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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beautiful, by Vernon Lee
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Beautiful
+       An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
+
+Author: Vernon Lee
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2008 [EBook #26942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAUTIFUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ruth Hart
+
+
+
+
+[Note:  for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to
+the beginning of the text and slightly modified it to conform with the
+online format.  I have also made two spelling corrections:
+"chippendale" to "Chippendale" and "closely interpendent" to
+"closely interdependent."]
+
+
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
+
+BY
+
+VERNON LEE
+
+
+Author of
+"Beauty and Ugliness"
+"Laurus Nobilis"
+etc.
+
+
+Cambridge:
+at the University Press
+New York:
+G.P. Putnam's Sons
+1913
+
+
+[Illustration: title page]
+
+
+_With the exception of the coat of arms
+at the foot, the design on the title page is a
+reproduction of one used by the earliest known
+Cambridge printer, John Siberch,_ 1521
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       Preface and Apology                                 v
+I.     The Adjective "Beautiful"                           1
+II.    Contemplative Satisfaction                          8
+III.   Aspects versus Things                              14
+IV.    Sensations                                         22
+V.     Perception of Relations                            29
+VI.    Elements of Shape                                  35
+VII.   Facility and Difficulty of Grasping                48
+VIII.  Subject and Object, or, Nominative and Accusative  55
+IX.    Empathy (Einfühlung)                               61
+X.     The Movement of Lines                              70
+XI.    The Character of Shapes                            78
+XII.   From the Shape to the Thing                        84
+XIII.  From the Thing to the Shape                        90
+XIV.   The Aims of Art                                    98
+XV.    Attention to Shapes                               106
+XVI.   Information about Things                          111
+XVII.  Co-operation of Things and Shapes                 117
+XVIII. Aesthetic Responsiveness                          128
+XIX.   The Storage and Transfer of Emotion               139
+XX.    Aesthetic Irradiation and Purification            147
+XXI.   Conclusion (Evolutional)                          153
+       Bibliography                                      156
+       Index                                             157
+
+
+
+PREFACE AND APOLOGY
+
+I HAVE tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference,
+particularly as regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science.
+But my explanation is addressed to readers in whom I have no right
+to expect a previous knowledge of psychology, particularly in its
+more modern developments. I have therefore based my explanation
+of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts
+familiar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader. Now
+mental facts thus available are by no means the elementary
+processes with which analytical and, especially experimental,
+psychology has dealings. They are, on the contrary, the everyday,
+superficial and often extremely confused views which practical life
+and its wholly unscientific vocabulary present of those ascertained
+or hypothetical scientific facts. I have indeed endeavoured (for
+instance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from
+sensation) to impart some rudiments of psychology in the course of
+my aesthetical explanation, and I have avoided, as much as possible,
+misleading the reader about such fearful complexes and cruxes as
+_memory, association_ and _imagination._ But I have been obliged
+to speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader, and I am fully aware
+that these terms correspond only very approximately to what is, or at
+present passes as, psychological fact. I would therefore beg the
+psychologist (to whom I offer this little volume as a possible slight
+addition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses) to understand that
+in speaking, for instance, of Empathy as involving a _thought_ of
+certain activities, I mean merely that whatever happens has the same
+result _as if we thought_; and that the processes, whatever they may
+be (also in the case of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating),
+translate themselves, _when they are detected,_ into _thoughts;_ but
+that I do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the
+processes, the "thoughts," the measuring, comparing etc. exist on
+subordinate planes of consciousness or whether they are mainly
+physiological and only occasionally abutting in conscious resultants.
+Similarly, lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me
+to write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed
+process of ocular perception, instead of being due, as is doubtless
+most often the case, to every kind of associative abbreviation and
+equivalence of processes.
+
+          VERNON LEE
+     Maiano _near_ Florence,_
+          Easter_ 1913.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ADJECTIVE "BEAUTIFUL"
+
+THIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it
+is an introduction, makes no attempt to "form the taste" of the public
+and still less to direct the doings of the artist. It deals not with
+_ought_ but with _is,_ leaving to Criticism the inference from the
+latter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how things can be
+made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things _are_
+beautiful. It takes Beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks
+to analyse and account for Beauty's existence and enjoyment. More
+strictly speaking, it analyses and accounts for Beauty not inasmuch
+as existing in certain objects and processes, but rather as calling
+forth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental
+activities and habits. It does not ask: What are the peculiarities of the
+things (and the proceedings) which we call _Beautiful?_ but: What
+are the peculiarities of our thinking and feeling when in the presence
+of a thing to which we apply this adjective? The study of single
+beautiful things, and even more, the comparison of various
+categories thereof, is indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics, but
+only inasmuch as it adds to our knowledge of the particular mental
+activities which such "Beautiful" (and vice versa "Ugly") things
+elicit in us. For it is on the nature of this active response on our own
+part that depends the application of those terms _Beautiful_ and
+_Ugly_ in every single instance; and indeed their application in any
+instances whatsoever, their very existence in the human vocabulary.
+
+In accordance with this programme I shall not start with a formal
+definition of the word _Beautiful,_ but ask: on what sort of
+occasions we make use of it. Evidently, on _occasions when we feel
+satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction,_ satisfaction meaning
+willingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience
+which has called forth that word; and meaning also that if it comes
+to a choice between two or several experiences, we _prefer_ the
+experience thus marked by the word _Beautiful. Beautiful,_ we may
+therefore formulate, _implies on our part an attitude of satisfaction
+and preference._ But there are other words which imply that much;
+first and foremost the words, in reality synonyms, USEFUL and
+GOOD. I call these synonyms because _good_ always implies
+_good for,_ or _good in,_ that is to say fitness for a purpose, even
+though that purpose may be masked under _conforming to a
+standard_ or _obeying a commandment,_ since the standard or
+commandment represents not the caprice of a community, a race or a
+divinity, but some (real or imaginary) utility of a less immediate
+kind. So much for the meaning of _good_ when implying standards
+and commandments; ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is,
+however, no such implication, and _good_ means nothing more than
+_satisfactory in the way of use and advantage._ Thus a _good_ road
+is a road we prefer because it takes us to our destination quickly and
+easily. A _good_ speech is one we prefer because it succeeds in
+explaining or persuading. And a _good_ character (good friend,
+father, husband, citizen) is one that gives satisfaction by the
+fulfilment of moral obligations.
+
+But note the difference when we come to _Beautiful._ A _beautiful_
+road is one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at; its
+being devious and inconvenient will not prevent its being
+_beautiful._ A _beautiful_ speech is one we like to hear or
+remember, although it may convince or persuade neither us nor
+anybody. A _beautiful_ character is one we like to think about but
+which may never practically help anyone, if for instance, it exists
+not in real life but in a novel. Thus the adjective _Beautiful_ implies
+_an attitude of preference, but not an attitude of present or future
+turning to our purposes._ There is even a significant lack of
+symmetry in the words employed (at all events in English, French
+and German) to distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the
+way of weather. For weather which makes us uncomfortable and
+hampers our comings and goings by rain, wind or mud, is described
+as _bad;_ while the opposite kind of weather is called _beautiful,
+fine,_ or _fair,_ as if the greater comfort, convenience, usefulness of
+such days were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our
+mere contemplation.
+
+_Our mere contemplation!_ Here we have struck upon the main
+difference between our attitude when we use the word _good_ or
+_useful,_ and when we use the word _beautiful._ And we can add to
+our partial formula "beautiful implies satisfaction and preference"--the
+distinguishing predicate--"_of a contemplative kind._" This
+general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our
+use of the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming
+exception will not only exemplify what I have said about our
+attitude when employing that word, but add to this information the
+name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion
+of _admiration._ For the selfsame object or proceeding may
+sometimes be called _good_ and sometimes _beautiful,_ according
+as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. While we
+admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it
+_good,_ we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic
+coachman as _beautiful, anglicè fine_ or _splendid,_ because there
+is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely
+being contemplated with admiration. Similarly, we have all of us
+heard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon
+to an operation, the apparently far-fetched adjective Beautiful, or
+one of the various equivalents, fine, splendid, glorious (even
+occasionally _jolly!)_ by which Englishmen express their
+admiration. The change of word represents a change of attitude. The
+engineer is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon
+estimating the advantages of the operation. Each of these highly
+practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an
+imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical
+estimation or even of practice itself. The machine or operation, the
+skill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being
+considered _apart from action,_ and advantage, means and time,
+to-day or yesterday; _platonically_ we may call it from the first great
+teacher of aesthetics. They are being, in one word, contemplated
+with admiration. And _admiration_ is the rough and ready name for
+the mood, however transient, for the emotion, however faint,
+wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because
+contemplation happens to give satisfaction. The satisfaction may be
+a mere skeleton of the "I'd rather than not" description; or it may be
+a massive alteration in our being, radiating far beyond the present,
+evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate it; storing
+itself up for the future; penetrating, like the joy of a fine day, into
+our animal spirits, altering pulse, breath, gait, glance and demeanour;
+and transfiguring our whole momentary outlook on life. But,
+superficial or overwhelming, _this hind of satisfaction connected
+with, the word Beautiful is always of the Contemplative order._
+
+And upon the fact we have thus formulated depend, as we shall see,
+most of the other facts and formulae of our subject.
+
+This essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the
+word _Beautiful_ has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous,
+and I think, quite misleading theories. The first of these defines
+aesthetic appreciation as _disinterested interest,_ gratuitously
+identifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we
+have not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such appreciation
+implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested.
+The second philosophical theory (originally Schiller's, and revived
+by Herbert Spencer) takes advantage of the non-practical attitude
+connected with the word _Beautiful_ to define art and its enjoyment
+as a kind of _play._ Now although leisure and freedom from cares
+are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter
+differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For
+although it may be possible to watch _other people_ playing football
+or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the
+deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may
+contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the
+concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part
+of the players _themselves_ an eminently practical state of mind,
+one diametrically opposed to contemplation, as I hope to make
+evident in the next section.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION
+
+WE have thus defined the word _Beautiful_ as implying an attitude
+of contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes
+amounting to an _emotion,_ of admiration; and so far contrasted it
+with the practical attitude implied by the word _good._ But we
+require to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of
+contemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not
+merely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one.
+
+Let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching
+the behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary
+wayfarers in front of a view, which they severally consider in the
+practical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. The view was from
+a hill-top in the neighbourhood of Rome or of Edinburgh, whichever
+the Reader can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers
+halted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts.
+
+"It will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot"--began one of
+the three. "We might have been back for tea-time if only there had
+been a tram and a funicular. And that makes me think: Why not start
+a joint-stock company to build them? There must be water-power in
+these hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter
+to town. Also houses could be built for people whose work takes
+them to town, but who want good air for their children; the
+hire-purchase system, you know. It might prove a godsend and a capital
+investment, though I suppose some people would say it spoilt the
+view. The idea is quite a _good_ one. I shall get an expert--"
+
+"These hills," put in the second man--"are said to be part of an
+ancient volcano. I don't know whether that theory is _true!_ It would
+be _interesting_ to examine whether the summits have been ground
+down in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic
+action at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been
+under the sea at no very distant period. It is also _interesting_ to
+notice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained
+by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural
+harbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable meeting-place of
+seafaring and pastoral populations. These investigations would
+prove, as I said, remarkably full of interest."
+
+"I wish"--complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to
+himself--"I wish these men would hold their tongues and let one
+enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to _what
+might be done_ or to _how it all came about._ They don't seem to
+feel how _beautiful_ it all is." And he concentrated himself on
+contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab
+of reluctance to leave.
+
+Meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there
+really was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for
+both tramway and funicular, and where the necessary capital could
+be borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of
+stratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical
+data about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country.
+
+"I suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your
+sketching materials?" said the scientific man, always interested in
+the causes of phenomena, even such trifling ones as a man
+remaining quiet before a landscape.
+
+"I reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out
+where you can use up a description of this place"--corrected the
+rapid insight of the practical man, accustomed to weigh people's
+motives in case they may be turned to use.
+
+"I am _not_ a painter, and I'm _not_ a writer"--exclaimed the third
+traveller, "and I thank Heaven I'm not! For if I were I might be
+trying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely
+enjoying all this beauty. Not but that I should like to have a sketch
+or a few words of description for when I've turned my back upon it.
+And Heaven help me, I really believe that when we are all back in
+London I may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your
+tramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action,
+because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this
+place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me--"
+
+"That's what it is to be aesthetic"--said the two almost in the same
+breath.
+
+"And that, I suppose"--answered the third with some animosity--"is
+what you mean by being practical or scientific."
+
+Now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of
+science, though differing so obviously from one another (the first
+bent upon producing new and advantageous _results,_ the second
+examining, without thought of advantage, into possible _causes),_
+both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was
+merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. They
+were, as he complained, thinking of _what might be done_ and of
+_how it had all come about._ That is to say they were both thinking
+_away_ from that landscape. The scientific man actually turned his
+back to it in examining first one rock, then another. The practical
+man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he
+was on, since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and
+that the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a
+funicular. But besides the different items of landscape, and the same
+items under different angles, which were thus offered to these two
+men's bodily eyes, there was a far greater variety, and rapider
+succession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their
+spirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills, plain,
+and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time,
+but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress,
+dairy-products, pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices,
+advertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and the scientific man's inner
+vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and
+seas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals
+under the microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let
+alone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries. Moreover,
+most, if not all these mental images (blocking out from attention the
+really existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy,
+swished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just
+enough seen to know what it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all,
+mere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought. So that what
+satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly
+scampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next
+one, and to a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to
+wit, pounds, shillings, and pence in the one case, and a coherent
+explanation in the other. In both cases equally there was a
+kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of
+aspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed. Or, more
+strictly speaking, there was no interest whatever in aspects as such,
+but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied;
+whether actions future and personally profitable, like building
+tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and
+quite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or
+prehistoric civilisations.
+
+Now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the
+two others had first mistaken for an artist or writer, and then
+dismissed as an aesthetic person.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ASPECTS _VERSUS_ THINGS
+
+HAVING settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked
+best, he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded
+him. Had he descended another twenty minutes, or looked through
+powerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a
+juxtaposition of emerald green, raw Sienna, and pale yellow,
+whereas, at the distance where he chose to remain, its colours fused
+into indescribably lovely lilacs and russets. Had he moved freely
+about he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of
+sharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their
+various angles, must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges,
+and roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate. Also that the
+foothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains
+behind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the
+attention by their aggressive projection. While, as if to spoil the
+aspect still more, he would have been forced to recognise (as Ruskin
+explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the Matterhorn peak)
+that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked
+up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely
+to rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of
+perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let
+alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. But
+to how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope,
+that man did not give one thought, any more than to how they might
+look after a hundred years of tramways and funiculars or how they
+had looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial action.
+He was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light
+and colour, the pattern (more and more detailed, more and more
+co-ordinated with every additional exploring glance) of keenly
+thrusting, delicately yielding lines, meeting as purposefully as if
+they had all been alive and executing some great, intricate dance. He
+did not concern himself whether what he was looking at was an
+aggregate of things; still less what might be these things' other
+properties. He was not concerned with things at all, but only with a
+particular appearance (he did not care whether it answered to reality),
+only with one (he did not want to know whether there might be any
+other) _aspect._
+
+For, odd as it may sound, a _Thing_ is both much more and much
+less than an _Aspect._ Much more, because a _Thing_ really means
+not only qualities of its own and reactions of ours which are actual
+and present, but a far greater number and variety thereof which are
+potential. Much _less,_ on the other hand, because of these potential
+qualities and reactions constituting a Thing only a minimum need be
+thought of at any given time; instead of which, an aspect is all there,
+its qualities closely interdependent, and our reactions entirely taken
+up in connecting them as whole and parts. A rose, for instance, is
+not merely a certain assemblage of curves and straight lines and
+colours, seen as the painter sees it, at a certain angle, petals masking
+part of stem, leaf protruding above bud: it is the possibility of other
+combinations of shapes, including those seen when the rose (or the
+person looking) is placed head downwards. Similarly it is the
+possibility of certain sensations of resistance, softness, moisture,
+pricking if we attempt to grasp it, of a certain fragrance if we breathe
+in the air. It is the possibility of turning into a particular fruit, with
+the possibility of our finding that fruit bitter and non-edible; of being
+developed from cuttings, pressed in a book, made a present of or
+cultivated for lucre. Only one of these groups of possibilities may
+occupy our thoughts, the rest not glanced at, or only glanced at
+subsequently; but if, on trial, any of these grouped possibilities
+disappoint us, we decide that this is not a real rose, but a paper rose,
+or a painted one, or no rose at all, but some _other thing._ For, so far
+as our consciousness is concerned, _things_ are merely groups of
+actual and potential reactions on our own part, that is to say of
+expectations which experience has linked together in more or less
+stable groups. The practical man and the man of science in my fable,
+were both of them dealing with _Things_: passing from one group
+of potential reaction to another, hurrying here, dallying there, till of
+the actual _aspect_ of the landscape there remained nothing in their
+thoughts, trams and funiculars in the future, volcanoes and icecaps
+in the past, having entirely altered all that; only the material
+constituents and the geographical locality remaining as the unshifted
+item in those much pulled about bundles of thoughts of possibilities.
+
+Every _thing_ may have a great number of very different _Aspects;_
+and some of these _Aspects_ may invite contemplation, as that
+landscape invited the third man to contemplate it; while other
+_aspects_ (say the same place after a proper course of tramways and
+funiculars and semi-detached residences, or _before_ the needful
+volcanic and glacial action) may be such as are dismissed or slurred
+as fast as possible. Indeed, with the exception of a very few cubes
+not in themselves especially attractive, I cannot remember any
+_things_ which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects as
+pleasing ones. The most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood
+on its head; the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at
+through a microscope or from too far off; the most beautiful melody
+is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . Here the Reader may
+interrupt: "What nonsense! Of course the building _is_ a building
+only when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a
+microscope; the melody isn't a melody except begun at the
+beginning"--all which means that when we speak of a building, a
+picture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer
+of a _Thing,_ but of one of the possible _Aspects_ of a thing; _and
+that when we say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords
+one or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction._ But if
+a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be
+_contemplated,_ if the mountain could not also be climbed or
+tunnelled, if the woman could not also get married, bear children
+and have (or not have!) a vote, we should say that the mountain and
+the woman were not _real things._ Hence we come to the conclusion,
+paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking
+about, _that what we contemplate as beautiful is an Aspect of a
+Thing, but never a Thing itself._ In other words: Beautiful is an
+adjective applicable to Aspects not to Things, or to Things only,
+inasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other
+potentialities) beautiful Aspects. So that we can now formulate:
+_The word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the
+contemplation not of things but of aspects._
+
+This summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject; and
+I should wish the Reader to get it by heart, until he grow
+familiarised therewith in the course of our further examinations.
+Before proceeding upon these, I would, however, ask him to reflect
+how this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless,
+squabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth,
+and whether art, as certain moralists contend, is a school of lying.
+For _true_ or _false_ is a judgment of existence; it refers to
+_Things;_ it implies that besides the qualities and reactions shown
+or described, our further action or analysis will call forth certain
+other groups of qualities and reactions constituting the _thing which
+is said to exist._ But aspects, in the case in which I have used that
+word, _are_ what they are and do not necessarily imply anything
+beyond their own peculiarities. The words _true_ or _false_ can be
+applied to them only with the meaning of _aspects truly existing_ or
+_not truly existing;_ _i.e._ aspects of which it is true or not to _say
+that they exist._ But as to an aspect being true or false in the sense
+of _misleading,_ that question refers not to the _aspect_ itself, but to
+the thing of which the aspect is taken as a part and a sign. Now the
+contemplation of the mere aspect, the beauty (or ugliness) of the
+aspect, does not itself necessitate or imply any such reference to a
+thing. Our contemplation of the beauty of a statue representing a
+Centaur may indeed be disturbed by the reflexion that a creature
+with two sets of lungs and digestive organs would be a monster and
+not likely to grow to the age of having a beard. But this disturbing
+thought need not take place. And when it takes place it is not part of
+our contemplation of the _aspect_ of that statue; it is, on the contrary,
+outside it, an excursion away from it due to our inveterate (and very
+necessary) habit of interrupting the contemplation of _Aspects_ by
+the thinking and testing of _Things._ The Aspect never implied the
+existence of a Thing beyond itself; it did not affirm that anything
+was true, _i.e._ that anything could or would happen besides the fact
+of our contemplation. In other words the formula that _beautiful is
+an adjective applying only to aspects,_ shows us that art can be
+truthful or untruthful only in so far as art (as is often the case)
+deliberately sets to making statements about the existence and nature
+of Things. If Art says "Centaurs can be born and grow up to man's
+estate with two sets of respiratory and digestive organs"--then Art is
+telling lies. Only, before accusing it of being a liar, better make sure
+that the statement about the possibility of centaurs has been intended
+by the Art, and not merely read into it by ourselves.
+
+But more of this when we come to the examination of Subject and
+Form.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SENSATIONS
+
+IN the contemplation of the _Aspect_ before him, what gave that
+aesthetic man the most immediate and undoubted pleasure was its
+colour, or, more correctly speaking, its colours. Psycho-Physiologists
+have not yet told us why colours, taken singly and apart
+from their juxtaposition, should possess so extraordinary a
+power over what used to be called our animal spirits, and through
+them over our moods; and we can only guess from analogy with
+what is observed in plants, as well as from the nature of the
+phenomenon itself, that various kinds of luminous stimulation must
+have some deep chemical repercussion throughout the human
+organism. The same applies, though in lesser degree, to sounds,
+quite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies.
+As there are colours which _feel, i.e._ make _us_ feel, more or less
+warm or cool, colours which are refreshing or stifling, depressing or
+exhilarating quite independent of any associations, so also there are
+qualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the trumpet, or
+harrow us like the quaver of the accordion. Similarly with regard to
+immediacy of effect: the first chords of an organ will change our
+whole mode of being like the change of light and colour on first
+entering a church, although the music which that organ is playing
+may, after a few seconds of listening, bore us beyond endurance;
+and the architecture of that church, once we begin to take stock of it,
+entirely dispel that first impression made by the church's light and
+colour. It is on account of this doubtless physiological power of
+colour and sound, this way which they have of invading and
+subjugating us with or without our consent and long before our
+conscious co-operation, that the Man-on-the-Hill's pleasure in the
+aspect before him was, as I have said, first of all, pleasure in colour.
+Also, because pleasure in colour, like pleasure in mere sound-quality
+or _timbre,_ is accessible to people who never go any further in their
+aesthetic preference. Children, as every one knows, are sensitive to
+colours, long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes.
+And the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used
+to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the
+subtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers incapable of
+distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of
+following a modulation.
+
+The Man on the Hill, therefore, received immediate pleasure from
+the colours of the landscape. _Received_ pleasure, rather than
+_took_ it, since colours, like smells, seem, as I have said, to invade
+us, and insist upon pleasing whether we want to be pleased or not. In
+this meaning of the word we may be said to be _passive_ to sound
+and colour quality: our share in the effects of these sensations, as in
+the effect of agreeable temperatures, contacts and tastes, is a
+question of bodily and mental reflexes in which our conscious
+activity, our voluntary attention, play no part: we are not _doing,_
+but _done to_ by those stimulations from without; and the pleasure
+or displeasure which they set up in us is therefore one which we
+_receive,_ as distinguished from one which _we take._
+
+Before passing on to the pleasure which the Man on the Hill _did
+take,_ as distinguished from thus passively _receiving,_ from the
+aspect before him, before investigating into the activities to which
+this other kind of pleasure, _pleasure taken, not received,_ is due,
+we must dwell a little longer on the colours which delighted him,
+and upon the importance or unimportance of those colours with
+regard to that _Aspect_ he was contemplating.
