it is, like Buddha,
to " fix his eyes upon the chain of causation." The
scientist of imagination sees his work under the
form of eternity, as one link of that endless chain,
one atom in that vortex of almighty purposes, which
science will need all time to reveal. For him it is
either one question, closed within itself by its own
answer, or it is the Infinite Law of the Universe,

THE ESTHETIC REPOSE 83

— the point or the circle. From all points of view,
then, the object of creation in art or science is a
girdle of impulses from which the mind may not
stray. The two conditions of our formal scheme
are given : a term which disappears, and one which
is a perfect whole. Transition between background
and foreground of attention is no longer possible,
because the background has dropped. Between the
objects of attention in the foreground it has no
meaning, because the foreground is an indissoluble
unity. With that object the self must feel itself
one, since the distinctive self -feeling has disappeared
with the opportunity for transition.

We have thus swung around the circle of mysti
cal, aBsthetic, and creative emotion, and we have
found a single formula to apply, and a single ex
planation to avail for the loss of personality. The
conditions of such experiences bring about the dis
appearance of one term, and the impregnable unity
of the other. Without transition between two terms
in consciousness, two objects of attention, the loss
of the feeling of personality takes place according
to natural psychological laws. It is no longer a
mystery that in intense experience the feeling of
personality dissolves.

One point, however, does remain still unex
plained, — the bliss of self-abandonment. Whence
are the definiteness and intensity of the religious
and aBsthetic emotions? The surrender of the
sense of personality, it seems, is based on purely

84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

formal relations of the elements of consciousness,
common to all three groups of the analyzed emo
tions. Yet it is precisely with a fading of self-
feeling that intensity and definiteness deepen. But
how can different and emotionally significant feel
ings arise from a single formal process? How can
the worship of God become ecstatic joy through
the loss of personality ? The solution of this ap
parent paradox is demanded not only in logic, but
also by those who would wish to see the religious
trance distinguished also in its origin from those
of baser content.

But it is, after all, the formal nature of the phe
nomenon that gives us light. If variation in the
degree of self-feeling is the common factor, and
the disappearance of the transition-feeling its cause,
then the lowest member of the scale, in which the
loss of self-feeling takes place with mathematical
completeness, must be included. That is the hyp
notic trance. It is not necessary at this place to
emphasize the fact that our theory, if accepted,
would constitute a theory and a definition also of
hypnotism. Of interest to our inquiry is merely a
characteristic mark of the hypnotic state, — its tre
mendous suggestibility. Why is this ? Our theory
would answer that all impulses are held in equi
librium, and that an external suggestion has thus
no rivals. Whatever the cause, this last is at any
rate the fact. All suggestions seem to double in
emotional value. Tell the hypnotic subject that he

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 85

is sailing up the Rhine, and the most vivid admira
tion is in his aspect ; he gazes in heart-felt devotion
if it is a pretty girl he is bid to look at ; he quaffs
a glass of water with livelier delight than he would
show for the draught of Chateau Yquem of which
he is led to think.

Now in religious and aesthetic experience there
is brought about the same equilibrium or unity of
impulses, resulting in analogous loss of self-feeling.
But it is a most interesting fact that the form of
the contemplated object is the cause of this arrest
and repose. God, the circle of the Infinite, the
Eternal One, enter into play as " unity " alone.
What, then, of the content ? After the analogy of
the extreme case, the content — that is, emotional
value and definite emotional tone — takes the place
of the external suggestion. Under just the con
ditions of the religious trance, the element of re
verence, of joyous sentiment, is able suddenly to
take on a more vivid aspect. It may not be that
the emotion itself is greater, but it now holds the
field. It may not be that it is more intense, but
the intensity of concentration which takes on its
color makes it seem so. The " rapture " is just the
sense of being caught up into union with the high
est; the joy of the rapture is the joy of every
thought of God, here left free to brighten into
ecstasy ; and its " revelation- value " is again the
sense of immediate union with a Being the intel
lectual concept of whom is immensely vivified.

86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BI1AUTY

So may be analyzed the aesthetic ecstasy. The
tension of those mutually antagonistic impulses
which make balance, and so unity, and so the con
ditions for loss of sense of self, clears the way
for tasting the full savor of pleasure in bright
color, flowing line, exquisite tone-sequence, mov
ing thought. Many a commonplace experience,
says M. Souriau, suddenly takes on a charm when
seen in the arrested aesthetic vision. " Every one
can have observed that an object in itself agreeable
to look on, like a bouquet of flowers, or the fresh
face of a young girl, takes on a sort of magic and
supernatural beauty if we regard it mechanically
while listening to music." : The intensity of con
centration caused by the unity of form fuses with
this suggested vividness of feeling from content
and material, and the whole is felt as intensity of
aesthetic emotion. The Sistine Madonna would
not strike so deep in feeling were it less crystal
line in its unity, less trance-like in its repose, and
so less enchanting in its suggestion.

So it is not only the man of achievement who
sees but one thing at a time. To enter intensely
into any ideal experience means to be blind to all
others. One must lose one's own soul to gain the
world, and none who enter and return from the
paradise of selfless ecstasy will question that it is
gained. It may be that personality is a hindrance
and a barrier, and that we are only truly in har-
* P. Souriau, La Suggestion en VArt.

THE AESTHETIC REPOSE 87

mony with the secret of our own existence when
we cease to set ourselves over against the world.
Nevertheless, the sense of individuality is a posses
sion for which the most of mankind would pay the
price, if it must be paid, even of eternal suffering.
The delicious hour of fusion with the universe is
precious, so it seems to us now, just because we
can return from it to our own nest, and, close and
warm there, count up our happiness. The fragmen-
tariness and multiplicity of life are, then, the sav
ing of the sense of selfhood, and we must indeed

" Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled."

IV
THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART

IV

A. THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM

IN what consists the Beauty of Visual Form?
The older writers on what we now know as the
science of art did not ask themselves this question.
Although we are accustomed to hear that order,
symmetry, unity in variety, was the Greek, and in
particular the Platonic, formula for beauty, we
observe, on examining the passages cited in evi
dence, that it is rather the moral quality appertain
ing to these characteristics that determines them
as beautiful ; symmetry is beautiful, because har
monious, and inducing order and self-restraint.
Aristotle's single pronouncement in the sense of
our question is the dictum : there is no beauty with
out a certain magnitude. Lessing, in his " Laocoon,"
really the first modern treatise in aesthetics, dis
cusses the excellences of painting and poetry, but
deals with visible beauty as if it were a fixed qual
ity, understood when referred to, like color. This
is undoubtedly due to his unconscious reference of
beauty to the human form alone ; a reference which
he would have denied, but which influences his
whole aesthetic theory. In speaking of a beautiful

92 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

picture, for instance, he would have meant first of
all the representation of beautiful persons in it,
hardly at all that essential beauty of the picture as
painting, to which every inch of the canvas is alike
precious. It is clear to us now, however, that the
beauty of the human form is the most obscure of all
possible cases, complex in itself, and overlaid and
involved as it is with innumerable interests and
motives of extra-aesthetic character. Beauty in sim
ple forms must be our first study ; and great credit
is due to Hogarth for having propounded in his
" Analysis of Beauty " the simple question, — what
makes the quality of beauty to the eye ?

But in visible beauty, the aesthetic value of pure
form is not the only element involved : or at least
it must be settled whether or not it is the only
element involved. If in a work of art, as we be
lieve, what belongs to its excellence belongs to its
beauty, we may not applaud one painter, for in
stance, for his marvelous color-schemes, another
for his expression of emotion, another for his delin
eation of character, without acknowledging that ex
pression of character and emotion come within our
concept of visible beauty. Franz von Lenbach was
once asked what he thought likely to be the fate of
his own work. " As for that," he replied, " I think
I may possibly have a chance of living ; but only
if Individualization or Characterization be deemed
to constitute a quality of permanent value in a
picture. This, however, I shall never know, for it

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 93

can only be adjudged by posterity. If that verdict
should prove unfavorable, then my work, too, will
perish with the rest, — for it cannot compare on
their lines with the great masters of the past."
That this is indeed an issue is shown by the con
trasting opinion of the critic who exclaimed before
a portrait, " Think away the head and face, and
you will have a wonderful effect of color ! " The
analysis of visible beauty accordingly resolves itself
into the explanation of the beauty of form (includ
ing shape and color) and the fixing in relation
thereto of other factors.

The most difficult part of our task is indeed
behind us. We have already defined Beauty in
general : we have outlined in a preceding essay the
abstract aesthetic demands, and we have now only
to ask through what psychological means these de
mands can be and are in fact met. In other words
we have to show that what we intensely feel as
Beauty can and does exemplify these principles,
and through them is explained and accounted for.
Beauty has been defined as that combination of
qualities in the object which brings about a union
of stimulation and repose in the enjoyer. How
must this be interpreted with reference to the par
ticular facts of visual form ?

The most immediate reference is naturally to the
sense organ itself ; and the first question is there
fore as to the favorable stimulations of the eye.
What, in general, does the eye demand o£ its object ?

94 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

II

The simplest element of visual experience is of
course found in light and color, the sensation of the
eye as such. Yet there is no branch of aesthetic
which is so incomplete. We know that the sensa
tion of light or color, if not too weak or too vio
lent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the glitter
ing, shining object, so long as it is not painful,
is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer,
polish, testify to this taste, from the most primitive
to the most civilized man. Color, too, if distinct,
not over-bright, nor too much extended in field, is
in itself pleasing. The single colors have been the
object of comparatively little study. Experiment
seems to show that the colors containing most
brightness — white, red, and yellow — are pre
ferred. Baldwin, in his " dynamogenic " experi
ments, 1 based on " the view that the infant's hand
movements in reaching or grasping are the best
index of the kind and intensity of its sensory ex
periences," finds that the colors range themselves
in order of attractiveness, blue, white, red, green,
brown. Further corrections lay more emphasis upon
the white. Yellow was not included in the experi
ments. Cohn's results, which show a relative dislike
of yellow, are contradicted by other observers, nota-

1 Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 1895, pp. 3$
50, ff.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 95

bly Major and Baker,1 and (unpublished) experi
ments of my own, including the aesthetic preferences
of seven or eight different sets of students at Rad-
cliffe and Wellesley colleges. Experiments of this
kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the
material, usually colored paper, varies considerably
from the spectral color, and differences in satura
tion, hue, and brightness make great differences in
the results, while the feeling-tone of association, in
dividual or racial, very often intrudes. But other
things being equal, the bright, the clear, the satu
rated color is relatively more pleasing, and white,
red, and yellow seem especially preferred.

Now, according to the Hering theory of color,
white, red, and yellow are the so-called " dissimi-
lating " colors in the three pairs, white-black, red-
green, and yellow-blue, corresponding to three hy
pothetical visual substances in the retina. These
substances, that is, in undergoing a kind of chemi
cal disintegration under the action of light-rays,
are supposed to give the sensations white, red, or
yellow respectively, and in renewing themselves
again to give the sensations of black, green, and
blue. The dissimilating process seems to bring
about stronger reactions on the physiological side,
as if it were a more exciting process. Thus it is
found 2 that as measured by the increase in strength

1 E. S. Baker, Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series, No. 4 ;
J. Cohn, Philos. Studien, vol. x ; Major, Amer. Journ. of Psychol.,
vol. vii.

2 Ch. F<5r<5, Sensation et Mouvement, 1887, p. 80.

96 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

of the hand grip under the stimulation of the
respective colors, red has particularly exciting
qualities, but the other colors have an analogous
effect, lessening, however, with the descent from
red to violet. The pleasure in bright red, or yel
low, for instance, may thus well be the feeling-tone
arising in the purely physiological effect of the
color. If red works like a trumpet call, while
blue calms and cools, and if red is preferred to
blue, it is because a sharp stimulation is so felt,
and so preferred.

The question of the demands of the eye in color
combination is still more complicated. It has been
traditional to consider the complementaries black-
white, red-green, blue-yellow, and the other pairs
resulting from the mixtures of these as the best
combinations. The physiological explanation is of
course found in the relief and refreshment to the
organs in successive alternation of the processes of
assimilation and dissimilation, and objectively in
the reinforcement, through this stronger function
ing of the retina, of the complementary colors
themselves. This tendency to mutual aid is shown
in the familiar experiment of fixating for some
moments a colored object, say red, and then trans
ferring the gaze to a white or gray expanse. The
image of the object appears thereon in the comple
mentary green. Per contra, the most complete
lack of contrast makes the most unpleasing combi
nation, because instead of a refreshing alternation

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 97

of processes in the retina, a fatiguing repetition
results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or red and
purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red'
process with most evil effect.

This contrast theory should, however, not be
interpreted too narrowly. There are pairs of so-
called complementaries which make a very crude,
harsh, even painful impression. The theory is
happily supplemented by showing * that the ideal
combination involves all three contrast factors,
hue, saturation, and brightness. Contrast of satu
ration or brightness within the same hue is also
pleasant. For any two qualities of the color circle,
in fact, there can be found degrees of saturation
and brightness in which they will form an agree
able combination, and this pleasing effect will be
based on some form of contrast. But the abso
lute and relative extension and the space-form of
the components have also a great influence on the
pleasurableness of combinations.

Further rules can hardly be given ; but the re
sults of various observers 2 seem to show that the
best combinations lie, as already said, among the
complementaries, or among those pairs nearer to
gether in the color circle than complementaries,
which are " warmer." The reason for this last is

1 A. Kirschmann, "Die psychol.-sesthet. Bedeutung des Licht
nnd Farbencontrastes," Philos. Studien, vol. vii.

2 Chevreul, De la Lot du Contraste Simultant des Couleurs.
E. S. Baker, op, cit.

98 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

that, in Chevreul's phraseology, combinations of
cold colors change each other's peculiar hue the
most, and of warm colors the least ; because the
complementaries of these cold colors are " warm,"
i. e. bright, and each, appearing on the field of the
neighboring cold color, seems to fade it out ; while
the complementaries of the juxtaposed warm colors
are not bright, and do not have sufficient strength
to affect their neighbors at all. With a combination
of blue and green for instance, a yellow shade would
appear in the green and a red in the blue. Such a
result fails to satisfy the demand, already touched
on, for purity and homogeneity of color, — that is,
for unimpeded seeing of color.

What significance have these abstract principles
of beauty in the combination of colors for repre
sentative art ? In the choice of objects with a defi
nite local color, of course, these laws will be found
operative. A scheme of blues and yellows is likely
to be more effective than one of reds and violets.
If we analyze the masterpieces of coloring, we shall
find that what we at first supposed to be the won
derful single effects of color is really the result
of juxtapositions which bring out each color to its
highest power.

m

While all this may be true, however, the most
important question has not yet been asked. Is
truth of color in representative art the same thing

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 99

as beauty of color? It might be said that the
whole procedure of the so-called Impressionist
school, in fact the whole trend of the modern
treatment of color, took their identity for granted.
Yet we must discriminate. Truth of color may
be truth to the local color of the given objects,
alone or together ; in this case we should have to
say that beauty did or did not exist in the picture,
according as it did or did not exist in the original
combination. A red hat on a purple chair would
set one's teeth on edge, in model or picture. Sec
ondly, truth of color may be truth to the modifi
cations of the enveloping light, and in this case
truth would make for beauty. For the colors of
any given scene are in general not colors which
the objects themselves, if isolated, would have, but
the colors which the eye itself is forced to see.
The bluish shadow of an object in bright sunlight
(yellowish light) is only an expression of the law
that in the neighborhood of a colored object we
see its complementary color. If such an effect is
reproduced in a picture, it gives the same relief to
the eye which the original effect showed the need
of. The eye fatigued with yellow sees blue ; so if
the blue is really supplied in the picture, it is not
only true, but on the road to beauty, because meet
ing the eye's demand. The older methods of paint
ing gave the local color of an object, with an
admixture of white for the lights, and a warm
dark for the shadows; the modern — which had

100 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

been touched on, indeed, sporadically, by Perugino
and Vermeer, for instance, — gives in the shadow
the complementary color of the object combined
with that of the light falling upon it — all condi
tions of favorable stimulation.

Further favorable stimulation of the eye is
given in the method of the Impressionists in treat
ing " values," that is, comparative relations of light
and shade. The real tones of objects including the
sky, light, etc., can never be reproduced. The older
schools, conscious of this, were satisfied to paint
in a scale of correspondence, in which the relative
values were fairly kept. But even by that means,
the great differences of intensity could not be given,
for the brightest spot of any painting is never more
than sixty-six times brighter than the darkest, while
the gray sky on a dull rainy day is four hundred and
twenty times brighter than a white painted cross-bar
of a window seen against the sky as background.1
There were various ways of combating this difficulty,
Rembrandt, for instance, as Kirschmann tells us,
chose the sombre brown tone, " not out of caprice
or an inclination for mystic dreaming (Fromentin),
but because the yellow and orange side of the
color-manifold admits of the greatest number of
intervals between full saturation and the darkest
shade." The precursors of the Impressionists, on
the other hand, succeeded in painting absolute

1 Kirschmann, Univ. of Toronto Studies, Pyschol. Series, Na
4, p. 20.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 101

values, confining themselves to a very limited
gamut ; for this reason the first landscapes of the
school were all gray-green, dull, cloudy. But
Monet did not stop there. He painted the abso
lute values of objects in shade on a sunny day.
which of course demands the brightest possibilities
of the palette, and got the lighted objects them
selves as nearly as he could, — thus destroying the
relative values, but getting an extraordinarily joy
ous and glowing effect; and one, too, of unex
pected verisimilitude, for it would seem that in
a sunlit scene we are really attentive to the shaded
objects alone, and what becomes of the others does
not so much matter. This effect was made still
more possible by the so-called dissociation of col
ors, — i. e. the juxtaposing of tints, the blending
of which by the eye gives the desired color, with
out the loss of brightness which a mixing of pig
ments would involve. Thus by putting touches of
black and white side by side, for instance, a gray
results much brighter than could have been other
wise reached by mixing ; or blue and red spots are
blended by the eye to an extraordinarily vivid pur
ple. Thus, by these methods, using the truth of
color in the sense of following the nature of retinal
functioning, Monet and his followers raised the
color scale many degrees in brightness. Now we
have seen that the eye loves light, warmth, strong
color-effects, related to each other in the way that
the eye must see them. Impressionism, as the

102 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

name of the method just described, makes it more
possible than it had been before to meet the de
mands of the eye for light and color, to recover
" the innocence of the eye," in Ruskin's phrase.
Truth to the local color of objects is relatively
indifferent, unless that color is beautiful in itself ;
truth to the reciprocal relations and changes of hue
is beauty, because it allows for the eye's own adap
tations of its surroundings in the interest of its
own functioning. Thus in this case, and to sum
up, truth is synonymous with beauty, in so far as
beauty is constituted by favorable stimulation of
an organ. The further question, how far this vivid
treatment of light is of importance for the realiza
tion of depth and distance, is not here entered on.

IV

The moment we touch upon line-form we are
already, in strictness, beyond the elements. For
with form enters the motor factor, which cannot
be separated from the motor innervations of the
whole body. It is possible, however, to abstract for
the moment from the form as a unit, and to con
sider here only what may be called the quality
of line. A line may be straight or broken, and
if curved, curving continuously or brokenly, etc.
That this quality of line is distinct from form may
be shown by the simple experiment of turning a
spiral — a logarithmic spiral, let us say — in differ-

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 103

ent ways about its focus. The aesthetic effect of the
figure is absolutely different in the different posi
tions, and yet the feeling about the character of
the line itself seems to remain the same. In what
sense, and for what reasons, does this curved line
satisfy the demands of the eye ? The discussion of
this question precipitates us at once into one of the
burning controversies of aesthetics, which may per
haps best be dealt with at this point.

An early answer to the question would have
been, that the eye is so hung in its muscles as to
move most easily in curved lines, and this easy
action in following the curve is felt as favorable
stimulation. But recent experiment 1 has shown
that the eye in fact moves by most irregular,
angular leaps from point to point of the figure.
The theory is therefore remodeled by substituting
for the movement sensations of the eye, the ten
dencies corresponding to those early movements
of touching imitative of the form, by which we
learned to know a form for what it is, and the
reproduction of feeling-tones belonging to the char
acter of such movement. The movements of touch
ing and feeling for a smooth continuous curved
object are themselves pleasant. This complex of
psychical factors makes a pleasurably stimulating
experience. The greater the tendency to complete
reproduction of these movements, that is, the
stronger the " bodily resonance," the more vivid

1 Q. M. Stratton, Philos. Studien, xx.

104 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

the pleasure. Whether we (with Groos) desig
nate this as sympathetic reproduction, or (with
Lipps) attribute to the figure the movements and
the feelings which resound in us after this fashion,
or even (with Witasek) insist on the purely ideal
character of the reproduction, seems to me not es
sential to the explanation of the pleasing charac
ter of the experience, and hence of the beauty of
the object. Not that we sympathetically reproduce
(" Miterleben " ), or " feel ourselves into " a form
( " Einfiihlen " ), but how we do so, is the question.

All that Hogarth says of the beauty of the ser
pentine line, as " leading the eye a kind of chase,"
is fully in harmony with this view, if we add to the
exploiting movements of the eye those other more
important motor innervations of the body. But we
should still have to ask, what kind of chase?
Sharp, broken, starting lines might be the basis
of a much more vivid experience, — but it would
be aesthetically negative. " The complete sensuous
experience of the spatial" is not enough, unless
that experience is positively, that is, favorably
toned. Clear or vivid seeing made possible by the
form of the object is not enough. Only as favor-
ably stimulating, that is, only as calling up ideal
reproductions, or physical imitations, of movements
which in themselves were suited to the functions
of the organs involved, can forms be found posi*
tively aesthetic, that is, beautiful.

Moreover, we have to note here, and to emphasize,

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 105

that the organs involved are more than the eye, as
has already been made plain. We cannot sepa
rate eye innervations from bodily innervations in
general. And therefore " the demands of the eye "
can never alone decide the question of the beauty
of visual form. If it were not so, the favorable
stimulation combined with repose of the eye would
alone make the conditions of beauty. The "de
mands of the eye" must be interpreted as the
demands of the eye plus the demands of the motor
system, — the whole psychophysical personality, in
short.

It is in these two principles, — " bodily resonance,"
and favorable as opposed to energetic functioning, —
and these alone, that we have a complete refutation
of the claim made by many artists to-day, that the
phrase " demands of the eye" embodies a complete
aesthetic theory. The sculptor Adolph Hildebrand,
in his "Problem of Form in the Plastic Art"
first set it forth as the task of the artist " to find a
form which appears to have arisen only from the
demands of the eye ; " l and this doctrine is to-day
so widely held, that it must here be considered at
some length.

It is the space-form, all that is seen, and not the
object itself, that is the object of vision. Now in
viewing a plastic object near at hand, the focus of
the eye must be constantly changed between the
nearer and further points. In a more distant view,
1 Das Problem der Form in d. bildenden Kunst, 1897.

106 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

on the other hand (Hildebrand's " Fernbild "),
the contour is denoted by differences of light and
shadow, but it is nevertheless perceived in a single
act of accommodation. Moreover, being distant, the
muscles of accommodation are relaxed ; the eye
acts at rest. The " Fernbild " thus gives the only
unified picture of the three-dimensional complex,
and hence the only unity of space-values. In the
perception of this unity, the author holds, consists
the essential pleasure which the work of art gives
us. Hildebrand's treatment is difficult, and lends
itself to varying interpretations, which have laid
stress now on unity as the essential of art,1 now on
" the joy in the complete sensuous experience of
the spatial." 2 The latter seems in harmony with
the passage in which Hildebrand says " all plea
sure in Form is pleasure in our not being obliged
to create this clearness for ourselves, in its being
created for us, nay, even forced upon us, by the
form itself."

But supposing the first interpretation correct:
supposing space-unity, conditioned by the unified
and reposeful act of seeing, to be the beauty we
seek — it is at once clear that the reduction of three
dimensions to two does not constitute unity even
for the eye alone ; how much less for the motor sys
tem of the whole body, which we have seen must be
involved. Hildebrand's " demands of the eye " re-

1 A. Kiehl, Vierteljahrschr.f. wissensch. Philos., xxi, xxii.

2 K. Groos, Der JSsthetische Genuss, 1902, p. 17.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 107

solves itself into the stimulation plus repose of the
ciliary muscle, — the organ of accommodation. A
real unity even for the eye alone would have to in
clude not only space relations in the third dimen
sion, but relations of line and mass and color in
the flat. As for the " complete sensuous experience
of the spatial " (which would seem to be equivalent
to Berenson's " tactile values "), the " clearness "
of Hildebrand's sentence above quoted, it is evi
dent that completeness of the experience does not
necessarily involve the positive or pleasurable ton
ing of the experience. The distinction is that be
tween a beautiful and a completely realistic pic
ture.

A further extension or restatement of this theory,
in a recent article,1 seems to me to express it in the
most favorable way. Beauty is again connected
with the functioning of our organs of perception
(Auffassungsorgane). " We wish to be put into
a fresh, lively, energetic and yet at the same time
effortless activity. . . . The pleasure in form is a
pleasure in this, that the conformation of the ob
ject makes possible or rather compels a natural
purposeful functioning of our apprehending or
gans." But purposeful for what ? For visual form,
evidently to the end of seeing clearly. The element
of repose, of unity, hinted at in the " effortless "
of the first sentence, disappears in the second. The

1 Th. A. Meyer, "Das Formprinzip des Schonen," Archiv. f.
Phil., Ed. x.

108 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

organs of apprehension are evidently limited to the
eye alone. It is not the perfect moment of stimu
lation and repose for the whole organism which is
aimed at, but the complete sensuous experience of
the spatial, again.

Hildebrand, to return to the more famous theo
rist, was writing primarily of sculpture, and would
naturally confine himself to consideration of the
plastic, which is an additional reason against mak
ing this interesting brochure, as some have done,
the foundation of an aesthetics. It is rather the
foundation of the sculptor's, perhaps even of the
painter's technique, with reference to plastic ele
ments alone. What it contains of universal sig
nificance, the demand for space-unity, based on the
state of the eye in a union of rest and action, ignores
all but one of the possible sources of rest and ac
tion for the eye, that of accommodation, and all the
allied activities completely.

On the basis of the favorable stimulations of
all these activities taken together, must we judge
as pleasing the so-called quality of line. But it is
clear that we cannot really separate the question
of quality of line from that of form, figure, and ar
rangement in space. The motor innervations enter
with the first, and the moment we have form at
all, we have space-composition also. But space-
composition means unity, and unity is the objective
quality which must be translated, in our investiga
tions, into esthetic repose. It is thus with the study

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 109

of composition that we pass from the study of the
elements as favorably stimulating, to the study of
the beauty of visual form.