+
+These colours--particularly a certain rain-washed blue, a pale lilac
+and a faded russet--gave him, as I said, immediate and massive
+pleasure like that of certain delicious tastes and smells, indeed
+anyone who had watched him attentively might have noticed that he
+was making rather the same face as a person rolling, as Meredith
+says, a fine vintage against his palate, or drawing in deeper draughts
+of exquisitely scented air; he himself, if not too engaged in looking,
+might have noticed the accompanying sensations in his mouth,
+throat and nostrils; all of which, his only active response to the
+colour, was merely the attempt to _receive more_ of the already
+received sensation. But this pleasure which he received from the
+mere colours of the landscape was the same pleasure which they
+would have given him if he had met them in so many skeins of silk;
+the more complex pleasure due to their juxtaposition, was the
+pleasure he might have had if those skeins, instead of being on
+separate leaves of a pattern-book, had been lying tangled together in
+an untidy work-basket. He might then probably have said, "Those
+are exactly the colours, and in much the same combination, as in
+that landscape we saw such and such a day, at such and such a
+season and hour, from the top of that hill." But he would never have
+said (or been crazy if he had) "Those skeins of silk are the landscape
+we saw in that particular place and oh that particular occasion." Now
+the odd thing is that he would have used that precise form of words,
+"that is the landscape," etc. etc., if you had shown him a pencil
+drawing or a photograph taken from that particular place and point
+of view. And similarly if you had made him look through stained
+glass which changed the pale blue, pale lilac and faded russet into
+emerald green and blood red. He would have exclaimed at the loss
+of those exquisite colours when you showed him the monochrome,
+and perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when you
+forced him to look through that atrocious glass. But he would have
+identified the aspect as the one he had seen before; just as even the
+least musical person would identify "God save the King" whether
+played with three sharps on the flute or with four flats on the
+trombone.
+
+There is therefore in an _Aspect_ something over and above the
+quality of the colours (or in a piece of music, of the sounds) in
+which that aspect is, at any particular moment, embodied for your
+senses; something which can be detached from the particular colours
+or sounds and re-embodied in other colours or sounds, existing
+meanwhile in a curious potential schematic condition in our memory.
+That something is _Shape._
+
+It is Shape which we contemplate; and it is only because they enter
+into shapes that colours and sounds, as distinguished from
+temperatures, textures, tastes and smells, can be said to be
+contemplated at all. Indeed if we apply to single isolated colour or
+sound-qualities (that blue or russet, or the mere timbre of a voice or
+an orchestra) the adjective _beautiful_ while we express our liking
+for smells, tastes, temperatures and textures merely by the adjectives
+_agreeable, delicious_; this difference in our speech is doubtless due
+to the fact that colours or sounds are more often than not connected
+each with other colours or other sounds into a Shape and thereby
+become subject to contemplation more frequently than temperatures,
+textures, smells and tastes which cannot themselves be grouped into
+shapes, and are therefore objects of contemplation only when
+associated with colours and sounds, as for instance, the smell of
+burning weeds in a description of autumnal sights, or the cool
+wetness of a grotto in the perception of its darkness and its murmur
+of waters.
+
+On dismissing the practical and the scientific man because they were
+_thinking away from aspects to things,_ I attempted to inventory the
+_aspect_ in whose contemplation their aesthetic companion had
+remained absorbed. There were the colours, that delicious
+recently-washed blue, that lilac and russet, which gave the man his
+immediate shock of passive and (as much as smell and taste) bodily
+pleasure. But besides these my inventory contained another kind of
+item: what I described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply
+convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills, picked
+up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down
+merely to rush up again in long rapid concave curves. And besides
+all this, there was the outline of a distant mountain, rising flamelike
+against the sky. It was all these items made up of _lines_ (skyline,
+outline, and lines of perspective!) which remained unchanged when
+the colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass,
+and unchanged also when the colouring was reduced to the barest
+monochrome of a photograph or a pencil drawing; nay remained the
+same despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless
+presentment of them. Those items of the aspect were, as we all know,
+_Shapes._ And with altered colours, and colours diminished to just
+enough for each line to detach itself from its ground, those Shapes
+could be contemplated and called beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+PERCEPTION OF RELATIONS
+
+WHY should this be the case? Briefly, because colours (and sounds)
+as such are forced upon us by external stimulation of our organs of
+sight and hearing, neither more nor less than various temperatures,
+textures, tastes and smells are forced upon us from without through
+the nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin,
+muscle, palate and nose. Whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly
+willy _seen_ or _heard,_ are, at least until we know them, _looked_
+at or _listened_ to, that is to say _taken in_ or _grasped,_ by mental
+and bodily activities which meet, but may also refuse to meet, those
+sense stimulations. Moreover, because these mental and bodily
+activities, being our own, can be rehearsed in what we call our
+memory without the repetition of the sensory stimulations which
+originally started them, and even in the presence of different ones.
+
+In terms of mental science, colour and sound, like temperature,
+texture, taste and smell, are _sensations_; while _shape_ is, in the
+most complete sense, a _perception._ This distinction between
+_sensation_ and _perception_ is a technicality of psychology; but
+upon it rests the whole question why shapes can be contemplated
+and afford the satisfaction connected with the word _beautiful,_
+while colours and sounds, except as grouped or groupable into
+shapes, cannot. Moreover this distinction will prepare us for
+understanding the main fact of all psychological aesthetics: namely
+that the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction which we get from shapes
+is satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what are, directly or indirectly,
+activities of our own.
+
+Etymologically and literally, _perception_ means the act of
+_grasping_ or _taking_ in, and also the result of that action. But
+when we thus _perceive_ a shape, what is it precisely that we grasp
+or take in? At first it might seem to be the _sensations_ in which that
+form is embodied. But a moment's reflection will show that this
+cannot be the case, since the sensations are furnished us simply
+without our performing any act of perception, thrust on us from
+outside, and, unless our sensory apparatus and its correlated brain
+centre were out of order, received by us passively, nilly willy, the
+Man on the Hill being invaded by the sense of that blue, that lilac
+and that russet exactly as he might have been invaded by the smell
+of the hay in the fields below. No: what we grasp or take in thus
+actively are not the sensations themselves, but the _relations_
+between these sensations, and it is of these relations, more truly than
+of the sensations themselves, that a shape is, in the most literal sense,
+_made up._ And it is this _making up of shapes,_ this grasping or
+taking in of their constituent relations, which is an active process on
+our part, and one which we can either perform or not perform. When,
+instead of merely _seeing_ a colour, we _look at_ a shape, our eye
+ceases to be merely passive to the action of the various light-waves,
+and becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way;
+turning its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the
+stimulus, adjusting its focus like that of an opera glass, and like an
+opera glass, turning it to the right or left, higher or lower.
+
+Moreover, except in dealing with very small surfaces, our eye
+moves about in our head and moves our head, and sometimes our
+whole body, along with it. An analogous active process undoubtedly
+distinguishes _listening_ from mere _hearing;_ and although
+psycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments
+of the inner ear corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye,
+it is generally recognised that auditive attention is accompanied by
+adjustments of the vocal parts, or preparations for such adjustments,
+which account for the impression of _following_ a sequence of
+notes as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do
+_not_ follow, in the sense of _connecting by our activity,_
+consecutive sensations of taste or smell. Besides such obvious or
+presumable bodily activities requisite for looking and listening as
+distinguished from mere seeing and hearing, there is moreover in all
+perception of shape, as in all _grasping of meaning,_ a mental
+activity involving what are called _attention_ and _memory._ A
+primer of aesthetics is no place for expounding any of the various
+psychological definitions of either of these, let us call them, faculties.
+Besides I should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental
+facts as can be found in the Reader's everyday (however unnoticed)
+experience, instead of requiring for their detection the artificial
+conditions of specialised introspection or laboratory experiment. So
+I shall give to those much fought over words _attention_ and
+_memory_ merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are
+familiar in everyday language, and only beg the Reader to notice
+that, whatever psychologists may eventually prove or disprove
+_attention_ and _memory_ to be, these two, let us unscientifically
+call them _faculties,_ are what chiefly distinguishes _perception_
+from _sensation._ For instance, in grasping or taking stock of a
+visible or an audible shape we are doing something with our
+attention, or our attention is doing something in us: a travelling
+about, a returning to starting points, a summing up. And a travelling
+about not merely between what is given simultaneously in the
+present, but, even more, between what has been given in an
+immediately proximate past, and what we expect to be given in an
+immediately proximate future; both of which, the past which is put
+behind us as past, and the past which is projected forwards as future,
+necessitate the activity of _memory._ There is an adjustment of our
+feelings as well as our muscles not merely to the present sensation,
+but to the future one, and a buzz of continuing adjustment to the past.
+There is a holding over and a holding on, a reacting backwards and
+forwards of our attention, and quite a little drama of expectation,
+fulfilment and disappointment, or as psychologists call them, of
+tensions and relaxations. And this little drama involved in all
+looking or listening, particularly in all taking stock of visible or
+audible (and I may add intellectual or _verbal_) shape, has its
+appropriate accompaniment of emotional changes: the ease or
+difficulty of understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat
+which we shall deal with later. And although the various perceptive
+activities remain unnoticed in themselves (so long as easy and
+uninterrupted), we become aware of a lapse, a gap, whenever our
+mind's eye (if not our bodily one!) neglects to sweep from side to
+side of a geometrical figure, or from centre to circumference, or
+again whenever our mind's ear omits following from some particular
+note to another, just as when we fall asleep for a second during a
+lecture or sermon: we have, in common parlance, _missed the hang_
+of some detail or passage. What we have missed, in that lapse of
+attention, is a _relation,_ the length and direction of a line, or the
+span of a musical interval, or, in the case of words, the references of
+noun and verb, the co-ordination of tenses of a verb. And it is such
+relations, more or less intricate and hierarchic, which transform what
+would otherwise be meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of
+sensations into the significant entities which can be remembered and
+recognised even when their constituent sensations are completely
+altered, namely _shapes._ To our previous formula that _beautiful_
+denotes satisfaction in contemplating an aspect, we can now add that
+an _aspect_ consists of sensations grouped together into _relations_
+by our active, our remembering and foreseeing, perception.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ELEMENTS OF SHAPE
+
+LET us now examine some of these relations, not in the
+genealogical or hierarchic order assigned to them by experimental
+psychology, but in so far as they constitute the elements of _shape,_
+and more especially as they illustrate the general principle which I
+want to impress on the Reader, namely: That the perception of
+Shape depends primarily upon movements which _we_ make, and
+the measurements and comparisons which _we_ institute.
+
+And first we must examine mere _extension_ as such, which
+distinguishes our active dealings with visual and audible sensations
+from our passive reception of the sensations of taste and smell. For
+while in the case of the latter a succession of similar stimulations
+affects us as "more taste of strawberry" or "more smell of rose"
+when intermittent, or as a vague "there _is_ a strong or faint taste of
+strawberry" and a "there is a smell of lemon flower"--when
+continuous; our organ of sight being mobile, reports not "more black
+on white" but "so many inches of black line on a white ground," that
+is to say reports a certain _extension_ answering to its
+own movement. This quality of extension exists also in our
+sound-perceptions, although the explanation is less evident. Notes do not
+indeed exist (but only sounding bodies and air-vibrations) in the
+space which we call "real" because our eye and our locomotion
+coincide in their accounts of it; but notes are experienced, that is
+thought and felt, as existing in a sort of imitation space of their own.
+This "musical space," as M. Dauriac has rightly called it, has limits
+corresponding with those of our power of hearing or reproducing
+notes, and a central region corresponding with our habitual
+experience of the human voice; and in this "musical space" notes are
+experienced as moving up and down and with a centrifugal and
+centripetal direction, and also as existing at definite spans or
+_intervals_ from one another; all of which probably on account of
+presumable muscular adjustments of the inner and auditive
+apparatus, as well as obvious sensations in the vocal parts when we
+ourselves produce, and often when we merely think of, them. In
+visual perception the sweep of the glance, that is the adjustment of
+the muscles of the inner eye, the outer eye and of the head, is
+susceptible of being either interrupted or continuous like any other
+muscular process; and its continuity is what unites the mere
+successive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension,
+so that the same successive colour-and-light-sensations can be
+experienced either as _one_ extension, or as two or more, according
+as the glance is continuous or interrupted; the eye's sweep, when not
+excessive, tending to continuity _unless a new direction requires a
+new muscular adjustment._ And, except in the case of an
+_extension_ exceeding any single movement of eye and head, a new
+adjustment answers to what we call _a change of direction.
+Extension_ therefore, as we have forestalled with regard to sound,
+has various modes, corresponding to something belonging to
+ourselves: a _middle,_ answering to the middle not of our field of
+vision, since that itself can be raised or lowered by a movement of
+the head, but to the middle of our body; and an _above_ and
+_below,_ a _right_ and a _left_ referable to our body also, or rather
+to the adjustments made by eye and head in the attempt to see our
+own extremities; for, as every primer of psychology will teach you,
+mere sight and its muscular adjustments account only for the
+dimensions of height (up and down) and of breadth (right and left)
+while the third or cubic dimension of _depth_ is a highly complex
+result of locomotion in which I include prehension. And inasmuch
+as we are dealing with _aspects_ and not with _things,_ we have as
+yet nothing to do with this _cubic_ or _third dimension,_ but are
+confining ourselves to the two dimensions of extension in height and
+breadth, which are sufficient for the existence, the identity, or more
+correctly the _quiddity,_ of visible shapes.
+
+Such a shape is therefore, primarily, a series of longer or shorter
+_extensions,_ given by a separate glance towards, or away from, our
+own centre or extremities, and at some definite angle to our own
+axis and to the ground on which we stand. But these acts of
+extension and orientation cease to be thought of as measured and
+orientated, and indeed as accomplished, by ourselves, and are
+translated into objective terms whenever our attention is turned
+outwards: thus we say that each line is of a given length and
+direction, so or so much off the horizontal or vertical.
+
+So far we have established relations only to ourselves. We now
+compare the acts of extension one against the other, and we also
+measure the adjustment requisite to pass from one to another,
+continuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre; in everyday
+speech, we perceive that the various lines are _similar_ and
+_dissimilar_ in length, direction and orientation. We _compare;_
+and comparing we _combine_ them in the unity of our intention:
+thought of together they are thought of as belonging together.
+Meanwhile the process of such comparison of the relation of each
+line with us to the analogous relation to us of its fellows, produces
+yet further acts of measurement and comparison. For in going from
+one of our lines to another we become aware of the presence
+of--how shall I express it?--well of a _nothing_ between them, what we
+call _blank space,_ because we experience a _blank_ of the
+particular sensations, say red and black, with which we are engaged
+in those lines. Between the red and black sensations of the lines we
+are looking at, there will be a possibility of other colour sensations,
+say the white of the paper, and these white sensations we shall duly
+receive, for, except by shutting our eyes, we could not avoid
+receiving them. But though received these white sensations will not
+be attended to, because they are not what we are busied with. We
+shall be _passive_ towards the white sensations while we are
+_active_ towards the black and red ones; we shall not measure the
+white; not sweep our glance along it as we do along the red and the
+black. And as _ceteris paribus_ our tense awareness of active states
+always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched
+between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions,
+and their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the
+uninteresting white extensions as a _blank,_ a gap, as that which
+separates the objects of our active interest, and takes what existence
+it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those
+interesting actively measured and compared lines. Thus the
+difference between our _active perception_ and our merely _passive
+sensation_ accounts for the fact that every visible shape is composed
+of lines (or bands) measured and compared with reference to our
+own ocular adjustments and our axis and centre; lines existing, as
+we express it, in _blank space,_ that is to say space not similarly
+measured; lines, moreover, _enclosing_ between each other more of
+this blank space, which is not measured in itself but subjected to the
+measurement of its enclosing lines. And similarly, every _audible_
+Shape consists not merely of sounds enclosing _silence,_ but of
+heard tones between which we are aware of the intervening _blank
+interval_ which _might have been_ occupied by the intermediary
+tones and semitones. In other words, visible and audible Shape is
+composed of alternations between _active,_ that is _moving,_
+measuring, referring, comparing, attention; and _passive,_ that is
+comparatively sluggish _reception_ of mere sensation.
+
+
+This fact implies another and very important one, which I have
+indeed already hinted at. If perceiving shape means comparing lines
+(they may _be bands,_ but we will call them _lines),_ and the lines
+are measured only by consecutive eye movements, then the act of
+comparison evidently includes the co-operation, however
+infinitesimally brief, of _memory._ The two halves of this
+Chippendale chair-back exist simultaneously in front of my eyes,
+but I cannot take stock simultaneously of the lengths and orientation
+of the curves to the right and the curves of the left. I must hold over
+the image of one half, and unite it, somewhere in what we call "the
+mind"--with the other; nay, I must do this even with the separate
+curves constituting the patterns each of which is measured by a
+sweep of the glance, even as I should measure them successively by
+applying a tape and then remembering and comparing their various
+lengths, although the ocular process may stand to the tape-process as
+a minute of our time to several hundreds of years. This comes to
+saying that the perception of visible shapes, even like that of audible
+ones, takes place _in time,_ and requires therefore the
+co-operation of _memory._ Now memory, paradoxical as it may sound,
+practically implies _expectation:_ the use of the past, to so speak, is
+to become that visionary thing we call the _future._ Hence, while we
+are measuring the extension and direction of one line, we are not
+only _remembering_ the extent and direction of another previously
+measured line, but we are also _expecting_ a similar, or somewhat
+similar, act of measurement of the _next_ line; even as in "following
+a melody" we not only remember the preceding tone, but _expect_
+the succeeding ones. Such interplay of present, past and future is
+requisite for every kind of _meaning,_ for every _unit of thought_;
+and among others, of the meaning, the _thought,_ which we
+contemplate under the name of _shape._ It is on account of this
+interplay of present, past and future, that Wundt counts feelings _of
+tension_ and _relaxation_ among the _elements_ of form-perception.
+And the mention of such _feelings,_ i.e. rudiments of _emotion,_
+brings us to recognise that the remembering and foreseeing of our
+acts of measurement and orientation constitutes a microscopic
+psychological drama--shall we call it the drama of the SOUL
+MOLECULES?--whose first familiar examples are those two
+peculiarities of visible and audible shape called _Symmetry_ and
+_Rythm._
+
+Both of these mean that a measurement has been made, and that the
+degree of its _span_ is kept in memory to the extent of our expecting
+that the next act of measurement will be similar. _Symmetry_
+exists quite as much in _Time_ (hence in shapes made up of
+sound-relations) as in _Space;_ and _Rythm,_ which is commonly thought
+of as an especially musical relation, exists as much in _Space_ as in
+_Time_; because the perception of shape requires Time and
+movement equally whether the relations are between objectively
+co-existent and durable marks on stone or paper, or between objectively
+successive and fleeting sound-waves. Also because, while the single
+relations of lines and of sounds require to be ascertained
+successively, the combination of those various single relations, their
+relations with one another _as whole and parts,_ require to be
+grasped by an intellectual synthesis; as much in the case of notes as
+in the case of lines. If, in either case, we did not remember the first
+measurement when we obtained the second, there would be no
+perception of shape however elementary; which is the same as
+saying that for an utterly oblivious mind there could be no
+relationships, and therefore no meaning. In the case of Symmetry
+the relations are not merely the lengths and directions of the single
+lines, that is to say their relations to ourselves, and the relation
+established by comparison between these single lines; there is now
+also the relation of both to a third, itself of course related to
+ourselves, indeed, as regards visible shape, usually answering to our
+own axis. The expectation which is liable to fulfilling or balking is
+therefore that of a repetition of this double relationship remembered
+between the lengths and directions on one side, by the lengths and
+directions on the other; and the repetition of a common relation to a
+central item.
+
+The case of RYTHM is more complex. For, although we usually
+think of Rythm as a relation of _two_ items, it is in reality a relation
+of four (or more ); because what we remember and expect is a
+mixture of similarity with dissimilarity between lengths, directions
+or impacts. OR IMPACTS. For with Rythm we come to another
+point illustrative of the fact that all shape-elements depend upon our
+own activity and its modes. A rythmical arrangement is not
+necessarily one between _objectively_ alternated elements like
+objectively longer or shorter lines of a pattern, or _objectively_
+higher or lower or longer and shorter notes. Rythm exists equally
+where the objective data, the sense stimulations, are uniform, as is
+the case with the ticks of a clock. These ticks would be registered as
+exactly similar by appropriate instruments. But our mind is not such
+an impassive instrument: our mind (whatever our mind may really
+be) is subject to an alternation of _more_ and _less,_ of _vivid_ and
+_less vivid, important_ and _less important,_ of _strong_ and
+_weak;_ and the objectively similar stimulations from outside, of
+sound or colour or light, are perceived as vivid or less vivid,
+important or less important, according to the beat of this mutual
+alternation with which they coincide: thus the uniform, ticking of the
+clock will be perceived by us as a succession in which the stress,
+that is the importance, is thrown upon the first or the second member
+of a group; and the recollection and expectation are therefore of a
+unity of dissimilar importance. We hear STRONG-WEAK; and
+remembering _strong-weak,_ we make a new _strong-weak_ out of
+that objective uniformity. Here there is no objective reason for one
+rythm more than another; and we express this by saying that the
+tickings of a clock have no intrinsic form. For _Form,_ or as I prefer
+to call it, _Shape,_ although it exists only in the mind capable of
+establishing and correlating its constituent relationships, takes an
+objective existence when the material stimulations from the outer
+world are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same
+series and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains
+why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to
+the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective
+stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations
+in time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which
+would, _ceteris paribus,_ have been provoked in himself if that
+shape had not existed first of all _only_ in his mind.
+
+A further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a
+combination of active measurements and comparisons, and of
+remembrance and expectations, is found in a fact which has very
+great importance in all artistic dealings with shapes. I have spoken,
+for simplicity's, sake, as if the patches of colour on a blank (i.e.
+uninteresting) ground along which the glance sweeps, were
+invariably contiguous and continuous. But these colour patches, and
+the sensations they afford us, are just as often, discontinuous in the
+highest degree; and the lines constituting a shape may, as for
+instance in constellations, be entirely imaginary. The fact is that
+what we feel as a line is not an objective continuity of
+colour-or-light-patches, but the continuity of our glance's sweep which
+may either accompany this objective continuity or replace it. Indeed
+such imaginary lines thus established between isolated colour patches,
+are sometimes felt as more vividly existing than real ones, because the
+glance is not obliged to take stock of their parts, but can rush freely
+from extreme point to extreme point. Moreover not only half the
+effectiveness of design, but more than half the efficiency of practical
+life, is due to our establishing such imaginary lines. We are
+inevitably and perpetually dividing visual space (and something of
+the sort happens also with "musical space") by objectively
+non-existent lines answering to our own bodily orientation. Every course,
+every trajectory, is of this sort. And every drawing executed by an
+artist, every landscape, offered us by "Nature," is felt, because it is
+measured, with reference to a set of imaginary horizontals or
+perpendiculars. While, as I remember the late Mr G. F. Watts
+showing me, every curve which we look at is _felt as being_ part of
+an imaginary circle into which it could be prolonged. Our sum of
+measuring and comparing activities, and also our dramas of
+remembrance and expectation, are therefore multiplied by these
+imaginary lines, whether they connect, constellation-wise, a few
+isolated colour indications, or whether they are established as
+standards of reference (horizontals, verticals, etc.) for other really
+existing lines; or whether again they be thought of, like those circles,
+as _wholes_ of which objectively perceived series of colour patches
+might possibly be _parts._ In all these cases imaginary lines are
+_felt,_ as existing, inasmuch as we feel the movement by which we
+bring them into existence, and even feel that such a movement might
+be made by us when it is not.
+
+So far, however, I have dealt with these imaginary lines only as an
+additional proof that shape-perception is an establishment of two
+dimensional relationships, through our own activities, and an active
+remembering, foreseeing and combining thereof.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FACILITY AND DIFFICULTY OF GRASPING
+
+OF this we get further proof when we proceed to another and less
+elementary relationship implied in the perception of shape: the
+relation of Whole and Parts.
+
+In dealing with the _ground_ upon which we perceive our red and
+black patches to be extended, I have already pointed out that our
+operations of measuring and comparing are not applied to all the
+patches of colour which we actually see, but only to such as we
+_look at_; an observation equally applicable to sounds. In other
+words our attention selects certain sensations, and limits to these all
+that establishing of relations, all that measuring and comparing, all
+that remembering and expecting; the other sensations being
+excluded. Now, while whatever is thus merely seen, but not looked
+at, is excluded as so much _blank_ or _otherness_; whatever is, on
+the contrary, _included_ is thereby credited with the quality of
+belonging, that is to say being included, together. And the more the
+attention alternates between the measuring of _included_ extensions
+and directions and the expectation of equivalent (symmetrical or
+rythmical) extensions or directions or stresses, the closer will
+become the relation of these items _included_ by our attention and
+the more foreign will become the _excluded otherness_ from which,
+as we feel, they _detach themselves._ But--by an amusing
+paradox--these lines measured and compared by our attention, are
+themselvesnot only _excluding_ so much _otherness or blank;_ they also
+tend, so soon as referred to one another, to _include_ some of this
+uninteresting blankness; and it is across this more or less completely
+included blankness that the eye (and the imagination!) draw such
+imaginary lines as I have pointed out with reference to the
+constellations. Thus a circle, say of red patches, _excludes_ some of
+the white paper on which it is drawn; but it _includes_ or _encloses_
+the rest. Place a red patch somewhere on that _enclosed_ blank; our
+glance and attention will now play not merely along the red
+circumference, but to and fro between the red circumference and the
+red patch, thereby establishing imaginary but thoroughly measured
+and compared lines between the two. Draw a red line from the red
+patch to the red circumference; you will begin expecting similar
+lengths on the other sides of the red patch, and you will become
+aware that these imaginary lines are, or are not, equal; in other
+words, that the red patch is, or is not, equidistant from every point of
+the red circumference. And if the red patch is not thus in the middle,
+you will expect, and imagine another patch which _is;_ and from
+this _imaginary centre_ you will draw imaginary lines, that is you
+will make by no means imaginary glance-sweeps, to the red
+circumference. Thus you may go on adding real red lines and
+imaginary lines connecting them with the circumference; and the
+more you do so the more you will feel that all these real lines and
+imaginary lines and all the blank space which the latter measure, are
+connected, or susceptible of being connected, closer and closer,
+every occasional excursion beyond the boundary only bringing you
+back with an increased feeling of this interconnexion, and an
+increased expectation of realising it in further details. But if on one
+of these glance-flickings beyond the circumference, your attention is
+caught by some colour patch or series of colour patches outside of it,
+you will either cease being interested in the circle and wander away
+to the new colour patches; or more probably, try to connect that
+outlying colour with the circle and its radii; or again failing that, you
+will "overlook it," as, in a pattern of concentric circles you overlook
+a colour band which, as you express it "has nothing to do with it,"
+that is with what you are looking at. Or again listening to. For if a
+church-bell mixes its tones and rythm with that of a symphony you
+are listening to, you may try and bring them in, make a place for
+them, _expect_ them among the other tones or rythms. Failing
+which you will, after a second or two, cease to notice those bells,
+cease to listen to them, giving all your attention once more to the
+sonorous whole whence you have expelled those intruders; or else,
+again, the intrusion will become an interruption, and the bells, once
+_listened to,_ will prevent your listening adequately to the
+symphony.
+
+Moreover, if the number of extensions, directions, real or imaginary
+lines or musical intervals, alternations of _something_ and
+_nothing,_ prove too great for your powers of measurement and
+comparison, particularly if it all surpass your habitual interplay of
+recollection and expectation, you will say (as before an over
+intricate pattern or a piece of music of unfamiliar harmonies and
+rythm) that "you can't grasp it"--that you "miss the hang of it." And
+what you will feel is that you cannot keep the parts within the whole,
+that the boundary vanishes, that what has been included unites with
+the excluded, in fact that all _shape_ welters into chaos. And as if to
+prove once more the truth of our general principle, you will have a
+hateful feeling of having been trifled with. What has been balked
+and wasted are all your various activities of measuring, comparing
+and co-ordinating; what has been trifled with are your expectations.
+And so far from contemplating with satisfaction the objective cause
+of all this vexation and disappointment, you will avoid
+contemplating it at all, and explain your avoidance by calling that
+chaotic or futile assemblage of lines or of notes "ugly."
+
+We seem thus to have got a good way in our explanation; and indeed
+the older psychology, for instance of the late Grant Allen, did not
+get any further. But to explain why a shape difficult to perceive
+should be disliked and called "ugly," by no means amounts to
+explaining why some other shape should be liked and called
+"beautiful," particularly as some ugly shapes happen to be far easier
+to grasp than some beautiful ones. The Reader will indeed remember
+that there is a special pleasure attached to all overcoming of
+difficulty, and to all understanding. But this double pleasure is
+shared with form-perception by every other successful grasping of
+meaning; and there is no reason why that pleasure should be
+repeated in the one case more than in the other; nor why we should
+repeat looking at (which is what we mean by contemplating) a shape
+once we have grasped it, any more than we continue to dwell on, to
+reiterate the mental processes by which we have worked out a
+geometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux. The
+sense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty
+overcome; the sense of illumination ends with the acquisition of a
+piece of information; and we pass on to some new obstacle and
+some new riddle. But it is different in the case of what we call
+_Beautiful. Beautiful_ means satisfactory for contemplation, _i.e._
+for reiterated perception; and the very essence of contemplative
+satisfaction is its desire for such reiteration. The older psychology
+would perhaps have explained this reiterative tendency by the
+pleasurableness of the sensory elements, the mere colours and
+sounds of which the easily perceived shape is made up. But this does
+not explain why, given that other shapes are made up of equally
+agreeable sensory elements, we should not pass on from a once
+perceived shape or combination of shapes to a new one, thus
+obtaining, in addition to the sensory agreeableness of colour or
+sound, a constantly new output of that feeling of victory and
+illumination attendant on every successful intellectual effort. Or, in
+other words, seeing that painting and music employ sensory
+elements already selected as agreeable, we ought never to wish to
+see the same picture twice, or to continue looking at it; we ought
+never to wish to repeat the same piece of music or its separate
+phrases; still less to cherish that picture or piece of music in our
+memory, going over and over again as much of its shape as had
+become our permanent possession.
+
+We return therefore to the fact that although balked perception is
+enough to make us reject a shape as _ugly, i.e._ such that we avoid
+entering into contemplation of it, easy perception is by no means
+sufficient to make us cherish a shape _as beautiful, i.e._ such that
+the reiteration of our drama of perception becomes desirable. And
+we shall have to examine whether there may not be some other
+factor of shape-perception wherewith to account for this preference
+of reiterated looking at the same to looking at something else.
+
+Meanwhile we may add to our set of formulae: difficulty in
+shape-perception makes contemplation disagreeable and impossible, and
+hence earns for aspects the adjective _ugly._ But facility in
+perception, like agreeableness of sensation by no means suffices for
+satisfied contemplation, and hence for the use of the adjective
+Beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SUBJECT AND OBJECT
+
+BUT before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception,
+namely that of Empathic Interpretation, I require to forestall an
+objection which my Reader has doubtless been making throughout
+my last chapters; more particularly that in clearing away the ground
+of this objection I shall be able to lay the foundations of my further
+edifice of explanation. The objection is this: if the man on the hill
+was aware of performing any, let alone all, of the various operations
+described as constituting shape-perception, neither that man nor any
+other human being would be able to enjoy the shapes thus perceived.
+
+My answer is:
+
+When did I say or imply that he was _aware_ of doing any of it? It is
+not only possible, but extremely common, to perform processes
+without being aware of performing them. The man was not _aware,_
+for instance, of making eye adjustments and eye movements, unless
+indeed his sight was out of order. Yet his eye movements could have
+been cinematographed, and his eye adjustments have been described
+minutely in a dozen treatises. He was no more aware of _doing_ any
+measuring or comparing than we are aware of _doing_ our digestion
+or circulation, except when we do them badly. But just as we are
+aware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of
+being aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate
+performance, so he was aware of his measuring and comparing,
+inasmuch as he was aware that the line A--B was longer than the
+line C--D, or that the point E was half an inch to the left of the point
+F. For so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called
+upon to make a choice between two possible proceedings, nor forced
+to do or suffer something difficult or distressing, in fact so long as
+we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our
+processes of attending, those processes are replaced in our
+awareness by the very facts--for instance the proportions and
+relations of lines--resulting from their activity. That these results
+should not resemble their cause, that mental elements (as they are
+called) should appear and disappear, and also combine into
+unaccountable compounds (Browning's "not a third sound, but a
+star") according as we attend to them, is indeed the besetting
+difficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it
+studies. But it is so because it is one of Psychology's basic facts.
+And, so far as we are at present concerned, this difference between
+mental processes and their results is the fact upon which
+psychological aesthetics are based. And it is not in order to convert
+the Man on the Hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception,
+nor even to explain why he was not aware of them, that I am
+insisting upon this point. The principle I have been expounding, let
+us call it that of the _merging of the perceptive activities of the
+subject in the qualities of the object of perception,_ explains another
+and quite as important mental process which was going on in that
+unsuspecting man.
+
+But before proceeding to that I must make it clearer how that man
+stood in the matter of _awareness of himself._ He was, indeed,
+aware of himself whenever, during his contemplation of that
+landscape, the thought arose, "well, I must be going away, and
+perhaps I shan't see this place again"--or some infinitely abbreviated
+form, perhaps a mere sketched out gesture of turning away,
+accompanied by a slight feeling of _clinging,_ he couldn't for the
+life of him say in what part of his body. He was at that moment
+acutely aware that he _did not want_ to do something which it was
+optional to do. Or, if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of
+going away, aware that he _wanted to come back,_ or at all events
+wanted to carry off as much as possible of what he had seen. In short
+he was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing himself
+away, or, if some other person or mere habit, saved him this effort,
+he was aware of himself making another effort to impress that
+landscape on his memory, and aware of a future self making an
+effort to return to it. I call it _effort_; you may, if you prefer, call it
+will; at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a
+verb to _cling to,_ (in the future tense) _return to,_ to _choose as
+against some other alternative_; as nominative of a verb briefly, _to
+like_ or _love._ And the accusative of these verbs would be the
+landscape. But unless the man's contemplation was thus shot with
+similar ideas of some action or choice of his own, he would express
+the situation by saying "this landscape _is_ awfully beautiful."
+
+This IS. I want you to notice the formula, by which the landscape,
+ceasing to be the accusative of the man's looking and thinking,
+becomes the nominative of a verb _to be so-and-so._ That
+grammatical transformation is the sign of what I have designated, in
+philosophical language, _as the merging of the activities of the
+subject in the object._ It takes place already in the domain of simple
+sensation whenever, instead of saying "_I_ taste or _I_ smell
+something nice or nasty" we say--"_this thing_ tastes or smells nice
+or nasty." And I have now shown you how this tendency to put the
+cart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex
+and active processes called perception; turning "I measure this
+line"--"I compare these two angles" into "this line _extends_ from A to
+B"--"these two angles _are equal_ to two right angles."
+
+But before getting to the final inversion--"this landscape _is_
+beautiful" instead of "_I_ like this landscape"--there is yet another,
+and far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the
+qualities of the object. This further putting of the cart before the
+horse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what only the horse
+can be doing!) falls under the head of what German psychologists
+call _Einfühlung,_ or "Infeeling"--which Prof. Titchener has
+translated _Empathy._ Now this new, and comparatively newly
+discovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which,
+leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound
+sensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever
+satisfaction we connect with the word Beautiful. And I have already
+given the Reader an example of such Empathy when I described the
+landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline
+"_dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves_";
+to which I might have added that there was also a plain which
+_extended,_ a valley which _wound along,_ paths which _climbed_
+and roads which _followed_ the _undulations_ of the land. But the
+best example was when I said that opposite to the man there was a
+distant mountain _rising_ against the sky.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EMPATHY
+
+_THE mountain rises._ What do we mean when we employ this
+form of words? Some mountains, we are told, have originated in an
+_upheaval._ But even if this particular mountain did, we never saw
+it and geologists are still disputing about HOW and WHETHER. So
+the _rising_ we are talking about is evidently not that probable or
+improbable _upheaval._ On the other hand all geologists tell us that
+every mountain is undergoing a steady _lowering_ through its
+particles being weathered away and washed down; and our
+knowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain,
+so far from rising, is _descending._ Of course we all know that,
+objects the Reader, and of course nobody imagines that the rock and
+the earth of the mountain is rising, or that the mountain is getting up
+or growing taller! All we mean is that the mountain _looks_ as if it
+were rising.
+
+The mountain _looks!_ Surely here is a case of putting the cart
+before the horse. No; we cannot explain the mountain _rising_ by
+the mountain _looking,_ for the only _looking_ in the business is
+_our_ looking _at_ the mountain. And if the Reader objects again
+that these are all _figures of speech,_ I shall answer that _Empathy_
+is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and
+occasionally employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain,
+when we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen
+expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. Very well; then,
+(says the Reader) we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely:
+when we look at the mountain _we somehow or other think of the
+action of rising._ Is that sufficiently literal and indisputable?
+
+So literal and indisputable a statement of the case, I answer, that it
+explains, when we come to examine it, why we have said that the
+mountain rises. For if the Reader remembers my chapter on
+shape-perception, he will have no difficulty in answering why we should
+have a thought of rising when we look at the mountain, since we
+cannot look at the mountain, nor at a tree, a tower or anything of
+which we similarly say that it _rises,_ without lifting our glance,
+raising our eye and probably raising our head and neck, all of which
+raising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something
+_rising._ The rising of which we are aware is going on in us. But, as
+the Reader will remember also, when we are engrossed by
+something outside ourselves, as we are engrossed in looking at the
+shape (for we can _look_ at only the shape, not the _substance)_ of
+that mountain we cease thinking about ourselves, and cease thinking
+about ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the
+mountain's shape. What becomes therefore of our awareness of
+raising or lifting or _rising?_ What can become of it (so long as it
+continues to be there!) except that it coalesces with the shape we are
+looking at; in short that the _rising_ continuing to be thought, but no
+longer to be thought of with reference to ourselves (since we aren't
+thinking of ourselves), is thought of in reference to what we _are_
+thinking about, namely the mountain, or rather the mountain's shape,
+which is, so to speak, responsible for any thought of rising, since it
+obliges us to lift, raise or rise ourselves in order to take stock of
+it. It is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done
+by our eye to the line of which we say that it _extends_ from A to B,
+when in reality the only _extending_ has been the extending of our
+glance. It is a case of what I have called the tendency to merge the
+_activities_ of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the
+perceived object. Indeed if I insisted so much upon this tendency of
+our mind, I did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the
+phenomenon of _Empathy,_ as we have just seen it exemplified in
+the _mountain which rises._
+
+If this is Empathy, says the Reader (relieved and reassured), am I to
+understand that Empathy is nothing beyond _attributing what goes
+on in us when we look at a shape to the shape itself?_
+
+I am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple! If what we
+attributed to each single shape was only the precise action which we
+happen to be accomplishing in the process of looking at it, Empathy
+would indeed be a simple business, but it would also be a
+comparatively poor one. No. The _rising_ of the mountain is an idea
+started by the awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes,
+head or neck, and it is an idea containing the awareness of that
+lifting or raising. But it is far more than the idea merely of that
+lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present
+moment and in connexion with this particular mountain. That
+present and particular raising and lifting is merely the nucleus to
+which gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of raising, or
+_rising._ which we have ever accomplished or seen accomplished,
+_raising_ or _rising_ not only of our eyes and head, but of every
+other part of our body, and of every part of every other body which
+we ever perceived to be rising. And not merely the thought of past
+_rising_ but the thought also of future rising. All these risings, done
+by ourselves or watched in others, actually experienced or merely
+imagined, have long since united together in our mind, constituting a
+sort of composite photograph whence all differences are eliminated
+and wherein all similarities are fused and intensified: the general
+idea of _rising,_ not "I rise, rose, will rise, it rises, has risen or will
+rise" but merely _rising as_ such, _rising_ as it is expressed not in
+any particular tense or person of the verb _to rise,_ but in that verb's
+infinitive. It is this universally applicable notion of rising, which is
+started in our mind by the awareness of the particular present acts of
+raising or rising involved in our looking at that mountain, and it is
+this general idea of rising, _i.e._ of _upward movement,_ which gets
+transferred to the mountain along with our own particular present
+activity of raising some part of us, and which thickens and enriches
+and marks that poor little thought of a definite raising with the
+interest, the emotional fullness gathered and stored up in its long
+manifold existence. In other words: what we are transferring (owing
+to that tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving subject
+with the qualities of the perceived object) from ourselves to the
+looked at shape of the mountain, is not merely the thought of the
+rising which is really being done by us at that moment, but the
+thought and emotion, the _idea of rising as such_ which had been
+accumulating in our mind long before we ever came into the
+presence of that particular mountain. And it is this complex mental
+process, by which we (all unsuspectingly) invest that inert mountain,
+that bodiless shape, with the stored up and averaged and essential
+modes of our activity--it is this process whereby we make the
+mountain _raise itself,_ which constitutes what, accepting Prof.
+Titchener's translation[*] of the German word _Einfühlung,_ I have
+called Empathy.
+
+[*] From _en_ and _pascho, epathon_.
+
+The German word _Einfühlung_ "feeling into"--derived from a
+_verb to feel oneself into something_ ("sich in Etwas ein fühlen")
+was in current use even before Lotze and Viscber applied it to
+aesthetics, and some years before Lipps (1897) and Wundt (1903)
+adopted it into psychological terminology; and as it is now
+consecrated, and no better occurs to me, I have had to adopt it,
+although the literal connotations of the German word have
+surrounded its central meaning (as I have just defined it) with
+several mischievous misinterpretations. Against two of these I think
+it worth while to warn the Reader, especially as, while so doing, I
+can, in showing what it is not, make it even clearer what Empathy
+really is. The first of these two main misinterpretations is based
+upon the reflexive form of the German verb "_sich einfühlen_" (to
+feel _oneself_ into) and it defines, or rather does not define,
+Empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the
+ego into the object or shape under observation; a notion
+incompatible with the fact that Empathy, being only another of those
+various mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the
+qualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already dealt,
+depends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought
+of an ego; if we became aware that it is _we_ who are thinking the
+rising, we who are _feeling_ the rising, we should not think or feel
+that the mountain did the rising. The other (and as we shall later see)
+more justifiable misinterpretation of the word Empathy is based on
+its analogy with _sympathy,_ and turns it into a kind of sympathetic,
+or as it has been called, _inner, i.e._ merely _felt, mimicry_ of, for
+instance, the mountain's _rising._ Such mimicry, not only _inner_
+and _felt,_ but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result
+from very lively _empathic_ imagination. But as it is the mimicking,
+inner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the _rising_ of
+the mountain, take place only in our imagination, it presupposes
+such previous animation of the inanimate, and cannot therefore be
+taken either as constituting or explaining Empathy itself.
+
+Such as I have defined and exemplified it in our Rising Mountain,
+Empathy is, together with mere Sensation, probably the chief factor
+of preference, that is of an alternative of satisfaction and
+dissatisfaction, in aesthetic contemplation, the muscular adjustments
+and the measuring, comparing and coordinating activities by which
+Empathy is started, being indeed occasionally difficult and
+distressing, but giving in themselves little more than a negative
+satisfaction, at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense
+relieved. But although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation
+of shapes, Empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental
+life. It is, indeed, one of our simpler, though far from absolutely
+elementary, psychological processes, entering into what is called
+imagination, sympathy, and also into that inference from our own
+inner experience which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer
+world, and given to the intermittent and heterogeneous sensations
+received from without the framework of our constant and highly
+unified inner experience, that is to say, of our own activities and
+aims. Empathy can be traced in all of modes of speech and thought,
+particularly in the universal attribution of _doing_ and _having_ and
+_tending_ where all we can really assert is successive and varied
+_being._ Science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic
+implications of _Force_ and _Energy, Attraction_ and _Repulsion_;
+and philosophy has reduced _Cause_ and _Effect_ from implying
+intention and effort to meaning mere constant succession. But
+Empathy still helps us to many valuable analogies; and it is possible
+that without its constantly checked but constantly renewed action,
+human thought would be without logical cogency, as it certainly
+would be without poetical charm. Indeed if Empathy is so recent a
+discovery, this may be due to its being part and parcel of our
+thinking; so that we are surprised to learn its existence, as Molière's
+good man was to hear that be talked prose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MOVEMENT OF LINES
+
+ANY tendency to Empathy is perpetually being checked by the need
+for practical thinking. We are made to think in the most summary
+fashion from one to another of those grouped possibilities, past,
+present and future, which we call a Thing; and in such discursive
+thinking we not only leave far behind the _aspect,_ the shape, which
+has started a given scheme of Empathy, a given _movement of
+lines,_ but we are often faced by facts which utterly contradict it.
+When, instead of looking at a particular _aspect_ of that mountain,
+we set to climbing it ourselves, the mountain ceases to "rise"; it
+becomes passive to the activity which our muscular sensations and
+our difficulty of breathing locate most unmistakably in ourselves.
+Besides which, in thus dealing with the mountain as a _thing,_ we
+are presented with a series of totally different aspects or shapes,
+some of which suggest empathic activities totally different from that
+of rising. And the mountain in question, seen from one double its
+height, will suggest the empathic activity of _spreading itself out._
+Moreover practical life hustles us into a succession of more and
+more summary perceptions; we do not actually see more than is
+necessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with
+and the adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is,
+as to what it is likely to become. And this which is true of seeing
+with the bodily eye, is even more so of seeing, or rather _not_ seeing
+but _recognising,_ with the eye of the spirit. The practical man on
+the hill, and his scientific companion, (who is merely, so to speak, a
+man _unpractically_ concerned with practical causes and changes)
+do not thoroughly see the shapes of the landscape before them; and
+still less do they see the precise shape of the funiculars, tramways,
+offices, cheques, volcanoes, ice-caps and prehistoric inhabitants of
+their thoughts. There is not much chance of Empathy and Empathy's
+pleasures and pains in their lightning-speed, touch-and-go visions!
+
+But now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically
+contemplative fellow-traveller. And, for simplicity's sake, let us
+imagine him contemplating more especially one shape in that
+landscape, the shape of that distant mountain, the one whose
+"rising"--came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it. The
+mountain is so far off that its detail is entirely lost; all we can see is
+a narrow and pointed cone, perhaps a little _toppling_ to one side, of
+uniform hyacinth blue _detaching_ itself from the clear evening sky,
+into which, from the paler misty blue of the plain, it _rises,_ a mere
+bodiless shape. It _rises._ There is at present no doubt about its
+_rising._ It rises and keeps on rising, never stopping unless _we_
+stop looking at it. It rises and never _has_ risen. Its drama of two
+lines _striving_ (one with more suddenness of energy and purpose
+than the other) to _arrive_ at a particular imaginary point in the sky,
+_arresting_ each other's _progress_ as they _meet_ in their
+_endeavour,_ this simplest empathic action of an irregular and by no
+means rectilinear triangle, goes on repeating itself, like the parabola
+of a steadily spirting fountain: for ever accomplishing itself anew
+and for ever accompanied by the same effect on the feelings of the
+beholder.