We may begin by asking what, as a matter of
fact, has been the arrangement of spaces to give
aesthetic pleasure. The primitive art of all nations
shows that it has taken the direction of symmetry
about a vertical line. It might be said that this is
the result of non-a3sthetic influences, such as con
venience of construction, technique, etc. 1 It is
clear that much of the symmetry appearing in
primitive art is due (1) to the conditions of con
struction, as in the form of dwellings, binding
patterns, weaving and textile patterns generally ;
(2) to convenience in use, as in the shapes of spears,
arrows, knives, two-handled baskets or jars ; (3)
to the imitation of animal forms, as in the shapes
of pottery, etc. On the other hand, (1) a very
great deal of symmetrical ornament maintains itself
against the suggestions of the shape to which it is
applied, as the ornaments of baskets, pottery, and
all rounded objects ; and (2) all distortion, disin
tegration, degradation of pattern-motives, often so
marked as all but to destroy their meaning, is in
the direction of geometrical symmetry. The early

1 The following is adapted from the author's Studies in Symme
try, Harvard Psychol Studies, vol. i, 1902.

110 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

art of all civilized nations shows the same charac
teristic. Now it might be said that, as there exists
an instinctive tendency to imitate visual forms by
motor impulses, the impulses suggested by the
symmetrical form are in harmony with the system
of energies of our bilateral organism, which is a
system of double motor innervations, and thus ful
fill our demand for a set of reactions correspond
ing to the organism as a whole. But we should
then expect that all space arrangements which devi
ate from complete symmetry, and thus suggest motor
impulses which do not correspond to the natural
bilateral type, would fail to give aesthetic pleasure.
Such, however, is not the case. Non-symmetrical
arrangements of space are often extremely pleasing.

This contradiction disappears if we are able to
show that the apparently non-symmetrical arrange
ment contains a hidden symmetry, and that all the
elements of that arrangement contribute to bring
about just that bilateral type of motor impulses
which is characteristic of geometrical symmetry.

A series of experiments was arranged, in which
one of two unequal lines of white on a black back
ground being fixed in an upright position a cer
tain distance from the centre, the other was shifted
until the arrangement was felt to be pleasing.
It was found that when two lines of different
sizes were opposed, their relative positions corre
sponded to the relation of the arms of a balance,
that is, a small line far from the centre was opposed

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 111

by a large one near the centre. A line pointing
out from the centre fitted this formula if taken
as " heavy," and pointing in, if taken as " light."
Similarly, objects of intrinsic interest and objects
suggesting depth in the third dimension were
" heavy " in the same interpretation. All this,
however, did not go beyond the proof that all
pleasing space-arrangements can be described in
terms of mechanical balance. But what was this
mechanical balance ? A metaphor explains nothing,
and no one will maintain that the visual represen
tation of a long line weighs more than a short one.
Moreover, the elements in the balance were so far
heterogeneous. The movement suggested by an
idea had been treated as if equivalent to the move
ment actually made by the eye in following a long
line ; the intrinsic interest — that is, the ideal in
terest — of an object insignificant in form was
equated to the attractive power of a perspective,
which has, presumably, a merely physiological ef
fect on the visual mechanism.

I believe, however, that the justification of this
apparent heterogeneity, and the basis for explana
tion, is given in the reduction of all elements to
their lowest term, — as objects for the expenditure
of attention. A large object and an " interesting "
object are " heavy " for the same reason, because
they call out the attention. And expenditure of
effort is expenditure of attention ; thus, if an ob
ject on the outskirts of the field of vision requires

112 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

a wide sweep of the eye to take it in, it demands
the expenditure of attention, and so is felt as
" heavy." But what is " the expenditure of atten
tion " in physiological terms ? It is nothing more
than the measure of the motor impulses directed to
the object of attention. And whether the motor
impulse appears as the tendency to fixate an object
or as the tendency to follow out the suggestions
of motion in the object, all reduces to the same
physiological basis.

It may here be objected that our motor impulses
are, nevertheless, still heterogeneous, inasmuch as
some are toward the object of interest, and some
along the line of movement. But it must be said,
first, that these are not felt in the body, but trans
ferred as values of weight to points in the picture, —
it is the amount and not the direction of excitement
that is counted ; and secondly, that even if it were
not so, the suggested movement along a line is felt
as " weight " at a particular point.

From this point of view the justification of the
metaphor of mechanical balance is quite clear.
Given two lines, the most pleasing arrangement
makes the larger nearer the centre, and the smaller
far from it. This is balanced because the spon
taneous impulse of attention to the near, large
line equals in amount the involuntary expendi
ture of attention to apprehend the small, farther
one.

We may thus think of a space to be composed

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 113

as a kind of target, in which certain spots or terri
tories count more or less, both according to their
distance from the centre and according to what fills
them. Every element of a picture, in whatever way
it gains power to excite motor impulses, is felt as
expressing that power in the flat pattern. A noble
vista is understood and enjoyed as a vista, but it is
counted in the motor equation, our " balance," as a
spot of so much intrinsic value at such and such
a distance from the centre. The skillful artist will
fill his target in the way to give the maximum
of motor impulses with the perfection of balance
between them.

It is thus in a kind of substitutional symmetry,
or balance, that we have the objective condition or
counterpart of aBsthetic repose, or unity. From this
point of view it is clearly seen in what respect the
unity of Hildebrand fails. He demands in the statue,
especially, but also in the picture, the flat surface
as a unity for the three dimensions. But it is only
with the flat space, won, if you will, by Hildebrand's
method, that the problem begins. Every point in
the third dimension counts, as has been said, in the
flat. The Fernbild is the beginning of beauty, but
within the Fernbild favorable stimulation and re
pose must still be sought. And repose or unity
is given by symmetry, subjectively the balance of
attention, inasmuch as this . balance is a tension of
antagonistic impulses, an equilibrium, and thus an.
inhibition of movement.

114 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

From this point of view, we are in a position to re
fute Souriau's interesting analysis l of form as the
condition for the appreciation of content. He says
that form, in a picture for instance, has its value in
its power to produce (through its fixation and con
centration of the eye) a mild hypnosis, in which,
as is well known, all suggestions come to us with
bewildering vividness. This is, then, just the state
in which the contents of the picture can most viv
idly impress themselves. Form, then, as the means
to content, by giving the conditions for suggestion, is
Souriau's account of it. In so far as form — in the
sense of unity — gives, through balance and equi
librium of impulses, the arrest of the personality, it
may indeed be compared with hypnotism. But this
arrest is not only a means, but an end hi itself ;
that aesthetic repose, which, as the unity of the
personality, is an essential element of the aesthetic
emotion as we have described it.

VI

There is no point of light or color, no contour, no
line, no depth, that does not contribute to the infi
nite complex which gives the maximum of experience
with the minimum of effort and which we call beauty
of form. But yet there is another way of viewing
the beautiful object, on which we touched in the
introduction to this chapter. So far, what we see is

1 La Suggestion en V Art,

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 115

only another name for how we see ; and the way of
seeing has proved to contain enough to bring to
stimulation and repose the psychophysical mech
anism. But now we must ask, what relation has
meaning to beauty ? Is it an element, coordinate
with others, or something superposed ? or is it an
end in itself, the supreme end ? What relation to
the beauty of form has that quality of their works
by virtue of which Rembrandt is called a dreamer,
and Rodin a poet in stone? What do we mean
when we speak of Sargent as a psychologist ? Is it
a virtue to be a poet in stone ? If it is, we must
somehow include in our concept of Beauty the
element of expression, by showing how it serves the
infinite complex. Or is it not an aesthetic virtue,
and Rodin is great artist and poet combined, and
not great artist because poet, as some would say ?
What is the relation of the objective content to
beauty of form ? In short, what place has the idea
in Beauty?

In the preceding the place of separate objects
which have only an ideal importance has been made
clear. The gold-embroidered gauntlet in a pic
ture counts as a patch of light, a trend of line, in a
certain spot ; but it counts more there, because it
is of interest for itself, and by thus counting more,
the idea has entered into the spatial balance, — the
idea has become itself form. Now it is the question
whether all " idea," which seems so heterogeneous
in its relation to form, does not undergo this trans-

116 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

mutation. It is at least of interest to see whether
the facts can be so interpreted.

We have spoken of ideas as parts of an aesthetic
whole. What of the idea of the whole ? Corot used
to say he painted a dream, and it is the dream of
an autumn morning we see in his pictures. Millet
portrays the sad majesty and sweetness of the life
near the soil. How must we relate these facts to
the views already won ?

It has often been said that the view which makes
the element of form for the eye alone, in the strict
est sense, is erroneous, because there is no form for
the eye alone. The very process of apprehending
a line involves not only motor memories and im
pulses, but numberless ideal associations, and these
associations constitute the line as truly as do the
others. The impression of the line involves ex
pression, a meaning which we cannot escape. The
forms of things constitute a kind of dialect of life,
— and thus it is that the theory of Einfuhlung in
its deepest sense is grounded. The Doric column
causes in us, no doubt, motor impulses, but it
means, and must mean, to us, the expression of in
ternal energy through those very impulses it causes.
" We ourselves are contracting our muscles, but we
feel as if the lines were pulling and piercing, bend
ing and lifting, pressing down and pushing up ;
in short, as soon as the visual impression is really
isolated, and all other ideas really excluded, then
the motor impulses do not awake actions which are

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 117

taken as actions of ourselves, but feelings of energy
which are taken as energies of the visual forms and
lines." 1 So the idea belonging to the object, and the
psychophysical effect of the object are only obverse
and inverse of the same phenomenon. And our
pleasure in the form of the column is rather our
appreciation of energy than our feeling of favorable
stimulation. Admitting this reasoning, the meaning
of a picture would be the same as its beauty, it is
said. The heroic art of J.-F. Millet, for example,
would be beautiful because it is the perfect expres
sion of the simplicity and suffering of labor.

Let us examine this apparently reasonable theory.
It is true that every visual element is understood
as expression too. It is not true, however, that ex
pression and impression are parallel and mutually
corresponding beyond the elements. Suppose a con
course of columns covered by a roof, — the Par
thenon. Those psychophysical changes induced
by the sight now mutually check and modify each
other. Can we say that there is a " meaning," like
the energy of the column, corresponding to that
complex ? It is at least not energy itself. Ask the
same as regards the lines and masses of a picture
by Corot. In the sense in which we have taken
" meaning," the only psychologically possible one,
our reactions could be interpreted only by some
mood. If the column means energy because it
makes us tower, then the picture must mean what

1 H. Munsterberg, The Principles of Art Education, p. 87.

118 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

it makes us do. That is, a combination of feathery
fronds and horizontal lines of water, bathed in
a gray-green silvery mist, can " mean " only a
repose lightened by a grave yet cheerful spirit.
In short, this theory of expressiveness cannot go
beyond the mood or moral quality. In the sense of
information, the theory of Einfuhlung contributes
nothing. Now, in this limited sense, we have indeed
no reason to contradict it, but simply to point out
that it holds only in this extremely limited sense.
When we see broad sweeping lines we interpret
them by sympathetic reproduction as strength, en
ergy. When those sweeping lines are made part
of a Titan's frame, we get the same effect plus the
associations which belong to distinctively muscular
energy. Those same lines might define the sweep of
a drapery, or the curve of an infant's limbs. Now
all that part of the meaning which belongs to the
lines themselves remains constant under whatever
circumstances ; and it is quite true that a certain
feeling-tone, a certain moral quality, as it were,
belongs, say, to Raphael's pictures, in which this
kind of outline is to be found. But as belonging to
a Titan, the additional elements of understanding
are not due to sympathetic reproduction. They are
not parallel with the motor suggestions ; they are
simply an associational addition, due to our infor
mation about the power of men with muscles like
that. That there are secondary motor elements as
a reverberation of these ideal elements need not be

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 119

denied. But they are not directly due to the form.
Now such part of our response to a picture as is
directly induced by the form, we have a right to
include in the aesthetic experience. It will, how
ever, in every work of art of even the least com
plexity, be expressible only as a mood, very indefi
nite, often indescribable. To make this " meaning,"
then, the essential aim of a picture seems unreason
able.

It is evident that hi experience we do not, as a
matter of fact, separate the mood which is due to
sympathy from the ideal content of the picture.
Corot paints a summer dawn. We cannot separate
our pleasure in the sight from our pleasure in the
understanding ; yet it is the visual complex that
gives us the mood, and the meaning of the scene is
due to factors of association. The " serene and happy
dream," the " conviction of a solemn and radiant
Arcadia," are not " expression " in that inevitable
sense in which we agreed to take it, but the result
of a most extended upbuilding of ideal (that is, as-
sociational) elements.

The " idea," then, as we have propounded it, is
not, as was thought possible, an integral and essen
tial part, but an addition to the visual form, and
we have still to ask what is its value. But in so
far as it is an addition, its effect may be in con
flict with what we may call the feeling-tone pro
duced by sympathetic reproduction. In that case, one
must yield to the other. Now it is not probable that

120 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

even the most convinced adherents of the expression
theory would hold that if expression or beauty must
go, expression should be kept. They only say that
expression is beauty. But the moment it is admit
ted that there is a beauty of form independent of
the ideal element, this theory can no longer stand.
If there is a conflict, the palm must be given to the
direct, rather than the indirect, factor. Indeed,
when there is such a conflict, the primacy must al
ways be with the medium suited to the organ, the
sensuous factor. For if it were not so, and expres
sion were beauty, then that would have to be most
beautiful which was most expressive. Arid even if
we disregard the extraordinary conclusions to which
this would lead, — the story pictures preferred to
those without a story, the photographic reproductions
preferred to the symphonies of color and form, — we
should be obliged to admit something still more in
cendiary. Expression is always of an ideal content,
is of something to express ; and it is unquestioned
that in words, and in words alone, can we get near
est to the inexpressible. Then literature, as being
the most expressive, would be the highest art, and
we should be confronted with a hierarchy of arts,
from that down.

Now, in truth, the real lover of beauty knows
that no one art is superior to another. " Each in
his separate star," they reign alone. In order to be
equal, they must depend on their material, not on
that common quality of imaginative thought which

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 121

each has in a differing degree, and all less than
literature.

The idea, we conclude, is then indeed subordi
nate, — a by-product, unless by chance it can enter
into, melt into, the form. This case we have clearest
in the example, already referred to, of the gold-
embroidered gauntlet, or the jeweled chalice, — say
the Holy Grail in Abbey's pictures, — which counts
more or less, in the spatial balance, according to
its intrinsic interest.

We have seen that through sympathetic repro
duction a certain mood is produced, which becomes
a kind of emotional envelope for the picture, — a
favorable stimulation of the whole, a raising of the
whole harmony one tone, as it were. Now the fur
ther ideal content of the picture may so closely be
long to this basis that it helps it along. Thus all that
we know about dawn — not only of a summer morn
ing — helps us to see, and seeing to rejoice, in Corot's
silvery mist or Monet's iridescent shimmers. All
that we know and feel about the patient majesty of
labor in the fields, next the earth, helps us to get
the slow, large rhythm, the rich gloom of Millet's
pictures. But it is the rhythm and the gloom that
are the beauty, and the idea reinforces our conscious
ness thereof. The idea is a sounding-board for the
beauty, and so can be truly said to enter into the
form.

But there are still some lions in the path of our
theory. The greatest of modern sculptors is re-

122 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

puted to have reached his present altitude by the
passionate pursuance of Nature, and of the ex
pressions of Nature. And few can see Rodin's
work without being at once in the grip of the emo
tion or fact he has chosen to depict. A great deal
of contemporary criticism on modern tendencies in
art rests on the intention of expression, and expres
sion alone, attributed to him. It is said of him :
" The solicitude for ardent expression overmasters
every aesthetic consideration. . . . He is a poet
with stone as his instrument of expression. He
makes it express emotions that are never found
save in music or in psychological and lyric litera
ture." i

Now while the last is undoubtedly true, I believe
that the first is not only not true, but that it is
proved to be so by Rodin's own procedure and
utterances, and that, if we understand his case
aright, it is for beauty alone that he lives. He
has related his search for the secret of Michael
Angelo's design, and how he found it in the
rhythm of two planes rather than four, the Greek
composition. This system of tormented form is
one way of referring the body to the geometry
of an imagined rectangular block inclosing the
whole.

2 " The ordinary Greek composition of the body,

1 C. Mauclair, " The Decorative Sculpture of August Rodin,'1
International Monthly, vol. iii.

2 D. S. MacColl, Nineteenth Century Art, 1902, p. 101.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 123

he puts it, depends on a rhythm of four lines, four
volumes, four planes. If the line of the shoulders
and pectorals slopes from right to left (the man
resting on his right leg) the line across the hips
takes the reverse slope, and is followed by that of
the knees, while the line of the first echoes that of
the shoulders. Thus we get the rhythm ABBA,
and the balancing volumes set up a corresponding
play of planes. Michael Angelo so turns the body
on itself that he reduces the four to two big planes,
one facing, the other swept round to the side of
the block." That is, he gets geometrical envelop
ing lines for his design. And, in fact, there is no
sculpture which is more wonderf ul in design than
Rodin's. I quote Mr. MacColl again. " It has been
said that the ' Bourgeois de Calais ' is a group of
single figures, possessing no unity of design, or at
best affording only a single point of view. Those
who say so have never examined it with attention.
The way in which these figures move among them
selves, as the spectator walks round, so as to pro
duce from every fresh angle sweeping commanding
lines, each of them thus playing a dozen parts at
once, is surely one of the most astounding feats of
the genius of design. Nothing in the history of art
is exactly comparable with it."

In short, it is the design, for all his words, that
Rodin cares for. He calls it Nature, because he
sees, and can see Nature only that way. But as he
said to some one who suggested that there might be

124 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

a danger in too close devotion to Nature, " Yes,
for a mediocre artist ! " It is for the sake of the
strange new beauty, " the unedited poses," " the odd
beautiful huddle 1 of lines," in a stooping or squat
ting form, that all these wild and subtle moments
are portrayed. The limbs must be adjusted or sur
prised in some pattern beyond their own. The
ideas are the occasion and the excuse for new out
lines, — that is all.

This is all scarcely less true of Millet, whom we
have known above all as the painter who has shown
the simple common lot of labor as divine. But he,
too, is artist for the sake of beauty first. He sees
two peasant women, one laden with grass, the other
with fagots. " From far off, they are superb, they
balance their shoulders under the weight of fatigue,
the twilight swallows their forms. It is beautiful,
it is great as a mastery." 2

The idea is, as I said, from this point of view, a
means to new beauty ; and the stranger and subtler
the idea, the more original the forms. The more
unrestrained the expression of emotion in the fig
ures, the more chance to surprise them in some new
lovely pattern. It is thus, I believe, that we may
interpret the seeming trend of modern sculpture,
and so much, indeed, of all modern art, to the " ex
pressive beauty " path. " The mediocre artist "
will lose beauty in seeking expression, the great

1 Said of Degas. MacColl.

8 Sensier, Vie et CEuvre de J.-F. Millet.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 125

artist will pursue his idea for the sake of the new
beauty it will yield.

Thus it seems that the stumbling blocks in the
way of our theory are not insurmountable after
all. From every point of view, it is seen to be pos
sible to transmute the idea into a helpmeet to the
form. Visual beauty is first beauty to the eye and
to the frame, and the mind cherishes and enriches
this beauty with all its own stored treasures. The
stimulation and repose of the psychophysical organ
ism alone can make one thrill to visual form ; but the
thrill is deeper and more satisfying if it engage the
whole man, and be reinforced from all the sources.

VII

But we ought to note a borderland in which the
concern is professedly not with beauty, but with
ideas of life. Aristotle's lover of knowledge, who
rejoiced to say of a picture " This is that man," is
the inspirer of drawing as opposed to the art of
visual form.

It is not beauty we seek from the Rembrandt
and Diirer of the etchings and woodcuts, from
Hogarth, Goya, Klinger, down to Leech and Keene
and Du Maurier ; it is not beauty, but ideas, —
information, irony, satire, life-philosophy. Where
there is a conflict, beauty, as we have defined it,
goes to the wall. We may trace, perhaps, the
ground of this in the highly increased amount of

126 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

symbolic, associative power given, and required, in
the black and white. Even to understand such a
picture demands such an enormous amount of un
conscious mental supplementation that it is natu«
ral to find the aesthetic centre of gravity in that
element.

The first conditions of the work, that is, deter
mine its trend and aim. The part played by imag
ination in our vision of an etching is and must be so
important, that it is, after all, the imaginative part
which outweighs the given. Nor do we desire the
given to infringe upon the ideal field. Thus do we
understand that for most drawings a background
vague and formless is the desideratum. " Such a
tone is the foil for psychological moments, as
they are handled by Goya, for instance, with bar-
barically magnificent nakedness. On a background
which is scarcely indicated, with few strokes, which
barely suggest space, he impales like a butterfly the
human type, mostly in a moment of folly or wicked
ness. . . . The least definition of surrounding
would blunt his (the artist's) keenness, and make
his vehemence absurd." l

This theory of the aim of black and white is
confirmed by the fact that while a painting is
composed for the size in which it is painted, and
becomes another picture if reproduced in another
measure, the size of drawings is relatively indiffer
ent ; reduced or enlarged, the effect is approxi-
1 Max Klinger, Malerei u. Zeichnung, 1903, p. 42.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 127

mately the same, because what is given to the eye
is such a small proportion of the whole experience.
The picture is only the cue for a complete structure
of ideas.

Here is a true case of Anders-streben, that " par
tial alienation from its own limitations, by which
the arts are able, not indeed to supply the place of
each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new
forces." 1 It is by its success as representation that
the art of the burin and needle — Griff elkunst, as
Klinger names it — ought first to be judged. This
is not saying that it may not also possess beauty
of form to a high degree, — only that this beauty of
form is not its characteristic excellence.

In what consists the beauty of visual form ? If
this question could be answered in a sentence our
whole discussion of the abstract formula for beauty
would have been unnecessary. But since we know
what the elements of visual form must do to bring
about the aBsthetic experience, it has been the aim
of the preceding pages to show how those elements
must be determined and related. The eye, the
psychophysical organism, must be favorably stim
ulated ; these, and such colors, combinations, lines
as we have described, are fitted to do it. It must
be brought to repose ; these, and such relations
between lines and colors as we have set forth, are
fitted to do it, for reasons we have given. It is to
the eye and all that waits upon it that the first and

1 W. Pater, The Renaissance : Essay on Giorgione.

128 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

the last appeal of fine art must be made ; and in
so far as the emotion or the idea belonging to a
picture or a statue waits upon the eye, in so far
does it enter into the characteristic excellence, that
is, the beauty of visual form.

B. SPACE COMPOSITION AMONG THE OLD
MASTERS

I

THE preceding pages have set forth the concrete
facts of visible beauty, and the explanation of our
feelings about it. It is also interesting, however,
to see how these principles are illustrated and con
firmed in the masterpieces of art. A statistical
study, undertaken some years ago with the purpose
of dealing thus with the hypothesis of substitu-
tional symmetry in pictorial composition, has given
abundance of material, which I shall set forth, at
otherwise disproportionate length, as to a certain
extent illustrative of the methods of such study.
It is clear that this is but one of many possible
investigations in which the preceding psychological
theories may be further illuminated. The text con
fines itself to pictures ; but the functions of the
elements of visual form are valid as well for all
visual art destined to fill a bounded area. The dis
cussion will then be seen to be only ostensibly lim
ited in its reference. For picture might always be
read space arrangement within a frame.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 129

In the original experimental study of space
arrangements, the results of which were given at
length on page 111, the elements of form in a pic
ture were reduced to size or mass, depth in the
third dimension, direction, and interest. Direction
was further analyzed into direction of motion or
attention (of persons or objects in the picture), an
ideal element, that is ; and direction of line. For
the statistical study, a given picture was then di
vided in half by an imaginary vertical line, and the
elements appearing on each side of this line were
set off against each other to see how far they lent
themselves to description by substitutional symme
try. Thus : in B. van der Heist's " Portrait of Paul
Potter," the head of the subject is entirely to left
of the central line, as also his full face and frontward
glance. His easel is right, his body turned sharply
to right, and both hands, one holding palette and
brushes, are stretched down to right. Thus the
greater mass is to the left, and the general direction
of line is to the right ; elements of interest in the
head, left ; in implements, right. This may be
schematized in the equation (Lt.) M. + I. = (Rt.)
I. + L.

Pieter de Hooch, " The Card-Players," in Buck
ingham Palace, portrays a group completely on the
right of the central line, all facing in to the table
between them. Directly behind them is a high light
window, screened, and high on the wall to the ex
treme right are a picture and hanging cloaks. All

130 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

goes to emphasize the height, mass, and interest
of the right side. On the left, which is otherwise
empty, is a door half the height of the window, giv
ing on a brightly lighted courtyard, from which is
entering a woman, also in light clothing. The light
streams in diagonally across the floor. Thus, with
all the " weight " on the right, the effect of this deep
vista on the left and of its brightness is to give a
complete balance, while the suggestion of line from
doorway and light makes, together with the central
figure, a roughly outlined V, which serves to bind
together all the elements. Equation, (Lt.) V. + 1.
= (Rt.) M. + I.

The thousand pictures on which the study was
based 1 were classified for convenience into groups,
— Religious, Portrait, Genre, and Landscape.
It was found on analysis that the functions of
the elements came out clearly, somewhat as fol
lows.

Of the religious pictures, only the " Madonnas
Enthroned " and other altar-pieces are considered at
this point as presenting a simple type, in which it
is easy to show the variations from symmetry. In
all these pictures the balance comes in between the
interest in the Infant Christ, sometimes together
with direction of attention to him, on one side, and
other elements on the other. When the first side

1 One thousand reproductions of old masters from F. Bruck-
mann's Classischer Bilderschatz, Munich, omitting frescoes and pic
tures of which less than the whole was given.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 131

is especially " heavy " the number of opposing ele
ments increases, and especially takes the form of
vista and line, which have been experimentally
found to be powerful in attracting attention. Where
there are no surrounding worshipers, we notice re
markable frequency in the use of vista and line, and,
in general, balance is brought about through the
disposition of form rather than of interests. The
reason for this would appear to be that the lack
of accessories in the persons of saints, worshipers,
etc., and the consequent increase in the size of
Madonna and Child in the picture, heightens the
effect of any given outline, and so makes the varia
tions from symmetry greater. This being the case,
the compensations would be stronger ; and as we
have learned that vista and line are of this character,
we see why they are needed.

The portrait class is an especially interesting ob
ject for study, inasmuch as while its general type
is very simple and constant, for this very reason
the slightest variations are sharply felt, and have
their very strongest characteristic effect. The gen
eral type of the portrait composition is, of course,
the triangle with the head at the apex, and this
point is also generally in the central line ; never
theless, great richness of effect is brought about by
emphasizing variations. For instance, the body and
head are, in the great majority of cases, turned in
the same way, giving the strongest possible em
phasis to the direction of attention, — especially

132 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

powerful, of course, where all the interest is in the
personality. But it is to be observed that the very
strongest suggestion of direction is given by the
direction of the glance ; and in no case, when most
of the other elements are directed in one way, does
the glance fail to come backward. With the head
on one side of the central line, of course the greatest
interest is removed to one side, and the element of
direction is brought in to balance. Again, with this
decrease in symmetry, we see a significant increase
in the use of the especially effective elements, vista
and line. In fact, the use of the small deep vista is
almost confined to the class with heads not in the
middle. The direction of the glance also plays an
important part. Very often the direction of move
ment alone is not sufficient to balance the powerful
M. + I. of the other side, and the eye has to be
attracted by a definite object of interest. This is
usually the hand, with or without an implement,
— like the palette, eta., of our first examples, — or
a jewel, vase, or bit of embroidery. This is very
characteristic of the portraits of Rembrandt and
Van Dyck.

In general, it may be said that (1) portraits
with the head in the centre of the frame show a
balance between the direction of suggested move
ment on one side, and mass or direction of attention,
or both together, on the other ; while (2) portraits
with the head not in the centre show a balance be
tween mass and interest on one side, and direction

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 133

of attention, or of line, or vista, or combinations of
these, on the other.

Still more utisymmetrical in their framework
than portraits, in fact the most unfettered type of
all, are the genre pictures. As these are pictures
with a human interest, and full of action and par
ticular points of interest, it was to be expected
that interest would be the element most frequently
appearing. In compositions showing great varia
tions from geometrical symmetry, it was also to be
expected that vista and line, elements which have
been noted comparatively seldom up to this point,
should suddenly appear strongly ; for, as being the
most strikingly " heavy " of the elements, they serve
to compensate for other variations combined.

The landscape is another type of unfettered com
position. It was of course to be expected that in
pictures without action there should be little sug
gestion of attention or of direction of movement.
But the most remarkable point is the presence of
vista in practically every example. It is, of course,
natural that somewhere in almost every picture
there should be a break to show the horizon line,
for the sake of variety, if for nothing else ; but
what is significant is the part played by this break
in the balancing of the picture. In about two
thirds of the examples the vista is inclosed by lines,
or masses, and when near the centre, as being at
the same time the "heaviest" part of the picture,
it serves as a fulcrum or centre to bind the parts —

134 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

always harder to bring together than in the other
types of pictures — into a close unity. The most
frequent form of this arrangement is a diagonal,
which just saves itself by turning up at its far end.
Thus the mass, and hence usually the special inter
est of the picture, is on the one side, on the other
the vista and the sloping line of the diagonal. In
very few cases is the vista behind an attractive or
noticeable part of the picture, the fact showing that
it acts in opposition to the latter, leading the eye
away from it, and thus serving at once the variety
and richness of the picture, and its unity. A com
plete diagonal would have line and vista both work
ing at the extreme outer edge of the picture, and
thus too strongly, — unless, indeed, balanced by
very striking elements near the other edge.

This function of the vista as a unifying element
is of interest in connection with the theory of Hil-
debrand, l that the landscape should have a narrow
foreground and wide background, since that is most
in conformity with our experience. He adduces
Titian's " Sacred and Profane Love" as an example.
But of the general principle it may be said that
not the reproduction of nature, but the production
of beauty, is the aim of composition, and that this
aim is best reached by focusing the eye by a nar
row background, i. e. vista. No matter how much
it wanders, it returns to that central spot and is
held there, keeping hold on all the other elements.
1 Op. tit., p. 55.

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 135

Of Hildebrand's example it may be said that the
pyramidal composition, with the dark and tall tree
in the centre, effectually accomplishes the bind
ing together of the two figures, so that a vista is
not needed. A wide background without that tree
would leave them rather disjointed.

In general, it may be said that balance in land
scape is effected between mass and interest on one
side and vista and line on the other ; and that
union is given especially by the use of vista.

n

The experimental treatment of the isolated
elements detected the particular function of each
in distributing attention in the field of view. But
while all are possibly operative in a given picture,
some are given, as we have seen, much more im
portance than others, and in pictures of different
types different elements predominate. In those
classes with a general symmetrical framework,
such as the altar and Madonna pieces, the ele-
ments of interest and direction of attention deter
mine the balance, for they appear as variations in
a symmetry which has already, so to speak, disposed
of mass and line. They give what action there is,
and where they are very strongly operative, they are
opposed by salient lines and deep vistas, which act
more strongly on the attention than does mass.
Interest keeps its predominance throughout the

136 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

types, except in the portraits, where the head is
usually in the central line. But even among the
portraits it has a respectable representation, as
jewels, embroideries, beautiful hands, etc., count
largely too in composition.

The direction of attention is most operative
among the portraits. Since these pictures represent
no action, it must be given by those elements which
move and distribute the attention ; in accordance
with which principle we find line also unusually
influential. As remarked above, altar-pieces and
Madonna pictures, also largely without action,
depend largely for it on the direction of atten
tion.

The vista, as said above, rivets and confines the
attention. We can, therefore, understand how it
is that in the genre pictures it appears very nu
merous. The active character of these pictures
naturally requires to be modified, and the vista
introduces a powerful balancing element, which is
yet quiet ; or, it might be said, inasmuch as energy
is certainly expended in plunging down the third
dimension, the vista introduces an element of ac
tion of counterbalancing character. In the land
scape it introduces the principal element of variety.
It is always to be found in those parts of the pic
ture which are opposed to other powerful elements,
and the " heavier " the other side, the deeper the
vista. Also in pictures with two groups it serves
as a kind of fulcrum, or unifying element, mas-

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 137

much as it rivets the attention between the two
detached sides.

The direction of suggestion by means of the
indication of a line, quite naturally is more fre
quent in the Madonna picture and portrait classes.
Both these types are of large simple outline, so
that line would be expected to tell. In a decided
majority of cases, combined with vista — the shape
being more or less a diagonal slope — it is clear
that it acts as a kind of bond between the two
sides, carrying the attention without a break from
one to the other.

The element of mass requires less comment. It
appears in greatest number in those pictures which
have little action, i. e. portraits and landscapes,
and which are yet not symmetrical, — in which last
case mass is, of course, already balanced. In fact,
it must of necessity exert a certain influence in
every unsymmetrical picture, and so its percentage,
even for genre pictures, is large.

Thus we may regard the elements as both at
tracting attention to a certain spot and dispersing
it over a field. Those types which are of a static
character (landscapes, altar-pieces) abound in ele
ments which disperse the attention ; those which are
of a dynamic character (genre pictures), in those
which make it stable. The ideal composition seems
to combine the dynamic and static elements, — to
animate, in short, the whole field of view, but in a
generally bilateral fashion. The elements, in sub-

138 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

stitutional symmetry, are then simply means of
introducing variety and action. As a dance in
which there are complicated steps gives the actor
and beholder a varied and thus vivified " balance,"
and is thus more beautiful than the simple walk,
so a picture composed in substitutional symmetry
is more rich in its suggestions of motor impulse,
and thus more beautiful, than an example of geo
metrical symmetry.

Ill

The particular functions of the elements which
are substituted for geometrical symmetry have been
made clear ; their presence lends variety and rich
ness to the balance of motor impulses. But this
quality of repose, or unity, given by balance, is also
enriched by a unity for intuition, — a large out
line in which all the elements are held together.
Now this way of holding together varies ; and I
believe that it bears a very close relation to the
subject and purpose of the picture.

Examples of these types of composition may
best be found by analyzing a few well-known pic
tures. We may begin with the class first studied,
the Altar-piece, choosing a picture by Botticelli, in
the Florence Academy. Under an arch is draped
a canopy held up by angels ; under this, again,
sits the Madonna with the Child on her lap, on
a throne, at the foot of which, on each side, stand
three saints. The outline of the whole is markedly

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 139

pyramidal; in fact, there are, broadly speaking,
three pyramids, — of the arch, the canopy, and the
grouping. A second, much less symmetrical exam
ple of this type, is given by another Botticelli in the
Academy, — "Spring." Here the central female
figure, topped by the floating Cupid, is slightly
raised above the others, which, however, bend
slightly inward, so that a triangle, or pyramid with
very obtuse angle at the apex, is suggested ; and
the whole, which at first glance seems a little scat
tered, is at once felt, when this is grasped, as
closely bound together.

Closely allied to this is the type of the Holbein
" Madonna of Burgomaster Meyer," in the Grand
Ducal Castle, Darmstadt. It is true that the same
pyramid is given by the head of the Madonna
against the shell-like background, and her spread
ing cloak which envelops the kneeling donors. But
still more salient is the diamond form given by
the descending rows of these worshiping figures,
especially against the dark background of the
Madonna's dress. A second example, without the
pyramid backing, is found in Rubens's " Rape of
the Daughters of Leucippus," in the Alte Pinako-
thek at Munich. Here the diamond shape formed
by the horses and struggling figures is most re
markable, — an effect of lightness which will be
discussed later in interpreting the types.

A third type, the diagonal, is given in an " Even
ing Landscape" by Cuyp, in the Buckingham

140 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Palace, London. High trees and cliffs, horsemen
and others, occupy one side, and the mountains
in the background, the ground and the clouds, all
slope gradually down to the other side.

It is a natural transition from this type to
the V-shape of the landscapes by Aart van der
Neer, " Dutch Villages," in the London National
Gallery and in the Rudolphinum at Prague, re
spectively. Here are trees and houses on each
side, gradually sloping to the centre to show
an open sky and deep vista. Other examples,
of course, show the opening not exactly in the
centre.

In the " Concert " by Giorgione, in the Pitti
Gallery, Florence, is seen the less frequent type of
the square. The three figures turned toward each
other with heads on the same level make almost a
square space-shape, although it might be said that
the central player gives a pyramidal foundation.
This last may also be said of Verrocchio's " Tobias
and the Archangels " in the Florence Academy, for
the square, or other rectangle, is again lengthened
by the pyramidal shape of the two central figures.
The unrelieved square, it may here be interpolated,
is not often found except in somewhat primitive
examples. Still less often observed is the oval type
of " Samson's Wedding Feast," Rembrandt, in the
Royal Gallery, Dresden. Here one might, by press
ing the interpretation, see an obtuse-angled double-
pyramid with the figure of Delilah for an apex,

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 141

but a few very irregular pictures seem to fall best
under the given classification.

Last of all, it must be remarked that the great
majority of pictures show a combination of two or
even three types ; but these are usually subordi
nated to one dominant type. Such, for instance, is
the case with many portraits, which are markedly
pyramidal, with the double-pyramid suggested by
the position of the arms, and the inverted pyramid,
or V, in the landscape background. The diagonal
sometimes just passes over into the V-shape, or
into the pyramid ; or the square is combined with
both.

What types are characteristic of the different
kinds of pictures ? In order to answer this question
we must ask first, What are the different kinds of
pictures ? One answer, at least, is at once suggested
to the student on a comparison of the pictures with
their groupings according to subjects. All those
which represent the Madonna enthroned, with all
variations, with or without saints, shepherds, or
Holy Family, are very quiet in their action ; that
is, it is not really an action at all which they repre
sent, but an attitude, — the attitude of contempla
tion. This is no less true of the pictures we may
call " Adorations," in which, indeed, the contem
plative attitude is still more marked. On the other
hand, such pictures as the " Descents," the " An
nunciations," and very many of the miscellaneous
religious, allegorical, and genre pictures, portray a

142 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

definite action or event. Now the pyramid type
is characteristic of the " contemplative " pictures
in a much higher degree. A class which might be
supposed to suggest the same treatment in compo
sition is that of the portraits, — absolute lack of
action being the rule. And we find, indeed, that
no single type is represented within it except the
pyramid and double-pyramid, with eighty-six per
cent, of the former. Thus it is evident that for
the type of picture which expresses the highest de
gree of quietude, contemplation, concentration, the
pyramid is the characteristic type of composition.
Among the so-called " active " pictures, the diago
nal and V-shaped types are most numerous.

The landscape picture presents a somewhat dif
ferent problem. It cannot be described as either
"active" or "passive," inasmuch as it does not
express either an attitude or an event. There is
no definite idea to be set forth, no point of concen
tration, as with the altar-pieces and the portraits,
for instance ; and yet a unity is demanded. An
examination of the proportions of the types shows
at once the characteristic type to be here also the
diagonal and V-shaped.

It is now necessary to ask what must be the in
terpretation of the use of these types of composition.
Must we consider the pyramid the expression of
passivity, the diagonal or V-shape, of activity?
But the greatly predominating use of the second for
landscapes would remain unexplained, for at least

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 143

nothing can be more reposeful than the latter. It
may aid the solution of the problem to remember
that the composition taken as a whole has to meet the
demand for unity, at the same time that it allows
free play to the natural expression of the subject.
The altar-piece has to bring about a concentration
of attention to express or induce a feeling of rever
ence. This is evidently accomplished by the sug
gestion of the converging lines to the fixation of
the high point in the picture, — the small area
occupied by the Madonna and Child, — and by the
subordination of the free play of other elements.
The contrast between the broad base and the apex
gives a feeling of solidity, of repose ; and it seems
not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to
rest the eyes above the centre of the picture directly
induces the associated mood of reverence or worship.
Thus the pyramidal form serves two ends ; prima
rily that of giving unity, and secondarily, by the
peculiarity of its shape, that of inducing the feeling-
tone appropriate to the subject of the picture.

Applying this principle to the so-called " active "
pictures, we see that the natural movement of atten
tion between the different " actors " in the picture
must be allowed for, while yet unity is secured.
And it is clear that the diagonal type is just fitted
for this. The attention sweeps down from the high
side to the low, from which it returns through some
backward suggestion of lines or interest in the ob
jects of the high side. Action and reaction — move-

144 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

ment and return of attention — is inevitable under
the conditions of this type ; and this it is which
allows the free play, — which, indeed, constitutes
and expresses the activity belonging to the subject,
just as the fixation of the pyramid constitutes the
quietude of the religious picture. Thus it is that
the diagonal composition is particularly suited to
portray scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling
of awe in the spectator, because only here can the
eye rove in one large sweep from side to side of the
picture, recalled by the mass and interest of the side
from which it moves. Th,e swing of the pendulum
is here widest, so to speak, and all the feeling-tones
which belong to wide, free movement are called into
play. If, at the same time, the element of the deep
vista is introduced, we have the extreme of concen
tration combined with the extreme of movement ;
and the result is a picture in the "grand style"
— comparable to high tragedy — in which all the
feeling-tones which wait on motor impulses are, as
it were, while yet in the same reciprocal relation,
tuned to the highest pitch. Such a picture is
the " Finding of the Ring," Paris Bordone, in the
Venice Academy. All the mass and the interest
and the suggestion of attention is toward the right,
the sweep of the downward lines and of the mag
nificent perspective toward the left, and the effect
of the whole space composition is of superb large
ness of life and feeling. Compare Titian's " Presen
tation of the Virgin," also the two great composi-

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 145

tions by Veronese, " Martyrdom of St. Mark," etc.,
in the Doge's Palace, Venice, and " Esther before
Ahasuerus," in the Uffizi, Florence. In these last
two, the mass, direction of interest, movement, and
attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend
diagonally to the right, where a vista is also sug
gested, — the diagonal making a V just at the end.
Here, too, the effect is of magnificence and vigor.
If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation,
the diagonal to action, what can be said of land
scape ? It is without action, it is true, and yet does
not express that positive quality, that will not to
act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape un-
composed is negative, and it demands unity. Its
type of composition, then, must give it something
positive besides unity. It lacks both concentration
and action ; but it can gain them both from a space
composition which shall combine unity with a ten
dency to movement. And this is given by the
diagonal and V-shaped type. This type merely
allows free play to the natural tendency of the
" active " picture ; but it constrains the neutral, in
animate landscape. The shape itself imparts motion
to the picture : the sweep of line, the concentration
of the vista, the unifying power of the inverted tri
angle between two masses, act, as it were, exter
nally to the suggestion of the object itself. There
is always enough quiet in a landscape, — the over
whelming suggestion of the horizontal suffices for
that ; it is movement that is needed for richness of

146 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

effect, and, as 1 have shown, no type imparts the
feeling of movement so strongly as the diagonal and
V-shaped type of composition. Landscapes need
energy to produce " stimulation," not repression,
and so the diagonal type is proportionately more
numerous.

The rigid square is found only at an early stage
in the development of composition. Moreover, all
the examples are " story " pictures, for the most
part scenes from the lives of the saints, etc. Many
of them are double-centre, — square, that is, with
a slight break in the middle, the grouping purely
logical, to bring out the relations of the characters.
Thus, in the " Dream of Saint Martin," Simone
Martini, a fresco at Assisi, the saint lies straight
across the picture with his head in one corner. Be
hind him on one side stand the Christ and angels,
grouped closely together, their heads on the same
level. These are all, of course, in one sense sym
metrical, — in the weight of interest, at least, — but
they are completely amorphous from an esthetic
point of view. The forms, that is, do not count at
all, — only the meanings. The story is told by a
clear separation of the parts, and as, in most stories,
there are two principal actors, it merely happens
that they fall into the two sides of the picture. On
the other hand, a rigid geometrical symmetry is also
characteristic of early composition, and these two
facts seem to contradict each other. But it is to
be noted, first, that the rigid geometrical symmetry

THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART 147

belongs only to the "Madonna Enthroned," and gen
eral " Adoration " pieces ; and secondly, that this
very rigidity of symmetry in details can coexist
with variations which destroy balance. Thus, in a
" Madonna Enthroned " of Giotto, where absolute
symmetry in detail is kept, the Child sits far out
on the right knee of the Madonna.

It would seem that the symmetry of these early
pictures was not dictated by a conscious demand
for symmetrical arrangement, or rather for real
balance, else such failures would hardly occur. The
presence of geometrical symmetry is more easily
explained as the product, in large part, of techni
cal conditions : of the fact that these pictures were
painted as altar-pieces to fill a space definitely
symmetrical in character — often, indeed, with ar
chitectural elements intruding into it. We may
even connect the Madonna pictures with the temple
images of the classic period, to explain why it was
natural to paint the object of worship seated ex
actly facing the worshiper. Thus we may separate
the two classes of pictures, the one giving an object
of worship, and thus taking naturally, as has been
said, the pyramidal, symmetrical shape, and being
moulded to symmetry by all other suggestions of
technique ; the other aiming at nothing except logi
cal clearness. This antithesis of the symbol and
the story has a most interesting parallel in the two
great classes of primitive art — the one symbolic,
merely suggestive, shaped by the space it had to

148 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

fill, and so degenerating into the slavishly symmet
rical; the other descriptive, "story-telling," and
without a trace of space composition. On neither
side is there evidence of direct aesthetic feeling.
Only in the course of artistic development do we
find the rigid, yet often unbalanced, symmetry re
laxing into a free substitutional symmetry, and the
formless narrative crystallizing into a really unified
and balanced space-form. The two antitheses ap
proach each other in the " balance " of the master
pieces of civilized art — in which, for the first time,
a real feeling for space composition makes itself
felt.

V

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC
I

Y 1 1HERE is a story, in Max Miiller's amusing re-
1 miniscences, of how Mendelssohn and David
once played, in his hearing, Beethoven's later sona
tas for piano and violin, and of how they shrugged
their shoulders, and opined the old man had not
been quite himself when he wrote them. In the
history of music it seems to be a rule almost
without exceptions, that the works of genius are
greeted with contumely. The same is no doubt
true, though to a much less degree, of other arts,
but in music it seems that the critics proposed also
excellent reasons for their vehemence. And it is
instructive to observe that the objections, and the
reasons for the objections, recur, after the original
object of wrath has passed into acceptance, nay,
into dominance of the musical world. One may
also descry one basic controversy running through
all these utterances, even when not explicitly set
forth.

It was made a reproach to Beethoven, as it has
been made a reproach to Richard Strauss, that he
sacrificed the beauty of form to expression ; and it

152 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

was rejoined, perhaps less in the old time than
now, that expression was itself the end and mean
ing of music. Now the works of genius, as we
have seen, after all take care of themselves. But
it is of greatest significance for the theory of
music, as of all art, that in the circle of the years,
the same contrasting views, grown to ever sharper
opposition, still greet the appearance of new work.
It was with Wagner, as all the world knows, that
the question came first to complete formulation.
His invention of the music-drama rested on his fa
mous theory of music as the heightened medium of
expression, glorified speech, which accordingly de
mands freedom to follow all the varying nuances
of feeling and emotion. Music has always been
called the language of the emotions, but Wagner
based his views not only on the popular notion, but
on the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer ; in
particular, on the view that music is the objectifi-
cation of the will. Herbert Spencer followed with
the thesis that music has its essential source in
the cadences of emotional speech. In opposition
primarily to Wagner, the so-called formalists were
represented by Hanslick, who wrote his well-known
•' The Beautiful in Music " to show that though
music has a limited capacity of expression, its aim
is formal or logical perfection alone. The expres
sionist school could not contradict the undoubted
fact that chords and intervals which are harmoni
ous show certain definite physical and mathemati-

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 153

cal relationships, that, in other words, our musical
preferences appear to be closely related to, if not de
termined by, these relationships. Thus each school
seemed to be backed by science. The emotional-
speech theory has been held in a vague way, indeed,
by most of those theorists whose natural conserva
tism would have drawn them in the other direction,
and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at
mediation, first made by Ambros,1 and now met in
almost all musical literature. Music may be, and
is, expressive, it is said, so long as each detail
allows itself to be entirely derived from and justi
fied by the mere formal element. The " centre of
gravity " lies in the formal relations.

To this, after all, Hanslick himself might sub
scribe. Other writers seek to balance form and
expression, insisting on " the dual nature of music,"
while resting ultimately on the emotional-speech
theory. " The most universal composers, recogniz
ing the interdependence of the two elements, pro
duce the highest type of pure music, music in which
beauty is based upon expression, and expression
transfigured by beauty."2

Tkis usual type of reconciliation, however, is a
perfectly mechanical binding together of two pos
sibly conflicting aesthetic demands. The question
is of the essential nature of music, not whether
music may be, but whether it must be, expressive ;

1 The Boundaries of Music and Poetry.

2 D. G. Mason, From Grieg to Brahms, 1902, p. 30.

154 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

not whether it has expressive power, but whether it
is, in its essence, expression, — a question which is
only obscured by insisting on the interdependence
of the two elements. If music has its essential
source in the cadences of speech, if its aim is to
be a glorified speech, then it must develop and
must be judged accordingly. Herbert Spencer is
perfectly logical in saying " It may be shown that
music is but an idealization of the natural language
of emotion, and that, consequently, music must be
good or bad according as it conforms to the laws
of this natural language." 1 But what, then, of
music which, according to Ambros, is justified by
its formal relations ? Is music good because it is
very expressive, and bad because it is too little
expressive? or is its goodness and badness inde
pendent of its expressiveness ? Such a question is
not to be answered by recognizing two kinds of
goodness. Only by an attempt to decide the funda
mental nature of the musical experience, and an
adjustment of the other factors in strict subordina
tion to it, can the general principle be settled.

The excuse for this artificial yoking together of
two opposing principles is apparent when it is seen
that form and expression are taken as addressing
themselves to two different mental faculties. It
seems to be the view of most musical theorists that
the experience of musical form is a perception,
while the experience of musical expression, disre-

1 On Education, p. 41.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 155

garding for the moment the suggestion of facts
and ideas, is an emotion. Thus Mr. Mason : " In
music we are capable of learning, and knowledge
of the principles of musical effect can help us to
learn, that the balance and proportion and sym
metry of the whole is far more essential than any
poignancy, however great, in the parts. He best
appreciates music . . . who understands it intellect
ually as well as feels it emotionally ; " l and again,
" We feel in the music of Haydn its lack of emo
tional depth, and its lack of intellectual subtlety."

It is just this contrast and parallelism of struc
ture as balance, proportion, symmetry, addressed to
the mind, with expression as emotional content,
that a true view of the aBsthetic experience would
lead us to challenge. If there is one thing that our
study of the general nature of aBsthetic experience
has shown, it is that aBsthetic emotion is unique
— neither a perception nor an intellectual grasp
of relations, nor an emotion within the accepted
rubric — joy, desire, triumph, etc. Whether or not
music is an exception to this principle, remains to
be seen ; but the presumption is at least in favor
of a direct, immediate, unique emotion aroused by
the true beauty of music, whatever that may prove
to be.

With a great literature in the form of special
studies, we must yet, on the whole, admit that we
possess no general formula in the philosophy or
1 Op. cit., p. 6.

156 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

psychology of music which covers the whole ground.
Schopenhauer has said that music is the objectifi-
cation of the will — not a copy or a picture of it,
but the will itself ; a doctrine which however illu
minating when it is modified in various ways is ob
viously no explanation of our experience. Hanslick
has but shown what music is not ; Edmund Gurney's
eloquent book, " The Power of Sound," is com
pletely agnostic in its conclusion that music is
a unique, indefinable, indescribable phenomenon,
which possesses, indeed, certain analogues with
other physical and psychical facts, but is coexten
sive with hone. Spencer's theory of music as glo
rified speech is not only in as yet unexplained
conflict with many facts, but has never been formu
lated so that it could apply to concrete cases. The
same is true of Wagner's " music as the utterance
of feeling."

But there is a body of scientific facts respecting
the elements of music, in which we may well seek
for clues. As facts alone they are of no value.
They must be explained as completely as possible ;
and it is probable that if we are able to reach the
ultimate nature and origin of these elements of
music they will prove significant, and a way will
be opened to a theory of the whole musical experi
ence. The need of such intensive understanding
must excuse the more or less technical discussions
in the following pages, without which no firm
foundation for a theory of music could be attained.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 157

II

The two great factors of music are rhythm and
tone-sensation, of which rhythm appears to be the
more fundamental.

Rhythm is defined in general as a repeating series
of time intervals. Events which occur in such a
series are said to have rhythm. In aesthetics, it is
the periodic recurrence of stress, emphasis, or accent
in the movements of dancing, the sounds of music,
the language of poetry. Subjectively it is the
quality of stimulation due to a succession of impres
sions (tactual and auditory are most favorable)
which vary regularly in objective intensity. We
desire to understand the nature, and the source
of the pleasing quality, of this phenomenon.

It is only by a complete psychological description,
however, even a physiological explanation, that we
can hope to fathom the tremendous significance
of rhythm in music and poetry. Those treatments
which expose its development in the dance and
song really beg the question ; they assume the
very fact for which we have to find the ground,
namely, the natural impulse to rhythm. Even those
theories which explain it as a helpful social phe
nomenon, as regulating work, etc., fail to account
for its peculiar psychological character — that com
pelling, intimate force, the " Zwang " of which
Nietszche speaks, which we all feel, and which makes

158 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

it helpful. This compelling quality of rhythm would
lead us to look behind the sociological influences,
for the explanation in some fundamental condition
of consciousness, some " demand " of the organism.
For this reason we must find superficial the views
which connect rhythm with the symmetry of the body
as making rhythmical gesture necessary; or more
particularly with the conditions of work, which, if
it is skilled and well carried out, proceeds in equal
recurring periods, like the swinging of a hammer
or an axe. But it appears that primitive effort is
not carried on in this way, and proceeds, not from
regularity to rhythm, but rather, through, by means
of rhythm, which is made a help, to regularity.
Again, it is said that work can be well carried
out by a large number of people, only in unison,
only by simultaneous action, and that rhythm is
a condition of this. The work in the cotton fields,
the work of sailors, etc., requires something to
give notice of the moment for beginning action.
Rhythm would then have arisen as a social func
tion. Against this it may be said that signals of this
kind might assist common action without recurring
at regular intervals, while periodicity is the funda
mental quality of rhythm. Thus this theory would
explain a natural tendency by its effect.

Looking then, in accordance with the principle
stated above, for deeper conditions, we find rhythm
explained in connection with such rhythmical
events as the heart beat and pulse, the double

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 159

rhythm of the breath ; but these are, for the most
part, unfelt ; and moreover, they would hardly ex
plain the predominance of rhythms quite other than
the physiological ones. Another theory, closely al
lied, connects rhythm with the conditions of activity
in general, but attaches itself rather to the effect
of rhythm than to its cause. Thus we are reminded
of the "heightened sense of expansion, or life,
connected with the augmentation of muscular
movements induced by the more extensive nervous
discharges following rhythmic stimulation." 1 But
why should it be just rhythmic stimulation that pro
duces this effect ? We are finally thrown back on
physiology for the answer that in rhythmical stim
ulation there are involved recurrent activities of
organs refreshed by immediately preceding periods
of repose. Here again, however, we must ask, why
on this hypothesis the periods themselves must be
exactly equal. For within the periods the greatest
variety obtains. One measure of a single note may
be succeeded by another containing eight ; within
the periods, that is, the minor moments of activity
and repose are quite unequal.