+
+It is this reiterative nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness,
+gives Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have
+tried to make clear to the Reader, is due not only to the movements
+which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to
+present movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and
+facility and their accompanying intentions; it is due at least as much
+to our accumulated and averaged past experience of movements of
+the same kind, also with _their_ cognate various modes of speed,
+intensity, facility, and _their_ accompanying intentions. And being
+thus residual averaged, and essential, this empathic movement, this
+movement attributed to the lines of a shape, is not clogged and
+inhibited by whatever clogs and inhibits each separate concrete
+experience of the kind; still less is it overshadowed in our awareness
+by the _result_ which we foresee as goal of our real active
+proceedings. For unless they involve bodily or mental strain, our
+real and therefore transient movements do not affect us as pleasant
+or unpleasant, because our attention is always outrunning them to
+some momentary goal; and the faint awareness of them is usually
+mixed up with other items, sensations and perceptions, of wholly
+different characters. Thus, in themselves and apart from their aims,
+our bodily movements are never interesting except inasmuch as
+requiring new and difficult adjustments, or again as producing
+perceptible repercussions in our circulatory, breathing and balancing
+apparatus: a waltz, or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly
+exciting, thanks to its resultant organic perturbations and its
+concomitants of overcome difficulty and danger, but even a dancing
+dervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the
+specific interest of movement as movement. Yet every movement
+which we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of
+vital economy, a change in our balance of bodily and mental
+expenditure and replenishment; and this, if brought to our awareness,
+is not only interesting, but interesting in the sense either of pleasure
+or displeasure, since it implies the more or less furtherance or
+hindrance of our life-processes. Now it is this complete awareness,
+this brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes, in our various
+and variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as _energy_
+and _intention,_ it is this sense of the _values of movement_ which
+Empathy, by its schematic simplicity and its reiteration, is able to
+reinstate. The contemplation, that is to say the _isolating and
+reiterating perception,_ of shapes and in so far of the qualities and
+relations of movement which Empathy invests them with, therefore
+shields our dynamic sense from all competing interests, clears it
+from all varying and irrelevant concomitants, gives it, as Faust
+would have done to the instant of happiness, a sufficient duration;
+and reinstating it in the centre of our consciousness, allows it to add
+the utmost it can to our satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
+
+Hence the mysterious importance, the attraction or repulsion,
+possessed by shapes, audible as well as visible, according to their
+empathic character; movement and energy, all that we feel as being
+life, is furnished by them in its essence and allowed to fill our
+consciousness. This fact explains also another phenomenon, which
+in its turn greatly adds to the power of that very Empathy of which it
+is a result. I am speaking once more of that phenomenon called
+_Inner Mimicry_ which certain observers, themselves highly subject
+to it, have indeed considered as Empathy's explanation, rather than
+its result. In the light of all I have said about the latter, it becomes
+intelligible that when empathic imagination (itself varying from
+individual to individual) happens to be united to a high degree of
+(also individually very varying) muscular responsiveness, there may
+be set up reactions, actual or incipient, _e.g._ alterations of bodily
+attitude or muscular tension which (unless indeed they withdraw
+attention from the contemplated object to our own body) will
+necessarily add to the sum of activity empathically attributed to the
+contemplated object. There are moreover individuals in whom such
+"mimetic" accompaniment consists (as is so frequently the case in
+listening to music) in changes of the bodily balance, the breathing
+and heart-beats, in which cases additional doses of satisfaction or
+dissatisfaction result from the participation of bodily functions
+themselves so provocative of comfort or discomfort. Now it is
+obvious that such mimetic accompaniments, and every other
+associative repercussion into the seat of what our fathers correctly
+called "animal spirits," would be impossible unless reiteration, the
+reiteration of repeated acts of attention, had allowed the various
+empathic significance, the various _dynamic values,_ of given
+shapes to sink so deeply into us, to become so habitual, that even a
+rapid glance (as when we perceive the upspringing lines of a
+mountain from the window of an express train) may suffice to evoke
+their familiar dynamic associations. Thus contemplation explains, so
+to speak, why contemplation may be so brief as to seem no
+contemplation at all: past repetition has made present repetition
+unnecessary, and the empathic, the dynamic scheme of any
+particular shape may go on working long after the eye is fixed on
+something else, or be started by what is scarcely a perception at all;
+we feel joy at the mere foot-fall of some beloved person, but we do
+so because he is already beloved. Thus does the reiterative character
+essential to Empathy explain how our contemplative satisfaction in
+shapes, our pleasure in the variously combined _movements of
+lines,_ irradiates even the most practical, the apparently least
+contemplative, moments and occupations of our existence.
+
+But this is not all. This reiterative character of Empathy, this fact
+that the mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or
+adding a single cubit to its stature, joined to the abstract (the
+_infinitive of the verb)_ nature of the suggested activity, together
+account for art's high impersonality and its existing, in a manner,
+_sub specie aeternitatis._ The drama of lines and curves presented
+by the humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the
+strange immortality of the youths and maidens on the _Grecian
+Urn,_ to whom Keats, as you remember, says:--
+
+"Fond lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
+Though winning near the goal. Yet, do not grieve;
+She cannot fade; though thou hast not thy bliss,
+For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair."
+
+And thus, in considering the process of Aesthetic Empathy, we find
+ourselves suddenly back at our original formula: Beautiful means
+satisfactory in contemplation, and contemplation not of Things but
+of Shapes which are only Aspects of them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CHARACTER OF SHAPES
+
+IN my example of the Rising Mountain, I have been speaking as if
+Empathy invested the shapes we look at with only one mode of
+activity at a time. This, which I have assumed for the simplicity of
+exposition, is undoubtedly true in the case either of extremely
+simple shapes requiring _few_ and homogeneous perceptive
+activities. It is true also in the case of shapes of which familiarity (as
+explained on p. 76) has made the actual perception very summary;
+for instance when, walking quickly among trees, we notice only
+what I may call their dominant empathic gesture of _thrusting_ or
+_drooping_ their branches, because habit allows us to pick out the
+most characteristic outlines. But, except in these and similar cases,
+the _movement_ with which Empathy invests shapes is a great
+deal more complex, indeed we should speak more correctly of
+movements than of movement of lines. Thus the mountain rises, and
+does nothing but rise so long as we are taking stock only of the
+relation of its top with the plain, referring its lines solely to real or
+imaginary horizontals. But if, instead of our glance making a single
+swish upwards, we look at the two sides of the mountain
+successively and compare each with the other as well as with the
+plain, our impression (and our verbal description) will be that _one
+slope goes up while the other goes down._ When the empathic
+scheme of the mountain thus ceases to be mere _rising_ and
+becomes _rising plus descending,_ the two _movements_ with
+which we have thus invested that shape will be felt as being
+interdependent; one side _goes down_ because the other has _gone
+up,_ or the movement rises _in order to_ descend. And if we look at
+a mountain chain we get a still more complex and co-ordinated
+empathic scheme, the peaks and valleys (as in my description of
+what the Man saw from his Hillside) appearing to us as a sequence
+of risings and sinkings with correlated intensities; a slope _springing
+up_ in proportion as the previously seen one _rushed down_; the
+movements of the eye, slight and sketchy in themselves, awakening
+the composite dynamic memory of all our experience of the impetus
+gained by switch-back descent. Moreover this sequence, being a
+sequence, will awaken expectation of repetition, hence sense of
+rythm; the long chain of peaks will seem to perform a dance, they
+will furl and unfurl like waves. Thus as soon as we get a
+combination of empathic _forces_ (for that is how they affect us)
+these will henceforth be in definite relation to one another. But the
+relation need not be that of mere give and take and rythmical
+cooperation. Lines meeting one another may conflict, check, deflect
+one another; or again resist each other's effort as the steady
+determination of a circumference resists, opposes a "Quos ego!" to
+the rushing impact of the spokes of a wheel-pattern. And, along with
+the empathic suggestion of the mechanical forces experienced in
+ourselves, will come the empathic suggestion of spiritual
+characteristics: the lines will have aims, intentions, desires, moods;
+their various little dramas of endeavour, victory, defeat or
+peacemaking, will, according to their dominant empathic suggestion,
+be lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or brutal;
+inexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar
+or dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief
+dynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music. But
+on the other hand there will remain innumerable emphatic
+combinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal
+classification because, as must be clearly understood, Empathy deals
+not directly with mood and emotion, but with dynamic conditions
+which enter into moods and emotions and take their names from
+them. Be this as it may, and definable or not in terms of human
+feeling, these various and variously combined (into coordinate
+scenes and acts) dramas enacted by lines and curves and angles, take
+place not in the marble or pigment embodying those contemplated
+shapes, but solely in ourselves, in what we call our memory,
+imagination and feeling. Ours are the energy, the effort, the victory
+or the peace and cooperation; and all the manifold modes of
+swiftness or gravity, arduousness or ease, with which their every
+minutest dynamic detail is fraught. And since we are their only real
+actors, these empathic dramas of lines are bound to affect us, either
+as corroborating or as thwarting our vital needs and habits; either as
+making our felt life easier or more difficult, that is to say as bringing
+us peace and joy, or depression and exasperation.
+
+Quite apart therefore from the convenience or not of the adjustments
+requisite for their ocular measurement, and apart even from the
+facility or difficulty of comparing and coordinating these
+measurements, certain shapes and elements of shape are made
+welcome to us, and other ones made unwelcome, by the sole
+working of Empathy, which identifies the modes of being and
+moving of lines with our own. For this reason meetings of lines
+which affect us as neither victory nor honourable submission nor
+willing cooperation are felt to be ineffectual and foolish. Lines also
+(like those of insufficiently tapered Doric columns) which do not
+_rise with enough impetus_ because they do not seem _to start with
+sufficient pressure at the base;_ oblique lines (as in certain imitation
+Gothic) which _lose their balance_ for lack of a countervailing
+_thrust_ against them, all these, and alas many hundreds of other
+possible combinations, are detestable to our feelings. And similarly
+we are fussed and bored by the tentative lines, the uncoordinated
+directions and impacts, of inferior, even if technically expert and
+realistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm
+at first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but
+reveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as
+movement, their utter empathic nullity. Indeed, if we analyse the
+censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of
+material instability, or on wrong perspective or anatomical "out of
+drawing" we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really
+that of empathic un-satisfactoriness, which escapes verbal detection
+but is revealed by the finger _following,_ as we say (and that is
+itself an instance of empathy) the movement, the development of,
+boring or fussing lines.
+
+Empathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with
+regard to shape, but also those particular degrees of liking which are
+matters of personal temperament and even of momentary mood
+(_cf_. p. 131). Thus Mantegna, with his preponderance of
+horizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and
+reassuring, but repel another beholder (or the same in a different
+mood) as dull and lifeless; while the unstable equilibrium and
+syncopated rythm of Botticelli may either fascinate or repel as
+morbidly excited. And Leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced
+circles will merely baffle (the "enigmatic" quality we hear so much
+of) the perfunctory beholder, while rewarding more adequate
+empathic imagination by allowing us to live, for a while, in the
+modes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious
+energy.
+
+Intensity and purposefulness and harmony. These are what everyday
+life affords but rarely to our longings. And this is what, thanks to
+this strange process of Empathy, a few inches of painted canvas, will
+sometimes allow us to realise completely and uninterruptedly. And
+it is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment, but mere
+psychological fact, to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles
+of a Byzantine floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation,
+this is because the modes of being which we are obliged to invest
+them with are such as we vainly seek, or experience only to lose, in
+our scattered or hustled existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FROM THE SHAPE TO THE THING
+
+SUCH are the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, impersonal and
+unpractical, we can receive, or in reality, give ourselves, in the
+contemplation of shape.
+
+But life has little leisure for contemplation; it demands
+_recognition,_ inference and readiness for active adaptation. Or
+rather life forces us to deal with shapes mainly inasmuch as they
+indicate the actual or possible existence of other groups of qualities
+which may help or hurt us. Life hurries us into recognising
+_Things._
+
+Now the first peculiarity distinguishing _things_ from _shapes_ is
+_that they can occupy more or less cubic space:_ we can hit up
+against them, displace them or be displaced by them, and in such
+process of displacing or resisting displacement, we become aware of
+two other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes: they have
+_weight_ in varying degrees and _texture_ of various sorts.
+Otherwise expressed, things have _body,_ they exist in three
+dimensional space; while _shapes_ although they are often aspects
+of things (say statues or vases) having body and cubic existence,
+shapes _as_ shapes are two dimensional and bodiless.
+
+So many of the critical applications of aesthetic, as well as of the
+historical problems of art-evolution are connected with this fact or
+rather the continued misunderstanding of it, that it is well to remind
+the Reader of what general Psychology can teach us of the
+perception of the Third Dimension. A very slight knowledge of
+cubic existence, in the sense of _relief,_ is undoubtedly furnished as
+the stereoscope furnishes it, by the inevitable slight divergence
+between the two eyes; an even more infinitesimal dose of such
+knowledge is claimed for the surfaces of each eye separately. But
+whatever notions of three-dimensional space might have been
+developed from such rudiments, the perception of cubic existence
+which we actually possess and employ, is undeniably based upon the
+incomparably more important data afforded by locomotion, under
+which term I include even the tiny pressure of a finger against a
+surface, and the exploration of a hollow tooth by the tip of the
+tongue. The muscular adjustments made in such locomotion become
+associated by repetition with the two-dimensional arrangements of
+colour and light revealed by the eye, the two-dimensional being thus
+turned into the three-dimensional in our everyday experience. But
+the mistakes we occasionally make, for instance taking a road seen
+from above for a church-tower projecting out of the plain, or the
+perspective of a mountain range for its cubic shape, occasionally
+reveal that we do not really _see_ three-dimensional objects, but
+merely _infer_ them by connecting visual data with the result of
+locomotor experience. The truth of this commonplace of psychology
+can be tested by the experiment of making now one, now the other,
+colour of a floor pattern seem convex or concave according as we
+think of it as a light flower on a dark ground, or as a white cavity
+banked in by a dark ridge. And when the philistine (who may be you
+or me!) exclaims against the "out of drawing" and false perspective
+of unfamiliar styles of painting, he is, nine times out of ten, merely
+expressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as
+"representing" three-dimensional things; so far proving that we do
+not decipher the cubic relations of a picture until we have guessed
+what that picture is supposed to stand for. And this is my reason for
+saying that visible shapes, though they may be aspects of cubic
+objects, have no body; and that the thought of their volume, their
+weight and their texture, is due to an interruption of our
+contemplation of shape by an excursion among the recollections of
+qualities which shapes, _as_ shapes, cannot possess.
+
+And here I would forestall the Reader's objection that the feeling of
+effort and resistance, essential to all our empathic dealings with
+two-dimensional shapes, must, after all, be due to _weight,_ which we
+have just described as a quality shapes cannot possess. My answer is
+that Empathy has extracted and schematised effort and resistance by
+the elimination of the thought of weight, as by the elimination of the
+awareness of our bodily tensions; and that it is just this elimination
+of all incompatible qualities which allows us to attribute activities to
+those two-dimensional shapes, and to feel these activities, with a
+vividness undiminished by the thought of any other circumstances.
+
+With cubic existence (and its correlative three-dimensional
+space), with weight and texture we have therefore got from the
+contemplated shape to a thought alien to that shape and its
+contemplation. The thought, to which life and its needs and dangers
+has given precedence over every other: What _Thing_ is behind this
+shape, what qualities must be inferred from this _aspect?_ After the
+possibility of occupying so much space, the most important quality
+which things can have for our hopes and fears, is _the possibility of
+altering their occupation of space;_ not our locomotion, but _theirs._
+I call it _locomotion_ rather than _movement,_ because we have
+_direct_ experience only of our own movements, and _infer_ similar
+movement in other beings and objects because of their change of
+place either across our motionless eye or across some other object
+whose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged. I call it
+_locomotion_ also to accentuate its difference from the _movement_
+attributed to the shape of the Rising Mountain, movement _felt_ by
+us to be going on but not expected to result in any change of the
+mountain's space relations, which are precisely what would be
+altered by the mountain's _locomotion._
+
+The _practical_ question about a shape is therefore: Does it warrant
+the inference of a _thing_ able to change its position in
+three-dimensional space? to advance or recede from us? And if so in
+what manner? Will it, like a loose stone, fall upon us? like flame, rise
+towards us? like water, spread over us? Or will it change its place
+only if _we_ supply the necessary _locomotion?_ Briefly: is the
+thing of which we see the shape inert or active? And if this shape
+belongs to a thing possessing activity of its own, is its locomotion of
+that slow regular kind we call the growth and spreading of plants?
+Or of the sudden, wilful kind we know in animals and men? What
+does this shape tell us of such more formidable locomotion? Are
+these details of curve and colour to be interpreted into jointed limbs,
+can the _thing_ fling out laterally, run after us, can it catch and
+swallow us? Or is it such that _we_ can do thus by it? Does this
+shape suggest the thing's possession of desires and purposes which
+we can deal with? And if so, _why is it where it is?_ Whence does it
+come? What is it going to do? What is it _thinking_ of (if it can
+think)? How will it _feel_ towards us (if it can feel)? What would it
+say (if it could speak)? What will be its future and what may have
+been its past? To sum all up: What does the presence of this shape
+lead us to think and do and feel?
+
+Such are a few of the thoughts started by that shape and the
+possibility of its belonging to a thing. And even when, as we shall
+sometimes find, they continually return back to the shape and play
+round and round it in centrifugal and centripetal alternations, yet all
+these thoughts are excursions, however brief, from the world of
+definite unchanging shapes into that of various and ever varying
+things; interruptions, even if (as we shall later see) intensifying
+interruptions, of that concentrated and coordinated contemplation of
+shapes, with which we have hitherto dealt. And these excursions,
+and a great many more, from the world of shapes into that of things,
+are what we shall deal with, when we come to Art, under the
+heading of _representation_ and _suggestion,_ or, as is usually said,
+of _subject_ and _expression_ as opposed to _form._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FROM THE THING TO THE SHAPE
+
+THE necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the
+Shape to the Thing, from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and
+practical thinking. But, as the foregoing chapter itself suggests, the
+real order of precedence, both for the individual and the race, is
+inevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest
+in things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in
+shapes.
+
+Indeed, considering the imperative need for an ever abbreviated and
+often automatic system of human reactions to sense data, it is by no
+means easy to understand (and the problem has therefore been
+utterly neglected) how mankind ever came to evolve any process as
+lengthy and complicated as that form-contemplation upon which all
+aesthetic preference depends. I will hazard the suggestion that
+familiarity with shapes took its original evolutional utility, as well as
+its origin, from the dangers of over rapid and uncritical inference
+concerning the qualities of things and man's proper reactions
+towards them. It was necessary, no doubt, that the roughest
+suggestion of a bear's growl and a bear's outline should send our
+earliest ancestors into their sheltering caves. But the occasional
+discovery that the bear was not a bear but some more harmless
+and edible animal must have brought about a comparison, a
+discrimination between the visible aspects of the two beasts, and a
+mental storage of their difference in shape, gait and colour.
+Similarly the deluding resemblance between poisonous and
+nutritious fruits and roots, would result, as the resemblance between
+the nurse's finger and nipple results with the infant, in attention to
+visible details, until the acquisition of vivid mental images became
+the chief item of the savage man's education, as it still is of the
+self-education of the modern child. This evolution of interest in visible
+aspects would of course increase tenfold as soon as mankind took to
+making things whose usefulness (_i.e._ their still non-existent
+qualities) might be jeopardised by a mistake concerning their shape.
+For long after _over_ and _under, straight_ and _oblique, right_ and
+_left,_ had become habitual perceptions in dealing with food and
+fuel, the effective aim of a stone, the satisfactory flight of an arrow,
+would be discovered to depend upon more or less of what we call
+horizontals and perpendiculars, curves and angles; and the stability
+of a fibrous tissue upon the intervals of crossing and recrossing, the
+rythmical or symmetrical arrangements revealed by the hand or eye.
+In short, _making,_ being inevitably _shaping,_ would have
+developed a more and more accurate perception and recollection of
+every detail of shape. And not only would there arise a comparison
+between one shape and another shape, but between the shape
+actually under one's eyes and the shape no longer present, between
+the shape as it really was and the shape as it ought to be. Thus in the
+very course of practical making of things there would come to be
+little interludes, recognised as useful, first of more and more
+careful looking and comparing, and then of real contemplation:
+contemplation of the arrow-head you were chipping, of the mat
+you were weaving, of the pot you were rubbing into shape;
+contemplation also of the _other_ arrow-head or mat or pot existing
+only in your wishes; of the shape you were trying to obtain with a
+premonitory emotion of the effect which its peculiarities would
+produce when once made visible to your eye! For the man cutting
+the arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with
+the appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual
+arrow-heads or mats of the same type, _would become aware of the
+different effect which such shapes had on the person who looked at
+them._ Some of these shapes would be so dull, increasing the
+tediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand;
+others so alert, entertaining and likeable, as if they were helping in
+the work; others, although equally compatible with utility, fussing or
+distressing one, never doing what one expected their lines and
+curves to do. To these suppositions I would add a few more
+suggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of
+man's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of "Things." The
+handicraftsman, armourer, weaver, or potter, benefits by his own
+and his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more
+adapted for use and wear, and which way to set about producing it;
+his technical skill becomes half automatic, so that his eye and mind,
+acting as mere overseers to his muscles, have plenty of time for
+contemplation so long as everything goes right and no new moves
+have to be made. And once the handicraftsman contemplates the
+shape as it issues from his fingers, his mind will be gripped by that
+liking or disliking expressed by the words "beautiful" and "ugly."
+Neither is this all. The owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of
+tissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its
+usefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill
+or strength required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn
+from a slave into a comrade. It is furbished or mended, displayed to
+others, boasted over, perhaps sung over as Alan Breck sang over his
+sword. The owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the
+owner!) caresses its shape; and its shape, all its well-known
+ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs, haunts the memory, ready to start into
+vividness whenever similar objects come under comparison. Now
+what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of
+civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and
+easily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use
+offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention
+which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this
+normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which
+explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects
+have acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling that of things.
+
+I therefore commend to the Reader the now somewhat unfashionable
+hypothesis of Semper and his school, according to which the first
+preference for beauty of shape must be sought for in those arts
+like stone and metal work, pottery and weaving, which give
+opportunities for repetition, reduplication, hence rythm and
+symmetry, and whose material and technique produce what are
+called geometric patterns, meaning such as exist in two dimensions
+and do not imitate the shapes of real objects. This theory has been
+discredited by the discovery that very primitive and savage mankind
+possessed a kind of art of totally different nature, and which analogy
+with that of children suggests as earlier than that of pattern: the art
+which the ingenious hypothesis of Mr Henry Balfour derives from
+recognition of accidental resemblances between the shapes and
+stains of wood or stone and such creatures and objects as happen to
+be uppermost in the mind of the observer, who cuts or paints
+whatever may be needed to complete the likeness and enable others
+to perceive the suggestion. Whether or not this was its origin, there
+seems to have existed in earliest times such an art of a strictly
+representative kind, serving (like the spontaneous art of children) to
+evoke the idea of whatever was interesting to the craftsman and his
+clients, and doubtless practically to have some desirable magic
+effect upon the realities of things. But (to return to the hypothesis of
+the aesthetic primacy of geometric and non-representative art) it is
+certain that although such early representations occasionally attain
+marvellous life-likeness and anatomical correctness, yet they do not
+at first show any corresponding care for symmetrical and rythmical
+arrangement. The bisons and wild boars, for instance, of the
+Altamira cave frescoes, do indeed display vigour and beauty in the
+lines constituting them, proving that successful dealing with shape,
+even if appealing only to practical interest, inevitably calls forth the
+empathic imagination of the more gifted artists; but these
+marvellously drawn figures are all huddled together or scattered as
+out of a rag-bag; and, what is still more significant, they lack that
+insistence on the feet which not only suggests ground beneath them
+but, in so doing, furnishes a horizontal by which to start, measure
+and take the bearings of all other lines. These astonishing
+palaeolithic artists (and indeed the very earliest Egyptian and Greek
+ones) seem to have thought only of the living models and their
+present and future movements, and to have cared as little for lines
+and angles as the modern children whose drawings have been
+instructively compared with theirs by Levinstein and others. I
+therefore venture to suggest that such aesthetically essential
+attention to direction and composition must have been applied to
+representative art when its realistic figures were gradually
+incorporated into the patterns of the weaver and the potter. Such
+"stylisation" is still described by art historians as a "degeneration"
+due to unintelligent repetition; but it was on the contrary the
+integrating process by which the representative element was
+subjected to such aesthetic preferences as had been established in
+the manufacture of objects whose usefulness or whose production
+involved accurate measurement and equilibrium as in the case of
+pottery or weapons, or rythmical reduplication as in that of textiles.
+
+Be this question as it may (and the increasing study of the origin and
+evolution of human faculties will some day settle it!) we already
+know enough to affirm that while in the very earliest art the
+shape-element and the element of representation are usually separate, the
+two get gradually combined as civilisation advances, and the shapes
+originally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions (hence as
+magical equivalents) or things, and employed for religious,
+recording, or self-expressive purposes, become subjected to
+selection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable
+perceptive and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to
+agreeable ones. Nay the whole subsequent history of painting and
+sculpture could be formulated as the perpetual starting up of new
+representative interests, new interests in _things,_ their spatial
+existence, locomotion, anatomy, their reaction to light, and also their
+psychological and dramatic possibilities; and the subordination of
+these ever-changing interests in things to the unchanging habit of
+arranging visible shapes so as to diminish opportunities for the
+contemplative dissatisfaction and increase opportunities for the
+contemplative satisfaction to which we attach the respective names
+of "ugly" and "beautiful."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE AIMS OF ART
+
+WE have thus at last got to Art, which the Reader may have
+expected to be dealt with at the outset of a primer on the Beautiful.
+
+Why this could not be the case, will be more and more apparent in
+my remaining chapters. And, in order to make those coming
+chapters easier to grasp, I may as well forestall and tabulate the
+views they embody upon the relation between the Beautiful and Art.