Last of all, we must note the view of rhythm as
a phenomenon of expectation (Wundt). But while
we can undoubtedly describe rhythm in terms of
expectation and its satisfaction, rhythm is rhythm
just through its difference from other kinds of ex
pectation.

1 H. E. Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, and Esthetics.

160 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

All these explanations seem either merely to
describe the facts we seek to explain, or to fail
to notice the peculiar intimate nature of the
rhythmical experience. But if it could be shown
not only that in all stimulation there must be in
volved an alternation of activity and repose, but
also that an equality of such periods was highly
favorable to the organism, we should have the con
ditions for a physiological theory of rhythm. Now
the important psychological facts of so-called sub
jective rhythrnizing seem to supply just this need.

It has been shown l that we can neither receive
objectively equal sense-stimuli, nor produce regular
movements, without injecting into these a rhyth
mical element. A series of objectively equal sound-
stimuli — the ticking of a clock, for instance — is
heard in groups, within each of which one element
is of greater intensity. A series of movements are
never objectively equal, but grouped in the same
way. Now this subjective rhythm, sensory and
motor, is explained as follows from the general
physiological basis of attention.

Attention itself is ultimately a motor phenome
non. Thus : the sensory aspect of attention is vivid
ness, and vividness is explained physiologically as
a brain-state of readiness for motor discharge ; 2 in

1 T. L. Bolton, Amer. Jour, of PsychoL, vol. vi. The classical
historical study of theories of rhythm remains that of Meumaim,
Phil. Studien, vol. x.

2 Miinsterberg, Grundzuge d. Psychologic, 1902, p. 525.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 161

the case of a visual stimulus, for instance, a state of
readiness to carry out movements of adjustment
to the object ; in short, the motor path is open.
Now attention, or vividness, is found to fluctuate
periodically, so that in a series of objectively equal
stimuli, certain ones, regularly recurring, would be
more vividly sensed. This is exemplified in the
well-known facts of the fluctuation of the threshold
of sensation, of the so-called retinal rivalry, and
of the subjective rhythmizing of auditory stimuli,
already mentioned. There is a natural rhythm of
vividness. Here, therefore, in the very conditions
of consciousness itself, we have the conditions of
rhythm too. The case of subjective motor rhythm
would be still clearer, since vividness is only the
psychical side of readiness for motor discharge ; in
other words, increased readiness for motor dis
charge occurs periodically, giving motor rhythm.

It has been said1 that this periodicity of the
brain-wave cannot furnish the necessary condition
for rhythm, inasmuch as it is itself a constant, and
could at most be applied to a series which was
adapted to its own time. But this objection does
not fit the facts. The " brain- wave," or "vivid
ness," or attention period, is not a constant, but
attaches itself to the contents of consciousness. In
other words, it does not function without material.
It is itself conditioned by its occasion. In the case

1 J. B. Miner, " Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms," Psychol
Rev., Mon. Suppl., No. 21.

162 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

of a regularly repeated stimulus, it is simply ad
justed to what is there, and out of the series
chooses, as it were, one at regular periods.1

Closely connected with these facts, perhaps only
a somewhat different aspect of them, is the phe
nomenon of motor mechanization. Any movement
repeated tends to become a circular reaction, as it
is called ; that is, the end of one repetition serves
as a cue for the beginning of the next. Now, in
regularly recurring stimuli, giving rise, as will be
later shown, to motor reactions, which are differ
entiated through the natural periodicity of the
attention (physiologically the tendency to motor
discharge), we have the best condition for this
mechanization. In other words, a rhythmical group
ing once set up naturally tends to persist. The
organism prepares itself for shocks at definite
times, and shocks coming at those times are plea
sant because they fulfill a need. Moreover, every
further stimulus reinforces the original activity ;
so that rhythmical grouping tends not only to per
sist, but to grow more distinct, — as, indeed, all
the facts of introspection show.

All this, however, is true of the repetition of
objectively equal stimuli. It shows how an impulse
to rhythm would arise and persist subjectively, but

1 Facts, too technical for reproduction here, quoted by R. H.
Stetson (Harvard Psychol. Studies, vol. i., 1902) from Cleghorn's
and Hofbauer's experiments seem to be in harmony with this
view.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 163

does not of itself explain the pleasure in the ex
perience of objective rhythm. It may be said in
general, however, that changes which would occur
naturally in an objectively undifferentiated con
tent give direct pleasure when they are artificially
introduced, — when, that is, the natural disposi
tion is satisfied. This we have seen to be true in
the case of color contrast ; and it is perhaps even
more valid in the realm of motor activity. What
ever in sense stimulation gives the condition for,
helps, furthers, enhances the natural function, is
felt both as pleasing and as furthering the par
ticular activity in question. Now, the objective
stress in rhythm is but emphasis on a stress that
would be in any case to some degree subjectively
supplied. Rhythm in music, abstracting from all
other pleasure-giving factors, is then pleasurable
because it is in every sense a favorable stimulation.
In accordance with the principle that complete
explanation of psychical facts is possible only
through the physiological substrate, we have so far
kept rather to that field in dealing with the foun
dations of our pleasure in rhythm. But further
description of the rhythmical experience is most
natural in psychological terms. There seems, in
deed, on principle no ground for the current anti
thesis, so much emphasized of late, of " psychical "
and "motor" theories of rhythm. Attention and
expectation are not " psychical " as opposed to
" motor." Granting, as no doubt most psychologists

164 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

would grant, that attention is the psychical analogue
of the physiological tendency to motor discharge,
then a motor automatism of which one is fully
conscious could be described as expectation and its
satisfaction. Indeed, the impossibility of a sharp
distinction between ideas of movement and move
ment sensations confirms this view. When expec
tation has reference to an experience with a move
ment element in it, the expectation itself contains
movement sensations of the kind in question.1
To say, then, that rhythm is expectation based on
the natural functioning of the attention period, is
simply to clothe our physiological explanation in
terms of psychological description. The usual
motor theory is merely one which neglects the
primary disposition to rhythm through attention
variations, in favor of the sensations of muscular
tension (kinaesthetic sensations) which arise in
rhythm, but do not cause it. To say that the im
pression of rhythm arises only in kinaesthetic sen
sations begs the question in the way previously
noted. Undoubtedly, the period once established,
the rhythmic group is held together, felt as a unit,
by means of the coordinated movement sensations ;
but the main problem, the possibility of this first
establishment, is not solved by such a motor theory.
In other words, the attention theory is the real
motor theory.

1 C. M. Hitchcock, " The Psychol. of Expectation,1' Psychol.
Rev., Mon. Suppl, No. 20.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 165

Expectation is the " set " of the attention. Au
tomatism is the set of the motor centres. Now as
attention is parallel to the condition of the motor
centres, we are able to equate expectation and
automatic movement. Rhythm is literally embodied
expectation, fulfilled. It is therefore easily to be
understood that whatever other emotions connect
themselves with satisfied expectation are at their
ideal poignance in the case of rhythm.

It is from this point of view that we must under
stand the helpfulness of rhythm in work. That all
definite stimulus, and especially sound stimulus,
rhythmical or not, sets up a diffusive wave of
energy, increasing blood circulation, dynamogenic
phenomena, etc., is another matter, which has later
to be discussed. But the essential is that this addi
tional stimulus is rhythmical, and therefore a rein
forcement of the nervous activity, and therefore a
lightening and favorable condition of work itself.
So it is, too, that we can understand the tremen
dous influence of rhythm just among primitive peo
ples, and those of a low degree of culture. Work
is hard for savages, not because bodily effort is
hard, but because the necessary concentration of
attention is for them almost impossible ; and the
more, that in work they are unskilled, and without
good tools, so that generally every movement has to
be especially attended to. Now rhythm in work is
especially directed to lighten that effort which they
feel as hardest ; it rests, renews, and frees the atten-

166 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

tion. Rhythm is helpful not primarily because it
enables many to work together by making effort
simultaneous, but rhythm rests and encourages the
individual, and working together is most naturally
carried out in rhythm.

To this explanation all the other factors of life-
enhancement, etc., can be attached. Rhythm is un
doubtedly favorable stimulation. Can it be brought
under the full esthetic formula of favorable stim
ulation with repose ? A rhythm once established
has both retrospective and prospective reference.
It looks before and after, it binds together the first
and the last moments of activity, and can therefore
truly be said to return upon itself, so as to give a
sense of equilibrium and repose.

But when we turn from the fundamental facts of
simple rhythm to the phenomena of art we find
straightway many other problems. It is safe to say
that no single phrase of music or line of poetry is
without variation ; more, that a rhythm without
variation would be highly disagreeable. How must
we understand these facts ? It is impossible within
the natural limitations of this chapter to do more
than glance at a few of them.

First of all, then, the most striking thing about
the rhythmical experience is that the period, or
group, is felt as a unit. " Of the number and rela
tion of individual beats constituting a rhythmical
sequence there is no awareness whatever on the part
of the aesthetic subject. . . . Even the quality of

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 167

the organic units may lapse from distinct conscious
ness, and only a feeling of the form of the whole
sequence remains." 1 Yet the slightest deviation
from its form is remarked. Secondly, every varia
tion creates not only a change in its own unit, but
a wave of disturbance all along the line. Also,
every variation from the type indicates a point of
accentual stress; the syncopated measure, for in
stance, is always strongly accented. Ail these facts
would seem to be connected with the view of the
importance of movement sensations in building up
the group feeling. The end of each rhythm period
gives the cue for the beginning of the next, and
the muscle tensions are coordinated within each
group ; so that each group is really continuous,
and would naturally be " felt " as one, — but be
ing automatic, would not be perceived in its sepa
rate elements. On the other hand, it is just auto
matic reaction, a deviation from which is felt most
strongly. The syncopated measure has to main
tain itself against pressure, as it were, and thus
by making its presence in consciousness felt more
strongly, it emphasizes the fundamental rhythm
form.

This is well shown in the following passage from
a technical treatise on expression in the playing of
music. " The efforts which feeling makes to hold
to ... the shape of the first rhythm, the force

1 R. MacDougall, " The Structure of Simple Rhythm Forms,"
Harv. Psychol. Studies, vol. i., p. o32.

168 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

which it is necessary to use to make it lose its de
sires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are
naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a
crescendo or greater intensity of sound, by an ac
celeration in movement." l If a purely technical
expression may be pardoned here, it could be said
that the motor image,2 that is, the coordinated mus
cular tensions which make the group feeling of the
fundamental rhythm, is always latent, and becomes
conscious whenever anything conflicts with it. Thus
it is that we can understand the tremendous rhyth
mical consciousness in that music which seems
most to contradict the fundamental rhythm, as in
negro melodies, and rag-time generally ; and in
general, the livening effect of variation. The motor
tension, the " set " becomes felt the moment there
is objective interference — just as we feel the
rhythm of our going downstairs only when we fail
to get the sensation we expect.

This principle of the motor image is of tremen
dous significance, as we shall see, for the whole
theory of music. Let it be sufficient to note here
that expectation, in the form of G estaltsqualitat,
or motor image, is, as a principle, sufficient for the
explanation of the most important factors in the
experience of rhythm.

1 M. Lussy, TraitS de ? Expression Musicale, Paris, 1874, p. 7.

2 Gestaltsqualitat, literally form-quality.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 169

III

But we have dwelt too long on the general char
acteristics. Although our examples have been
drawn mostly from the field of music, the preced
ing principles apply to all kinds of rhythm, tactual
and visual as well as auditory. It is time to show
why the rhythm out of all comparison the strong
est, most compelling, most full of emotional quality,
is the rhythm of music.

It has long been known that there is especially
close connection between sounds and motor inner-
vations. All sorts of sensorial stimuli produce re
flex contractions, but the auditory, apparently, to a
much higher degree. Animals are excited to all
sorts of outbreaks by noise ; children are less
alarmed by visual than by auditory impressions.
The fact that we dance to sound rather than to the
waving of a baton, or rhythmical flashes of light
for instance — the fact that this second proposition
is felt at once to be absurd, shows how intimately
the two are bound together. The irresistible effects
of dance, martial music, etc., are trite common
places ; and I shall therefore not heap up instances
which can be supplied by every reader from his
own experience. Now all this is not hard to under
stand, biologically. The eye mediated the infor
mation of what was far enough away to be fled
from, or prepared for ; the ear what was likely to

170 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

be nearer, unseen, and so more ominous. As more
ominous, it would have to be responded to in action
more quickly. So that if any sense was to be in
especially close connection with the motor centres,
it would naturally be hearing.

The development of the auditory functions
points to the same close connection of sound and
movement. Sounds affect us as tone, and as im
pulse. The primitive sensation was one of impulse
alone, mediated by the " shake-organs." These
shake-organs at first only gave information about
the attitude and movements of the body, and were
connected with motor centres so as to be able to
reestablish equilibrium by means of reflexes. The
original " shake-organ " developed into the organs
of hearing and of equilibrium (that is, the cochlea
and the semicircular canals respectively), but these
were still side by side in the inner ear, and the close
connection with the motor centres was not lost.
Anatomically, the auditory nerve not only goes to
those parts of the brain whence the motor inner-
vation emanates, and to the reflex centres in the
cerebellum, but passes close by the vagus or
pneumogastric nerve, which rules the heart and the
vasomotor functions. We have then multiplied
reasons for the singular effect of sound on motor
reactions, and on the other organic functions which
have so much to do with feeling and emotion.

Every sound-stimulus is then much more than
sound-sensation. It causes reflex contractions in

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 171

the whole muscular system ; it sets up some sort of
cardiac and vascular excitation. This reaction is in
general in the direction of increased amplitude of
respiration, but diminution of the pulse, depending
on a peripheral vaso-constriction. Moreover, this
vasomotor reaction is given in a melody or piece
of music, not by its continuity, but for every one
of the variations of rhythm, key, or intensity, —
which is of interest in the light of what has been
said of the latent motor image. The obstacle in
syncopated rhythm is physiologically translated as
vaso-constriction. In general, music induces car
diac acceleration.

All this is of value in showing how completely
the attention-motor theory of rhythm applies to the
rhythm of sounds. Since sound is much more than
sound, but sound-sensation, movement, and visceral
change together, we can see that the rhythmical
experience of music is, even more literally and
completely than at first appeared, an embodied
expectation. No sensorial rhythm could be so com
pletely induced in the psychophysical organism as
the sound-rhythm. In listening to music, we see
how it is that we ourselves, body and soul, seem
to be in the rhythm. We make it, and we wait to
make it. The satisfaction of our expectation is
like the satisfaction of a bodily desire or need ;
no, not like it, it is that. The conditions and
causes of rhythm and our pleasure in it are more
deeply seated than language, custom, even instinct ;

172 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

they are in the most fundamental functions of life.
This element of music, at least, seems not to have
arisen as a " natural language."

IV

The facts of the relations of tones, the elements,
that is, of melody and harmony, are as follows.
We cannot avoid the observation that certain tones
" go together," as the phrase is, while others do not.
This peculiar impression of belonging together is
known as consonance, or harmony. The intervals
of the octave, the fifth, the third, for instance,
that is, C-C', C-Gr, C-E, in the diatonic scale,
are harmonious ; while the interval of the second,
C-D, is said to be dissonant. Consonance, how
ever, is not identical with pleasingness, for differ
ent combinations are sometimes pleasing, sometimes
displeasing. In the history of music we know that
the octave was to the Greeks the most pleasing
combination, to mediaeval musicians the fifth, while
to us, the third, which was once a forbidden chord,
is perhaps most delightful. Yet we should never
doubt that the octave is the most consonant, the
fifth and the third the lesser consonant of combi
nations. We see, thus, that consonance, whatever
its nature, is independent of history ; and we must
seek for its explanation in the nature of the audi
tory process.

Various theories have been proposed. That of

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 173

Helmholtz has held the field so long that, although
weighty objections have been raised to it, it must
still be treated with respect. In introducing it a
short review of the familiar facts of the physics and
physiology of hearing may not be out of place.

The vibration rates per second of the vibrating
bodies, strings, steel rods, etc., which produce those
musical tones which are consonant, are in definite
and small mathematical ratios to each other. Thus
the rates of C-C' are as 1 : 2 ; of C-G, C-E, as
2 : 3, 4 : 5. In general, the simpler the fraction,
the greater the consonance.

But no sonorous body vibrates in one single rate ;
a taut string vibrates as a whole, which gives its
fundamental tone, but also in halves, in fourths,
etc., each giving out a weaker partial tone, in har
mony with the fundamental. And according to the
different ways in which a sonorous body divides,
that is, according to the different combination of
partial tones peculiar to it, is its especial quality
of tone, or timbre. The whole complex of funda
mental and partial tones is what we popularly
speak of as a tone, . — more technically a clang.
These physical agitations or vibrations are trans
mitted to the air. Omitting the account of the
anatomical path by which they reach the inner
ear, we find them at last setting up vibrations in
a many-fibred membrane, the basilar membrane,
which is in direct connection with the ends of the
auditory nerve. It is supposed that to every pos-

174 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

sible rate of vibration, that is, every possible tone,
or partial tone, there corresponds a fibre of the
basilar membrane fitted by its length to vibrate
synchronously with the original wave-elements.
The complex wave is thus analyzed into its con
stituents. Now when two tones, which we will for
clearness suppose to be simple, unaccompanied by
partial tones, sounding together, have vibration
rates in simple ratios to each other, the air-waves
set in motion do not interfere with each other, but
combine into a complex but homogeneous wave.
If they have to each other a complicated ratio,
such as 500 : 504, the air-waves will not only not
coalesce, but four times in the second the trough
of one wave will meet the crest of the other, thus
making the algebraic sum zero, and producing the
sensation of a momentary stoppage of the sound.
When these stoppages, or beats, as they are called,
are too numerous to be heard separately, as in the
interval, say, 500 : 547, the effect is of a disagree
able roughness of tone, and this we call discord.
In other words, any tones which do not produce
beats are harmonious, or harmony is the absence of
discord. In the words of Helmholtz,1 consonance
is a continuous, dissonance an intermittent, tone-
sensation.

Aside from the fact that consonance, as a psy
chological fact, seems positive, while this determi
nation is negative, two very important facts can be

1 Lehre v. d. Tonempjindungen, p. 370, in 4th edition.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 175

set up in opposition. As a result of experimental
investigation, we know that the impression of con
sonance can accompany the intermittent or rough
sound-sensations we know as beating tones ; and,
conversely, tones can be dissonant when the possi
bility of beats is removed. Briefly, it is possible
to make beats without dissonance, and dissonance
without beats.

The other explanation makes consonance due to
the identity of partial tones. When two tones
have one or more partial tones in common they are
said to be related ; the amount of identity gives
the degree of relationship. Physiologically, one or
more basilar membrane fibres are excited by both,
and this fact gives the positive feeling of relation
ship or consonance. Of course the obvious objec
tion to this view is that the two tones should be
felt as differently consonant when struck on instru
ments which give different partial tones, such as
organ and piano, while in fact they are not so
felt.

But it is not after all essential to the aesthetics
of music that the physiological basis of harmony
should be fully understood. The point is that cer
tain tones do indeed seem to be " preordained to
congruity," preordained either in their physical con
stitution or their physiological relations, and not
to have achieved congruity by use or custom. Con
sonance is an immediate and fundamental impres
sion, — psychologically an ultimate fact. That it

176 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

is ultimate is emphasized by Stumpf 1 in his theory
of Fusion. Consonance is fusion, that is, Unitary
impression. Fusion is not identical with inability
to distinguish two tones from each other in a chord,
although this may be used as a measure of fusion.
Consonance is the feeling of unity, and fusion is
the mutual relation of tones which gives that feel
ing.

The striking fact of modern music is the princi
ple of tonality. Tonality is said to be present in a
piece of music when every element in it is referred
to, gets its significance from its relation to, a funda
mental tone, the tonic. The tonic is the beginning
and lowest note in the scale in question, and all
notes and chords are understood according to their
place in that scale. But the conception of the scale
of course does not cover the ground, it merely fur
nishes the point of departure, — the essential is
in the reference of every element to the fundamen
tal tone. The tonic is the centre of gravity of a
melody.

The feeling of tonality grew up as follows.
Every tone was referred to a fundamental, whether
or not it made with it an harmonious interval. The
fundamental was imaged together with every other
note, and when a group of such references often
appeared together, the feelings bound up with the
single reference (interval-feelings) fused into a

1 Beitrage zur Akustik u. Musikwissenschaft, Heft I, Konso-
nanz u. DLisoiiciiiz. 1898.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 177

single feeling, — the tonality-feeling. When this
point is once reached, it is clear that every tone is
heard not as itself alone, but in its relations ; it is
not that we judge of tonality, it is a direct impres
sion, based on a psychological principle that we
have already touched on in the theory of rhythm.
The tonality-feeling is a feeling of form, or motor
image, just as the shape of objects is a motor image.
We do not now need to go through all possible
experiences in relation to these objects ; we possess
their form in a system of motor images, which are
themselves only motor cues for coordinated move
ments. So every tone is felt as something at a
certain distance from, with a certain relation to,
another tone which is dimly imagined. In following
a melody, the notes are able to belong together for
us by virtue of the background of the tone to which
they are related, and in terms of which they are
heard. The tonality is indeed literally a " funded
content," — that is, a funded capital of relations.

These are the general facts of tonality. But
what is its meaning for the nature of music ? Why
should all notes be referred to one? Is this, too,
an ultimate psychological fact? In answer there
may be pointed out the original basic quality of
certain tones, and the desire we have to return to
them. Of two successive tones, it is always the
one which is, in the ratio of their vibration rates,
a power of two, with which we wish to end.1 When
1 Max Meyer, A Psychological Theory of Melody.

178 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

neither of two successive tones contains a power of
two, we have no preference as to the ending. Thus
denoting any tone by 1, it is always to 1 or 2, or 2n
that we wish to return, from any other possible tone ;
while 3 and 5, 5 and 7, leave us indifferent as to
their succession. In general, when two tones are
related, as 2n : 3, 5, 7, 9, 15 — in which 2n denotes
every power of two, including 2° = !, with the pro
gression from the first to the second, there is bound
up a tendency to return to the first. Thus the fun
damental fact of melodic sequence may be said
to be the primacy of 2 in vibration rates. But 2n,
in a scale containing 3, 5, etc., is always what we
know as the tonic. The tonic, then, gives a sense
of equilibrium, of rest, of finality, while to end on
another tone gives a feeling of restlessness or
striving.

Now tone-relationship alone, it is clear, would
not of itself involve this immediate impulse to end
a sequence of notes on one rather than on another.
Nor is tonality, in the all-pervasive sense in which
we understand it, a characteristic of ancient, or of
mediaeval music, while the tendency to end on a
certain tone, which we should to-day call the tonic,
was always felt. Thus, since complete tonality was
developed late in the history of music, while the
closing on the tonic was certainly prior to it, the
finality of the tonic would seem to be the primary
fact, out of which the other has been developed.

We speak to-day, for instance, of dissonant

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 179

chords, which call for a resolution — and are in
clined to interpret them as dissonant just because
they do so call. But the desire for resolution is
historically much later than the distinction between
consonance and dissonance. . . . " What we call
resolution is not change from dissonant to conso
nant in general, but the transition of definite tones
of a dissonant interval into definite tones of a
consonant." 1 The dissonance comes from the de
vice of getting variety, in polyphonic music, by
letting some parts lag behind, and the discords
which arose while they were catching up were re
solved in the final coming together ; but the steps
were all predetermined. 2 Resolution was inevitably
implied by the very principle on which the device
is founded. That is, the understanding of a chord
as something to be resolved, is indeed part of the
feeling of tonality ; but the ending on the tonic
was that out of which this resolution-feeling grew.

Must we, then, say that the finality of the tonic
is a unique, inexplicable phenomenon ? giving up
the nature of melody as a problem if not insoluble,
at least unsolved ?

The feeling of finality in the return to 2n is ex
plained by Lipps and his followers, from the fact
that the two-division is most natural, and so tones
of 2n vibrations would have the character of rest
and equilibrium. This explanation might hold if

1 Stumpf, op. a'*., p. 33.

2 Grove, Diet, of Music and Musicians. Art. " Resolution."

180 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

we were ever conscious of the two-division as such,
in tones — which we are not ; so that it would
seem to depend on the restful character of a per
ception which by hypothesis is never present to
the mind at all.

The experience is, on the contrary, immediate, —
an impression, not a perception ; and this immediacy
points to the one ultimate fact in musical feeling we
have so far discovered. The whole development
of the scale, and the complex feeling of tonality, is
an expression of the desire for consonance. Every
change and correction in the scale has gone to make
every note more consonant with its neighbors.
And naturally the tonic is the tone with which all
other tones have the most unity. Now this " re
turn " phenomenon is a simpler case of the desire
for the feeling of unity. The tonic is the epitome
of all the most perfect feelings of consonance or
unity which are possible in any particular sequence
of tones, and is therefore the goal or resting-
place after an excursion. The undoubted feeling of
equilibrium or repose which we have in ending on
the tonic is thus explained. Not that consonance
itself, the feeling of unity, is explained. But at
any rate consonance is the root of the " return,"
and of its development into complete tonality.

The history of music is then the explicit develop
ment of acoustic laws implicit in every stage of
musical feeling. That feeling covers an ever wider
field. When Mr. Hadow says that the terms con-

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 181

cord and discord are wholly relative to the ear of
the listener,1 and that the distinction between them
is not to be explained on any mathematical basis,
or by any a priori law of acoustics, — that it is not
because a minor second is ugly that we dislike it, for
it will be a concord some day, — he is only partly
right. The minor second may be a "concord,"
that is, we may like it, some day ; but that will be
because we have extended our feeling of tonality
to include the minor second. When that day
comes the minor second will be so closely linked
with other fully consonant combinations that we
shall hear it in terms of them, just as to-day we
hear the chord of the dominant seventh in terms
of its resolution. But the basis will not be con
vention or custom, except in so far as custom is
the unfolding of natural law. The course of music,
like that of every other art, is away from arbitrary —
though simple — convention, to a complexity which
satisfies the natural demands of the organism. The
" natural persuasion " of the ear is omnipotent.

It has been said above that the feeling of tonality
is a motor image or "form-quality" and that
the image of the tonic persists throughout every
sequence of tones in a melody. Now these are not
only felt as having a certain relation to the tonic ;

1 W. H. Hadow, Studies in Modern Music, 1893.

182 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

that relation is an active one. It was said that we
had a positive desire to end on a certain tone, and
that a tendency to pass to that tone was bound up
with the hearing of another tone. The degree of
this tendency is determined by their relation. The
key, the tonality, is determined by the consensus of
intervals which have been felt as more or less con
sonant. Then steps in this scale which come near
to the great salient points — that is, the points of
greatest consonance, which is unity, which is rest —
are felt as suggesting them. This is the reason why
a semitone progression is felt as so compelling. In
taking the scale upward, C to C', that element in
the tone-space already clearly foreshadowed by the
previous tones is C' ; B is so near that it is almost
C' — it seems to cry aloud to be completed by C'.
Then the tendency to move from B to Cr is espe
cially strong. In the same way a chromatic note
suggests most strongly the salient point in the
scheme to which it is nearest — and " tends "to it
as to a point of comparative rest. The difference
between the major and minor scales may be found
in the lesser definiteness 1 with which the tendency
to progression, in the latter, is felt — "a condition
of hovering, a kind of ambiguity, of doubt, to which
side the movement shall proceed." We may then
understand a melody as ever tending with various
degrees of urgency, of strain, to its centre of grav
ity, the tonic.