+These generalisations are as follows:
+
+Although it is historically probable that the habit of avoiding
+ugliness and seeking beauty of shape may have been originally
+established by utilitarian attention to the non-imitative
+("geometrical") shapes of weaving, pottery and implement-making,
+and transferred from these crafts to the shapes intended to represent
+or imitate natural objects, yet the distinction between _Beautiful_
+and _Ugly_ does not belong either solely or necessarily to what we
+call _Art._ Therefore the satisfaction of the shape-perceptive or
+aesthetic preferences must not be confused with any of the many and
+various other aims and activities to which art is due and by which it
+is carried on. Conversely: although in its more developed phases,
+and after the attainment of technical facility, art has been
+differentiated from other human employment by its foreseeing the
+possibility of shape-contemplation and therefore submitting itself to
+what I have elsewhere called the _aesthetic imperative,_ yet art has
+invariably started from some desire other than that of affording
+satisfactory shape-contemplation, with the one exception of cases
+where it has been used to keep or reproduce opportunities of such
+shape contemplation already accidentally afforded by natural shapes,
+say, those of flowers or animals or landscapes, or even occasionally
+of human beings, which had already been enjoyed as beautiful. All
+art therefore, except that of children, savages, ignoramuses and
+extreme innovators, invariably avoids ugly shapes and seeks for
+beautiful ones; _but art does this while pursuing all manner of
+different aims._ These non-aesthetic aims of art may be roughly
+divided into (A) the making of useful objects ranging from clothes
+to weapons and from a pitcher to a temple; (B) the registering or
+transmitting of facts and their visualising, as in portraits, historical
+pictures or literature, and book illustration; and (C) the awakening,
+intensifying or maintaining of definite emotional states, as especially
+by music and literature, but also by painting and architecture when
+employed as "aids to devotion." And these large classes may again
+be subdivided and connected, if the Reader has a mind to, into
+utilitarian, social, ritual, sentimental, scientific and other aims, some
+of them not countenanced or not avowed by contemporary morality.
+
+How the aesthetic imperative, i.e. the necessities of satisfactory
+shape-contemplation, qualifies and deflects the pursuit of such
+non-aesthetic aims of art can be shown by comparing, for instance, the
+mere audible devices for conveying conventional meaning and
+producing and keeping up emotional conditions, viz. the hootings
+and screechings of modern industrialism no less than the ritual
+noises of savages, with the arrangements of well constituted pitch,
+rythm, tonality and harmony in which military, religious or dance
+music has disguised its non-aesthetic functions of conveying signals
+or acting on the nerves. Whatever is unnecessary for either of these
+motives (or any others) for making a noise, can be put to the account
+of the desire to avoid ugliness and enjoy beauty. But the workings of
+the aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the Art of the
+visual-representative group, and especially in painting, which allows us to
+follow the interplay of the desire to be told (or tell) _facts about
+things_ with the desire to _contemplate shapes,_ and to contemplate
+them (otherwise we should _not_ contemplate!) with sensuous,
+intellectual and empathic satisfaction.
+
+This brings us back to the Third Dimension, of which the possession
+is, as have we seen, the chief difference between _Things,_ which
+can alter their aspect in the course of their own and our actions, and
+_Shapes,_ which can only be contemplated by our bodily and mental
+eye, and neither altered nor thought of as altered without more or
+less jeopardising their identity.
+
+I daresay the Reader may not have been satisfied with the reference
+to the locomotor nature of cubic perception as sufficient justification
+of my thus connecting cubic existence with Things rather than with
+Shapes, and my implying that aesthetic preference, due to the
+sensory, intellectual and empathic factors of perception, is
+applicable only to the two other dimensions. And the Reader's
+incredulity and surprise will have been all the greater, because
+recent art-criticism has sedulously inculcated that the suggestion of
+cubic existence is the chief function of pictorial genius, and the
+realisation of such cubic existence the highest delight which pictures
+can afford to their worthy beholder. This particular notion, entirely
+opposed to the facts of visual perception and visual empathy, will
+repay discussion, inasmuch as it accidentally affords an easy
+entrance into a subject which has hitherto presented inextricable
+confusion, namely the relations of _Form_ and _Subject,_ or, as I
+have accustomed the Reader to consider them, the _contemplated
+Shape_ and the _thought-of Thing._
+
+Let us therefore examine why art-criticism should lay so great a
+stress on the suggestion and the acceptance of that suggestion, of
+three-dimensional existence in paintings. _In paintings._ For this
+alleged aesthetic desideratum ceases to be a criterion of merit when
+we come to sculpture, about which critics are more and more
+persistently teaching (and with a degree of reason) that one of the
+greatest merits of the artist, and of the greatest desiderata of the
+beholder, is precisely the reduction of real cubic existence by
+avoiding all projection beyond a unified level, that is to say by
+making a solid block of stone look as if it were a representation on a
+flat surface. This contradiction explains the origin of the theory
+giving supreme pictorial importance to the Third Dimension. For art
+criticism though at length (thanks especially to the sculptor
+Hildebrand) busying itself also with plastic art, has grown up mainly
+in connexion with painting. Now in painting the greatest scientific
+problem, and technical difficulty, has been the suggestion of
+three-dimensional existences by pigments applied to a two-dimensional
+surface; and this problem has naturally been most successfully
+handled by the artists possessing most energy and imagination, and
+equally naturally shirked or bungled or treated parrot-wise by the
+artists of less energy and imagination. And, as energy and
+imagination also show themselves in finer perception, more vivid
+empathy and more complex dealings with shapes which are only
+two-dimensional, it has come about that the efficient and original
+solutions of the cubic problem have coincided, _ceteris paribus,_
+with the production of pictures whose two-dimensional qualities
+have called forth the adjective _beautiful,_ and _beautiful_ in the
+most intense and complicated manner. Hence successful treatment
+of cubic suggestion has become an habitual (and threatens to
+become a rule-of-thumb) criterion of pictorial merit; the more so
+that qualities of two-dimensional shape, being intrinsic and specific,
+are difficult to run to ground and describe; whereas the quality of
+three-dimensional suggestion is ascertainable by mere comparison
+between the shapes in the picture and the shapes afforded by real
+things when seen in the same perspective and lighting. Most people
+can judge whether an apple in a picture "looks as if" it were solid,
+round, heavy and likely to roll off a sideboard in the same picture;
+and some people may even, when the picture has no other claims on
+their interest, experience incipient muscular contractions such as
+would eventually interfere with a real apple rolling off a real
+sideboard. Apples and sideboards offer themselves to the meanest
+experience and can be dealt with adequately in everyday language,
+whereas the precise curves and angles, the precise relations of
+directions and impacts, of parts to whole, which together make up
+the identity of a two-dimensional shape, are indeed perceived and
+felt by the attentive beholder, but not habitually analysed or set forth
+in words. Moreover the creation of two-dimensional shapes
+satisfying to contemplation depends upon two very different factors:
+on traditional experience with regard to the more general
+arrangements of lines, and on individual energy and sensitiveness,
+i.e. on genius in carrying out, and ringing changes on, such
+traditional arrangements. And the possession of tradition or genius,
+although no doubt the most important advantage of an artist,
+happens not to be one to which he can apply himself as to a problem.
+On the other hand a problem to be solved is eternally being pressed
+upon every artist; pressed on him by his clients, by the fashion of his
+time and also by his own self inasmuch as he is a man interested not
+only in _shapes_ but in _things._ And thus we are back at the fact
+that the problem given to the painter to solve by means of lines and
+colours on a flat surface, is the problem of telling us something new
+or something important about _things:_ what things are made of,
+how they will react to our doings, how they move, what they feel
+and think; and above all, I repeat it, what amount of space they
+occupy with reference to the space similarly occupied, in present or
+future, by other things including ourselves.
+
+Our enquiry into the excessive importance attributed by critics to
+pictorial suggestion of cubic existence has thus led us back to the
+conclusion contained in previous chapters, namely that beauty
+depending negatively on ease of visual perception, and positively
+upon emphatic corroboration of our dynamic habits, is a quality of
+_aspects,_ independent of cubic existence and every other possible
+quality of _things_; except in so far as the thought of
+three-dimensional, and other, qualities of things may interfere with the
+freedom and readiness of mind requisite for such highly active and
+sensitive processes as those of empathic form interpretation. But the
+following chapter will, I trust, make it clear that such interference of
+the _Thought about Things_ with the _Contemplation of Shapes_ is
+essential to the rythm of our mental life, and therefore a chief factor
+in all artistic production and appreciation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ATTENTION TO SHAPES
+
+TO explain how art in general, and any art in particular, succeeds in
+reconciling these contradictory demands, I must remind the Reader
+of what I said (p. 93) about the satisfactory or unsatisfactory
+possibilities of shapes having begun to be noticed in the moments of
+slackened attention to the processes of manufacturing the objects
+embodying those shapes, and in the intervals between practical
+employment of these more or less _shapely_ objects. And I must ask
+him to connect with these remarks a previous passage (p. 44)
+concerning the intermittent nature of normal acts of attention, and
+their alternation as constituting _on-and-off beats._ The deduction
+from these two converging statements is that, contrary to the a-priori
+theories making aesthetic contemplation an exception, a kind of
+bank holiday, to daily life, it is in reality one-half of daily life's
+natural and healthy rythm. That the real state of affairs, as revealed
+by psychological experiment and observation, should have escaped
+the notice of so many aestheticians, is probably due to their theories
+starting from artistic production rather than from aesthetic
+appreciation, without which art would after all probably never have
+come into existence.
+
+The production of the simplest work of art cannot indeed be thought
+of as one of the alternations of everyday attention, because it is a
+long, complex and repeatedly resumed process, a whole piece of life,
+including in itself hundreds and thousands of alternations of _doing_
+and _looking,_ of discursive thinking of aims and ways and means
+and of contemplation of aesthetic results. For even the humblest
+artist has to think of whatever objects or processes his work aims at
+representing, conveying or facilitating; and to think also of the
+objects, marble, wood, paints, voices, and of the processes, drawing,
+cutting, harmonic combining, by which he attempts to compass one
+of the above-mentioned results. The artist is not only an aesthetically
+appreciative person; he is, in his own way, a man of science and a
+man of practical devices, an expert, a craftsman and an engineer. To
+produce a work of art is not an interlude in his life, but his life's
+main business; and he therefore stands apart, as every busy specialist
+must, from the business of other specialists, of those ministering to
+mankind's scientific and practical interests.
+
+But while it takes days, months, sometimes years to produce a work
+of art, it may require (the process has been submitted to exact
+measurement by the stop-watch) not minutes but seconds, to take
+stock of that work of art in such manner as to carry away its every
+detail of shape, and to continue dealing with it in memory. The
+unsuspected part played by memory explains why aesthetic
+contemplation can be and normally is, an intermittent function
+alternating with practical doing and thinking. It is in memory,
+though memory dealing with what we call the present, that we
+gather up parts into wholes and turn consecutive measurements into
+simultaneous relations; and it is probably in memory that we deal
+empathically with shapes, investing their already perceived
+directions and relations with the remembered qualities of our own
+activities, aims and moods. And similarly it is thanks to memory that
+the brief and intermittent acts of aesthetic appreciation are combined
+into a network of contemplation which intermeshes with our other
+thoughts and doings, and yet remains different from them, as the
+restorative functions of life remain different from life's expenditure,
+although interwoven with them. Every Reader with any habit of
+self-observation knows how poignant an impression of beauty may be
+got, as through the window of an express train, in the intermittence
+of practical business or abstract thinking, nay even in what I have
+called the _off-beat_ of deepest personal emotion, the very stress of
+the practical, intellectual or personal instant (for the great
+happenings of life are measured in seconds!) apparently driving in
+by contrast, or conveying on its excitement, that irrelevant aesthetic
+contents of the _off-beat_ of attention. And while the practical or
+intellectual interest changes, while the personal emotion subsides,
+that aesthetic impression remains; remains or recurs, united, through
+every intermittence, by the feeling of identity, that identity which,
+like _the rising of the mountain,_ is due to the reiterative nature of
+shape-contemplation: the fragments of melody may be interrupted in
+our memory by all manner of other thoughts, but they will recur and
+coalesce, and recurring and coalescing, bring with them the
+particular mood which their rythms and intervals have awakened in
+us and awaken once more.
+
+That diagrammatic Man on the Hill in reality _thought away_ from
+the landscape quite as much as his practical and scientific
+companions; what he did, and they did not, was to think _back_ to it;
+and think back to it always with the same references of lines and
+angles, the same relations of directions and impacts, of parts and
+wholes. And perhaps the restorative, the healing quality of aesthetic
+contemplation is due, in large part, to the fact that, in the perpetual
+flux of action and thought, it represents reiteration and therefore
+stability.
+
+Be that as it may, the intermittent but recurrent character of shape
+contemplation, the fact that it is inconceivably brief and amazingly
+repetitive, that it has the essential quality of identity because of
+reiteration, all this explains also two chief points of our subject. First:
+how an aesthetic impression, intentionally or accidentally conveyed
+in the course of wholly different interests, can become a constant
+accompaniment to the shifting preoccupations of existence, like the
+remembered songs which sing themselves silently in our mind and
+the remembered landscapes becoming an intangible background to
+our ever-varying thoughts. And, secondly, it explains how art can
+fulfil the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things
+while satisfying the imperious unchanging demands of the
+contemplated preference for beautiful aspects. And thus we return to
+my starting-point in dealing with art: that art is conditioned by the
+desire for beauty while pursuing entirely different aims, and
+executing any one of a variety of wholly independent non-aesthetic
+tasks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+INFORMATION ABOUT THINGS
+
+AMONG the facts which Painting is set to tell us about things, the
+most important, after cubic existence, is Locomotion. Indeed in the
+development of the race as well as in that of the individual, pictorial
+attention to locomotion seems to precede attention to cubic existence.
+For when the palaeolithic, or the Egyptian draughtsman, or even the
+Sixth Century Greek, unites profile legs and head with a full-face
+chest; and when the modern child supplements the insufficiently
+projecting full-face nose by a profile nose tacked on where we
+expect the ear, we are apt to think that these mistakes are due to
+indifference to the cubic nature of things. The reverse is, however,
+the case. The primitive draughtsman and the child are recording
+impressions received in the course of the locomotion either of the
+thing looked at or of the spectator. When they unite whatever
+consecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest
+to copy, they are in the clutches of their cubic experience, and what
+they are indifferent about, perhaps unconscious of, is the
+_two-dimensional_ appearance which a body presents when its parts are
+seen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view. The
+progress of painting is always from representing the Consecutive to
+representing the Simultaneous; perspective, foreshortening, and later,
+light and shade, being the scientific and technical means towards
+this end.
+
+Upon our knowledge of the precise stage of such pictorial
+development depends our correct recognition of what things, and
+particularly what spatial relations and locomotion, of things, the
+painter is intended to represent. Thus when a Byzantine
+draughtsman puts his figures in what look to us as superposed tiers,
+he is merely trying to convey their existence behind one another on
+a common level. And what we take for the elaborate contortions of
+athletes and Athenas on Sixth Century vases turns out to be nothing
+but an archaic representation of ordinary walking and running.
+
+The suggestion of locomotion depends furthermore on anatomy.
+What the figures of a painting are intended to be doing, what they
+are intended to have just done and to be going to do, in fact all
+questions about their action and business, are answered by reference
+to their bodily structure and its real or supposed possibilities. The
+same applies to expression of mood.
+
+The impassiveness of archaic Apollos is more likely to be due to
+anatomical difficulties in displacing arms and legs, than to lack of
+emotion on the part of artists who were, after all, contemporaries
+either of Sappho or Pindar. And it is more probable that the
+sculptors of Aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of
+lips and cheeks than that, having Homer by heart, they imagined his
+heroes to die silently and with a smirk.
+
+I have entered into this question of perspective and anatomy, and
+given the above examples, because they will bring home to the
+reader one of the chief principles deduced from our previous
+examination into the psychology of our subject, namely that _all
+thinking about things is thinking away from the Shapes suggesting
+those things, since it involves knowledge which the Shapes in
+themselves do not afford._ And I have insisted particularly upon the
+dependence of representations of locomotion upon knowledge of
+three-dimensional existence, because, before proceeding to the
+relations of Subject and Form in painting, I want to impress once
+more upon the reader the distinction between the _locomotion of
+things_ (locomotion active or passive) and what, in my example of
+the _mountain which rises,_ I have called the _empathic movement
+of lines._ Such _movement of lines_ we have seen to be a scheme of
+activity suggested by our own activity in taking stock of a
+two-dimensional-shape; an _idea,_ or _feeling_ of activity which we,
+being normally unaware of its origin in ourselves, project into the
+shape which has suggested it, precisely as we project our sensation
+of _red_ from our own eye and mind into the object which has
+deflected the rays of light in such a way as to give us that _red_
+sensation. Such _empathic,_ attributed, movements of lines are
+therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception
+has called them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being
+qualities of the shapes, they inevitably change with every alteration
+which a shape undergoes, every shape, actively perceived, having its
+own special _movement of lines;_ and every _movement of lines,_
+or _combination of movements of lines_ existing in proportion as
+we go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a
+quality. The case is absolutely reversed when we perceive or think
+of, the _locomotion of things._ The thought of a thing's locomotion,
+whether locomotion done by itself or inflicted by something else,
+necessitates our thinking away from the particular shape before us to
+another shape more or less different. In other words locomotion
+necessarily alters what we are looking at or thinking of. If we think
+of Michel Angelo's seated Moses as getting up, we think _away_
+from the approximately pyramidal shape of the statue to the
+elongated oblong of a standing figure. If we think of the horse of
+Marcus Aurelius as taking the next step, we think of a straightened
+leg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended in the air.
+And if we think of the Myronian Discobolus as letting go his quoit
+and "recovering," we think of the matchless spiral composition as
+unwinding and straightening itself into a shape as different as that of
+a tree is different from that of a shell.
+
+The pictorial representation of locomotion affords therefore the
+extreme example of the difference between discursive thinking
+about things and contemplation of shape. Bearing this example in
+mind we cannot fail to understand that, just as the thought of
+_locomotion_ is opposed to the thought of _movement of lines,_ so,
+in more or less degree, the thought of the objects and actions
+represented by a picture or statue, is likely to divert the mind from
+the pictorial and plastic shapes which do the representing. And we
+can also understand that the problem unconsciously dealt with by all
+art (though by no means consciously by every artist) is to execute
+the order of suggesting interesting facts about things in a manner
+such as to satisfy at the same time the aesthetic demand for shapes
+which shall be satisfactory to contemplate. Unless this demand for
+sensorially, intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be
+complied with a work of art may be interesting as a diagram, a
+record or an illustration, but once the facts have been conveyed and
+assimilated with the rest of our knowledge, there will remain a shape
+which we shall never want to lay eyes upon. I cannot repeat too
+often that the differentiating characteristic of art is that it gives its
+works a value for contemplation independent of their value for
+fact-transmission, their value as nerve-and-emotion-excitant and of their
+value for immediate, for practical, utility. This aesthetic value,
+depending upon the unchanging processes of perception and
+empathy, asserts itself in answer to every act of contemplative
+attention, and is as enduring and intrinsic as the other values are apt
+to be momentary and relative. A Greek vase with its bottom
+knocked out and with a scarce intelligible incident of obsolete
+mythology portrayed upon it, has claims upon our feelings which the
+most useful modern mechanism ceases to have even in the intervals
+of its use, and which the newspaper, crammed full of the most
+important tidings, loses as soon as we have taken in its contents.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE CO-OPERATION OF THINGS AND SHAPES
+
+DURING the Middle Ages and up to recent times the chief task of
+painting has been, ostensibly, the telling and re-telling of the same
+Scripture stories; and, incidentally, the telling them with the addition
+of constantly new items of information about _things:_ their volume,
+position, structure, locomotion, light and shade and interactions of
+texture and atmosphere; to which items must be added others of
+psychological or (pseudo)-historical kind, how it all came about, in
+what surroundings and dresses, and accompanied by what feelings.
+This task, official and unofficial, is in no way different from those
+fulfilled by the man of science and the practical man, both of whom
+are perpetually dealing with additional items of information. But
+mark the difference in the artist's way of accomplishing this task: a
+scientific fact is embodied in the progressive mass of knowledge,
+assimilated, corrected; a practical fact is taken in consideration, built
+upon; but the treatise, the newspaper or letter, once it has conveyed
+these facts, is forgotten or discarded. The work of art on the contrary
+is remembered and cherished; or at all events it is made with the
+intention of being remembered and cherished. In other words and as
+I shall never tire of repeating, the differentiating characteristic of art
+is that it makes _you think back to the shape_ once that shape has
+conveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention
+or exciting your emotions. And the first and foremost problem, for
+instance of painting, is that of preventing the beholder's eye from
+being carried, by lines of perspective, outside the frame and even
+persistently out of the centre of the picture; the sculptor (and this is
+the real reason of the sculptor Hildebrand's rules for plastic
+composition) obeying a similar necessity of keeping the beholder's
+eye upon the main masses of his statue, instead of diverting it, by
+projections at different distances, like the sticking out arms and
+hands of Roman figures. So much for the eye of the body: the
+beholder's curiosity must similarly not be carried outside the work of
+art by, for instance, an incomplete figure (legs without a body!) or
+an unfinished gesture, this being, it seems to roe, the only real
+reason against the representation of extremely rapid action and
+transitory positions. But when the task of conveying information
+implies that the beholder's thoughts be deliberately led from what is
+represented to what is not, then this centrifugal action is dealt with
+so as to produce a centripetal one back to the work of art: the painter
+suggests questions of _how_ and _why_ which get their answers in
+some item obliging you to take fresh stock of the picture. What Is
+the meaning of the angels and evidently supernatural horseman in
+the foreground of Raphael's _Heliodorus?_ Your mind flies to the
+praying High Priest in the central recess of the temple, and in going
+backwards and forwards between him, the main group and the
+scattered astonished bystanders, you are effectually enclosed within
+the arches of that marvellous composition, and induced to explore
+every detail of its lovely and noble constituent shapes.
+
+The methods employed thus to keep the beholder's attention inside
+the work of art while suggesting things beyond it, naturally vary
+with the exact nature of the non-aesthetic task which has been set to
+the artist; and with the artist's individual endowment and even more
+with the traditional artistic formulae of his country and time:
+Raphael's devices in _Heliodorus_ could not have been compassed
+by Giotto; and, on the other hand, would have been rejected as
+"academic" by Manet. But whatever the methods employed, and
+however obviously they reveal that satisfactory form-contemplation
+is the one and invariable _condition_ as distinguished from the
+innumerable varying _aims,_ of all works of art, the Reader will find
+them discussed not as methods for securing attention to the shape,
+but as methods of employing that shape for some non-aesthetic
+purpose; whether that purpose be inducing you to drink out of a cup
+by making its shape convenient or suggestive; or inducing you to
+buy a particular commodity by branding its name and virtues on
+your mind; or fixing your thoughts on the Madonna's sorrows; or
+awaking your sympathy for Isolde's love tragedy. And yet it is
+evident that the artist who shaped the cup or designed the poster
+would be horribly disappointed if you thought only of drinking or of
+shopping and never gave another look to the cup or the poster; and
+that Perugino or Wagner would have died of despair if his
+suggestion of the Madonna's sorrows or of Isolde's love-agonies had
+been so efficacious as to prevent anybody from looking twice at the
+fresco or listening to the end of the opera. This inversion of the
+question is worth inquiring into, because, like the analogous paradox
+about the pictorial "realisation" of cubic existence, it affords an
+illustration of some of the psychological intricacies of the relation
+between Art and the Beautiful. This is how I propose to explain it.
+
+The task to which an artist is set varies from one work to another,
+while the shapes employed for the purpose are, as already said,
+limited by his powers and especially by the precise moment in
+artistic evolution. The artist therefore thinks of his available shapes
+as something given, as _means,_ and the subject he is ordered to
+represent (or the emotion he is commissioned to elicit) as the
+all-important _aim._ Thus he thinks of himself (and makes the critic
+think of him) not as preventing the represented subject or expressed
+emotion from withdrawing the beholder from the artistic shapes, but,
+on the contrary, as employing these artistic shapes for the sole
+purpose of that representation or emotional expression. And this
+most explicable inversion of the real state of affairs ends by making
+the beholder believe that what _he_ cares for in a masterpiece is not
+the beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have, but the
+efficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which
+could be just as efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest
+daub or the wretchedest barrel organ! This inevitable, and I believe,
+salutary illusion of the artist, is further in creased by the fact that
+while the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and
+diminishing opportunities for ugliness, the actual beauty of the
+shapes he is creating arises from the depths of his unreasoned,
+traditional and organised consciousness, from activities which might
+be called automatic if they were not accompanied by a critical
+feeling that what is produced thus spontaneously and inevitably is
+either turning out as it must and should, or, contrariwise, insists
+upon turning out exactly as it _should not._ The particular system of
+curves and angles, of directions and impacts of lines, the particular
+"whole-and-part" scheme of, let us say, Michelangelo, is due to his
+modes of aesthetic perceiving, feeling, living, added to those of all
+the other artists whose peculiarities have been averaged in what we
+call the school whence Michelangelo issued. He can no more depart
+from these shapes than he can paint Rembrandt's Pilgrims of
+Emmaus without Rembrandt's science of light and shade and
+Rembrandt's oil-and-canvas technique. There is no alternative, hence
+no choice, hence no feeling of a problem to resolve, in this question
+of shapes to employ. But there are dozens of alternatives and of acts
+of choice, there is a whole series of problems when Michelangelo
+sets to employing these inevitable shapes to telling the Parting of the
+Light from the Darkness, or the Creation of Adam on the Vault of
+the Sixtine, and to surrounding the stories from Genesis with
+Prophets and Sibyls and Ancestors of Christ. Is the ceiling to remain
+a unity, or be broken up into irrelevant compositions? Here comes in,
+alongside of his almost automatic genius for shapes, the man's
+superhuman constructive ingenuity. See how he divides that ceiling
+in such a way that the frames of the separate compositions combine
+into a huge structure of painted rafters and brackets, nay the
+Prophets and Sibyls, the Ancestors and Ancestresses themselves,
+and the naked antique genii, turn into architectural members,
+holding that imaginary roof together, securing its seeming stability,
+increasing, by their gesture its upspring and its weightiness, and at
+the same time determining the tracks along which the eye is forced
+to travel. Backwards and forwards the eye is driven by that living
+architecture, round and round in its search now for completion of
+visible pattern, now for symbolic and narrative meaning. And ever
+back to the tale of the Creation, so that the remote historic incidents
+of the Ancestors, the tremendous and tremendously present lyric
+excitement and despair of the prophetic men and women, the pagan
+suggestion of the athletic genii, all unite like the simultaneous and
+consecutive harmonies of a titanic symphony, round the recurrent
+and dominant phrases of those central stories of how the universe
+and man were made, so that the beholder has the emotion of hearing
+not one part of the Old Testament, but the whole of it. But
+meanwhile, and similarly interchanging and multiplying their
+imaginative and emotional appeal, the thought of those most
+memorable of all written stories unites with the perception and
+empathy of those marvellous systems of living lines and curves and
+angles, throbbing with their immortal impacts and speeds and
+directions in a great coordinated movement that always begins and
+never ends, until it seems to the beholder as if those painted shapes
+were themselves the crowning work of some eighth day of Creation,
+gathering up in reposeful visible synthesis the whole of Creation's
+ineffable energy and harmony and splendour.
+
+This example of Michelangelo's ceiling shows how, thanks to the
+rythmical nature of perception, art fulfils the mission of making us
+think from Shapes to Things and from Things back to Shapes. And it
+allows us to see the workings of that psychological law, already
+manifest in the elementary relations of line to line and dot to dot, by
+which whatever can be thought and felt in continuous alternation
+tends to be turned into a whole by such reiteration of common
+activities. And this means that Art adds to its processes of selection
+and exclusion a process of _inclusion,_ safeguarding aesthetic
+contemplation by drawing whatever is not wholly refractory into
+that contemplation's orbit. This turning of non-aesthetic interests
+from possible competitors and invaders into co-operating allies is an
+incomparable multiplying factor of aesthetic satisfaction, enlarging
+the sphere of aesthetic emotion and increasing that emotion's volume
+and stability by inclusion of just those elements which would have
+competed to diminish them. The typical instance of such a possible
+competitor turned into an ally, is that of the cubic element, which I
+have described (p. 85) as the first and most constant intruder from
+the thought of _Things_ into the contemplation of _Shapes._ For the
+introduction into a picture of a suggested third dimension is what
+prevents our _thinking away from_ a merely two-dimensional aspect
+by supplying subsidiary imaginary aspects susceptible of being
+co-ordinated to it. So perspective and modelling in light and shade
+satisfy our habit of locomotion by allowing us, as the phrase is, _to
+go into_ a picture; and _going into,_ we remain there and establish
+on its imaginary planes schemes of horizontals and verticals besides
+those already existing on the real two-dimensional surface. This
+addition of shapes due to perspective increases the already existing
+dramas of empathy, instead of interrupting them by our looking
+away from the picture, which we should infallibly do if our
+exploring and so to speak _cubic-locomotor_ tendencies were not
+thus employed inside the picture's limits.
+
+This alliance of aesthetic contemplation with our interest in cubic
+existence and our constant thought of locomotion, does more
+however than merely safeguard and multiply our chances of
+empathic activity. It also increases the sensory discrimination, and
+hence pleasureableness, of colour, inasmuch as colour becomes,
+considered as light and shade and _values,_ a suggestion of
+three-dimensional _Things_ instead of merely a constituent of
+two-dimensional _Shapes._ Moreover, one easily tires of "following"
+verticals and horizontals and their intermediate directions; while
+empathic imagination, with its dynamic feelings and frequent
+semi-mimetic accompaniments, requires sufficient intervals of repose;
+and such repose, such alternation of different mental functions,
+isprecisely afforded by thinking in terms of cubic existence.
+Art-critics have often pointed out what may be called the thinness, the
+lack of _staying power,_ of pictures deficient in the cubic element;
+they ought also to have drawn attention to the fatiguing, the almost
+hallucinatory excitement, resulting from uninterrupted attention to
+two-dimensional pattern and architectural outlines, which were,
+indeed, intended to be incidentally looked at in the course of taking
+stock of the cubic qualities of furniture and buildings.
+
+And since the limits of this volume have restricted me to painting as
+a type of aesthetic contemplation, I must ask the Reader to accept on
+my authority and if possible verify for himself, the fact that what I
+have been saying applies, _mutatis mutandis,_ to the other arts. As
+we have already noticed, something analogous to a third dimension
+exists also in music; and even, as I have elsewhere shown,[*] in
+literature. The harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our
+tendency to think of other notes and particularly of other allied
+tonalities; while as to literature, the whole handling of words, indeed
+the whole of logical thinking, is but a cubic working backwards and
+forwards between _what_ and _how,_ a co-ordinating of items and
+themes, keeping the mind enclosed in one scheme of ideas by
+forestalling answers to the questions which would otherwise divert
+the attention. And if the realisation of the third dimension has come
+to be mistaken for the chief factor of aesthetic satisfaction, this error
+is due not merely to the already noticed coincidence between cubic
+imagination and artistic genius, but even more to the fact that cubic
+imagination is the type of the various multiplying factors by which
+the empathic, that is to say the essentially aesthetic, activity, can
+increase its sphere of operations, its staying power and its intensity.
+
+[*] _The Handling of Words,_ English Review, 1911-12.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AESTHETIC RESPONSIVENESS
+
+OUR examination has thus proceeded from aesthetic contemplation
+to the work of Art, which seeks to secure and satisfy it while
+furthering some of life's various other claims. We must now go back
+to aesthetic contemplation and find out how the beholder meets
+these efforts made to secure and satisfy his contemplative attention.
+For the Reader will by this time have grasped that art can do nothing
+without the collaboration of the beholder or listener; and that this
+collaboration, so far from consisting in the passive "being impressed
+by beauty" which unscientific aestheticians imagined as analogous
+to "being impressed by sensuous qualities," by hot or cold or sweet
+or sour, is in reality a combination of higher activities, second in
+complexity and intensity only to that of the artist himself.
+
+We have seen in the immediately preceding chapter that the most
+deliberate, though not the essential, part of the artist's business is to
+provide against any possible disturbance of the beholder's
+responsive activity, and of course also to increase by every means
+that output of responsive activity. But the sources of it are in the
+beholder, and beyond the control of the most ingenious artistic
+devices and the most violent artistic appeals. There is indeed no
+better proof of the active nature of aesthetic appreciation than the
+fact that such appreciation is so often not forthcoming. Even mere
+sensations, those impressions of single qualities to which we are
+most unresistingly passive, are not pleasurable without a favourable
+reaction of the body's chemistry: the same taste or smell will be
+attractive or repulsive according as we have recently eaten. And
+however indomitably colour- and sound-sensations force themselves
+upon us, our submission to them will not be accompanied by even
+the most "passive" pleasure if we are bodily or mentally out of sorts.
+How much more frequent must be lack of receptiveness when,
+instead of dealing with _sensations_ whose intensity depends after
+all two thirds upon the strength of the outer stimulation, we deal
+with _perceptions_ which include the bodily and mental activities of
+exploring a shape and establishing among its constituent sensations
+relationships both to each other and to ourselves; activities without
+which there would be for the beholder no shape at all, but
+mere ragbag chaos!--And in calculating the likelihood of a
+perceptive empathic response we must remember that such active
+shape-perception, however instantaneous as compared with the cumbrous
+processes of locomotion, nevertheless requires a perfectly
+measurable time, and requires therefore that its constituent processes
+be held in memory for comparison and coordination, quite as much
+as the similar processes by which we take stock of the relations of
+sequence of sounds. All this mental activity, less explicit but not less
+intense or complex than that of logically "following" an argument, is
+therefore such that we are by no means always able or willing to
+furnish it. Not able, because the need for practical decisions hurries
+us into that rapid inference from a minimum of perception to a
+minimum of associated experience which we call "recognising
+things," and thus out of the presence of the perfunctorily dealt with
+shapes. Not willing, because our nervous condition may be unable
+for the strain of shape perception; and our emotional bias (what we
+call our _interest)_ may be favourable to some incompatible kind of
+activity. Until quite recently (and despite Fechner's famous
+introductory experiments) aesthetics have been little more than a
+branch of metaphysical speculation, and it is only nowadays that the
+bare fact of aesthetic responsiveness is beginning to be studied. So
+far as I have myself succeeded in doing so, I think I can assure the
+Reader that if he will note down, day by day, the amount of pleasure
+he has been able to take in works of art, he will soon recognise the
+existence of aesthetic responsiveness and its highly variable nature.
+Should the same Reader develop an interest in such (often
+humiliating) examination into his own aesthetic experience, he will
+discover varieties of it which will illustrate some of the chief
+principles contained in this little book. His diary will report days
+when aesthetic appreciation has begun with the instant of entering a
+collection of pictures or statues, indeed sometimes pre-existed as he
+went through the streets noticing the unwonted charm of familiar
+objects; other days when enjoyment has come only after an effort of
+attention; others when, to paraphrase Coleridge, _he saw, not felt,
+how beautiful things are;_ and finally, through other varieties of
+aesthetic experience, days upon which only shortcomings and
+absurdities have laid hold of his attention. In the course of such
+aesthetical self-examination and confession, the Reader might also
+become acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never
+sufficiently repeated distinction between _contemplating Shapes and
+thinking about Things_; or, in ordinary aesthetic terminology
+between _form_ and _subject._ For there are days when pictures or
+statues will indeed afford pleasurable interest, but interest in the
+things _represented,_ not in the _shapes;_ a picture appealing even
+forcibly to our dramatic or religious or romantic side; or
+contrariwise, to our scientific one. There are days when he may be
+deeply moved by a Guido Reni martyrdom, or absorbed in the
+"Marriage à la Mode"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as
+in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of
+sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of
+water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion,
+the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an
+inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure,
+there may be days when the diarist will be quite delighted with a
+hideous picture, because it affords some chronological clue, or new
+point of comparison. "This _dates_ such or such a style"--"_Plein
+Air_ already attempted by a Giottesque! Degas forestalled by a Cave
+Dweller!" etc. etc. And finally days when the Diarist is haunted by
+the thought of what the represented person will do next: "Would
+Michelangelo's Jeremiah knock his head if he got up?"--"How will
+the Discobolus recover when he has let go the quoit?"--or haunted
+by thoughts even more frivolous (though not any less aesthetically
+irrelevant!) like "How wonderfully like Mrs So and So!" "The living
+image of Major Blank!"--"How I detest auburn people with
+sealing-wax lips!" _ad lib._
+
+Such different _thinkings away from the shapes_ are often traceable
+to previous orientation of the thoughts or to special states of body
+and feelings. But explicable or not in the particular case, these
+varieties of one's own aesthetic responsiveness will persuade the
+Reader who has verified their existence, that contemplative
+satisfaction in shapes and its specific emotion cannot be given by the
+greatest artist or the finest tradition, unless the beholder meets their
+efforts more than half way.
+
+The spontaneous collaboration of the beholder is especially
+indispensable for Aesthetic Empathy. As we have seen, empathic
+modes of movement and energy and intention are attributed to
+shapes and to shape elements, in consequence of the modes of
+movement and energy involved in mere shape perception; but shape
+perception does not necessarily call forth empathic imagination. And
+the larger or smaller dynamic dramas of effort, resistance,
+reconciliation, cooperation which constitute the most poignant
+interest of a pictorial or plastic composition, are inhibited by bodily
+or mental states of a contrary character. We cease to _feel_
+(although we may continue, like Coleridge, to _see_) that the lines
+of a mountain or a statue _are rising,_ if we ourselves happen to feel
+as if our feet were of lead and our joints turning to water. The
+coordinated interplay of empathic movement which makes certain
+mediaeval floor patterns, and also Leonardo's compositions, into
+whirling harmonies as of a planetary system, cannot take place in
+our imagination on days of restlessness and lack of concentration.
+Nay it may happen that arrangements of lines which would flutter
+and flurry us on days of quiet appreciativeness, will become in every
+sense "sympathetic" on days when we ourselves feel fluttered and
+flurried. But lack of responsiveness may be due to other causes. As
+there are combinations of lines which take longer to perceive
+because their elements or their coordinating principles are
+unfamiliar, so, and even more so, are there empathic schemes (or
+dramas) which baffle dynamic imagination when accustomed to
+something else and when it therefore meets the new demand with an
+unsuitable empathic response. Empathy is, even more than mere
+perception, a question of our activities and therefore of our habits;
+and the aesthetic sensitiveness of a time and country (say the
+Florentine fourteenth century) with a habit of round arch and
+horizontals like that of Pisan architecture, could never take with
+enthusiasm to the pointed ogeeval ellipse, the oblique directions and
+unstable equilibrium, the drama of touch and go strain and resistance,
+of French Gothic; whence a constant readmission of the round
+arched shapes into the imported style, and a speedy return to the
+familiar empathic schemes in the architecture of the early
+Renaissance. On the other hand the persistence of Gothic detail in
+Northern architecture of the sixteenth and occasionally the
+seventeenth century, shows how insipid the round arch and straight
+entablature must have felt to people accustomed to the empathy of
+Gothic shapes. Nothing is so routinist as imagination and emotion;
+and empathy, which partakes of both, is therefore more dependent
+on familiarity than is the perception by which it is started: Spohr,
+and the other professional contemporaries of Beethoven, probably
+heard and technically understood all the peculiarities of his last
+quartets; but they liked them none the better.
+
+On the other hand continued repetition notoriously begets
+indifference. We cease to look at a shape which we "know by heart"
+and we cease to interpret in terms of our own activities and
+intentions when curiosity and expectation no longer let loose our
+dynamic imagination. Hence while utter unfamiliarity baffles
+aesthetic responsiveness, excessive familiarity prevents its starting
+at all. Indeed both perceptive clearness and empathic intensity reach
+their climax in the case of shapes which afford the excitement of
+tracking familiarity in novelty, the stimulation of acute comparison,
+the emotional ups and downs of expectation and partial recognition,
+or of recognition when unexpected, the latter having, as we know
+when we notice that a stranger has the trick of speech or gesture of
+an acquaintance, a very penetrating emotional warmth. Such
+discovery of the novel in the familiar, and of the familiar in the new,
+will he frequent in proportion to the definiteness and complexity of
+the shapes, and in proportion also to the sensitiveness and steadiness
+of the beholder's attention; while on the contrary "obvious" qualities
+of shape and superficial attention both tend to exhaust interest and
+demand change. This exhaustion of interest and consequent demand
+for change unites with the changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on
+art, together producing innovation. And the more superficial the
+aesthetic attention given by the beholders, the quicker will style
+succeed style, and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by
+exaggeration or left in the lurch before their maturity; a state of
+affairs especially noticeable in our own day.
+
+The above is a series of illustrations of the fact that aesthetic
+pleasure depends as much on the activities of the beholder as on
+those of the artist. Unfamiliarity or over-familiarity explain a large
+part of the aesthetic non-responsiveness summed up in the saying
+_that there is no disputing of tastes._ And even within the circle of
+habitual responsiveness to some particular style, or master, there are,
+as we have just seen, days and hours when an individual beholder's
+perception and empathic imagination do not act in such manner as to
+afford the usual pleasure. But these occasional, even frequent, lapses
+must not diminish our belief either in the power of art or in the
+deeply organised and inevitable nature of aesthetic preference as a
+whole. What the knowledge of such fluctuations ought to bring
+home is that beauty of shape is most spontaneously and completely
+appreciated when the attention, instead of being called upon, as in
+galleries and concerts, for the mere purpose of aesthetic enjoyment,
+is on the contrary, directed to the artistic or "natural" beauty of
+shapes, in consequence of some other already existing interest. No
+one except an art-critic sees a new picture or statue without first
+asking "What does it represent?"; shape-perception and aesthetic
+empathy arising incidentally in the examination which this question
+leads to. The truth is that even the art-critic is oftenest brought into
+enforced contemplation of the artistic shape by some other question
+which arises from his particular bias: By whom? of what precise
+date? Even such technical questions as "where and when restored or
+repainted?" will elicit the necessary output of attention. It is possible
+and legitimate to be interested in a work of art for a dozen reasons
+besides aesthetic appreciation; each of these interests has its own
+sentimental, scientific, dramatic or even moneymaking emotion; and
+there is no loss for art, but rather a gain, if we fall back upon one of
+them when the specific aesthetic response is slow or not
+forthcoming. Art has other aims besides aesthetic satisfaction; and
+aesthetic satisfaction will not come any the quicker for turning our
+backs upon these non-aesthetic aims. The very worst attitude
+towards art is that of the holiday-maker who comes into its presence
+with no ulterior interest or business, and nothing but the hope of an
+aesthetic emotion which is most often denied him. Indeed such
+seeking of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake would lead to even
+more of the blank despondency characteristic of so many gallery
+goers, were it not for another peculiarity of aesthetic responsiveness,
+which is responsible for very puzzling effects. This saving grace of
+the tourist, and (as we shall see) this pitfall of the art-expert, is what
+I propose to call the _Transferability of Aesthetic Emotion._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE STORAGE AND TRANSFER OF EMOTION
+
+IN dealing with familiarity as a multiplying factor of aesthetic
+appreciation, I have laid stress on its effect in facilitating the
+perception and the empathic interpretation of shapes. But repetition
+directly affects the emotion which may result from these processes;
+and when any emotion has become habitual, it tends to be stored in
+what we call memory, and to be called forth not merely by the
+processes in which it originated, but also independently of the whole
+of them, or in answer to some common or equivalent factor. We are
+so accustomed to this psychological fact that we do not usually seem
+to recognise its existence. It is the explanation of the power of words,
+which, apart from any images they awaken, are often irresistibly
+evocative of emotion. And among other emotions words can evoke
+the one due to the easy perception and to the life-corroborating
+empathic interpretation of shapes. The word _Beautiful,_ and its
+various quasi synonyms, are among the most emotionally suggestive
+in our vocabulary, carrying perhaps a vague but potent remembrance
+of our own bodily reaction to the emotion of admiration; nay even
+eliciting an incipient rehearsal of the half-parted lips and slightly
+thrown-back head, the drawn-in breath and wide-opened eyes, with
+which we are wont to meet opportunities of aesthetic satisfaction. Be
+this last as it may, it is certain that the emotion connected with the
+word _Beautiful_ can be evoked by that word alone, and without an
+accompanying act of visual or auditive perception. Indeed beautiful
+shapes would lose much of their importance in our life, if they did
+not leave behind them such emotional traces, capable of revival
+under emotionally appropriate, though outwardly very dissimilar,
+circumstances; and thereby enormously increasing some of our
+safest, perhaps because our most purely subjective, happiness.
+Instead therefore of despising the raptures which the presence of a
+Venus of Milo or a Sixtine Madonna can inspire in people
+manifestly incapable of appreciating a masterpiece, and sometimes
+barely glancing at it, we critical persons ought to recognise in this
+funny, but consoling, phenomenon an additional proof of the power
+of Beauty, whose specific emotion can thus be evoked by a mere
+name and so transferred from some past experience of aesthetic
+admiration to a. present occasion which would otherwise be mere
+void and disappointment.
+
+Putting aside these kind of cases, the transfer (usually accomplished
+by a word) of the aesthetic emotion, or at least of a willingness for
+aesthetic emotion, is probably one of the explanations of the spread
+of aesthetic interest from one art to another, as it is the explanation
+of some phases of aesthetic development in the individual. The
+present writer can vouch for the case of at least one real child in
+whom the possibility of aesthetic emotion, and subsequently of
+aesthetic appreciation, was extended from music and natural scenery
+to pictures and statues, by the application of the word _Beautiful_ to
+each of these different categories. And something analogous
+probably helped on the primaeval recognition that the empathic
+pleasures hitherto attached to geometrical shapes might be got from
+realistic shapes, say of bisons and reindeer, which had hitherto been
+admired for their lifelikeness and skill, but not yet subjected to any
+aesthetic discrimination (_cf_. p. 96). Similarly, in our own times,
+the delight in natural scenery is being furthered by the development
+of landscape painting, rather than furthering it. Nay I venture to
+suggest that it was the habit of the aesthetic emotion such as
+mediaeval men received from the proportions, directions, and
+coordination of lines in their cathedrals of stone or brick which set
+their musicians to build up, like Browning's _Abt Vogler,_ the soul's
+first balanced and coordinated dwellings made of sounds.
+
+Be this last as it may, it is desirable that the Reader should accept,
+and possibly verify for himself, the psychological fact of the
+_storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion._ Besides, the points
+already mentioned, it helps to explain several of the cruxes and
+paradoxes of aesthetics. First and foremost that dictum _De
+Gustibus non est disputandum_ which some philosophers and even
+aestheticians develop into an explicit denial of all intrinsic
+shape-preferences, and an assertion that _beautiful_ and _ugly_ are merely
+other names for _fashionable_ and _unfashionable, original_ and
+_unoriginal,_ or _suitable_ and _unsuitable._ As I have already
+pointed out, differences of taste are started by the perceptive and
+empathic habits, schematically various, of given times and places,
+and also by those, especially the empathic habits, connected with
+individual nervous condition: people accustomed to the round arch
+finding the Gothic one unstable and eccentric; and, on the other
+hand, a person taking keen pleasure in the sudden and lurching lines
+of Lotto finding those of Titian tame and humdrum. But such
+intrinsically existing preferences and incompatibility are quite
+enormously increased by an emotional bias for or against a
+particular kind of art; by which I mean a bias not due to that art's
+peculiarities, but preventing our coming in real contact with them.
+
+Aesthetic perception and especially aesthetic empathy, like other
+intellectual and emotional activities, are at the mercy of a hostile
+mental attitude, just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of
+the limbs. I do not hesitate to say that we are perpetually refusing to
+look at certain kinds of art because, for one reason or another, we
+are emotionally prepossessed against them. On the other hand, once
+the favourable emotional condition is supplied to us, often by means
+of words, our perceptive and empathic activities follow with twice
+the ease they would if the business had begun with them. It is quite
+probable that a good deal of the enhancement of aesthetic
+appreciation by fashion or sympathy should be put to the account,
+not merely of gregarious imitativeness, but of the knowledge that a
+favourable or unfavourable feeling is "in the air." The emotion
+precedes the appreciation, and both are genuine.