1 F. Weimnann, Zeitschr.f. Psyckol, Bd. 35, p. 360.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 183

It is from this point of view that we can see the
cogency of Gurney's remark, that when music
seems to be yearning for unutterable things, it is
really yearning only for the next note. " In this
step from the state of rest into movement and re
turn, the coming again to rest ; on what circuitous
ways, with what reluctances and hesitations ; whether
quick and decisively or gradually and unnoticed —
therein consists the nature of melody." 1

Or in Gurney's more eloquent description, " The
melody may begin by pressing its way through a
sweetly yielding resistance to a gradually foreseen
climax; whence again fresh expectation is bred,
perhaps for another excursion, as it were, round
the same centre but with a bolder and freer sweep,
. . . to a point where again the motive is suspended
on another temporary goal ; till after a certain
number of such involutions and evolutions, and of
delicately poised leanings and reluctances and yield-
ings, the forces so accurately measured just suffice
to bring it home, and the sense of potential and
coming integration which has underlain all our
provisional adjustments of expectation is trium
phantly justified."2

This should not be taken as a more or less poet
ical account under the metaphor of motion. These
" leanings " are literal in the sense that one note
does imply another as its natural complement and
satisfaction and we seek to reach or make it. The

1 Weinmana, op. cit. 2 Op. cit., p. 165.

184 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

striving is an intrinsic element, not a by-product
for our understanding.

There is another point to note. The " sense of
potential and coming integration " is a strong factor
of melody. If it cannot be said that the first note
implies the last, it is at least true that from point
to point the next step is dimly foreseen, and this
effect is cumulative. If melody is an ever-hindered
striving for the goal, at least the hindrances them
selves are stations on the way, each one as over
come adding to the final momentum with which
the goal is reached. It is like an accumulation of
evidence, a constellation of associations. AB fore
tells C ; but ABCDEF rushes yet more strongly
upon G. So it is that the irresistibleness, the " un
alterable Tightness " of a piece of music increases
from beginning to end.

The significance of this essential internal neces
sity of progression cannot be overestimated. The
unalterable Tightness of music is founded on nat
ural acoustic laws, and this " Tightness " is funda
mental. A melody is not right because it is beauti
ful, it is beautiful because it is right. The natural
tendencies point out different paths to the goal;
therefore there are different ways of being right,
and thus different ways of being beautiful ; but the
nature of the relation between point and point, the
nature of the progression, that is, the nature of
melody, is the same.

Up to this point we have consistently abstracted

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 185

from the element of rhythm in melody. Strictly
speaking, however, it is impossible to do so. The
individuality of a melody is absolutely dependent
on its rhythm, that is, on the relative time-value of
its tones. Gurney has devoted some amusing pages
to showing the trivial, dragging, lustreless tunes
that result from ever so slight a change in the
rhythm of noble themes, or even in the distribution
of rhythmical elements within the bar. The reason
for this is evident. The nature of melody in the
sense of sequence consists in the varied answers to
the demands of the ear as felt at each successive
point. Now it is clear that such " answer " can be
emphasized, given indifferently, held in suspense, in
short, subjected to all kinds of variation as well by
the rhythmical form into which it is cast, as by the
different choice of possibilities for the tone itself.
The rhythm helps out the melody not only by add
ing to it an independently pleasing element, but, and
this is indeed the essential, by reinforcing the in
trinsic relations of the notes themselves. Thus it is
in the highest degree true that in melody and rhythm
we do not have content and form, but that, strictly
speaking^ the melody is tone-sequence in rhythm.

The intimate bondage of tone-sequence and
rhythm is grounded in the identity of their inner
nature ; both are varieties of the objective condi
tions of embodied expectation. It is not of the
essence of music to satisfy explicit and conscious
expectation — to satisfy the understanding. It

186 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

meets on the contrary a subconscious, automatic
need which becomes conscious only in the moment
of its contenting. Every moment of progress in a
beautiful melody is hailed like an instinctive action
performed for the first time. Rhythm is the ideal
satisfaction of attention in general with all its bod
ily concomitants and expressions. Tone-sequence is
the satisfaction of attention directed to auditory
demands. But the form-quality of rhythm, the
form-quality of tonality, is an all but subconscious
possession. Together, reinforcing each other in
melody, they furnish the ideal arrangement of the
most poignant of sense-stimulations.

VI

It is strange that those who would accept the
general facts of musical logic as outlined above do
not perceive that they have thereby cut away the
ground from under the feet of the " natural lan
guage " argument. If the principle of choice in the
progress of a melody is tone-relationship, the prin
ciple of choice cannot also be the cadences of the
speaking voice. That musical intervals often recall
the speaking voice is another matter, as we have
said, and to this it may be added that they much
more often do not. The question here is only of the
primacy of the principle. Thus it would seem that
the facts of musical structure constitute in them
selves a refutation of the view we have disputed.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 187

To say that music arose in " heightened speech "
is irrelevant ; for the occasion of an aesthetic
phenomenon is never its cause. It might as well
be said that music arose in economic conditions,
— as indeed Grosse, in his " Anfange der Kunst,"
conclusively shows, without attempting to make this
social occasion intrude into the nature of the phe
nomenon. Primitive decorative art arose in the
imitation of the totemic or clan symbols, mostly
animal forms ; but we have seen that the aesthetic
quality of the decoration is due to the demands of
the eye, and appears fully only in the comparative
degradation of the representative form. In exactly
the same way might we consider the " degradation "
«)f speech cadences into real music, — supposing this
were really the origin of music. As a matter of
fact, however, the best authorities seem to be
agreed that the primitive " dance-song " was rather
a monotonous, meaningless chant, and that the ori
ginal pitch-elements were mechanically supplied by
the first musical instruments ; these being at first
merely for noise, and becoming truly vibrating, so
norous bodies because they were more easily struck
if they were hard or taut. The musical tones which
these hard vibrating bodies gave out were the first
determinations of pitch, and of the elements of the
scale, which correspond to the natural partial vibra
tions of such bodies. " The human voice," Wal-
laschek 1 tells us, " equally admits of any pentatonic

1 Primitive Music, 1893, p. 156.

188 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

or heptatonic intervals, and very likely we should
never have got regular scales if we had depended
upon the ear and voice only. The first unique cause
to settle the type of a regular scale is the instru
ment." To this material we have to apply only
that " natural persuasion of the ear " which we have
already explained, to account for the full develop
ment of music.

The beauty of music, in so far as beauty is iden
tical with pleasantness, consists in its satisfaction
of the demands of the ear, and of the whole psycho-
physical organism as connected with the ear. It is
now time to return to a thread dropped at the be
ginning. It was said that a common way of set
tling the musical experience was to make musical
beauty the object of perception, and musical ex
pression the object, or source, of emotion. This
view seems to attach itself to all shades of theory.
Hanslick always contrasts intellectual activity as
attaching to the form, and emotion as attaching to
the sensuous material (that is, the physical effects of
motion, loud or soft sound, tempo, etc.). He speaks
of the esthetic criterion of intelligent gratification.
" The truly musical listener " has " his attention
absorbed by the particular form and character of
the composition," " the unique position which the
intellectual element in music occupies in relation to
forms and substance (subject)." M. Dauriac in the
same way separates the emotion of music * as a pro-
1 " Le Plaisir et 1'Emotion Musicale," Eev. Philos., Tome 42, No. 7.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 189

duct of nervous excitations, from the appreciation
of it as beautiful. " It is probable that the pleasure
caused by rhythm and color prevails with a pretty
large number, with the greatest number, over the
pleasure in the musical form, pleasure too exclu
sively psychological for one to be content with it
alone. . . . The musical sense implies the intel
ligence. . . . The theory . . . applies to a great
number of sonorous sensations, and not at all to any
musical perceptions." Mr. W. H. Hadow l tells us
that it is the duty of the musician not to flatter the
sense with an empty compliment of sound, but to
reach through sensation to the mental faculties
within. And again we read " the art of the com
poser is in a sense the discovery and exposition of
the intelligible relations in the multifarious mate
rial at his command." 2

Now it is riot hard to see how this antithesis has
come about. But that the work of a master is always
capable of logical analysis does not prove that our
apprehension of it is a logical act. And the pre
ceding discussion has wholly failed to make its
point, if it is not now clear that the musical experi
ence is an impression and not a judgment ; that the
feeling of tonality is not a judgment of tonality,
and that though the aesthetic enjoyment of music
extends only to those limits within which the feel
ing of tonality is active, that feeling is more likely
than not to be quite unintelligible to the listener.

1 Qp. ctf., p. 47. 2 Grove's Diet. Art. " Relationship."

190 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Indeed, if it were not so, we should have to re
strict, by hypothesis, the enjoyment of music to
those able to give a technical report of what they
hear, — which is notoriously at odds with the facts.
That psychologist is quite right who holds 1 that
psychology, in laying down a principle explaining
the actual effect of a musical piece, is not justified
in confining itself to skilled musicians and taking
no notice of more than nine tenths of those who
listen to the piece. But on the understanding that
the tonality-feeling acts subconsciously, that our
satisfaction with the progression of notes is unex
plained to ourselves, though explicable by the laws
of acoustics and association, we are enabled to bring
within the circle of those who have the musical ex
perience even those nine tenths whose intellects are
not actively participant.

The fact is that musical form, in the sense of
structure, balance, symmetry, and proportion in the
arrangement of phrases, and in the contrasting of
harmonies and keys, is different from the musical
form which is felt intimately, intrinsically, as the
desired, the demanded progress from one note to
another. Structure is indeed perceived, understood,
enjoyed as an orderly unified arrangement. Form
is felt as an immediate joy. Structure it is which
many critics have in mind when they speak of form,
and it is the confusion between the two which makes
such an antithesis of musical beauty and sensuous
i Lazarus, Das Leben der Stele, ii, p. 323.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 191

material possible. The real musical beauty, it is
clear, is in the melodic idea ; in the sequence of
tones which are indissolubly one, which are felt
together, one of which cannot exist without the
other. Musical beauty is in the intrinsic musical
form. And yet here, too, we must admit, that, in
the last analysis, structure and form need not be
different. The perfect structure will be such a unity
that it, too, will be felt as one — not only " the
orderly distribution of harmonies and keys in such
a manner that the mind can realize the concatena
tion as a complete and distinct work of art." The
ideal musical consciousness would have an ideally
great range ; it would not only realize the concat
enation, but it would take it in as one takes in a
single phrase, a simple tune, retaining it from first
note to last. The ordinary musical consciousness
has merely a much shorter breath. It can " feel "
an air, a movement ; it cannot " feel " a symphony,
it can only perceive the relation of keys and har
monies therein. With repeated hearing, study, ex
perience, this span of beauty may be indefinitely
extended — in the individual, as in the race. But
no one will deny that the direct experience of
beauty, the single aBsthetic thrill, is measured ex
actly by the length of this span. It is only genius
— hearer or composer — who can operate " a
longue haleine."

So it is that we must understand the develop
ment in musical form from the cut and dried sonata

192 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

form to the wayward yet infinitely greater beauty
of Beethoven ; and thence to the " free forms " of
modern music. " Infinite melody " is a contradic
tion in terms, because when the first term cannot
be present in consciousness with the last there is
nothing to control and direct the progression ; and
our musical memory is limited. Yet we can con
ceive, theoretically, the possibility of an indefinite
widening of the memory.

It was on some such grounds as these that Poe
laid down his famous " Poetic Principle," — that a
long poem does not exist ; that " a long poem "
is simply a flat contradiction in terms. He says,
indeed, that because " elevating excitement," the
end of a poem, is " through a psychical necessity "
transient, therefore no poem should be longer than
the natural term of such excitement. It is clearly
possible to substitute for " elevating excitement,"
immediate musical feeling of the individual. What
is the meaning of " feeling," " impression," here ? It
is the power of entering into a Gestaltsqualitat —
a motor group, a scheme in which every element is
the mechanical cue to the following. Beauty ceases
for the hearer where this carrying power, the
" funded capital " of tone-linkings ceases. In just
the same way, if rhythm were a perception rather
than an impression, we ought to be able to appre
hend a rhythm of which the unit periods were
hours. Yet we may so bridge over the moments of
beauty in experience that we are enabled, without

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 193

stretching the figure to a breaking-point, to speak
of a symphony or an opera as a single beautiful
work of art.

vn

But what of the difficulties which such a theory
must meet ? The most obvious one is the short life
of musical works. If musical beauty is founded in
natural laws, why does music so quickly grow old ?
The answer is that music is a phenomenon of ex
pectation as founded on these natural laws. It is
the tendency of one note to progress to another
which is the basis of the vividness of our experi
ence. We expect, indeed, what belongs objectively
to the development of a melody, but only that
particular variety of progression to which we have
become accustomed. So it is that music which
presents only the old, simple progressions gives the
greatest sense of ease, but the least sense of effort —
the ideal motion not being hindered on its way. In
tensity, vividness, would be felt where the progres
sion is less obvious, but felt as " fitting in " when it
is once made ; and where it is not obvious at all —
where the link is not felt, a sense of dissatisfac
tion and restlessness arises. So it is with music
which we know by heart. It is not that we know
each note, and so expect it, but that it is felt as
necessarily issuing out of the preceding. A piece of
poor music, really heterogeneous and unconnected,
might be thoroughly familiar, and yet never, in

194 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

this sense, felt as satisfying expectation. In the
same way, music in which the progressions were
germane to the existing tonality-feeling, while still
not absolutely obvious, would not be less quicken
ing to the musical sense, even if learned by heart.
It is clear that there is an external and an internal
expectation — one, imposed by memory, for the par
ticular piece ; the other constituted partly by in
trinsic internal relations, partly by the degree to
which these internal relations have been exploited.
That is, the possibility of musical expectation, and
pleasure in its satisfaction, is conditioned by the
possession of a tonality-feeling which covers the
constituents of the piece of music, but which has
not become absolutely mechanical in its action.
Just as rhythm needs an obstacle to make the
structure felt, so melody needs some variation
from the obvious set of relations already won
and possessed. If that possession is too complete,
the melody becomes as stale and uninteresting
as would a 3-4 rhythm without a change or a
break.

The test of genius in music, of the width and
depth of mastery, is to be able to become familiar
without ceasing to be strange. On the other hand,
if in music to be great is always to be misunder
stood, it is no less true, here as elsewhere, that to
be misunderstood is not always to be great. And
music may be merely strange, and pass into ob
livion, without ever having passed that stage of

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 195

surprised and delighted acceptance which is the
test of its truth to fundamental laws.

But how shall music advance ? How shall it set
out to win new relations ? It is at least conceivable
that it takes the method of another art which we
have just studied. To get new beauties, it does not
say, — Go to, I will add to the beauties I already
have ! It makes new occasions, and by way of
these finds the impulse it seeks. Renoir paints the
baigneuse of Montmartre, and finds " the odd, beau
tiful huddle of lines " in so doing ; Rodin por
trays ever new subtleties of situation and mood,
and by way of these comes most naturally to " the
unedited poses." So a musician, we may imagine,
comes to new and strange utterances by way of a
new and strange motion or cry that he imitates.
Out of the various bents and impulses that these
give him he chooses the ones that chance to be
beautiful. And in time these new beauties have be
come worn away like the trite metaphors that are
now no longer metaphors, but part of the " funded
capital." That was a ridiculous device of Schu
mann's, who found a motif for one of his loveliest
things by using the letters of his temporary fair
one's name — A B E G G ; but it may not be
so utterly unlike the procedure by which music
grows.

196 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

VIII

But what provision must be made for the emo
tions of music ? It cannot be that the majority
of musicians, who are strangely enough the very
ones to insist that music is merely the language
of emotion, are utterly and essentially wrong.
Nor has it been attempted to prove them so. The
beauty of music, we have sought to show, grows
and flowers out of tone-relations alone, consists in
tone-sequences alone. But it has not been said that
music did not arouse emotion, nor that it might
not on occasion even express it.

It is in fact now rather a commonplace in
musical theory, to show the emotional means which
music has at its command ; and I shall therefore
be very brief in my reference to them. They may
be shortly classed as expressive by association and
by direct induction. Expressive by association are
passages of direct imitation : the tolling of bells,
the clash of arms, the roar of wind, the hum of
spinning wheels, even to the bleating of sheep and
the whirr of windmills ; the cadence of the voice in
pleading, laughter, love ; from such imitations we
are reminded of a fact or an emotion. More inti
mate is the expression by induction ; emotion is
aroused by activities which themselves form part of
the emotions in question. Thus the differences in
tempo, reproduced in nervous response, call up the
gayety, sadness, hesitation, firmness, haste, growing

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 197

excitement, etc., of which whole experiences these
movement types form a part.

These emotions, as has often been shown, are
absolutely general and indefinite in their character,
and are, on the whole, even in their intensity, no
measure of the beauty of the music which arouses
them. Indeed, we can get intense emotion from
sound which is entirely unmusical. So, too, loud-
ness, softness, crescendo, diminuendo, volume, pierc-
ingness,have their emotional accompaniments. It is
to Hanslick that we owe the general summing up
of these possibilities of expression as " the dynamic
figures of occurrences." How this dynamic skeleton
is filled out through association, or that special form
of association which we know as direct induction,
is not hard to understand on psychological grounds.
It is not necessary to repeat here the reasons for
the literally " moving " appeal of sound-stimula
tions, which have been already detailed under the
subject of rhythm.

Yet there still remains a residue of emotion not
entirely accounted for. It has been said that these,
the emotions expressed, or aroused, are more or less
independent of the intrinsic musical beauty. But
it cannot be denied that there is an intense emotion
which grows with the measure of the beauty of a
piece of music, and which music lovers are yet
loth to identify with the so-called general aesthetic
emotion, or with the " satisfaction of expectation,"
different varieties of which, in fusion, we have tried

198 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

to show as the basis of the musical experience. The
aesthetic emotion from a picture is not like this, they
say, and a mere satisfaction of expectation is unut
terably tame. This is unique, aesthetic, individual !
I believe that the clue to this objection is the
natural impulse of mankind to confuse the intensity
of an experience with a difference in kind. But first
of all, there must be added to our list of definite
emotions from music, those which attach themselves
to the internal relations of the notes. Gurney has
said that when we feel ourselves yearning for the
unutterable, we are really yearning for the next
note. That is the secret ! Each one of those ten
dencies, demands, leanings, strivings, returns, as
between tone and tone in a melody, is necessarily
accompanied by the feeling-tone which belongs to
such an attitude. And it is to be noted that all the
more poignant emotions we get from music are al
ways stated in terms of urgency, of strain, of effort.
That is because these emotions, and these alone, are
inescapable in music since they are founded on the
intrinsic relations of the notes themselves. It is
just for this reason, too, that music, just in propor
tion to its beauty, is felt, as some one says, like
vinegar on a wound, by those in grief or anxiety.

" I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes."

It is the yearning that is felt most strongly, the
more vividly are the real musical relations of the
notes brought out.

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 199

Music expresses and causes tension, strain, yearn
ing, through its inner, its " absolute " nature. But
it does more ; it satisfies these yearnings. It not
only creates an expectation to satisfy it, but the
expectation itself is of a poignant, emotional, per
sonal character. What is the emotion that is
aroused by such a satisfaction ?

The answer to this question takes us back again
to that old picturesque theory of Schopenhauer —
that music is the objectification of the will. Scho
penhauer meant this in a metaphysical, and to us
an inadmissible sense ; but I believe that the psy
chological analysis of the musical experience which
we have just completed shows that there is another
sense in which it is absolutely true.

The best psychological theory of the experience
of volition makes it the imaging of a movement or
action, followed by feelings of strain, and then of
the movement carried out. The anticipation is the
essential. Without anticipation, as in the reflex,
winking, the action appears involuntary. Without
the feeling of effort or strain, as in simply raising
the empty hand, the self-feeling is weaker. When
all these three elements, image, effort, success, are
present most vividly, the feeling is of triumphant
volition. Now my thesis is — the thesis toward
which every thought of the preceding has pointed
— that the fundamental facts of the musical ex
perience are supremely fitted to bring about the
illusion and the exaltation of the triumphant will.

200 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

The image, dimly foreshadowed, is given in the
half-consciousness of each note as it appears, and
in that sense of coming integration already recog
nized. The proof is the shock and disappointment
when the wrong note is sounded; if we had not
some anticipation of the right, the wrong one would
not shock. The strain we have in the effort of the
organism to reach the note, the tendency to which
is implicit in the preceding. The success is given
in the coming of the note itself.

All this is no less true of rhythm — but there
the expectation is more mechanical, less conscious,
as has been fully shown. The more beautiful, that
is, the more inevitably, irresistibly right the music,
the more powerful the influence to this illusion of
the triumphant will. The exaltation of musical
emotion is thus the direct measure of the perfec
tion of the relations — the beauty of the music.
This, then, is the only intimate, immediate, intrin
sic emotion of music — the illusion of the trium
phant will !

One word more on the interpretation of music
in general a3sthetic terms. All that has been said
goes to show that music possesses to the very
highest degree the power of stimulation. Can we
attribute to it repose in any other sense than that
of satisfying a desire that it arouses ? We can do
so in pointing out that music ever returns upon
itself — that its motion is cyclic. Music is the art
of auditory implications ; but more than this, its

THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC 201

last note returns to its first. It is as truly a unity
as if it were static. We may say that the beauty of a
picture is only entered into when the eye has roved
over the whole canvas, and holds all the elements
indirectly while it is fixated upon one point. In
exactly the same way music is not beauty unless it
is all there ; at every point a fusion of the heard
tone with the once heard tones in the order of their
hearing. The melody, as a set of implications, is
as essentially timeless as the picture. By melody
too, then, is given the perfect moment, the moment
of unity and completeness, of stimulation and repose.
The aesthetic emotion for music is then the
favorable stimulation of the sense of hearing and
those other senses that are bound up with it, to
gether with the repose of perfect unity. It has
a richer color, a more intense exaltation in the
illusion of the triumphant will, which is indeed the
peculiar mark of the perfect moment for the self
in action.

VI
THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE

VI

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE

THAT in the practice and pleasure of art for
art's sake there lurks an unworthy element,
is a superstition that recurs in every generation of
critics. A most accomplished and modern disciple
of the gay science but yesterday made it a reproach
to the greatest living English novelist, that he, too,
was all for beauty, all for art, and had no great
informing purpose. " Art for art's sake " is clearly,
to this critic's mind, compatible with the lack of
something all desirable for novels. Yet if there is
indeed a characteristic excellence of the novel, if
there is something the lack of which in a novel is
rightly deplored, then the real art for art's sake is
bound to include this characteristic excellence. If
an informing purpose is needed, no true artist can
dispense with it. Otherwise art for art's sake is a
contradiction in terms.

The critic I have quoted merely voices the lin«
gering Puritan distrust of beauty as an end in itself,
and so repudiates the conception of beauty as con
taining all the excellences of a work of art. He
thinks of beauty as cut up into small snips and

206 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

shreds of momentary sensations ; as the sweet sound
of melodious words and cadences ; or as something
abstract, pattern-like, imposed from without, — a
Procrustes-bed of symmetry and proportion ; or as
a view of life Circe-like, insidious, a golden languor,
made of " the selfish serenities of wild-wood and
dream-palace." All these, apart or together, are
thought of as the " beauty," at which the artist
" for art's sake " aims, and to that is opposed the
nobler informing purpose. But the truer view of
beauty makes it simply the epitome of all which a
work of art ought to be, and thus the only end and
aim of every work of art. The beauty of literature
receives into itself all the precepts of literature :
there is no " ought " beyond it. And art for art's
sake is but art conscious of its aim, the production
of that all-embracing beauty.

What, then, is the beauty of literature? How
may we know its characteristic excellences ? It is
strange how, in all serious discussion, to the con
founding of some current ideas of criticism, we are
thrown back, inevitably, on this concept of excel
lence ! The most ardent of impressionists wakes
up sooner or later to the idea that he has been
talking values all his life. The excellences of liter
ature ! They must lie within the general formula
for beauty, yet they must be conditioned by the
possibilities of the special medium of literature.
The general formula, abstract and metaphysical as
it must be, may not be applied directly ; for abstract

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 207

thought will fit only that art which can convey it ;
hence the struggle of theorists with painting, music,
and architecture, and the failure of Hegel, for in
stance, to show how beauty as " the expression of
the Idea " resides in these arts. But if the general
formula is always translated relatively to the sense-
medium through which beauty must reach the
human being, it may be preserved, while yet affirm
ing all the special demands of the particular art.
Beauty is a constant function of the varying me
dium. The end of Beauty is always the same, the
perfect moment of unity and self-completeness, of
repose in excitement. But this end is attained
by different means furnished by different media :
through vision and its accompanying activities;
through hearing and its accompanying activities ;
and for literature, through hearing in the special
sense of communication by word. It is the nature
of this medium that we must further discover.

n

Now the word is nothing in itself ; it is not
sound primarily, but thought. The word is but a
sign, a negligible quantity in human intercourse —
a counter in which the corns are ideas and emotions
— merely legal tender, of no value save in ex
change. What we really experience in the sound
of a sentence, in the sight of a printed page, is a
complex sequence of visual and other images, ideas,

208 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

emotions, feelings, logical relations, swept along in
the stream of consciousness, — differing, indeed, in
certain ways from daily experience, but yet pri
marily of the web of life itself. The words in their
nuances, march, tempo, melody add certain elements
to this flood — hasten, retard, undulate, or calm it ;
but it is the thought, the understood experience,
that is the stuff of literature.

Words are first of all meanings, and meanings
are to be understood and lived through. We can
hardly even speak of the meaning of a word, but
rather of what it is, directly, in the mental state
that is called up by it. Every definition of a word
is but a feeble and distant approximation of the
unique flash of experience belonging to that word.
It is not the sound sensation nor the visual image
evoked by the word which counts, but the whole of
the mental experience, to which the word is but an
occasion and a cue. Therefore, since literature is
the art of words, it is the stream of thought itself
that we must consider as the material of literature.
In short, literature is the dialect of life — as Ste
venson said ; it is by literature that the business of
life is carried on. Some one, however, may here
demur: visual signs, too, are the dialect of life.
We understand by what we see, and we live by
what we understand. The curve of a line, the cres
cendo of a note, serve also for wordless messages.
Why are not, then, painting and music the vehicles
of experience, and to be judged first as evocation of

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 209

life, and only afterward as sight and hearing ? This
conceded, we are thrown back on that view of art
as " the fixed quantity of imaginative thought
supplemented by certain technical qualities, — of
color in painting, of sound in music, of rhythmical
words in poetry," from which it has been the one
aim of the preceding arguments of this book to
free us.

The holders of this view, however, ignore the his
tory and significance of language. Our sight and
hearing are given to us prior to our understanding
or use of them. In a way, we submit to them —
they are always with us. We dwell in them through
passive states, through seasons of indifference;
moreover when we see to understand, we do not
see, and when we hear to understand we do not
hear. Only shreds of sensation, caught up in our
flight from one action to another, serve as signals
for the meanings which concern us. In proportion
as action is prompt and effective, does the cue as
such tend to disappear, until, in all matters of skill,
piano-playing, fencing, billiard-playing, the sight or
sound which serves as cue drops almost altogether
out of consciousness. So far as it is vehicle of in
formation, it is no longer sight or sound as such —
interest has devoured it. But language came into
being to supplement the lacks of sight and sound.
It was created by ourselves, to embody all active
outreaching mental experience, and it comes into
particular existence to meet an insistent emergency

210 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

— a literally crying need. In short, it is constituted
by meanings — its essence is communication. Sight
and sound have a relatively independent existence,
and may hence claim a realm of art that is largely
independent of meanings. Not so the art of words,
which can be but the art of meanings, of human
experience alone.

And yet again, were the evocation of life the
means and material of all art, that art in which
the level of imaginative thought was low, the range
of human experience narrow, would take a low
place in the scale. What, then, of music and archi
tecture? Inferior arts, they could not challenge
comparison with the poignant, profound, all-em
bracing art of literature. But this is patently not
the fact. There is no hierarchy of the arts. We
may not rank St. Paul's Cathedral below " Para
dise Lost." Yet if the material of all experience
is the material of all art, they must not only be
compared, but " Paradise Lost " must be admitted
incomparably the greater. No — we may not admit
that all the arts alike deal with the material of
expression. The excellence of music and architec
ture, whatever it may be, cannot depend on this
material. Yet by hypothesis it must be through
the use of its material that the end of beauty is
reached by every art. A picture has lines and
masses and colors, wherewith to play with the
faculty of vision, to weave a spell for the whole
man. Beauty is the power to enchant him through

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 211

the eye and all that waits upon it, into a moment
of perfection. Literature has "all thoughts, all
passions, all delights" — the treasury of life — to
play with, to weave a spell for the whole man.
Beauty in literature is the power to enchant him,
through the mind and heart, across the dialect of
life, into a moment of perfection.

Ill

The art of letters, then, is the art whose mate
rial is life itself. Such, indeed, is the implication
of the approved theories of style. Words, phrases,
sentences, chapters, are excellent in so far as they
are identical with thought in all its shades of feel
ing. " Economy of attention," Spencer's familiar
phrase for the philosophy of style, his explanation
of even the most ornate and extravagant forms, is
but another name for this desired lucidity of the
medium. Pater, himself an artist in the overlaying
of phrases, has the same teaching. " All the laws of
good writing aim at a similar unity or identity of
the mind in all the processes by which the word
is associated to its import. The term is right, and
has its essential beauty, when it becomes, in a man
ner, what it signifies, as with the names of simple
sensations." l He quotes therewith De Maupassant
on Flaubert: "Among all the expressions in the
world, all forms and turns of expression, there is
1 Appreciations : An Essay on Style.

212 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

but one — one form, one mode — to express what
I want to say." And adds, " The one word for the
one thing, the one thought, amid the multitude of
words, terms, that might just do : the problem of
style was there ! — the unique word, phrase, sen
tence, paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely pro
per to the single mental presentation or vision
within." . . .

Thought in words is the matter of literature;
and words exist but for thought, and get their
excellence as thought ; yet, as Flaubert says, the
idea only exists by virtue of the form. The form,
or the word, is the idea ; that is, it carries along
with it the fringe of suggestion which crystallizes
the floating possibility in the stream of thought.
A glance at the history of language shows how
this must have been so. Words in their first for
mation were doubtless constituted by their imita
tive power. As Taine has said,1 at the first they
arose in contact with the objects ; they imitated
them by the grimaces of mouth and nose which ac
companied their sound, by the roughness, smooth
ness, length, or shortness of this sound, by the
rattle or whistle of the throat, by the inflation or
contraction of the chest.

This primitive imitative power of the word sur
vives in the so-called onomatopoetic words, which
aim simply at reproducing the sounds of nature.
A second order of imitation arises through the
1 H. Taine, La Fontaine et ses Fables, p. 288.

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 213

associations of sensations. The different sensa
tions, auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, motor, and
organic have common qualities, which they share
with other more complex experiences ; of form, as
force or feebleness ; of feeling, as harshness, sweet
ness, and so on. It is, indeed, another case of the
form-qualities to which we recurred so often in the
chapter on music. Clear and smooth vowels will
give the impression of volatility and delicacy ; open,
broad ones of elevation or extension (airy, flee;
large, far). The consonants which are hard to
pronounce will give the impression of effort, of
shock, of violence, of difficulty, of heaviness, —
" the round squat turret, black as the fool's heart ; "
those which are easy of pronunciation express ease,
smoothness, fluidity, calm, lightness, (facile, suave,
roulade) ; — " lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon,"
a line like honey on the tongue, of which physical
organ, indeed, one becomes, with the word " tinct,"
definitely conscious.

In fact, the main point to notice in the enume
ration of the expressive qualities of sounds, is that
it is the movement in utterance which character
izes them. That movement tends to reproduce
itself in the hearer, and carries with it its feeling-
tone of ease or difficulty, explosiveness or sweet
ness long drawn out. It is thus by a kind of
sympathetic induction rather than by external imi
tation that these words of the second type become
expressive.

214 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Finally, the two moments may be combined, as
in such a word as " roaring," which is directly imi
tative of a sound, and by the muscular activity it
calls into play suggests the extended energy of
the action itself.

The stage in which the word becomes a mere
colorless, algebraic sign of object or process never
occurs, practically, for in any case it has accumu
lated in its history and vicissitudes a fringe of sugges-
tiveness, as a ship accumulates barnacles. " Words
carry with them all the meanings they have worn,"
says Walter Raleigh in his " Essay on Style." " A
slight technical implication, a faint tinge of archa
ism in the common turn of speech that you em
ploy, and in a moment you have shaken off the
mob that scours the rutted highway, and are ad
dressing a select audience of ticket-holders with
closed doors." Manifold may be the implications
and suggestions of even a single letter. Thus a
charming anonymous essay on the word " Grey."
" Gray is a quiet color for daylight things, but there
is a touch of difference, of romance, even, about
things that are grey. Gray is a color for fur, and
Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a gray
day, and a gentlewoman's hair ; and horses must be
gray. . . . Now grey is for eyes, the eyes of a
witch, with green lights in them and much wicked,
ness. Gray eyes would be as tender and yielding
and true as blue ones ; a coquette must have eyes
of grey."

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 215

Words do not have meanings, they are mean
ings through their power of direct suggestion
and induction. They may become what they sig
nify. Nor is this power confined to words alone ;
on its possession by the phrase, sentence, or verse
rests the whole theory of style. The short,
sharp staccato, the bellowing turbulent, the swim
ming melodious circling sentence are truly what
they mean, in their form as in the objective sense
of their words. The sound-values of rhythm and
pace have been in other chapters fully dwelt upon ;
the expressive power of breaks and variations is
worth noting also. Of the irresistible significance
of rhythm, even against content, we have an exam
ple amusingly commented on by Mr. G. K. Ches
terton in his " Twelve Types." " He (Byron) may
arraign existence on the most deadly charges, he
may condemn it with the most desolating verdict,
but he cannot alter the fact that on some walk in
a spring morning when all the limbs are swinging
and all the blood alive in the body, the lips may
be caught repeating :

' Oh, there 's not a joy the world can give like that it takes

away,
When the glow of early youth declines in beauty's dull

That automatic recitation is the answer to the
whole pessimism of Byron."

216 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

IV

Such, then, are some of the means by which Ian*
guage becomes identical with thought, and most
truly the dialect of life. The genius will have ways,
to which these briefly outlined ones will seem
crude and obvious, but they will be none the less
of the same nature. Shall we then conclude that
the beauty of literature is here ? that, in the words
of Pater, from the essay I have quoted, " In that
perfect justice (of the unique word) . . . omni
present in good work, in function at every point,
from single epithets to the rhythm of a whole book,
lay the specific, indispensable, very intellectual
beauty of literature, the possibility of which con
stitutes it a fine art."

In its last analysis, such a conception of litera
ture amounts to the unimpeded intercourse of mind
with mind. Literature would be a language which
dispenses with gesture, facial expression, tone of
voice ; which is, in its halts, accelerations and re
tardations, emphases and concessions, the apothe
osis of conversation. But this clearness, — in the
sublime sense, including the ornate and the subtle,
— this luminous lucidity, — is it not quite indeter
minate ? Clearness is said of a medium. What is
it that shines through?

Were this clearness the beauty we are seeking,
whatever in the world that wanted to get itself

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 217

said, would, if it were perfectly said, become a final
achievement of literature. All that the plain man
looks for, we must think rightly, in poetry and
prose, might be absent, and yet we should have to
acknowledge its excellence. Let us then consider
this quality by which the words become what they
signify as the specific beauty rather of style than
of literature ; the mere refining of the gold from
which the work of art has yet to be made. Lan
guage is the dialect of life ; and the most perfect
language can be no more than the most perfect
truth of intercourse. It must then be through the
treatment of life, or the sense of life itself, that we
are somehow to attain the perfect moment of beauty.

The sense of life ! In what meaning are these
words to be taken ? Not the completest sense of all,
because the essence of life is in personal responsi
bility to a situation, and this is exactly what in our
experience of literature disappears. First of all,
then, before asking how the moment of beauty is
to be attained, we must see how it is psychologi
cally possible to have a sense of life that is yet
purged of the will to live.

All experience of life is a complication of ideas,
emotions, and attitudes or impulses to action in
varying proportions. The sentiment of reality is
constituted by our tendency to interfere, to " take
a hand." Sometimes the stage of our consciousness
is so fully occupied by the images of others that
our own reaction is less vivid. Finally, all condi-

218 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

tions and possibilities of reaction may be so mini
mizetl that the only attitude possible is our accept
ance or rejection of a world in which such things
can be. What does it " matter " to me whether or
not " the old, unhappy, far-off things " really hap
pened ? The worlds of the Borgias, of Don Juan,
and of the Russian war stand on the same level of
reality. Aucassin and Nicolette are as near to me
as Abelard and Heloi'se. For in relation to these
persons my impulse is nil. I submit to them, I
cannot change or help them ; and because I have
no impulse to interfere, they are not vividly real to
me. And, in general, in so far as I am led to con
template or to dwell on anything in idea, in so
far does my personal attitude tend to parallel this
impersonal one toward real persons temporally or
geographically out of reach.

Now in literature all conditions tend to the
enormous preponderance of the ideal element in
experience. My mind in reading is completely
filled with ideas of the appearance, ways, manners,
and situation of the people concerned. I leave
them a clear field. My emotions are enlisted only
as the inevitable fringe of association belonging to
vivid ideas — the ideas of their emotions. So far
as all the possibilities of understanding are fulfilled
for me, so far as I am in possession of all the con
ditions, so far do I " realize " the characters, but
realize them as ideas tinged with feeling.

Here there will be asseverations to the contrary.

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 219

What ! feel no real emotion over Little Nell, or
Colonel Newcome ? no emotion in that great scene
of passion and despair, the parting of Richard
Feverel and Lucy, — a scene which none can read
save with tight throat and burning eyes ! Even so.
It is not real emotion. You have the vivid ideas,
so vivid that a fringe of emotional association ac
companies them, as you might shudder remember
ing a bad dream. But the real emotion arises only
from the real impulse, the real responsibility.

The sense of life that literature gives might be
described as life in its aspect as idea. That this
fact is the cause of the peace and painlessness of
literature — since it is by his actions, as Aristotle
says, that man is happy or the reverse — need not
concern us here. For the beauty of literature, and
our joy in it, lie not primarily in its lack of power
to hurt us. The point is that literature gives none
the less truly a sense of life because it happens
to be one extreme aspect of life. The literary
way is only one of the ways in which life can be
met.

To give the sense of life perfectly — to create
the illusion of life — is this, then, the beauty of
literature ? But we are seeking for the perfect mo
ment of stimulation and repose. Why should the
perfect illusion of life give this, any more than life
itself does ? So the " vision " of a picture might
be intensely clear, and yet the picture itself un-
beautiful. Such a complete " sense of life," such

220 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

clear " vision," would show the artist's mastery of
technique, but not his power to create beauty. In
the art of literature, as in the art of painting, the
normal function is but the first condition, the state
of perfection is the end at which to aim.

It is just this distinction that we can properly
make between the characteristic or typical in the
sense of differentiated, and the great or excellent
in literature. In the theory of some writers, perfect
fidelity to the type is the only originality. To paint
the Russian peasant or the French bourgeois as he
is, to catch the exact shade of exquisite soullessness
in Oriental loves, to reproduce the Berserker rage
or the dull horror of battle, is indeed to give the
perfect sense of life. But the perfect, or the com
plete, sense of life is not the moment of perfect
life.

Yet to this assertion two answers might be made.
The authors of " Bel- Ami," or " Madame Chrysan-
theme," or " The Triumph of Death," might claim
to be saved by their form. The march of events,
the rounding climax, the crystal-clear unity of the
finished work, they might say, gives the indispen
sable union, for the perfect moment of stimulation
and repose. No syllable in the slow unfolding of
exquisite cadences but is supremely placed from
the first page to the last. As note calls to note,
so thought calls to thought, and feeling to feeling,
and the last word is an answer to the first of the
inevitable procession. A writer's donnee, they

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 221

would say, is his own. The reader may only beg —
Make me something fine after your own fashion !

And they would have to be acknowledged partly
in the right. In that inevitable unity of form there
is indeed a necessary element of the perfect mo
ment ; but it is not a perfect unity. For the matter
of their art should be, in the last analysis, life itself ;
and the unity of life itself, the one basic unity of
all, they have missed. It is a hollow sphere they
present, and nothing solid. Henry James has spent
the whole of a remarkable essay on D'Annunzio's
creations in determining the meaning of " the fact
that their total beauty somehow extraordinarily
fails to march with their beauty of parts, and that
something is all the while at work undermining
that bulwark against ugliness which it is their ob
vious theory of their own office to throw up." The
secret is, he avers, that the themes, the " anecdotes,"
could find their extension and consummation only
in the rest of life. Shut out, as they are, from the
rest of life, shut out from all fruition and assimi
lation, and so from all hope of dignity, they lose
absolutely their power to sway us.

It might be simpler to say that these works lack
the first beauty which literature as the dialect of
life can have — they lack the repose of centrality ;
they have no identity with the meaning of life as a
whole. It could not be said of them, as Bagehot
said of Shakespeare : " He puts things together, he
refers things to a principle; rather, they group

222 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

themselves in his intelligence insensibly around a
principle; ... a cool oneness, a poised person
ality, pervades him." But in these men there is no
cool oneness, no reasonable soul, and so they miss
the central unity of life, which can give unity to
literature. Even the apparent structural unity fails
when looked at closely; the actions of the charac
ters are seen to be mechanical — their meaning is
not inevitable.

The second answer to our assertion that the
" sense of life " is not the beauty of literature
might call attention to the fact that sense of life
may be taken as understanding of life. A complete
sense of life must include the conditions of life, and
the conditions of life involve this very " energetic
identity " on which we have insisted. And this con
tention we must admit. So long as the sense of
life is taken as the illusion of life, our words hold
good. But if to that is added understanding of
life, the door is open to the profoundest excellences
of literature. Henry James has glimpsed this truth
in saying that no good novel will ever proceed from
a superficial mind. Stevenson has gone further.
44 But the truth is when books are conceived under
a great stress, with a soul of ninefold power, nine
times heated and electrified by effort, the condi
tions of our being are seized with such an ample
grasp, that even should the main design be trivial
or base, some truth and beauty cannot fail to be
expressed."

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 223

V

The conditions of our being ! If we accept, af
firm, profoundly rest in what is presented to us, we
have the first condition of that repose which is the
essence of the aesthetic experience. And from this
highest demand can be viewed the hierarchy of the
lesser perfections which go to make up the " perfect
moment" of literature. Instead of reaching this
point by successive eliminations, we might indeed
have reached it in one stride. The perfect moment
across the dialect of life, the moment of perfect
life, must be in truth that in which we touch the
confines of our being, look upon our world, all in
all, as revealed in some great moment, and see that
it is good — that we grasp it, possess it, that it is
akin to us, that it is identical with our deepest
wills. The work that grasps the conditions of our
being gives ourselves back to us completed.

In the conditions of our being in a less profound
sense may be found the further means to the per
fect moment. Thus the progress of events, the de
velopment of feelings, must be in harmony with
our natural processes. The development, the rise,
complication, expectation, gratification, the sus
pense, climax, and drop of the great novel, corre
spond to the natural functioning of our mental
processes. It is an experience that we seek, multi
plied, perfected, expanded — the life moment of a

224 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

man greater than we. This, too, is the ultimate
meaning of the demands of style. Lucidity, indeed,
there must be, — identity with the thought ; but
besides the value of the thought in its approxima
tion to the conditions of our being, we seek the
vividness of that thought, — the perfect moment
of apprehension, as well as of experience. It is the
beauty of style to be lucid ; but the beauty of lucid
ity is to reinforce the springs of thought.

Even to the minor elements of style, the tone-
coloring, the rhythm, the melody, — the essence
of beauty, that is, of the perfect moment, is given
by the perfecting of the experience. The beauty
of liquids is their ease and happiness of utterance.
The beauty of rhythm is its aiding and compelling
power, on utterance and thought. There is a sen
suous pleasure in a great style ; we love to mouth
it, for it is made to mouth. As Flaubert says some
what brutally, " Je ne sais qu'une phrase est bonne
qu'apres Favoir fait passer par mon gueuloir."

In the end it might be said that literature gives
us the moment of perfection, and is thus possessed
of beauty, when it reveals ourselves to ourselves in
a better world of experience ; in the conditions of
our moral being, in the conditions of our thought
processes, in the conditions of our utterance
and our breathing ; — all these, concentric cir
cles, in which the centre of repose is given by the
underlying identity of ourselves with this world.
Because it goes to the roots of experience, and

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 225

seeks to give the conditions of our being as they
really are, literature may be truly called a criti
cism of life. Yet the end of literature is not the
criticism of life ; rather the appreciation of life —
the full savour of life in its entirety. The final
definition of literature is the art of experience.

VI

But then literature would give only the perfect
moments of existence, would ignore the tragedies,
ironies, pettiness of life ! Such an interpretation is a
quite mistaken one. As the great painting uses the
vivid reproduction of an ugly face, a squalid hovel,
to create a beautiful picture, beautiful because all
the conditions of seeing are made to contribute to
our being made whole in seeing ; so great literature
can attain through any given set of facts to the
deeper harmony of life, can touch the one poised,
unconquerable soul, and can reinforce the moment
of self-completeness by every parallel device of
stimulation and concentration. And because it is
most often in the tragedies that the conditions of
our being are laid bare, and the strings which re
verberate to the emotions most easily played upon,
it is likely that the greatest books of all will be the
tragedies themselves. The art of experience needs
contrasts no less than does the visual or auditory art.

This beauty of literature, because it is a hierar
chy of beauties more and less essential, exists in

226 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

all varieties and in all shades. If the old compari
son and contrast of idealism and realism is referred
to here, it is because that ancient controversy seems
not even yet entirely outworn. If realism means
close observation of facts and neglect of ideas,
and idealism, neglect of prosaic facts and devotion
to ideas, then we must admit that realism and
idealism are the names of two defective types.
Strictly speaking, whatever goes deep enough to
the truth of things, gets nearer reality, is realism ;
yet to get nearer reality is to attain true ideas, and
that is idealism too. The great work 'of literature
is realistic because it does not lose sight of the
ideal. Our popular use of idealistic refers, indeed,
to the world seen through rose-colored glasses ;
but for that possible variety of literary effort it is
better to use the word Romance. Romance is the
world of our youthful dreams of things, not as they
do happen, or as in our nobler moments we will
them to happen, but as, without any special deeper
meaning, we should wish them to happen. That
is the world of the gold-haired maiden, " the lover
with the red-roan steed of steeds," the purse of
Fortunatus, the treasure -trove, the villain con
fronted with his guilt. " Never the time and the
place and the loved one all together ! " But in
Romance they come together. The total depravity
of inanimate things has become the stars in their
courses fighting for us. Stevenson calls it the poe
try of circumstance — for the dreams of youth

THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE 227.

are properly healthy and material. The salvage
from the wreck in " Robinson Crusoe," he tells
us, satisfies the mind like things to eat. Romance
gives us the perfect moment of the material and
human — with the divine left out.

It has sometimes been made a reproach to critics
- — more often, I fear, by those who hold, like my
self, that beauty and excellence in art are iden
tical — that they discourse too little of form in
literature, and too much of content. But all our
taking thought will have been vain, if it is not
now patent that the first beauty of literature is,
and must be, its identity with the central flame of
life, — the primal conditions of our being. Thus it
is that the critic is justified in asking first of all,
How does this man look on life ? Has he revealed
a new — or better — the eternal old meaning ? The
Weltanschauung is the critic's first consideration,
and after that he may properly take up that second
ary grasp of the conditions of our being in mental
processes, revealed in the structure, march of inci
dents, suspense, and climaxes, and the beauty or
idiosyncracy of style. It is then literally false that
it does not matter what a man says, but only how
he says it. What he says is all that matters, for it
will not be great thought without some greatness in
the saying. Art for art's sake in literature is then
art for life's sake, and the " informing purpose," in
so far as that means the vision of our deepest selves,
is its first condition.

228 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

And because the Beauty of Literature is consti
tuted by its quality as life itself, we may defer de
tailed consideration of the species and varieties of
literature. Prose and poetry, drama and novel,
have each their own special excellences springing
from the respective situations they had, and have,
to meet. Yet these but add elements to the one
great power they all must have as literature, —
the power to give the perfect experience of life in
its fullness and vividness, and in its identity with
the central meanings of existence, — unity and self-
completeness together, — in a form which offers to
our mental functions the perfect moment of stimu
lation and repose.

VII

THE NATURE OF THE EMO
TIONS OF THE DRAMA

VII

THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE
DRAMA

THAT psychologist who, writing on the prob
lems of dramatic art, called his brochure " The
Dispute over Tragedy," gave the right name to a
singular situation. Of all the riddles of aesthetic
experience, none has been so early propounded, so
indefatigably attempted, so variously and unsatis
factorily solved, as this. What is dramatic ? What
constitutes a tragedy ? How can we take pleasure
in painful experiences? These questions are like
Banquo's ghost, and will not down.

The ingenious Bernays has said that it was all
the fault of Aristotle. The last phrase of the fa
mous definition in the " Poetics," which should re
late the nature, end, and aim of tragedy, is left, in
his works as we have them, probably through the
suppression or loss of context, without elucidating
commentary. And the writers on tragedy have ever
since so striven to guess his meaning, and to make
their answers square with contemporary drama, that
they have given comparatively slight attention to
the immediate, unbiased investigation of the phe-

232 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

nomenon itself. Aristotle's definition is as follows : 1
" Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that
is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude ;
in language embellished with each kind of artistic
ornament, the several kinds being found in sepa
rate parts of the play : in the form of action, not
of narrative ; through pity and fear effecting the
proper purgation of these emotions." In what fol
lows, he takes up and explains this definition, phrase
by phrase, until the very last. What is meant by
the Purgation (Katharsis) through pity and fear ?
It is at least what tragedy " effects," and is thus
evidently the function of tragedy. But a thing is
determined, constructed, judged, according to its
function ; the function is, so to speak, its genetic
formula. With a clear view of that, the rest of
the definition could conceivably have been con
structed without further explanation ; without it,
the key to the whole fails. " Purgation of these
emotions ;" did it mean purification of the emotions,
or purgation of the soul from the emotions? And
what emotions ? Pity and fear, or " these and such
like," thus including all emotions that tragedy could
bring to expression ?

Our knowledge of the severely moral bent of the
explicit art criticism of the Greeks has inclined
many to accept the first interpretation ; and mod
ern interests impel in the same direction. It is nat
ural to think of the generally elevating and soften-
1 S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 1895.

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 233

ing effects of great art as a kind of moral clarify
ing, and the question how this should be effected
just by pity and fear was not pressed. So Lessing
in the " Hamburgische Dramaturgic " takes Kathar-
sis as the conversion of the emotions in general into
virtuous dispositions.

Before we ask ourselves seriously how far this
represents our experience of the drama, we must
question its fidelity to the thought of Aristotle;
and that question seems to have received a final
answer in the exhaustive discussion of Bernays.1
Without going into his arguments, suffice it to say
that Aristotle, scientist and physician's son as he
was, had in mind in using this striking metaphor
of the Katharsis of the emotions, a perfectly defi
nite procedure, familiar in the treatment, by excit
ing music, of persons overcome by the ecstasy or
" enthusiasm " characteristic of certain religious
rites. Bernays quotes Milton's preface to " Samson
Agonistes : " " Tragedy is said by Aristotle to be of
power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge
the mind of those and such like passions ; that is,
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a
kind of delight, stirred by reading or seeing those
passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in
her own effects to make good his assertion ; for so
in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality
are used against melancholy, sour against sour,

1 Zwei Adhandlungen uber d. Aristotelische Theorie d. Drama,
1880.

234 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

salt to remove salt humours," adding " the homoa-
opathic comparison shows how near he was to the
correct notion." Bernays concludes that by Kathar-
sis is denoted the " alleviating discharge " of the
emotions themselves. In other words, pity and fear
are bad, and it is a good thing to get rid of them
in a harmless way, as it is better to be vaccinated
than to have small pox.

Now this alleviating discharge is pleasurable
(/«0' ^801/^5), and the pleasure seems, from allied
passages, to arise not in the accomplished relief from
oppression, but in the process itself. This becomes
intelligible from the point of view of Aristotle's
definition of pleasure as an ecstatic condition of
the soul. For every emotion contains, according to
Aristotle, be it ever so painful, an ecstatic, and
hence a pleasurable element ; so that the excitement
of pity and fear in the ecstatic degree would effect,
at the same time with an alleviating discharge, a
pleasure also. Pity and fear are aroused to be al
layed, and to give pleasure in the arousing and the
relief.

Such, approximately, is Aristotle's view of the
Tragic Emotion, or Katharsis. Is it also our own ?
To clear the field for this inquiry, it will be well
first of all to insist on a distinction which is mostly
discounted in significance because taken for
granted. We speak of Aristotle's Katharsis as the
Tragic Emotion, forgetting that to-day Tragedy
and the Tragic are no longer identical. Aristotle

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 235

conceives himself to be dealing with the peculiar
emotion aroused by a certain dramatic form, the
name of which has nothing to do with its content.
For Tragedy is literally goat-song, perhaps from
the goat-skins worn by the first performers of trag
edy disguised as satyrs. Since then we have bor
rowed the name of that dramatic form to apply to
events which have the same type or issue as in that
form. In popular speech to-day the word tragic at
taches itself rather to the catastrophe than to the
struggle, and therefore, I cannot but think, modern
discussion of " the tragic " is wrong in attempting
to combine the Aristotelian and the modern shades
of meaning, and to embody them both in a single
definition. Aristotle is dealing with the whole ef
fect of the dramatic representation of what we
should call a tragic occurrence. It is really the
theory of the dramatic experience and not of the
tragic, in our sense, which occupies him. Therefore,
as I say, we must not assume, with many modern
critics, that an analysis of the tragic in experience
will solve the problem of the Katharsis. Our
" tragic event," it is true, is of the kind which dra
matically treated helped to bring about this pecu
liar effect. But the question of Aristotle and our
problem of Katharsis is the problem of the emotion
aroused by the Tragic Drama. What, then, is the
nature of dramatic emotion ?