+
+A more personally humiliating aesthetic experience may be
+similarly explained. Unless we are very unobservant or very
+self-deluded, we are all familiar with the sudden checking (often almost
+physically painful) of our aesthetic emotion by the hostile criticism
+of a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert: "Dreadfully
+old-fashioned," "_Archi-connu,_""second-rate school work,"
+"completely painted over," "utterly hashed in the performance" (of a
+piece of music), "mere prettiness"--etc. etc. How often has not a
+sentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment;
+and transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality
+(even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry,
+euphony or pleasant colour!) into shrivelled cavillers at everything
+save brand-new formulae and tip-top genius! Indeed, while teaching
+a few privileged persons to taste the special "quality" which
+Botticelli has and Botticelli's pupils have not, and thus occasionally
+intensifying aesthetic enjoyment by distinguishing whatever
+differentiates the finer artistic products from the commoner, modern
+art-criticism has probably wasted much honest but shamefaced
+capacity for appreciating the qualities common, because
+indispensable, to, all good art. It is therefore not without a certain
+retributive malignity that I end these examples of the storage and
+transfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent bias to artistic
+appreciation, with that of the Nemesis dogging the steps of the
+connoisseur. We have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase,
+of a wonderful masterpiece on the authority of some famous
+expert; and of the masterpiece proving to be a mere school
+imitation, and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. The
+foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion,
+joined with what we have learned about shape-perception and
+empathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity
+to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly
+owned up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess
+enough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could
+never suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable emotional
+attitude and the absence of obvious _extrinsic_ (technical or
+historical) reasons for scepticism, these elements of resemblance
+must awaken the vague idea, especially the empathic scheme, of the
+particular master's work, and his name--shall we say Leonardo's?--will
+rise to the lips. But _Leonardo_ is a name to conjure with, and
+in this case to destroy the conjurer himself: the word _Leonardo_
+implies an emotion, distilled from a number of highly prized and
+purposely repeated experiences, kept to gather strength in respectful
+isolation, and further heightened by a thrill of initiate veneration
+whenever it is mentioned. This _Leonardo-emotion,_ once set on
+foot, checks all unworthy doubts, sweeps out of consciousness all
+thoughts of inferior work (_inferiority_ and _Leonardo_ being
+emotionally incompatible!), respectfully holds the candle while the
+elements common to the imitation and the masterpiece are gone over
+and over, and the differentiating elements exclusively belonging to
+Leonardo evoked in the expert's memory, until at last the objective
+work of art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces
+which impart to it their emotionally communicable virtue. And
+when the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule, the
+Philistine shrewdly decides that a sham Leonardo is just as good as a
+genuine one, that these are all matters of fashion, and that there is
+really no disputing of tastes!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+AESTHETIC IRRADIATION AND PURIFICATION
+
+THE storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another
+fact, with which indeed I began this little book: namely that the
+word _Beautiful_ has been extended from whatever is satisfactory in
+our contemplation of shapes, to a great number of cases where there
+can be no question of shapes at all, as in speaking of a "beautiful
+character" and a "fine moral attitude"; or else, as in the case of a
+"beautiful bit of machinery," a "fine scientific demonstration" or a
+"splendid surgical operation" where the shapes involved are not at
+all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such cases the
+word _Beautiful_ has been brought over with the emotion of
+satisfied contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the
+minds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect,
+round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise
+_shapely_ thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of
+half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic
+experience, and evoked by that word _Beautiful_ whose application
+they partially justify. Nor is this all. Recent psychology teaches that,
+odd as it at first appears, our more or less definite images, auditive
+as well as visual, and whether actually perceived or merely
+remembered, are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's
+contents, coming and going and weaving themselves on to a
+constant woof of our own activities and feelings. It is precisely such
+activities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply
+the words _Beautiful_ and _Ugly._ Thus everything which has come
+in connexion with occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation,
+will meet with somewhat of the same reception as that shape-contemplation
+originally elicited. And even the merest items of information which
+the painter conveys concerning the visible universe; the merest
+detail of human character conveyed by the poet; nay even the
+mere nervous intoxication furnished by the musician, will all be
+irradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been conveyed
+in, and will therefore be felt as beautiful.
+
+Moreover, as the "beautiful character" and "splendid operation" have
+taught us, rare and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a
+"platonic" way. And even objects of bodily desire, so long as that
+desire is not acute and pressing, may give rise to merely
+contemplative longings. All this, added to what has previously been
+said, sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which
+are irradiated by the word _Beautiful_ and the emotion originally
+arising from the satisfied contemplation of mere shapes.
+
+And that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so
+life-corroborating and so strangely impersonal, and that its special
+emotion should be so susceptible of radiation and transfer, is
+sufficient explanation of the elevating and purifying influence which,
+ever since Plato, philosophers have usually ascribed to the Beautiful.
+Other moralists however have not failed to point out that art has,
+occasionally and even frequently, effects of the very opposite kind.
+The ever-recurrent discussion of this seeming contradiction is,
+however, made an end of, once we recognise that art has many aims
+besides its distinguishing one of increasing our contemplation of the
+beautiful. Indeed some of art's many non-aesthetic aims may
+themselves be foreign to elevation and purification, or even, as for
+instance the lewd or brutal subjects of some painting and poetry, and
+the nervous intoxication of certain music, exert a debasing or
+enervating influence. But, as the whole of this book has tried to
+establish, the contemplation of beautiful shapes involves perceptive
+processes in themselves mentally invigorating and refining, and a
+play of empathic feelings which realise the greatest desiderata of
+spiritual life, viz. intensity, purposefulness and harmony; and such
+perceptive and empathic activities cannot fail to raise the present
+level of existence and to leave behind them a higher standard for
+future experience. This exclusively elevating effect of beautiful
+shape as such, is of course proportioned to the attention it receives
+and the exclusion of other, and possibly baser, interests connected
+with the work of art. On the other hand the purifying effects of
+beautiful shapes depend upon the attention oscillating to and fro
+between them and those other interests, e.g. _subject_ in the
+_representative_ arts, _fitness_ in the _applied_ ones, and
+_expression_ in music; all of which non-aesthetic interests benefit
+(enhanced if noble, redeemed if base) by irradiation of the nobler
+feelings wherewith they are thus associated. For we must not forget
+that where opposed groups of feeling are elicited, whichever
+happens to be more active and complex will neutralise its opponent.
+Thus, while an even higher intensity and complexity of aesthetic
+feelings is obtained when the "subject" of a picture, the use of a
+building or a chattel, or the expression of a piece of music, is in
+itself noble; and a Degas ballet girl can never have the dignity of a
+Phidian goddess, nor a gambling _casino_ that of a cathedral, nor
+the music to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' _German Requiem,_
+yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the
+attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic
+suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine
+allegory embodied in Correggio's _Danaë,_ or else we reinterpret
+that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the
+Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a
+common observation that while _unmusical_ Bayreuth-goers often
+attribute demoralising effects to some of Wagner's music, the
+genuinely musical listeners are unaware, and usually incredulous, of
+any such evil possibilities.
+
+This question of the purifying power of the Beautiful has brought us
+back to our starting-point. It illustrates the distinction between
+_contemplating an aspect_ and _thinking about things,_ and this
+distinction's corollary that shape as such is yon-side of _real_ and
+_unreal,_ taking on the character of reality and unreality only
+inasmuch as it is thought of in connexion with a _thing._ As regards
+the possibility of being _good_ or _evil,_ it is evident from all the
+foregoing that _shape as shape,_ and without the suggestion of
+things, can be evil only in the sense of being ugly, ugliness
+diminishing its own drawbacks by being, _ipso facto,_ difficult to
+dwell upon, inasmuch as it goes against the grain of our perceptive
+and empathic activities. The contemplation of beautiful shape is, on
+the other hand, favoured by its pleasurableness, and such
+contemplation of beautiful shape lifts our perceptive and empathic
+activities, that is to say a large part of our intellectual and emotional
+life, on to a level which can only be spiritually, organically, and in
+so far, morally beneficial.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+CONCLUSION (EVOLUTIONAL)
+
+SOME of my Readers, not satisfied by the answer implicit in the last
+chapter and indeed in the whole of this little book, may ask a final
+question concerning our subject. Not: What is the use of Art? since,
+as we have seen, Art has many and various uses both to the
+individual and to the community, each of which uses is independent
+of the attainment of Beauty.
+
+The remaining question concerns the usefulness of the very demand
+for Beauty, of that _Aesthetic Imperative_ by which the other uses
+of art are more or less qualified or dominated. In what way, the
+Reader may ask, has sensitiveness to Beauty contributed to the
+survival of mankind, that it should not only have been preserved and
+established by evolutional selection, but invested with the
+tremendous power of the pleasure and pain alternative?
+
+The late William James, as some readers may remember, placed
+musical pleasure between sentimental love and sea-sickness as
+phenomena unaccountable by any value for human survival, in fact
+masteries, if not paradoxes, of evolution.
+
+The riddle, though not necessarily the mystery, does not consist in
+the survival of the aesthetic instinct of which the musical one is a
+mere sub-category, but in the origin and selectional establishment of
+its elementary constituents, say for instance space-perception and
+empathy, both of which exist equally outside that instinct which is a
+mere compound of them and other primary tendencies. For given
+space-perception and empathy and their capacity of being felt as
+satisfactory or unsatisfactory, the aesthetic imperative is not only
+intelligible but inevitable. Instead therefore of asking: Why is there a
+preference for what we call Beauty? we should have to ask: why has
+perception, feeling, logic, imagination, come to be just what it is?
+Indeed why are our sense-organs, our bodily structure and chemical
+composition, what they are; and why do they exist at all in
+contradistinction to the ways of being of other living or other
+inanimate things? So long as these elementary facts continue
+shrouded in darkness or taken for granted, the genesis and
+evolutional reason of the particular compound which we call
+aesthetic preference must remain only one degree less mysterious
+than the genesis and evolutional reason of its psychological
+components.
+
+Meanwhile all we can venture to say is that as satisfaction derived
+from shapes we call _beautiful,_ undoubtedly involves intense,
+complex, and reiterative mental activities, as it has an undeniable
+power for happiness and hence for spiritual refreshment, and
+as it moreover tends to inhibit most of the instincts whose
+superabundance can jeopardise individual and social existence, the
+capacity for such aesthetic satisfaction, once arisen, would be
+fostered in virtue of a mass of evolutional advantages which are as
+complex and difficult to analyse, but also as deep-seated and
+undeniable, as itself.
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+I.      _Lipps._ Raumaesthetik, Leipzig, 1897.
+         "       Aesthetik, vol. I. part ii., Leipzig, 1906.
+II.     _Karl Groos._ Aesthetik, Giessen, 1892.
+         "       Der Aesthetische Genuss, Giessen, 1902.
+III.    _Wundt._ Physiologische Psychologie (5th Edition, 1903), vol.
+III. pg. 107 to 209. But the whole volume is full of indirect
+suggestion on aesthetics.
+IV.     _Münsterberg._ The Principles of Art Education, New York,
+1905. (Statement of Lipps' theory in physiological terms.)
+V.      _Külpe._ Der gegenwärtige Stand der experimentellen
+Aesthetik, 1907.
+VI.     _Vernon Lee and Anstruther-Thomson._ Beauty and Ugliness,
+1912 (contains abundant quotations from most of the above works
+and other sources).
+VII.    _Ribot._ Le Rôle latent des Images Motrices. Revue
+Philosophique, March 1912.
+VIII.   _Witasek._ Psychologie der Raumwahrnehmung des Auges
+(1910). These two last named are only indirectly connected with
+visual aesthetics.
+
+For art-evolutional questions consult:
+IX.     _Haddon._ Evolution in Art, 1895.
+X.      _Yrjö Hirn._ Origins of Art, Macmillan, 1900.
+XI.     _Levinstein._ Kinderzeichnungen, Leipzig, 1905.
+XII.    _Loewy._ Nature in early Greek Art (translation), Duckworth,
+1907.
+XIII.   _Delia Seta._ Religione e Arte Figurata, Rome, 1912.
+XIV.    _Spearing._ The Childhood of Art, 1913.
+XV.     _Jane Harrison._ Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Aesthetic:
+     aridity, 136-7;
+     imperative, 99-100;
+     irradiation, 147-52;
+     purification, 149-52;
+     responsiveness, active nature of, 128-36;
+     habit and familiarity affecting, 134-6
+Altamira cave frescoes, 95
+Art:
+     differential characteristic of, 116-18;
+     non-aesthetic aims of, 99-100, 137-8; utility of, 153-5
+Aspect:
+     aesthetics concerned with, 15, 21, 105;
+     shape the determining feature of, 26-8
+Attention, a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32
+
+Balfour, H., 95
+Beautiful:
+     aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective, 147-8;
+     attitude implied by use of adjective, 2-7, 18-19;
+     empathy the chief factor of preference, 67-8;
+     implies desire for reiterated perception, 53-4
+Botticelli, 83
+Brahms' _German Requiem,_ 150
+Browning's _Abt Vogler,_ 141
+
+Coleridge's _Ode to Dejection,_ 131
+Colour, passive reception of, 23-4, 29
+Contemplative satisfaction marking aesthetic attitude, 8-15
+Correggio's _Danae,_ 151
+Cubic Existence:
+     perception of, 85;
+     pictorial suggestion of, importance attached to, discussed, 101-5
+
+_Discobolus,_ 115
+
+Einfühlung, 59;
+     misinterpretations of, 66-7
+Emotion, storage and transfer of, 139-46
+Empathy, 61-69;
+     complexity of movements of lines, 78-83;
+     movements of lines, 70-77;
+     second element of shape-perception, 59-60
+Extension existing in perception, 35-8
+
+Fechner, 130
+
+Hildebrand, 102, 118
+
+Inner Mimicry, 74-5
+
+James, W., 153
+
+Keats' _Grecian Urn,_ 77
+
+Levinstein, 96
+Lipps, 66
+Locomotion of Things, distinction between, and empathic
+movement of lines, 111-16
+Lotze, 66
+
+Mantegna, 82
+Memory:
+     a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32;
+     in perception, 40-1
+Michel Angelo, 114, 122
+Movement of Lines, distinction between, and locomotion of Things,
+111-16; _see also_ Empathy
+
+Object of Perception, subject's activities merged in, 57, 58
+
+Perception:
+     active process involved in, 29-34, 128-9;
+     distinguished from sensation, 32;
+     subject and object of, 55-60
+
+Raphael's _Heliodorus,_ 119
+Relaxation an element of form-perception, 42
+Rembrandt, 122
+Rythm, 42-5
+
+Semper, hypothesis regarding shape-preference, 94
+Sensations:
+     distinguished from perceptions, 32;
+     perception of relation between, 29-30
+Shape:
+     character of, 78-83;
+     contemplation of, its intermittent but recurrent character, 106-10;
+     determines contemplation of an aspect, 26-8;
+     elements of, 35-47;
+     Empathy an element of perception of, 59;
+     facility and difficulty of grasping, 48-54;
+     a perception, 29-34;
+     practical causes regarding evolution of, 90-4;
+     preference, its evolution, 94-7;
+     and Things, their co-operation, 117-27;
+     thinking away from, to Things, 131-2, 84-9
+Sound, passive reception of, 23-4, 29
+Subject of perception, extent of awareness of self, 57-9
+Symmetry, 42-3
+
+Tension, an element of form-perception, 42
+Things and Shapes, their cooperation, 117-27;
+     thoughts about, entering into shape-contemplation, 84-9
+Third Dimension, locomotor nature of knowledge of, 85-6, 101
+Titchener, 59
+
+Vinci, Leonardo da, 83, 145-6
+Vischer, 66
+
+Watts, G. F., 46
+Whole and Parts, perception of relation of, 48-54
+Wilde's _Salome,_ 150
+Wundt, 42, 66
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Beautiful, by Vernon Lee</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beautiful, by Vernon Lee
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Beautiful
+       An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
+
+Author: Vernon Lee
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2008 [EBook #26942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAUTIFUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ruth Hart
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<center>
+<p>[Note:&nbsp; for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to the
+beginning of the text and slightly modified it to conform with the online format.&nbsp; I
+have also made two spelling corrections:&nbsp; "chippendale" to "Chippendale" and "closely
+interpendent" to "closely interdependent."]</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>THE BEAUTIFUL</p>
+
+<p>AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL AESTHETICS</p>
+
+<p>BY</p>
+
+<p>VERNON LEE</p>
+
+<p>Author of<br>
+"Beauty and Ugliness"<br>
+"Laurus Nobilis"<br>
+etc.</p><br>
+
+<p>Cambridge:<br>
+at the University Press<br>
+New York:<br>
+G.P. Putnam's Sons<br>
+1913</p>
+
+<p><img src="images/beautiful.png" width="343" height="524" alt=
+"[Illustration: beautiful]"></p>
+
+<p><i>With the exception of the coat of arms<br>
+at the foot, the design on the title page is a<br>
+reproduction of one used by the earliest known<br>
+Cambridge printer, John Siberch,</i> 1521</p><br>
+
+<p>CONTENTS</p><br>
+
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">&nbsp;</td>
+
+<td><a href="#0">Preface and Apology</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">v</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">I.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#1">The Adjective "Beautiful"</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;1</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">II.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#2">Contemplative Satisfaction</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;8</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">III.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#3">Aspects <i>versus</i> Things</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;14</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IV.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#4">Sensations</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">22</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">V.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#5">Perception of Relations</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">29</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VI.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#6">Elements of Shape</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">35</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VII.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#7">Facility and Difficulty of Grasping</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">48</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VIII.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#8">Subject and Object, or, Nominative and Accusative</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">55</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IX.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#9">Empathy (<i>Einf&uuml;hlung</i>)</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">61</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">X.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#10">The Movement of Lines</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">70</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XI.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#11">The Character of Shapes</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">78</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XII.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#12">From the Shape to the Thing</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;84</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIII.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#13">From the Thing to the Shape</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;90</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIV.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#14">The Aims of Art</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;98</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XV.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#15">Attention to Shapes</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;106</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVI.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#16">Information about Things</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;111</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVII.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#17">Co-operation of Things and Shapes</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;117</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVIII.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#18">Aesthetic Responsiveness</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">128</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIX.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#19">The Storage and Transfer of Emotion</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">139</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XX.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#20">Aesthetic Irradiation and Purification</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;147</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXI.</td>
+
+<td><a href="#21">Conclusion (Evolutional)</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">153</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">&nbsp;</td>
+
+<td><a href="#22">Bibliography</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;156</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">&nbsp;</td>
+
+<td><a href="#23">Index</a></td>
+
+<td align="right">&nbsp;157</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+<br>
+<a name="0"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p>PREFACE AND APOLOGY</p>
+
+<p>I HAVE tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference, particularly as
+regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science. But my explanation is addressed
+to readers in whom I have no right to expect a previous knowledge of psychology,
+particularly in its more modern developments. I have therefore based my explanation of
+the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts familiar, or at all
+events easily intelligible, to the lay reader. Now mental facts thus available are by no
+means the elementary processes with which analytical and, especially experimental,
+psychology has dealings. They are, on the contrary, the everyday, superficial and often
+extremely confused views which practical life and its wholly unscientific vocabulary
+present of those ascertained or hypothetical scientific facts. I have indeed endeavoured
+(for instance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from sensation) to impart
+some rudiments of psychology in the course of my aesthetical explanation, and I have
+avoided, as much as possible, misleading the reader about such fearful complexes and
+cruxes as <i>memory, association</i> and <i>imagination.</i> But I have been obliged to
+speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader, and I am fully aware that these terms
+correspond only very approximately to what is, or at present passes as, psychological
+fact. I would therefore beg the psychologist (to whom I offer this little volume as a
+possible slight addition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses) to understand that in
+speaking, for instance, of Empathy as involving a <i>thought</i> of certain activities, I
+mean merely that whatever happens has the same result <i>as if we thought</i>; and that
+the processes, whatever they may be (also in the case of measuring, comparing and
+co-ordinating), translate themselves, <i>when they are detected,</i> into
+<i>thoughts;</i> but that I do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the
+processes, the "thoughts," the measuring, comparing etc. exist on subordinate planes of
+consciousness or whether they are mainly physiological and only occasionally abutting in
+conscious resultants. Similarly, lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me
+to write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed process of ocular
+perception, instead of being due, as is doubtless most often the case, to every kind of
+associative abbreviation and equivalence of processes.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; VERNON LEE<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Maiano <i>near</i> Florence, <i><br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Easter</i> 1913.</p><a name=
+"1"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER I</p>
+
+<p>THE ADJECTIVE "BEAUTIFUL"</p>
+
+<p>THIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it is an
+introduction, makes no attempt to "form the taste" of the public and still less to direct
+the doings of the artist. It deals not with <i>ought</i> but with <i>is,</i> leaving to
+Criticism the inference from the latter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how
+things can be made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things <i>are</i>
+beautiful. It takes Beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks to analyse and
+account for Beauty's existence and enjoyment. More strictly speaking, it analyses and
+accounts for Beauty not inasmuch as existing in certain objects and processes, but rather
+as calling forth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental activities and
+habits. It does not ask: What are the peculiarities of the things (and the proceedings)
+which we call <i>Beautiful?</i> but: What are the peculiarities of our thinking and
+feeling when in the presence of a thing to which we apply this adjective? The study of
+single beautiful things, and even more, the comparison of various categories thereof, is
+indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics, but only inasmuch as it adds to our
+knowledge of the particular mental activities which such "Beautiful" (and vice versa
+"Ugly") things elicit in us. For it is on the nature of this active response on our own
+part that depends the application of those terms <i>Beautiful</i> and <i>Ugly</i> in
+every single instance; and indeed their application in any instances whatsoever, their
+very existence in the human vocabulary.</p>
+
+<p>In accordance with this programme I shall not start with a formal definition of the
+word <i>Beautiful,</i> but ask: on what sort of occasions we make use of it. Evidently,
+on <i>occasions when we feel satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction,</i> satisfaction
+meaning willingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience which has
+called forth that word; and meaning also that if it comes to a choice between two or
+several experiences, we <i>prefer</i> the experience thus marked by the word
+<i>Beautiful. Beautiful,</i> we may therefore formulate, <i>implies on our part an
+attitude of satisfaction and preference.</i> But there are other words which imply that
+much; first and foremost the words, in reality synonyms, USEFUL and GOOD. I call these
+synonyms because <i>good</i> always implies <i>good for,</i> or <i>good in,</i> that is
+to say fitness for a purpose, even though that purpose may be masked under <i>conforming
+to a standard</i> or <i>obeying a commandment,</i> since the standard or commandment
+represents not the caprice of a community, a race or a divinity, but some (real or
+imaginary) utility of a less immediate kind. So much for the meaning of <i>good</i> when
+implying standards and commandments; ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is,
+however, no such implication, and <i>good</i> means nothing more than <i>satisfactory in
+the way of use and advantage.</i> Thus a <i>good</i> road is a road we prefer because it
+takes us to our destination quickly and easily. A <i>good</i> speech is one we prefer
+because it succeeds in explaining or persuading. And a <i>good</i> character (good
+friend, father, husband, citizen) is one that gives satisfaction by the fulfilment of
+moral obligations.</p>
+
+<p>But note the difference when we come to <i>Beautiful.</i> A <i>beautiful</i> road is
+one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at; its being devious and
+inconvenient will not prevent its being <i>beautiful.</i> A <i>beautiful</i> speech is
+one we like to hear or remember, although it may convince or persuade neither us nor
+anybody. A <i>beautiful</i> character is one we like to think about but which may never
+practically help anyone, if for instance, it exists not in real life but in a novel. Thus
+the adjective <i>Beautiful</i> implies <i>an attitude of preference, but not an attitude
+of present or future turning to our purposes.</i> There is even a significant lack of
+symmetry in the words employed (at all events in English, French and German) to
+distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the way of weather. For weather which
+makes us uncomfortable and hampers our comings and goings by rain, wind or mud, is
+described as <i>bad;</i> while the opposite kind of weather is called <i>beautiful,
+fine,</i> or <i>fair,</i> as if the greater comfort, convenience, usefulness of such days
+were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our mere contemplation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Our mere contemplation!</i> Here we have struck upon the main difference between
+our attitude when we use the word <i>good</i> or <i>useful,</i> and when we use the word
+<i>beautiful.</i> And we can add to our partial formula "beautiful implies satisfaction
+and preference"—the distinguishing predicate—&quot;<i>of a contemplative
+kind.</i>" This general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our use of
+the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming exception will not only exemplify
+what I have said about our attitude when employing that word, but add to this information
+the name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion of
+<i>admiration.</i> For the selfsame object or proceeding may sometimes be called
+<i>good</i> and sometimes <i>beautiful,</i> according as the mental attitude is practical
+or contemplative. While we admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will
+find it <i>good,</i> we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic coachman as
+<i>beautiful, anglic<font face="Times New Roman">&egrave;</font> fine</i> or
+<i>splendid,</i> because there is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities
+are merely being contemplated with admiration. Similarly, we have all of us heard an
+engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon to an operation, the
+apparently far-fetched adjective Beautiful, or one of the various equivalents, fine,
+splendid, glorious (even occasionally <i>jolly!)</i> by which Englishmen express their
+admiration. The change of word represents a change of attitude. The engineer is no longer
+bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon estimating the advantages of the operation.