236 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

n

The analogy of Aristotle's conception of the
emotion of tragedy with certain modern views is
evident. To feel pain is to live intensely, it is said ;
to be absorbed in great, even though overwhelm
ing, events is to make us realize our own pulsing
life. The criticism to be made on this theory is,
however, no less simple : it consists merely in deny
ing the fact. It does not give us pleasure to have
painful emotions or to see other people's sorrows, in
spite of the remains of the "gorilleferoce " in us, to
which Taine and M. Faguet attribute this imputed
pleasure. And if we feel pleasure, excitement, ele
vation in the representation of the tragic, it must
be due to some other element in the experience
than the mere self-realization involved in suffering.
It is indeed our first impulse to say that the pain
ful quality vanishes when the exciting events are
known to be unreal ; pity and fear are painful be
cause too intense, and in the drama are just suffi
ciently moderated. The rejoinder is easy, that pity
and fear are never anything but painful down to
the vanishing point. The slight pity for a child's
bruised finger is not more pleasurable because less
keen ; while our feeling, whatever it is, for Ophelia
or Gretchen, becomes more pleasurable in propor
tion to its intensity.

It is clear that the matter is not so simple as

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 237

Aristotle's psychology would make it. Pity and
fear do not in themselves produce pleasure, relief,
and repose. These emotions as aroused by tragedy
are either not what we know as pity and fear in
real life, or the manner of their undergoing brings
in an entirely new element, on which Aristotle has
not touched. In some way or other the pity and
fear of tragedy are not like the pity and fear of
real lif e, and in this distinction lies the whole mys
tery of the dramatic Katharsis.

But there is an extension of Aristotle's theory,
lineally descended from that of Lessing, which pro
fesses to elucidate this difference and must be taken
account of, inasmuch as it represents the modern
popular view. Professor Butcher, in his edition of
the " Poetics," concludes, on the basis of a reference
in the " Politics " implying that the Katharsis of en
thusiasm is not identical with the Katharsis of pity
and fear, that the word is to be taken less literally,
as an expulsion of the morbid elements in the
emotions, — and these he takes to be the selfish
elements which cling to them in real life. Thus
" the spectator, who is brought face to face with
grander sufferings than his own, experiences a
sympathetic ecstasy, a lifting out of himself. It is
precisely in this transport of feeling, which carries
a man outside his individual self, that the distinc
tive tragic pleasure resides. Pity and fear are
purged of the impure element which clings to them
in life. In the glow of tragic excitement these feel-

238 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

ings are so transformed that the net result is a
noble emotional satisfaction."

In spite of our feeling that the literal and naive
reading of the analogy was probably after all nearer
Aristotle's meaning, we may accept the words of
Professor Butcher as its modern formulation. They
sound, indeed, all but a truism : yet they are seen
on examination to glide lightly over some psycho
logical difficulties. Firstly, the step is a long one
from the pity and fear felt by the Greek toward
or about the actors, to a sharing of their emotion.
The one is a definite external relation, limited to
two emotions ; the other, the " sympathetic ecstasy,"
opens the door to all conceivable emotions, and
needs at least to be justified. But, secondly, even
suppose the step taken ; suppose the " sympathetic
imitation" conceded as a fact: the objections to
Aristotle's interpretation are equally applicable to
this. Why should this " transport of sympathetic
feeling" not take the form of a transport of pain?
Why should the net result be " a noble emotional
satisfaction ? " If pity and fear remain pity and
fear, whether selfish or unselfish, it doth not yet
appear why they are emotionally satisfactory. The
" so transformed " of the passage quoted assumes
the point at issue and begs the question. That
is, if this transformation of feeling does indeed
take place, there is at least nothing in the nature
of the situation, as yet explained, to account for it.
But explanation there must be. To this, the lost

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 239

passage on the Katharsis must have been devoted ;
this, every thorough-going study of the theory of the
drama must make an indispensable preliminary.
What there is in the nature of tragic art capa
ble of transforming painful to pleasurable emotion
must be made clear. Before we can accept Professor
Butcher's view of the function of Tragedy, its
possibility as a psychological experience must be
demonstrated. For the immediately pleasurable
aesthetic effect of Tragedy, a certain kind of pity
and fear, operating in a special way, are required.
It must be thus only in the peculiar character of
the emotions aroused that the distinctive nature
of the tragic experience consists. What is this pecu
liar character?

m

A necessary step to the explanation of our plea
sure in supposedly painful emotions is to make clear
how we can feel any emotion at all in watching
what we know to be unreal, and to show how this
emotion is sympathetic, that is, imitative, rather
than of an objective reference. In brief, why do we
feel with, rather than toward or about, the actors ?

The answer to this question requires a reference
to the current theory of emotion. According to
modern psychologists, emotion is constituted by the
instinctive response to a situation ; it is the feeling
accompanying very complicated physical reactions,
which have their roots in actions once useful in the

240 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

history of mankind. Thus the familiar "expres
sion " of anger, the flushed face, dilated nostril,
clenched fist, are remains or marks of reactions ser
viceable in mortal combat. But these, the " coarser "
bodily changes proper to anger, are accompanied by
numberless organic reactions, the " feel " of all of
which together is an indispensable element of the
emotion of anger. The point to be noted in all this
is that these reactions are actions, called up by
something with which we literally have to do.

A person involved in real experience does not
reproduce the emotions about him, for in real life
he must respond to the situation, take an attitude
of help, consolation, warning ; and the character of
these reactions determines for him an emotion of
his own. Even though he really do nothing, the
multitudinous minor impulses to action going to
make up his attitude appreciably interfere with the
reproduction of the reactions of the object of his
interest. In an exactly opposite way the artificial
conditions of the spectator at a play, which rein
force the vivid reproduction of ideas, and check
action, stifle those emotions directed toward the
players, the objective emotions of which we have
spoken. The spectator is completely cut off from
all possibilities of influence on events. Between his
world and that across the footlights an inexpressible
gulf is fixed. He cannot take an " attitude," he can
have nothing to do in this galere. Since he may
not act, even those beginnings of action which make

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 241

the basis of emotion are inhibited in him. The spec
tator at a play experiences much more clearly and
sharply than the sympathetic observer ; only the
proportions of his mental contents are different.
This, I say, accounts for the absence of the real
pity and fear, which were supposed to be directed
toward the persons in the play. But so far as yet
appears there is every reason to expect the sympa
thetic reproduction of the emotions of the persons
themselves.

Let us briefly recall the situation. The house is
darkened and quiet ; all lines converge to the stage,
which is brightly lighted, and heightened in visual
effect by every device known to art. The onlooker's
mind is emptied of its content ; all feeling of self
is pushed down to its very lowest level. He has be
fore him a situation which he understands through
sight and hearing, and in which he follows the ac
tion not only by comprehension, but by instinctive
imitation. This is the great vehicle of suggestion.
We cannot see tears rise without moisture in our
own eyes ; we reproduce a yawn even against our
will; the sudden or the regular movement of a
companion we are forced to follow, at least incip-
iently. Now the expression which we imitate brings
up in us to a certain extent the whole complex of
ideas and feeling-tones belonging to that expres
sion. Moreover, the more closely we attend to it,
the more explicitly do we imitate it, by an evident
psychological principle. Thus in the artificially con-

242 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

trived situation of the spectator at a play, he is
forced, not only to understand intellectually, but
also to follow, quite literally, the emotional move
ments of the actors. The process of understanding,
raised to the highest pitch, involves by its very na
ture also reproduction of what is understood. The
complex of the ideas and associations of the per
sons of the play is ideally reproduced. Are not the
organic reactions belonging to these set up too? —
not directly, in response to a situation in which the
spectator may act, but indirectly, by reproduction
of the mental contents of one who may act, the
person of the drama. The final answer to this
question contains, to my mind, the whole kernel of
the dramatic mystery, and the starting-point for
an aBsthetic theory of tragedy.

IV

Every play contains at least two actors. The
suggestion of states of mind does not come from
the hero alone, but is given by two persons, or
groups of persons, at once. These persons are,
normally, in conflict. Othello menaces, Desdemona
shrinks ; Nora asserts her right, Hilmar his claim ;
L'Aiglon vaunts his inherited personality, Metter-
nich — holds the candle to the mirror ! But what
of the spectator ? He cannot at once shrink and
menace, assert and deny, as the conditions of sym
pathetic reproduction would seem to demand. Real

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 243

emotion implies a definite set of reactions of the
nature of movements ; and two opposed movements
cannot take place at the same time. Ideas, how
ever, can dwell together in amity. The spectator
has a vivid picture of Othello and Desdemona to
gether; but his reactions have neutralized each
other, and his emotions, lacking their organic
conditions, are in abeyance.

This is the typical dramatic moment, for it is
the one which is alone characteristic of the drama.
Only in the simultaneous realization of two op
posing forces is the full mutual checking of emo
tional impulses possible, and it is only in this
simultaneous realization that the drama differs
from all other forms of art. When the two an
tagonistic purposes are actually presented to the
onlooker in the same moment of time, then alone
can be felt the vividness of realization, the tension
of conflict, the balance of emotion, the " allevia
tion " of the true Kath arsis !

But what is this ? No emotion after all, when
the very traditional test of our enjoyment of a
play is the amount of feeling it arouses ! — when
hearts beat, hands clench, tears flow ! Emotion
there is, it may not be denied ; but not the sympa
thetic emotions of the traditional theory.

What emotion? The mutual checking of im
pulses issues in a balance, a tension, a conflict
which is yet a bond ; and this it is which is the
clue to the excitement or exaltation which in the

244 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

dramatic experience usurps the place of definite
feeling. We have met this phenomenon before.
^Esthetic emotion in general, we have heard, con
sists just in the union of a kind of stimulation or
enhanced life, with repose; a heightening of the
vital energies unaccompanied by any tendency to
movement, — in short, that gathering of forces
which we connect with action, and which is felt the
more because action is checked. Just such a repose
through equilibrium of impulses is given by the
dramatic conflict. Introspection makes assurance
doubly sure. The tense exaltation of the typical
aesthetic experience, undirected, unlimited, pure of
personal or particular reference, is reproduced in
this nameless ecstasy of the tragic drama. The
mysterious Katharsis, the emotion of tragedy, is,
then, a special type of the unique aesthetic emotion.

And it is the singular peculiar characteristic
of the drama — the face to face confrontation of
forces — which furnishes these conditions. As we
might have foreseen, the peculiar Katharsis, or
pleasurable disappearance or alleviation of emotion
in tragedy, is based on just those elements in
which the drama differs from other forms of art.
Confrontation, and not action, as the dramatic
principle, is the important deduction from our
theory; — is, indeed, but the objective aspect of it.

The view of confrontation as the dramatic prin
ciple is confirmed by dramatic literature. We
emphasize in our study of Greek plays their sim-

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 245

plicity of plot, their absence of intrigue, their
sculptural, bas-relief quality. The Greek drama
makes of a poem a crisis, says M. Faguet. A
tragedy is a well-composed group, a fine contrast,
a beautiful effect of imposing symmetry — as in
the " Antigone," " on one side civil law in all its
blind rigor, on the other moral law in all its splen
dor." The only element in common with the mod
ern type is found in the conflict of wills. Could
such a play as the " Suppliants " of Euripides find
any aesthetic justification, save that it has the one
dramatic essential — confrontation, balance of emo
tions? The very scenes of short speeches, of ob
jurgation or sententious repartee, which cannot but
have for us an element of the grotesque, must have
been as pleasing as they were to the Greek audi
ence, from the fact that they brought to sharpest
vision the confrontation of the two antagonists.
The mediaeval drama, which has become popularly
known in " Everyman," is nothing but a succes
sion of duels, material or spiritual. It is indeed the
two profiles confronting one another, our sympathy
balanced, and suspended, as it were, between them,
which characterize our recollections of this whole
great field. The modern critics and comparers of
English and French drama are fond of contrasting
the full, rich, even prodigal characterization, rhe
torical and lyrical beauty of the Shakespearean
drama with the cold, clear, logical, but resistless
movement of the French. Yet the contrast is not

246 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

quite that between characterization and form ; the
essential form is common to both. In the first
place, Elizabethan drama was platform drama —
that is, by the testimony of contemporaries, little
concerned with anything but the succession of more
or Jess unconnected scenes between two or three
persons. And we see clearly that the great dramatic
power of " Hamlet," for instance, must lie, not in
the movement of a wavering purpose, but in the
separate scenes of his struggle, each one wonder
fully rich, vivid, balanced, but almost a unit in
itself. On the theory that the true dramatic form
is logical progress, dramatic — as contrasted with
literary — power would have to be denied to
" Hamlet." The aesthetic meaning of " Lear " is
not in the terrible retribution of pride and self-
will, but in the cruel confrontation of father and
daughters.

This is no less true of the first great French
plays. It is certainly not the resistless movement
of the intrigue which makes the " Misanthrope,"
" Tartufe," the " Precieuses Ridicules," master
pieces of comedy as well as of literature. Their
dramatic value lies in their piquancy of confron
tation. The tug-of-war between Alceste and Celi-
mene, between Rodrigue and Chimene in " Le
Cid," is what we think of as dramatic ; and it is
this same element which is found as well in the com
plicated and overflowing English plays. And in
modern French drama, for all its " logic," the dom-

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 247

mating factor is the " scene a faire," — what I have
called the scene of confrontation. The notoriously
successful scene in the English drama of to-day, the
duel of Sophy and Lord Quex — tolerably empty
of real feeling or significance though it is — be
comes successful merely through the consummate
handling of the face-to-face element. Only by ad
mitting this esthetic moment of arrest can we allow
dramatic value to such a play as "Les Affaires
sont les Affaires " — a truly static drama. The
hero of this is, in the words of a reviewer, " essen
tially the same force in magnitude and direction
from the rise to the fall of the curtain. It does not
move ; it is we who are taken around it so that we
may see its various facets. It is not moulded by
the successive incidents of the play, but only dis
closed by them ; sibi constat" Yet we cannot deny
to the play dramatic power ; and the reason for this
is, as I believe, because it does, after all, possess the
dramatic essential — not action, but tension.

It will be demanded, however, what place there
is then for a temporal factor, if the typical dra
matic experience depends upon the great scene?
It cannot be denied that the drama is a work of
art developed in time, like music and poetry. It
comes to a climax and a resolution ; it evolves its
.harmonies like the symphony, in irrevocable order.

248 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

"We cannot afford to neglect, in such an aesthetic
analysis, what is an undoubted element in dramatic
effect, the so-called inevitable march of events. In
answer to this objection we may hold that the tem
poral factor is a corollary of the primary demand
for confrontation. It is necessary that the confron
tation or conflict should be vividly imagined, with
all possible associative reinforcements — that it
should be brought up to the turn of the screw, as
it were. For this, then, motivation is absolutely
necessary. An attitude is only clearly " realized "
when it is made to seem inevitable. It takes com
plete possession of our minds only when it inhibits
all other possibilities. At any given scene, the
power of a part to reproduce itself in us is mea
sured by the convincing quality given it by mo
tivation, and for this there must be a full body
of associations to draw on, to round out and com
plete understanding. The villain of the play is, for
instance, less completely "suggested" to us, be
cause our associations are supposedly less rich for
such characters ; as a beggar hypnotized and made
to feel himself a king has meagre mental equip
ment for the part. Now, this inner possession can
come about only through the compelling force of a
long course of preparation. In providing such an
accumulation of impulses, none was greater than
the younger Dumas — and none had to be greater !
To make his audience accept — that is, identify
itself with — the action of the hero in " Denise,"

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 249

or the mother's decision in " Les Idees de Mme.
Aubray," so subversive of general social feeling, and
thereby to experience fully the great dramatic mo
ment in each play, there had to go the effect of
innumerable small impulses. And to realize some
situations is even beyond the scope of a play's de
velopment. It is an acute remark of Mr. G. K.
Chesterton's, that many plays nowadays turn on
problems of marriage : which subject is one for
slow years of adjustment, patience, adaptation, en
deavor ; while the drama requires quick decisions,
bouleversements, etc., and would do wisely to con
fine itself to fields in which such bouleversements
can be made credible. At any rate, motivation is
desirable for the dramatic confrontation, and time
— the working-out — is an essential condition of
motivation. To make the dramatic conflict ever
sharper and deeper, until it either melts into har
mony, or ceases through the destruction of one
element, is the whole duty of the development,
and makes it necessary. That development is tem
poral, is, dramatically, only a device for damming
the flood that it may break at last with greater
force.

This, too, is an answer to the objection that if
confrontation is the dramatic essential, bare oppo
sition, because the clearest confrontation, would be
the greatest drama, and the " Suppliants " of Euri
pides be indeed an example of it. Bare opposition
is never real confrontation in our sense, for that

250 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

must be an arrest, a mutual antagonism of all im
pulses of soul and sense. It must possess the whole
man. It needs to take in " all thoughts, all passions,
all delights," to be complete, and the measure of
its completeness is the measure of its esthetic
value.

In the same way, the demand for profound truth
and significance in the drama is clearly to be
reached from the purely dramatic need. Inner
"possession," the condition for our dramatic ten
sion, depends not alone on the cumulation of sug
gestions — suggestion in its, so to speak, quantita
tive aspect. The attitude of a character must be
necessary in itself: that is, it must be true to the
great and general laws of life. If it is funda
mentally false, even with the longest and com-
pletest preparation, it rings hollow. We cannot
completely enter into it. Thus we see that the one
central requirement, the dramatic germ, leads to
the most far-reaching demands for logic, sanity,
and morality in the ideas of a play.

This should not be interpreted as exhausting the
aesthetic value of logic and morality in the drama.
The drama is a species of literature : and these
qualities, apart from the fact that they are necessary
to the full dramatic moment, have also an aesthetic
effect proper to themselves. Thus the development
has the beauty which lies in a necessary progress ;
but this beauty is common to the epic, the novel,
and the symphony, while the unity given by the

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 251

confrontation and tension of simultaneous forces
belongs to the drama alone. It is therefore devel
opment as serving the dramatic end that I have
deduced.

Yet we may well recall here the other aspect
of the experience. Analogous to the pleasure in
rhythm and in music, in which the awaited beat or
tone slips, as it were, into a place already prepared
for it, with the satisfaction of harmonious ner
vous adjustment, is the pleasure in an inevitable and
irrevocable progress. For it is not felt as inevita
ble unless the whole crystallization of the situation
makes such, and only such, an action or thought
necessary at a certain point in the structure, makes
it to a certain extent anticipated, and so recognized
with acclaim on its appearance. We will an event
in anticipating and accepting it; and we realize'
it as it comes. Nothing more is to be found in the
psychological analysis of the will itself — theo
retically, the two states are nearly identical. Thus
this continual anticipation and " coming true "
takes on the feeling-tone of all volition ; and so in
music, as I have shown at length, and in drama,
and to a degree in all forms of literature, we have
the illusion of the triumphant will. This is the se
cret of that creative joy felt by the spectator at
a drama, which has been so often noted. It is this
illusion of the triumphant will, too, which enters
largely into our acceptance of the tragic end.
Much has been said, in the " dispute over tragedy,"

252 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

of the so-called " Resignation " of the tragic hero,
and of the audience in relation to his fate. But I
believe that these writers are wrong in connecting
this resignation primarily with a moral attitude.
What is foreseen as perfectly inevitable, is suffi
ciently "accepted" in the psychological sense —
that is, vividly imagined and awaited, — to con
tribute to this illusion of volition. Hence arise,
for the catastrophe of drama, that exaltation and
stern joy which are indissolubly connected with the
experience of will in real life.

VI

We have spoken of the dramatic, and have de
sired to show that its peculiar aesthetic experience
arises out of the tension or balance of emotion in
the confrontation of opposing forces. If this is a
fruitful theory, it should throw light on the dis
tinction between the different forms of the drama,
and on the principal issues of that " Dispute over
Tragedy " which is always with us.

The possible results of a meeting of two forces
are these. Both forces, or one force, may be de
stroyed ; or, short of destruction, the two may melt
into harmony, or one may give way before the
other. I think it may be said that these alterna
tives represent the distinctions of Tragedy and
Comedy. When two aims are absolutely irrecon
cilable, and when the forces tending to them are

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 253

important, — that is, powerful, — there must be
somewhere destruction, and we have tragedy.
When they are reconcilable, if they are important,
we have serious comedy ; when not important, or
not envisaged as important, we have light comedy.
Thus Tragedy and Comedy are closely related, —
more closely than we are prone to think. In the
words of the late Professor Everett, in " Poetry,
Comedy, and Duty:" "The tragic is, like the comic,
simply the incongruous. The great Tragedy of
Nature, which is called the Struggle for Existence,
results simply from a greater or less incongruous-
ness between any form of life and its surround
ings. . . . The comic is found in an incongruous
relation considered merely as to its form, while
the tragic is found in an incongruous relation
taken as to its reality." For this word incongruity
I would substitute collision or conflict. When there
is no way out, we have Tragedy ; when there is a
way out, we have Comedy. And when things are
taken superficially enough, there always is a way
out, for we can at least always agree to disagree.
In any case, the end of the conflict is a period, re
pose, unity. This seems to be borne out by im
mediate introspection. The feelings with which we
come from a great tragedy or a great comedy are
indeed almost identical. The excitement, tension,
sunk into repose, are common to both ; the satis
faction with a good ending is strangely paralleled
by our resignation to a bad one, — significant of

254 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

our real indifference to the fact, so long as the
Esthetic Unity is reached.

In George Meredith's wonderful little essay on
the Comic Spirit, this view is rather remarkably
confirmed. He has defined Comedy as the contrast
of the middle way, the way of common sense, with
our human vagaries, " Comme un point fixe fait
remarquer l'emportement des autres." Comedy, he
says, teaches the world to understand what ails it.
..." Comedy is the fountain of sound sense," and
again, " the use of the true comedy is to awaken
thoughtful laughter." " Men's future upon earth
does not attract it ; their honesty and shapeliness
in the present does ; and whenever they wax out
of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious,
bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically
delicate ; whenever it sees them self-deceived or
hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting
into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning
shortsightedly, plotting dementedly ; whenever they
are at variance with their professions, and violate
the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them
in consideration one to another ; whenever they
offend sound reason, fair justice ; are false in
humility or moved with conceit, individually or in
the bulk — the Spirit overhead will look humorously
malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed
by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic
Spirit." The Comic Spirit is the just common sense,
the subconscious wisdom of the ages. There is a

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 255

golden mean, the Comic Spirit shows it to us in the
light of our flashing laughter at the deviation there
from. And because there is, even the unreconciled
— if reconcilable — difference or conflict is not seri
ous. That is why true Comedy seems to find its best
field in a developed social life. The incongruities
of human nature hurt if they are pressed too deep,
because they are irreconcilable ; they too quickly
edge the tragic gulf. But the incongruities of the
conventional life do not hurt when pressed. To
change our metaphor, adjustment to the middle
way is here so easily credible and possible, that it
is the very hunting-ground for the Comic Spirit.

The reputed masterpiece of Moliere shows us
Alceste and Celimene in the end still at odds. But
light-heartedness and sincerity are not to common
sense incompatible, and thus we are rightly led up
to the impasse by paths of laughter. Wherever
the middle way is divined, there is the possible
entrance of the Spirit of Comedy. It is certainly
a detriment to the purely tragic effect of Pinero's
greatest play, that the middle way, the possibility
of reconciliation, is shadowed forth in the last
word, — the cry of the stepdaughter of the Second
Mrs. Tanqueray, " If I had only been more merci
ful ! " Dumas fils would never have allowed that.
He would have written his play around that
thought, and made it indeed a reconciling drama
— or he would have suppressed the cry. The end
of Romeo and Juliet — dare I confess it ? — has

256 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

always hovered for me close to that border which
is not sublime. For the hapless lovers missed all
for want of a little common sense. There was
naught inevitable in their plight. I see the Comic
Spirit leaning across to stay the hand of the im
petuous Komeo. Why not take a moment's sober
thought ? she murmurs.

Tragedy ensues when there is no way out. It is
not that ruin or death for those in whom these
forces are embodied is of the essence of the situa
tion ; only that in the complete destruction of a
force or purpose when it has been embodied in a
strong desperate character, the death of that charac
ter is usually involved. There is no solution but to
cut the knot. The tragic has been defined as " that
quality of experience whereby, in and through
some serious collision, followed by fatal catastrophe
or inner ruin, something valuable in personality be
comes manifest, either as sublime or admirable in the
hero, or as triumph of an idea." But " Lear," " Mac
beth," "Hamlet," " CEdipus King," "Othello,"
exist to contravene this view. No, the tragic (in its
first sense, in the sense derived from the dramatic
form from which it is named) is in the collision it
self ; it is the profound and, to our vision, the irre
concilable antagonism of different elements in life.
And in life we accept it because we must; we
transcend it because, as moral beings, we may. The
sublime in actual tragic experience is the reaction of
the unconquerable Soul. In tragic literature another

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 257

element appears. We are helped in transcending
the essential contradictions of life presented to us,
because the conditions of literature in " preparing "
an event create for us the illusion of volition, the
acceptance of fate. And in the tragic drama, to all
these elements of the complex experience, there is
added the exaltation of the aesthetic " arrest," the
tension of confrontations.

The question of the " highest " or " most tragic "
form of tragedy seems to have been settled by
general agreement. It has been held that the
tragic of the justified opposing force is the more
full of meaning and importance, for the reason that
more interesting and complex feelings are called
into play on each side than in the case of the un
justified opposing force. But the definition of the
tragic drama we have won seems further to illumi
nate our undoubted preference for this type. We
demand aesthetically all that will make the con
frontation, the dramatic tension, more clearly felt ;
and we cannot realize fully a side which should be
unjustified. In such a play as Maeterlinck's " Agla-
vaine and Selysette " there is no movement, and
even the conflict is subterranean ; yet, as all the
characters are in their way noble, and in their
way justified, we find it among the most poignant
of his plays. Nay, more, in any situation the more
nearly the conflict is shown to be absolutely inevi
table, arising out of the very nature of life as we
know it, — completely justified, or at least felt as

258 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

inevitable .on both sides, — t he more are we shaken
by the distinctive tragic emotion. The conflict of
duties to one's self and to the world is the sharp
est of tragedies. Luther, as Freytag well shows, is
a really tragic figure from the moment when we
conceive of the inner connection of his intolerance
with all that is good and great in his nature.
As the expression of such a conflict of impulses
good in themselves, " Magda " is a greater tragedy
than the " Joy of Living ; " " Ghosts " than " Hedda
Gabler ; " the story of " Francesca da Rimini "
(I do not mean D' Annunzio's play) than " La Citta
Morta."

What, then, shall be said of the so-called tragic
" Guilt," in which the hero rushes on impiously
to his doom? It is clear that this question is
closely related to the much-debated " Greatness "
of the tragic hero. If there is guilt, there must
be also greatness, to impress that side of the can
vas on our vision. It is, indeed, almost a quantita
tive problem. Strength, energy, depth of passion,
breadth of vision, power and place, ravish our at
tention and our unconscious imitation. What is
lacking in extensity of associative reproduction
must be added in intensity. And, in fact, we find
that it is the giants who bear the tragic " Schuld."
Hamlet is not guilty; rather " one like ourselves,"
in Aristotle's phrase, and therefore he need not be
great. I agree with Volkelt's view that even the
traditional tremendous will of the tragic hero may

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 259

be dispensed with. No doubt it is most often
strength of will which brings out the original con
flict. But that conflict once given, as it is given,
for example, in " Hamlet," the main point is to
increase the weight of each side, which can indeed
be done by other elements of greatness. On the
other hand, I disagree with Volkelt's reason for
thus exempting will, which is, that the contrast
feeling of " how great a fall was there " may be
given by other qualities in the hero than that of
will. As I have urged, it is not the catastrophe
which is of the tragic essence, and therefore not
for the sake of the catastrophe that we should
marshal our elements. The climax of tragedy and
of our feeling is in the deadlock of forces, and
whatever is not absolutely essential thereto may be
done without.

VII

The phenomenon of our aesthetic reaction on the
so-called painful experiences of the drama has then
been discussed at length and accounted for. There
is an undoubted emotional experience of great in
tensity ; and yet that emotion turns out to be not
the emotion in the drama, but rather the emotion
from the drama, — a unique independent emotion
of tension, otherwise a form of the characteristic
aesthetic emotion with which we have been before
engaged. The playwright who scornfully rejects
the spectator supposed to be aesthetic, ideally con-

260 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

templative and emotionally indifferent, is vindi
cated. There must be a vivid emotional effect, but
it is the spectator's very own, and not a copy of
the hero's emotion, because it is the product of the
essential form of the drama itself, the confrontation
of forces.

Secondly, that confrontation of forces has re
vealed itself as indeed essential. This is not the
time-honored view of tragedy as collision, which
has been arrived at simply by observing that great
tragic dramas are mostly collisions, making the
drama a picture thereof, but not explaining why
it must be such. I have tried, on the contrary,
to show that confrontation is a necessary product
of the bare form of dramatic representation, — two
people face to face. But if this bare form or scheme
of confrontation is understood and interpreted as
profoundly as possible, then all the other character
istics of the tragic drama are seen to flow from it ;
and thus for the first time to be really explained by
being accounted for. The tragic drama not only is,
but must be, collision, because confrontation, under
stood as richly as possible, must be collision. It
must be " inevitable," and it must have movement,
because only so is the confrontation reinforced.

In brief, others have said that the drama, or
tragedy, is conflict, the perfect opposition of two
forces. We should rather say that the drama is
first of all picture, living representation of colloquy ;
as such, it is balance, confrontation ; and conf routa-

EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA 261

tion to its ideal degree of intensity is conflict. No
drama can dispense with picture ; and so no drama
is free from the obligation to add unto itself these
other qualities also. The acting play is the play of
confrontations.

VIII
THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS

VIII

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS

THE Idea of Beauty has been greatly widened
since the age of Plato. Then, it was only in
order, proportion, unity in variety, that beauty was
admitted to consist ; to-day we hold that the mod
erns have caught a profounder beauty, the beauty
of meanings, and we make it matter for rejoicing
that nothing is too small, too strange, or too ugly to
enter, through its power of suggestion, the realm of
the aesthetically valuable ; and that the definition of
beauty should have been extended to include, under
the name of Romantic, Symbolic, Expressive, or
Ideal Beauty, all of the elements of aesthetic expe
rience, all that emotionally stirs us in representa
tion. But while this view is a natural development,
it is not of necessity unassailable ; and it is open
to question whether the addition of an independ
ent element of expression to the older definition of
beauty can be justified by its consequences for art.
Such an inquiry, however, cannot stop with the
relation of the deeper meanings of modern art to
the conception of beauty. It must go further and
find out what elements, the sensuous form or the

266 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

ideas that are bound up with it, in a work of art,
of the classical as well as of the idealistic type,
really constitute its aesthetic value. What is it that
makes the beauty of the " Venus of Milo"? Is it
the pose and the modeling, or the idea of the eter
nal feminine that it expresses to us ? What is it
that makes the beauty of St. Mark's or of Giotto's
tower? the relation of the lines and masses or the
sacred significance of the edifice they go to form ?
What is it that makes the beauty of the Ninth
Symphony ? the perfection of the melodic sequence,
or the Hymn of Joy, the message from the Infinite
which they are meant to utter ?

The antithesis between these two points of view
is, of course, not the same as that other antithesis
between " art for art's sake " and art in the light
of its moral meanings and effects. What we now
call romantic or expressive art can certainly be
made the more fruitful in moral suggestions ; but
this fact bears not at all on the question of what
belongs fundamentally to the nature of beauty.
We know, moreover, that on this matter the camps
of the formalists and the romanticists are divided.
The Greeks, the lovers of formal beauty, were so
alive to the moral effects of art that their theories
were in danger of being quite overwhelmed by this
view. On the other hand, the lovers of ideas in art,
the natural enemies, as one would have thought, of
art for art's sake, have been most often impatient
of any consideration of its moral elements or effects.

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 267

This second question, then, of art as pleasure or as
moral influence can be once for all excluded from
the discussion. So far as yet appears, the issue is
between form and expression.

There is, perhaps, some point of common agree
ment from which to survey and distinguish more ex
actly these two diverging tendencies. Such a coign
of vantage is offered by the nature of the aesthetic
attitude, — for since Kant there has been among
aestheticians no essential difference of opinion on
this point. The aesthetic attitude, all agree, is dis
interested. We care for the image or appearance
of the object, for the way its form affects us, and
not for the actual existence of the object itself. If
I delight aesthetically in a cluster of grapes, I do
not want to eat them, but only to enjoy their image,
and my feeling of pleasure, as aesthetic, would not
be changed if before me were only a mirage, an
hallucination, or a picture. It is just the pleasure
in perception that appeals to me, — therein both
schools agree, — and the only matter at issue is the
question of what this disinterested pleasure of per
ception includes. Is that pleasure bound up with
the mechanism of perception itself, or does it come
from the end of the process and the ease with which
it is reached, — from the idea, in the contemplation
of which we delight ?

One school asserts that the real pleasure in per
ception comes only from form. The given object
is beautiful, through its original qualities of line,

268 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

color, or sound, which strike the special senses in a
way that is pleasing to them ; and through its com-
binations of these qualities, which affect the whole
human organism in a directly pleasurable way.
What is outside of the given object of art — is
meant, suggested, or recalled by it — belongs, it is
said, to absolutely un aesthetic processes, as is shown
by the fact that many things, which we are the
first to acknowledge as ugly, are the exciting cause
of great thoughts and delightful associations. The
opposed school maintains that the meanings of
a work of art are all that it exists for. The pre
sentation of an idea, by whatever sensuous means,
so only that they be transparent, and the joy of the
soul in contemplating this idea, must be the object
and the end of art. The later idealists admit value
to the form only in so far as it may express, con
vey, symbolize, or suggest the content, whether as
pure idea, or as a shadowing forth of the Divine
World-Meaning.

These theories are certainly intelligible ; but the
results of applying them with logical consistency
are rather terrifying. Andrew Lang says some
where that the logical consequence of the formal
theory of art in all its nakedness would make
Tennyson the youth, Swinburne, and Edgar Poe
the greatest poets of the world, and those delicious
effusions of Edward Lear, " The Jumblies " and
" On the Coast of Coromandel," masterpieces. Yet
if we allow the idealists to pass sentence, what

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 269

shall become of our treasures in " Kubla Khan,"
or " Ueber alien Gipfeln," or " La Nuit de De-
cembre"? The results of such a judgment day
would be even more appalling to the true lover of
poetry. Moreover, if the idea, the end of art, need
not reside in the object itself, but may arise there
from by subtle suggestion, the complications of
poetry or painting are unnecessary. A geometric
figure may remind us of the constitution of the
world of space, a sundial, of the transitoriness of
human existence, and with a " chorus-ending from
Euripides," the whole sweep of the cosmic meanings
is upon us. In the words of Fra Lippo Lippi : —

"Why, for this,

What need of art at all ? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or what 's best,
A bell to chime the hours with, does as well."

n

In spite of this, however, a place for ideas must
clearly be found in our definition of beauty ; and
yet it must be so limited and bound to the beautiful
form that corollaries such as we have just drawn
will be impossible. An interesting attempt to re
concile these two points of view — to establish an
organic relation between form and idea — is found
in " The Sense of Beauty " by Professor George
Santayana. The central point of this writer's theory
is his definition of beauty as the objectification of

270 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

pleasure. ^Esthetic experience, lie says, is based
partly on form, partly on expression, but the plea
sure felt is always projected into the object, and is
felt as a quality of it. All kinds of external asso
ciations may connect themselves with the work of
art, but so long as they remain external, and keep,
so to speak, their values for themselves, they can
not be said to add beauty to the object. But when
they are present only in their effect, — a diffused
feeling of pleasure, — that diffused feeling is at
tributed directly to the object, is felt as if it inheres
therein, and so the object becomes more beautiful,
for beauty is objectified pleasure. Professor San-
tayana designates form as beauty in the first term,
and expression as beauty in the second term.
Beauty in the first term can exist alone, — not so
beauty in the second term. It must have a little
beauty of the first term to graft itself upon. " A
map, for instance, is not usually thought of as an
aesthetic object, and yet, let the tints of it be a
little subtle, let the lines be a little delicate, and
the masses of land and sea somewhat balanced, and
we really have a beautiful thing, the charm of
which consists almost entirely in its meaning."

Now here, it seems to me, is a weak point in
Professor Santayana's armor. If such wonderful
elements of beauty can be projected into a fairly
colorless object by virtue of its fringe of suggestive-
ness, why should not beauty of the second term be
felt in objects without that little bit of intrinsic

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 271

worth of form? Is not such indeed the fact? What
else is the meaning of the story of " Beauty and
the Beast"? The squat and hideous Indian idol, the
scarabaeus, the bit of Aztec pottery, become attrac
tive and desired for themselves by virtue of their
halo of pleasure from dim associations. And all
these values are felt as completely objectified, and
so fulfill the requirements for " beauty in the second
term." That small amount of intrinsic beauty on
which to graft the beauty of the second term is,
therefore, not a necessary condition, so that we are
left, on Professor Santayana's theory, with the
strange paradox of so-called beautiful objects which
are, nevertheless, confessedly ugly.

What, then, is the flaw in this definition ? While
we concede the objectification of pleasure in all these
cases, we cannot, it would seem, admit a correspond
ing change from non-aesthetic to aesthetic feelings.
The personal attitude towards an object, based on
the sentiments objectified in it, and the aesthetic
attitude are two different things. The truth is, that
all this objectified tone-feeling is directly dependent
on the original real existence of the object that calls
it up, and on our practical personal relation to it,
and is thus, by universal agreement, definitely non-
aesthetic. I enjoy the cast of the great Venus very
nearly as much as the original, — but who cares for
casts of the Aztec gods, or of the prehistoric carv
ings of the reindeer period? Who wants an imita
tion scarabaeus ? To have the real thing, to see it,

272 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

to touch it, to know that it has had real experiences
that would fill me with wonder and with awe, " to
love it for the dangers it has passed," — to feel that
I myself am through it actually linked with its
mysterious history, — that is the value it has for
me ; not a pleasure of perception at all, but a very
definite, practical interest in my own personality.
If the pleasure lay only in disinterested perception,
any representation of the object ought to have the
same value.

What, then, the author of " The Sense of Beauty"
calls " the beauty of the second term," — the power
to suggest feeling through the medium of associ
ated ideas, — we may deny to impart any aesthetic
character whatever. Professor Santayana has, in
deed, mediated between the formalists and the ideal
ists ; but his theory would lead us to attributions
of beauty from which common sense revolts ; and
we have seen the secret of its deficiency to lie in
the confusion of the personal with the aesthetic at
titude. If now we amend his definition, " Beauty
is objectified pleasure," to " Beauty is objectified
aesthetic pleasure," we are advanced no further.

Ill

The problem stands, then : how to provide for
the presence of ideas in the work of art, and the
definite emotions aroused by it, either by bringing
ihem somehow into the definition of beauty in itself,

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 273

or by showing how their presence is related to the
full aesthetic experience. But, first of all, we have
to ask how the aesthetic pleasure even in formal
beauty is constituted, and to what extent expression
belongs to the beauty of pure form. Form is im
pressive, or directly beautiful, through its harmony
V?ith the conditions offered by our senses, primarily
of sight and hearing, and through the harmony of
its combinations of suggestions and impulses with
the entire organism. I enjoy a well-composed pic
ture like Titian's " Sacred and Profane Love,"
because the good composition means such a balanced
relation of impulses of attention, of incipient move
ments, as harmonizes with such an organism as mine,
tending to move toward both sides, and yet unified
and stable ; and because the combination of colors
is at once stimulating and soothing to my eyes. So
much for impression, beauty of the first term. But
it is not only that harmonious state of my visual
and motor functions that I get out of the form of a
picture. No, I have, besides all this pleasure, a real
exhilaration or emotion, a definite mood of repose
or gayety or triumph, without any fringe of asso
ciation, which yet certainly contributes to my feel
ing of the beauty of the experience, and so of the
work of art. How did it come out of the form?

Well, this very harmonious excitation of the
organism has brought with it just such an organic
reverberation as, the current theory of emotion
asserts, must be at the bottom of all our emotional

274 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

states. A certain sequence of nervous shocks and
of vasomotor changes, certain stimulations and
relations and contractions of the internal organs
have been set up as the " diffusive wave " from
the sense-stimulations, and a particular emotional
tinge is the result. That is a direct impression, but
an expression too. Take the same case on a much
lower level. A glass of wine makes me cheerful,
not because it arouses cheerful ideas directly, but
because the organic changes it sets up are such as
belong to the motived expression of joy, and have
the same effect. A deep, slow movement played by
an orchestra can affect me in two ways. It may be
that I have usually connected that sort of music
with religious experiences, and all the profound
and inspiring feelings belonging thereto ; and so I
transfer those feelings to the music and give it
those adjectives. Or the slowness of the rhythmic
pulse that is set up in me, the largeness, the volume,
the depth of sound, all bring about in me the kind
of nervous state that belongs to a reposeful and
yet deeply moved feeling. The second experience
is expression through impression, through the in
ward changes that the form itself sets up. The first
is expression through the medium of something ex
ternal, — an idea which brings with it a feeling, —
something that does not belong to the music itself,
but to my own individual experiences.

This distinction between internal and external
expressiveness is perfectly clear for music, and also

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 275

for architecture. In painting, too, it can easily be
traced. We know the effect that is produced by
broken lines, by upward moving ones, — like the
" always aspiring " of the Gothic cathedral. The
low-lying, wide expanses of some of the old Dutch
landscapists give us repose, not because they remind
us of the peaceful happiness of the land, but because
we cannot melt ourselves into all those horizontal
lines without that restful feeling which accompanies
such relaxation ; and our emotion is read into the
picture as aesthetic pleasure, because it came out of
the abstract forms, — the painting in the picture.
The beauty of form is thus seen to be inseparably
allied with a certain degree of emotional expressive
ness in a way that does not distract, like the asso
ciation of ideas, from the pure esthetic experience.
This quality of expressiveness should not, however,
become a part of the definition of beauty, so that
it should be said that the greater the emotional
expressiveness, the more beautiful the object. For
if that were true, such music, for instance, as all
acknowledge quite mediocre, would be felt as most
beautiful by those who find in it a strong and defi
nite emotion ; and a Strauss waltz, which makes us
more merry than one by Mendelssohn, should be in
so far more beautiful. This, of course, we are not
ready to concede ; and it seems, therefore, most
logical to regard the special emotional effects of
formal beauty rather as a corollary to, than as a part
of, the essential aesthetic mood. But if we give the

276 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

name emotion to that perfectly vague but unmistak
able excitement with which we respond to purely
formal beauty, — that indescribable exaltation with
which we listen to " absolute " music, — then wf
must say that that emotion is but another name for
aesthetic pleasure. Objectively, we have formal
beauty ; subjectively, on the physiological side, a
harmonious action of the organism, and on the men
tal side the undefined exaltation which is known as
sesthetic pleasure.

rv*

Up to this point, however, we have considered
only the relation between purely formal beauty
and the various shades of emotional response to it ;
now we may turn to the original question which we
set ourselves, how to provide, in our definition of
beauty, for the presence of ideas in the work of art.
No one will deny that the full aesthetic experience
cannot be dismissed with the treatment of formal
beauty; and, although Professor Santayana's
" beauty in the second term " may be rejected as a
purely individual, arbitrary, interested, and hence
unaesthetic element, the explicit content of a work of
art cannot be ignored. The suggested ideas aroused
by an old rose garden may be no addition to its
beauty, but the same cannot be said of the great
ideas contained directly in Shakespeare's poetry.
Yet great ideas alone do not make great art, else we
must count Aristotle and Spinoza and Kant great

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 277

poets too. Must we then be satisfied to rest in the
dualism of those who maintain that great creations
of art are the expression of great truths under the
laws of poetic form? Is the esthetic expression
indeed the recognition of truth plus the feeling of
beauty of form, or is it a fusion of these into a
third undivided pulse of esthetic emotion ? Is there
no way of overcoming, for those arts which do ex
press ideas, this dualism of form and content in
our theory of the beautiful ?

Let us analyze a little more closely this notion
of the content. Music and architecture cannot
properly be said to have any content, although
they have a meaning according to their uses, like
a funeral dirge and a hymn of joy, a prison and a
temple. But this meaning is extraneous. It is
given by the work itself only in so far as the form
induces the emotion which belongs to the idea, — as
the dirge, sadness ; the temple, awe. The idea of
burial or of worship is nowhere to be found in the
work of art. In the hierarchy of arts, painting and
sculpture show the first trace of a content. This
content, however, is at once seen to be susceptible
of farther analysis. The " Sistine Madonna " pic
tures a mother and child worshiped, which may be
called the subject, — but this does not exhaust the
content. The real meaning of the picture, to which
may be given the name of theme, is the divine ele
ment in maternal love. The subjects of Dona-
tello's " John the Baptist " and «« Saint George," of

278 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Michael Angelo's " David " and " Moses," can be
described only as men of different types in differ
ent attitudes ; their themes, however, are moral
ideas, expressing the moral significance of each per
sonality. The subject of " The Angelus " is given
in its name ; its theme is humble piety. From the
infinite number of possible examples one more
will suffice, — the well-known " War " by Franz
Stuck, in the Neue Pinacothek, — the subject
a youth, under a lurid sky, trampling under his
horse's feet the bodies of the slain. The theme is
again a moral idea, — the horrors of war.

If we now ask whether we can attribute beauty
to the ideas of painting and sculpture, a negative
answer is at once suggested. It is manifestly im
possible to establish an order of aesthetic excel
lence between these subjects. The idea of peasants
telling their beads is more beautiful than the idea
of a ruthless destroyer only in so far as it is
morally higher; and this distinction, therefore,
has reference to the theme and not to the subject.
How far, however, moral and aesthetic excellence
are coincident is a question for which we are not
yet ready. At this point we care only to point out
that the mere idea of a picture is neither aesthetic
nor the reverse.

But, it may be objected, is not our first thought
in stopping before a picture like the " War,"
" What a wonderful idea " ? It is the idea and not
the form which strikes us, it may be said, even

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 279

though we may be quite unimpressed by the value
of its moral significance. Nevertheless, this view
of our own mental processes may be held to be
illusory. What really strikes us is the unity of
the conception. The lurid sky, the dark, livid faces
of the dead — the whole color scheme, in short, is
so contrived as to impress directly, as previously
explained, without the medium of an idea, with
that particular tinge of emotional tone which ought
to be also the accompaniment of the idea of the
horrors of war. The emotion is thus the envelop
ing unity which binds the subject and theme and
the pictorial form together. In this sense, when
we say, " What a wonderful idea ! " we really
mean, what a wonderful fitness of form to idea, —
which is the same as saying, what a wonderful
form, or more technically, what a wonderful unity.
That part of the effect of beauty in a picture
which is due to the idea is thus the fundamental
but merely abstract element of unity, contributing
to the complex aesthetic state only the simplest
condition.

The case of literature presents an entirely new
problem, for the material of literature is itself, first
of all, idea. Literature deals with words, and words
exist only by virtue of their meanings. Even the
sound of words is of importance primarily for the
additional meanings which it suggests, as the word
liquid first means a fluid substance, and then by
its sound suggests ease and smoothness, and only

280 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

last of all is noted as melodious. Thus since mean
ings, ideas, are the material of literature, we can
speak of the beauty of ideas in literature only by
an artificial sundering of elements that are properly
in fusion. Yet as we may speak of a motive or
musical idea and its working out, although strictly
the idea involves its own working out, so we may
conceive of the central thought of a literary work,
and of its development. But the relation here is
not of content and form, like the content and form
of a picture ; rather that of concentrated and di
luted form. So, too, as in music, we may distinguish
form and structure. Structure is offered to the
intellect — it clears and vivifies understanding ; it
is not felt, it is perceived. Anything which is made
up of parts — beginning, middle, and end, climax
and resolution — possesses structure. But form in
the intimate sense is the intrinsic, inevitable rela
tion of cause and effect ; in this sense, it is seen to
be truly content also. In literature, as to structure,
it is the relation of parts : as to form, it is the
succession of events, the movement, combination
and resolution of separate ideas and emotions,
which give us aesthetic pleasure or the reverse. As
action must follow excitement, or despair satiety,
so the relation of parts, the order of presentation,
must be adapted to mutual reinforcement. Thus
the porter's scene in " Macbeth " is related to the
neighboring scenes, as De Quincey has shown in
his famous essay. And just as in music the feeling

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 281

of " Tightness " ensues when the awaited note slips
into place, so the feeling of Brightness" comes when
the inevitable consequences follow the premises of
a plot.

The particular separate ideas of such a develop
ment partake of beauty, then, in so far as they
minister to the movement of the whole, just as the
separate lines in a swaying, swirling robe of one
of Botticelli's women minister to the whole con
ception. The catastrophe, in other words, must be
as inevitably related to the sequence of ideas as
the final chords of a symphony to the sequence of
notes. The attitude of mind with which we wel
come it is the same, whether on the plane of the
responses of the psychophysical organism or of the
ideal understanding.

But before finally relegating the idea to its place
in the aesthetic scheme, we must ask whether the
specific emotional content can claim independent
a3sthetic value ; for we can scarcely ignore the fact
that almost all naive response to literature, and in
deed to all forms of art, is, or is believed to be,
specifically emotional. Maupassant, in his intro
duction to " Pierre et Jean," distinguishes thus
between the demand of the critic — " Make me
something fine according to your temperament " —
and the cry of the public — " Move me, terrify
me, make me weep ! " And yet to the assertion of

282 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

common sense that the desire of the naive enjoyer
of art is definite emotional excitement, we may
venture to oppose a negative. The average person
who weeps at the theatre, or over a novel, would
no doubt repudiate the suggestion that it is not
primarily the emotion of terror, or pity, that he
feels. But a closer interpretation shows that it
is almost impossible to disengage, in such an ex
perience, the particular emotions. What is felt
is rather pleasurable excitement, pleasure raised
to the pitch of exaltation, with a fringe of emo
tional association. The notion of specific emotions
is illusory in the same sense that our notion of
pleasure from specific emotions in listening to music
is illusory. The ordinary descriptions of music
are all couched in emotional or even ideational
terms, — from the musical adventures of " Charles
Auchester " down, — and yet we know, as Gurney
says, that when, in listening to music, we think
we are yearning after the unutterable, we are
really yearning after the next note ; and when
we think it is the yearning that gives us plea
sure, it is really the triumphant acceptance of the
melodic Tightness of that next note. So the much-
discussed Katharsis, or emotion of Tragedy, is not
the experience of emotions and pleasure in that
experience, but rather pleasure in the experience
of ideas, tinged with emotion, which belong to
each other with precisely that musical Tightness.
Katharsis is indeed not the mark of Tragedy alone,

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 283

although in Tragedy it has a very great relative
intensity ; it is ultimately only a designation for
the specific aesthetic pleasure, to which I can give
no better name than the oft-repeated one of trium
phant acquiescence in the Tightness of relations.
We think we feel a situation directly, but what we
really feel is pleasure in the Tightness of the man
ner of the event, and in the moment of perfect
experience it gives us. Such specific emotion as
may be detected in any aesthetic experience is,
then, covered by the definition of beauty only in
so far as it has become form rather than content,

— is valuable only in its relations rather than in
itself. The experience of pity or fear, even though
generalized, unselfish, etc., — after the various
formulas of the expounders of dramatic emotion,

— does not impart aesthetic character of itself ; it
becomes aesthetic only if it appears at such a point
in the tragedy, linked in such a way to the de
veloping plot, that it belongs to the unified and
reciprocally harmonious circle of experiences.

VI

But we have up to this time consistently neglected
the central idea of the work of art, and its claim
to be included in the aesthetic formula. We have
defined beauty as that which brings about a state
of harmonious completeness, of repose in activity,
in the psychophysical and psychological realms.

284 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

This harmonious repose can exist only with a dis
interested attitude toward the objects which have
brought this state about. Whether the Melian
Venus or " Hamlet " or " Lohengrin " live, we
care not ; only that if they live, it shall be so. In
this sense, our attitude is interested, our will is
active, but only toward the existence of the form.
But with the introduction of the central theme, we
cease to be disinterested, — our hypothetical is
changed to an affirmative. The moral idea we must
accept or reject, for it bears a direct relation to
our personality. We will, or do not will, that, in
the real world in which we ourselves have to live
and struggle, certain forces shall be operative, —
that there shall be the beauty of health, as in the
" Discobolus ; " maternal love which is divine, as
in the " Sistine Madonna ; " that war shall be hor
rible ; that sloth un striven against shall triumph
over love, as in " The Statue and the Bust ; " that
defiance of the social organism shall involve self-
destruction, as in " Anna Karenina." The person
or the combination of events expressing this idea
we do not seek in our personal experience, but we
do demand for our own a world in which this idea
rules. Thus it must be admitted that there is,
strictly speaking, at the core of every aesthetic
response to a work of art containing an idea, a
non-sesthetic element, an element of personal and
interested judgment.

On the other hand, this affirmation or acceptance

THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS 285

of a moral idea implies the quietude of the will ;
just that state of harmony, of repose, which we
have found to be the mark of the aesthetic on the
lower planes of being. In so far, then, as we accept
the moral idea which a work of art presents, in so
far that idea has the power of bringing us to the state
of harmony, and in so far it is beautiful. And vice
versa, works of art which leave us in a state of
moral rebellion are unbeautiful, not because they
are immoral, but because they are disturbing to the
moral sense. Literature which ignores the funda
mental moral principle of the freedom of the will,
like the works of Flaubert, Maupassant, much of
Zola, Loti, and Thomas Hardy, fails of beauty, in
asmuch as it fails of the perfect reposeful harmony
of human nature in its entirety.

Thus a thoroughgoing analysis of the nature of
the aesthetic experience in its simplest and most
sensuous form has given us a principle, — the
principle of unity in harmonious functioning, —
which has enabled us to follow the track of beauty
into the more complex realms of ideas and of moral
attitudes, and to discover that there also the law
of internal relation and of fitness for imitative re
sponse holds for all embodiments of beauty. That
harmonious, imitative response, the psychophysical
state known on its feeling side as aBsthetic pleasure,
we have seen to be, first, a kind of physiological
equilibrium, a " coexistence of opposing impulses
which heightens the sense of being while it prevents

286 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY

action," like the impulses to movement correspond
ing to geometrical symmetry ; secondly, a psycho
logical equilibrium, in which the flow of ideas and
impulses is a circle rounding upon itself, all asso
ciations, emotions, expectations indissolubly linked
with the central thought and leading back only to
it, and proceeding in an irrevocable order, which is
yet adapted to the possibilities of human experi
ence ; and thirdly, a quietude of the will, in the
acceptance of the given moral attitude for the
whole scheme of life. Thus is given, in the fusion
of these three orders of mental life, the perfect
moment of unity and self-completeness.

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