+Each of these highly practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an
+imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical estimation or even
+of practice itself. The machine or operation, the skill, the inventiveness, the fitness
+for its purposes, are being considered <i>apart from action,</i> and advantage, means and
+time, to-day or yesterday; <i>platonically</i> we may call it from the first great
+teacher of aesthetics. They are being, in one word, contemplated with admiration. And
+<i>admiration</i> is the rough and ready name for the mood, however transient, for the
+emotion, however faint, wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because
+contemplation happens to give satisfaction. The satisfaction may be a mere skeleton of
+the "I'd rather than not" description; or it may be a massive alteration in our being,
+radiating far beyond the present, evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate
+it; storing itself up for the future; penetrating, like the joy of a fine day, into our
+animal spirits, altering pulse, breath, gait, glance and demeanour; and transfiguring our
+whole momentary outlook on life. But, superficial or overwhelming, <i>this hind of
+satisfaction connected with, the word Beautiful is always of the Contemplative
+order.</i></p>
+
+<p>And upon the fact we have thus formulated depend, as we shall see, most of the other
+facts and formulae of our subject.</p>
+
+<p>This essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the word
+<i>Beautiful</i> has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous, and I think, quite
+misleading theories. The first of these defines aesthetic appreciation as
+<i>disinterested interest,</i> gratuitously identifying self-interest with the practical
+pursuit of advantages we have not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such
+appreciation implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested. The
+second philosophical theory (originally Schiller's, and revived by Herbert Spencer) takes
+advantage of the non-practical attitude connected with the word <i>Beautiful</i> to
+define art and its enjoyment as a kind of <i>play.</i> Now although leisure and freedom
+from cares are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter differs
+essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For although it may be possible
+to watch <i>other people</i> playing football or chess or bridge in a purely
+contemplative spirit and with the deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may
+contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the concentration on the
+aim and the next moves constitutes on the part of the players <i>themselves</i> an
+eminently practical state of mind, one diametrically opposed to contemplation, as I hope
+to make evident in the next section.</p><a name="2"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER II</p>
+
+<p>CONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION</p>
+
+<p>WE have thus defined the word <i>Beautiful</i> as implying an attitude of
+contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes amounting to an
+<i>emotion,</i> of admiration; and so far contrasted it with the practical attitude
+implied by the word <i>good.</i> But we require to know more about the distinctive
+peculiarities of contemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not
+merely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one.</p>
+
+<p>Let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching the behaviour and
+listening to the remarks of three imaginary wayfarers in front of a view, which they
+severally consider in the practical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. The view
+was from a hill-top in the neighbourhood of Rome or of Edinburgh, whichever the Reader
+can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers halted and remained for a
+moment absorbed each in his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"It will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot"—began one of the three.
+"We might have been back for tea-time if only there had been a tram and a funicular. And
+that makes me think: Why not start a joint-stock company to build them? There must be
+water-power in these hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter to
+town. Also houses could be built for people whose work takes them to town, but who want
+good air for their children; the hire-purchase system, you know. It might prove a godsend
+and a capital investment, though I suppose some people would say it spoilt the view. The
+idea is quite a <i>good</i> one. I shall get an expert—&quot;</p>
+
+<p>"These hills," put in the second man—"are said to be part of an ancient volcano.
+I don't know whether that theory is <i>true!</i> It would be <i>interesting</i> to
+examine whether the summits have been ground down in places by ice, and whether there are
+traces of volcanic action at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been
+under the sea at no very distant period. It is also <i>interesting</i> to notice, as we
+can up here, how the situation of the town is explained by the river affording easier
+shipping on a coast poor in natural harbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable
+meeting-place of seafaring and pastoral populations. These investigations would prove, as
+I said, remarkably full of interest."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish"—complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to himself—"I
+wish these men would hold their tongues and let one enjoy this exquisite place without
+diverting one's attention to <i>what might be done</i> or to <i>how it all came
+about.</i> They don't seem to feel how <i>beautiful</i> it all is." And he concentrated
+himself on contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab of
+reluctance to leave.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there really was sufficient
+pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for both tramway and funicular, and where the
+necessary capital could be borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of
+stratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical data about the
+various tribes originally inhabiting that country.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your sketching
+materials?" said the scientific man, always interested in the causes of phenomena, even
+such trifling ones as a man remaining quiet before a landscape.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out where you can
+use up a description of this place"—corrected the rapid insight of the practical
+man, accustomed to weigh people's motives in case they may be turned to use.</p>
+
+<p>"I am <i>not</i> a painter, and I'm <i>not</i> a writer"—exclaimed the third
+traveller, "and I thank Heaven I'm not! For if I were I might be trying to engineer a
+picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely enjoying all this beauty. Not but that
+I should like to have a sketch or a few words of description for when I've turned my back
+upon it. And Heaven help me, I really believe that when we are all back in London I may
+be quite glad to hear you two talking about your tramway-funicular company and your
+volcanic and glacial action, because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of
+this place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me—&quot;</p>
+
+<p>"That's what it is to be aesthetic"—said the two almost in the same breath.</p>
+
+<p>"And that, I suppose"—answered the third with some animosity—"is what you
+mean by being practical or scientific."</p>
+
+<p>Now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of science, though
+differing so obviously from one another (the first bent upon producing new and
+advantageous <i>results,</i> the second examining, without thought of advantage, into
+possible <i>causes),</i> both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who
+was merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. They were, as he
+complained, thinking of <i>what might be done</i> and of <i>how it had all come
+about.</i> That is to say they were both thinking <i>away</i> from that landscape. The
+scientific man actually turned his back to it in examining first one rock, then another.
+The practical man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he was on,
+since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and that the steepness required
+supplementing the tramway by a funicular. But besides the different items of landscape,
+and the same items under different angles, which were thus offered to these two men's
+bodily eyes, there was a far greater variety, and rapider succession of items and
+perspectives presented to the eyes of their spirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing
+not only the hills, plain, and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even
+in time, but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress, dairy-products,
+pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices, advertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and
+the scientific man's inner vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps
+and seas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals under the
+microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let alone probably pages of books
+and interiors of libraries. Moreover, most, if not all these mental images (blocking out
+from attention the really existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy,
+swished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just enough seen to know what
+it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all, mere words filling up gaps in the chain of
+thought. So that what satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these
+rapidly scampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next one, and to
+a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to wit, pounds, shillings, and
+pence in the one case, and a coherent explanation in the other. In both cases equally
+there was a kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of aspects of
+which only one detail perhaps was noticed. Or, more strictly speaking, there was no
+interest whatever in aspects as such, but only in the possibilities of action which these
+aspects implied; whether actions future and personally profitable, like building
+tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and quite
+impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or prehistoric
+civilisations.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the two others had first
+mistaken for an artist or writer, and then dismissed as an aesthetic person.</p><a name=
+"3"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER III</p>
+
+<p>ASPECTS <i>VERSUS</i> THINGS</p>
+
+<p>HAVING settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked best, he remained
+there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded him. Had he descended another twenty
+minutes, or looked through powerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a
+juxtaposition of emerald green, raw Sienna, and pale yellow, whereas, at the distance
+where he chose to remain, its colours fused into indescribably lovely lilacs and russets.
+Had he moved freely about he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of
+sharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their various angles, must
+be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges, and roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler
+on a slate. Also that the foothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the
+mountains behind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the attention by
+their aggressive projection. While, as if to spoil the aspect still more, he would have
+been forced to recognise (as Ruskin explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the
+Matterhorn peak) that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked up
+at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely to rush up again in long
+concave curves, was merely an illusion of perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and
+further ones lower, let alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds.
+But to how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope, that man did not give
+one thought, any more than to how they might look after a hundred years of tramways and
+funiculars or how they had looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial
+action. He was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light and colour, the
+pattern (more and more detailed, more and more co-ordinated with every additional
+exploring glance) of keenly thrusting, delicately yielding lines, meeting as purposefully
+as if they had all been alive and executing some great, intricate dance. He did not
+concern himself whether what he was looking at was an aggregate of things; still less
+what might be these things' other properties. He was not concerned with things at all,
+but only with a particular appearance (he did not care whether it answered to reality),
+only with one (he did not want to know whether there might be any other)
+<i>aspect.</i></p>
+
+<p>For, odd as it may sound, a <i>Thing</i> is both much more and much less than an
+<i>Aspect.</i> Much more, because a <i>Thing</i> really means not only qualities of its
+own and reactions of ours which are actual and present, but a far greater number and
+variety thereof which are potential. Much <i>less,</i> on the other hand, because of
+these potential qualities and reactions constituting a Thing only a minimum need be
+thought of at any given time; instead of which, an aspect is all there, its qualities
+closely interdependent, and our reactions entirely taken up in connecting them as whole
+and parts. A rose, for instance, is not merely a certain assemblage of curves and
+straight lines and colours, seen as the painter sees it, at a certain angle, petals
+masking part of stem, leaf protruding above bud: it is the possibility of other
+combinations of shapes, including those seen when the rose (or the person looking) is
+placed head downwards. Similarly it is the possibility of certain sensations of
+resistance, softness, moisture, pricking if we attempt to grasp it, of a certain
+fragrance if we breathe in the air. It is the possibility of turning into a particular
+fruit, with the possibility of our finding that fruit bitter and non-edible; of being
+developed from cuttings, pressed in a book, made a present of or cultivated for lucre.
+Only one of these groups of possibilities may occupy our thoughts, the rest not glanced
+at, or only glanced at subsequently; but if, on trial, any of these grouped possibilities
+disappoint us, we decide that this is not a real rose, but a paper rose, or a painted
+one, or no rose at all, but some <i>other thing.</i> For, so far as our consciousness is
+concerned, <i>things</i> are merely groups of actual and potential reactions on our own
+part, that is to say of expectations which experience has linked together in more or less
+stable groups. The practical man and the man of science in my fable, were both of them
+dealing with <i>Things</i>: passing from one group of potential reaction to another,
+hurrying here, dallying there, till of the actual <i>aspect</i> of the landscape there
+remained nothing in their thoughts, trams and funiculars in the future, volcanoes and
+icecaps in the past, having entirely altered all that; only the material constituents and
+the geographical locality remaining as the unshifted item in those much pulled about
+bundles of thoughts of possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>Every <i>thing</i> may have a great number of very different <i>Aspects;</i> and some
+of these <i>Aspects</i> may invite contemplation, as that landscape invited the third man
+to contemplate it; while other <i>aspects</i> (say the same place after a proper course
+of tramways and funiculars and semi-detached residences, or <i>before</i> the needful
+volcanic and glacial action) may be such as are dismissed or slurred as fast as possible.
+Indeed, with the exception of a very few cubes not in themselves especially attractive, I
+cannot remember any <i>things</i> which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects
+as pleasing ones. The most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood on its head; the
+most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at through a microscope or from too far
+off; the most beautiful melody is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . Here the
+Reader may interrupt: "What nonsense! Of course the building <i>is</i> a building only
+when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a microscope; the melody
+isn't a melody except begun at the beginning"—all which means that when we speak of
+a building, a picture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer of a
+<i>Thing,</i> but of one of the possible <i>Aspects</i> of a thing; <i>and that when we
+say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords one or more aspects which we
+contemplate with satisfaction.</i> But if a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could
+only be <i>contemplated,</i> if the mountain could not also be climbed or tunnelled, if
+the woman could not also get married, bear children and have (or not have!) a vote, we
+should say that the mountain and the woman were not <i>real things.</i> Hence we come to
+the conclusion, paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking about,
+<i>that what we contemplate as beautiful is an Aspect of a Thing, but never a Thing
+itself.</i> In other words: Beautiful is an adjective applicable to Aspects not to
+Things, or to Things only, inasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other
+potentialities) beautiful Aspects. So that we can now formulate: <i>The word beautiful
+implies the satisfaction derived from the contemplation not of things but of
+aspects.</i></p>
+
+<p>This summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject; and I should wish the
+Reader to get it by heart, until he grow familiarised therewith in the course of our
+further examinations. Before proceeding upon these, I would, however, ask him to reflect
+how this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless, squabble as to
+whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth, and whether art, as certain
+moralists contend, is a school of lying. For <i>true</i> or <i>false</i> is a judgment of
+existence; it refers to <i>Things;</i> it implies that besides the qualities and
+reactions shown or described, our further action or analysis will call forth certain
+other groups of qualities and reactions constituting the <i>thing which is said to
+exist.</i> But aspects, in the case in which I have used that word, <i>are</i> what they
+are and do not necessarily imply anything beyond their own peculiarities. The words
+<i>true</i> or <i>false</i> can be applied to them only with the meaning of <i>aspects
+truly existing</i> or <i>not truly existing;</i> <i>i.e.</i> aspects of which it is true
+or not to <i>say that they exist.</i> But as to an aspect being true or false in the
+sense of <i>misleading,</i> that question refers not to the <i>aspect</i> itself, but to
+the thing of which the aspect is taken as a part and a sign. Now the contemplation of the
+mere aspect, the beauty (or ugliness) of the aspect, does not itself necessitate or imply
+any such reference to a thing. Our contemplation of the beauty of a statue representing a
+Centaur may indeed be disturbed by the reflexion that a creature with two sets of lungs
+and digestive organs would be a monster and not likely to grow to the age of having a
+beard. But this disturbing thought need not take place. And when it takes place it is not
+part of our contemplation of the <i>aspect</i> of that statue; it is, on the contrary,
+outside it, an excursion away from it due to our inveterate (and very necessary) habit of
+interrupting the contemplation of <i>Aspects</i> by the thinking and testing of
+<i>Things.</i> The Aspect never implied the existence of a Thing beyond itself; it did
+not affirm that anything was true, <i>i.e.</i> that anything could or would happen
+besides the fact of our contemplation. In other words the formula that <i>beautiful is an
+adjective applying only to aspects,</i> shows us that art can be truthful or untruthful
+only in so far as art (as is often the case) deliberately sets to making statements about
+the existence and nature of Things. If Art says "Centaurs can be born and grow up to
+man's estate with two sets of respiratory and digestive organs"—then Art is telling
+lies. Only, before accusing it of being a liar, better make sure that the statement about
+the possibility of centaurs has been intended by the Art, and not merely read into it by
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>But more of this when we come to the examination of Subject and Form.</p><a name=
+"4"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER IV</p>
+
+<p>SENSATIONS</p>
+
+<p>IN the contemplation of the <i>Aspect</i> before him, what gave that aesthetic man the
+most immediate and undoubted pleasure was its colour, or, more correctly speaking, its
+colours. Psycho-Physiologists have not yet told us why colours, taken singly and apart
+from their juxtaposition, should possess so extraordinary a power over what used to be
+called our animal spirits, and through them over our moods; and we can only guess from
+analogy with what is observed in plants, as well as from the nature of the phenomenon
+itself, that various kinds of luminous stimulation must have some deep chemical
+repercussion throughout the human organism. The same applies, though in lesser degree, to
+sounds, quite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies. As there are
+colours which <i>feel, i.e.</i> make <i>us</i> feel, more or less warm or cool, colours
+which are refreshing or stifling, depressing or exhilarating quite independent of any
+associations, so also there are qualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the
+trumpet, or harrow us like the quaver of the accordion. Similarly with regard to
+immediacy of effect: the first chords of an organ will change our whole mode of being
+like the change of light and colour on first entering a church, although the music which
+that organ is playing may, after a few seconds of listening, bore us beyond endurance;
+and the architecture of that church, once we begin to take stock of it, entirely dispel
+that first impression made by the church's light and colour. It is on account of this
+doubtless physiological power of colour and sound, this way which they have of invading
+and subjugating us with or without our consent and long before our conscious
+co-operation, that the Man-on-the-Hill's pleasure in the aspect before him was, as I have
+said, first of all, pleasure in colour. Also, because pleasure in colour, like pleasure
+in mere sound-quality or <i>timbre,</i> is accessible to people who never go any further
+in their aesthetic preference. Children, as every one knows, are sensitive to colours,
+long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes. And the timbre of a perfect
+voice in a single long note or shake used to bring the house down in the days of our
+grandparents, just as the subtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers
+incapable of distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of
+following a modulation.</p>
+
+<p>The Man on the Hill, therefore, received immediate pleasure from the colours of the
+landscape. <i>Received</i> pleasure, rather than <i>took</i> it, since colours, like
+smells, seem, as I have said, to invade us, and insist upon pleasing whether we want to
+be pleased or not. In this meaning of the word we may be said to be <i>passive</i> to
+sound and colour quality: our share in the effects of these sensations, as in the effect
+of agreeable temperatures, contacts and tastes, is a question of bodily and mental
+reflexes in which our conscious activity, our voluntary attention, play no part: we are
+not <i>doing,</i> but <i>done to</i> by those stimulations from without; and the pleasure
+or displeasure which they set up in us is therefore one which we <i>receive,</i> as
+distinguished from one which <i>we take.</i></p>
+
+<p>Before passing on to the pleasure which the Man on the Hill <i>did take,</i> as
+distinguished from thus passively <i>receiving,</i> from the aspect before him, before
+investigating into the activities to which this other kind of pleasure, <i>pleasure
+taken, not received,</i> is due, we must dwell a little longer on the colours which
+delighted him, and upon the importance or unimportance of those colours with regard to
+that <i>Aspect</i> he was contemplating.</p>
+
+<p>These colours—particularly a certain rain-washed blue, a pale lilac and a faded
+russet—gave him, as I said, immediate and massive pleasure like that of certain
+delicious tastes and smells, indeed anyone who had watched him attentively might have
+noticed that he was making rather the same face as a person rolling, as Meredith says, a
+fine vintage against his palate, or drawing in deeper draughts of exquisitely scented
+air; he himself, if not too engaged in looking, might have noticed the accompanying
+sensations in his mouth, throat and nostrils; all of which, his only active response to
+the colour, was merely the attempt to <i>receive more</i> of the already received
+sensation. But this pleasure which he received from the mere colours of the landscape was
+the same pleasure which they would have given him if he had met them in so many skeins of
+silk; the more complex pleasure due to their juxtaposition, was the pleasure he might
+have had if those skeins, instead of being on separate leaves of a pattern-book, had been
+lying tangled together in an untidy work-basket. He might then probably have said, "Those
+are exactly the colours, and in much the same combination, as in that landscape we saw
+such and such a day, at such and such a season and hour, from the top of that hill." But
+he would never have said (or been crazy if he had) "Those skeins of silk are the
+landscape we saw in that particular place and oh that particular occasion." Now the odd
+thing is that he would have used that precise form of words, "that is the landscape,"
+etc. etc., if you had shown him a pencil drawing or a photograph taken from that
+particular place and point of view. And similarly if you had made him look through
+stained glass which changed the pale blue, pale lilac and faded russet into emerald green
+and blood red. He would have exclaimed at the loss of those exquisite colours when you
+showed him the monochrome, and perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when
+you forced him to look through that atrocious glass. But he would have identified the
+aspect as the one he had seen before; just as even the least musical person would
+identify "God save the King" whether played with three sharps on the flute or with four
+flats on the trombone.</p>
+
+<p>There is therefore in an <i>Aspect</i> something over and above the quality of the
+colours (or in a piece of music, of the sounds) in which that aspect is, at any
+particular moment, embodied for your senses; something which can be detached from the
+particular colours or sounds and re-embodied in other colours or sounds, existing
+meanwhile in a curious potential schematic condition in our memory. That something is
+<i>Shape.</i></p>
+
+<p>It is Shape which we contemplate; and it is only because they enter into shapes that
+colours and sounds, as distinguished from temperatures, textures, tastes and smells, can
+be said to be contemplated at all. Indeed if we apply to single isolated colour or
+sound-qualities (that blue or russet, or the mere timbre of a voice or an orchestra) the
+adjective <i>beautiful</i> while we express our liking for smells, tastes, temperatures
+and textures merely by the adjectives <i>agreeable, delicious</i>; this difference in our
+speech is doubtless due to the fact that colours or sounds are more often than not
+connected each with other colours or other sounds into a Shape and thereby become subject
+to contemplation more frequently than temperatures, textures, smells and tastes which
+cannot themselves be grouped into shapes, and are therefore objects of contemplation only
+when associated with colours and sounds, as for instance, the smell of burning weeds in a
+description of autumnal sights, or the cool wetness of a grotto in the perception of its
+darkness and its murmur of waters.</p>
+
+<p>On dismissing the practical and the scientific man because they were <i>thinking away
+from aspects to things,</i> I attempted to inventory the <i>aspect</i> in whose
+contemplation their aesthetic companion had remained absorbed. There were the colours,
+that delicious recently-washed blue, that lilac and russet, which gave the man his
+immediate shock of passive and (as much as smell and taste) bodily pleasure. But besides
+these my inventory contained another kind of item: what I described as a fan-like
+arrangement of sharply convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills,
+picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down merely to rush up
+again in long rapid concave curves. And besides all this, there was the outline of a
+distant mountain, rising flamelike against the sky. It was all these items made up of
+<i>lines</i> (skyline, outline, and lines of perspective!) which remained unchanged when
+the colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass, and unchanged also
+when the colouring was reduced to the barest monochrome of a photograph or a pencil
+drawing; nay remained the same despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless
+presentment of them. Those items of the aspect were, as we all know, <i>Shapes.</i> And
+with altered colours, and colours diminished to just enough for each line to detach
+itself from its ground, those Shapes could be contemplated and called
+beautiful.</p><a name="5"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER V</p>
+
+<p>PERCEPTION OF RELATIONS</p>
+
+<p>WHY should this be the case? Briefly, because colours (and sounds) as such are forced
+upon us by external stimulation of our organs of sight and hearing, neither more nor less
+than various temperatures, textures, tastes and smells are forced upon us from without
+through the nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin, muscle, palate and
+nose. Whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly willy <i>seen</i> or <i>heard,</i> are,
+at least until we know them, <i>looked</i> at or <i>listened</i> to, that is to say
+<i>taken in</i> or <i>grasped,</i> by mental and bodily activities which meet, but may
+also refuse to meet, those sense stimulations. Moreover, because these mental and bodily
+activities, being our own, can be rehearsed in what we call our memory without the
+repetition of the sensory stimulations which originally started them, and even in the
+presence of different ones.</p>
+
+<p>In terms of mental science, colour and sound, like temperature, texture, taste and
+smell, are <i>sensations</i>; while <i>shape</i> is, in the most complete sense, a
+<i>perception.</i> This distinction between <i>sensation</i> and <i>perception</i> is a
+technicality of psychology; but upon it rests the whole question why shapes can be
+contemplated and afford the satisfaction connected with the word <i>beautiful,</i> while
+colours and sounds, except as grouped or groupable into shapes, cannot. Moreover this
+distinction will prepare us for understanding the main fact of all psychological
+aesthetics: namely that the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction which we get from shapes
+is satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what are, directly or indirectly, activities of our
+own.</p>
+
+<p>Etymologically and literally, <i>perception</i> means the act of <i>grasping</i> or
+<i>taking</i> in, and also the result of that action. But when we thus <i>perceive</i> a
+shape, what is it precisely that we grasp or take in? At first it might seem to be the
+<i>sensations</i> in which that form is embodied. But a moment's reflection will show
+that this cannot be the case, since the sensations are furnished us simply without our
+performing any act of perception, thrust on us from outside, and, unless our sensory
+apparatus and its correlated brain centre were out of order, received by us passively,
+nilly willy, the Man on the Hill being invaded by the sense of that blue, that lilac and
+that russet exactly as he might have been invaded by the smell of the hay in the fields
+below. No: what we grasp or take in thus actively are not the sensations themselves, but
+the <i>relations</i> between these sensations, and it is of these relations, more truly
+than of the sensations themselves, that a shape is, in the most literal sense, <i>made
+up.</i> And it is this <i>making up of shapes,</i> this grasping or taking in of their
+constituent relations, which is an active process on our part, and one which we can
+either perform or not perform. When, instead of merely <i>seeing</i> a colour, we <i>look
+at</i> a shape, our eye ceases to be merely passive to the action of the various
+light-waves, and becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way; turning
+its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the stimulus, adjusting its focus
+like that of an opera glass, and like an opera glass, turning it to the right or left,
+higher or lower.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, except in dealing with very small surfaces, our eye moves about in our head
+and moves our head, and sometimes our whole body, along with it. An analogous active
+process undoubtedly distinguishes <i>listening</i> from mere <i>hearing;</i> and although
+psycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments of the inner ear
+corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye, it is generally recognised that
+auditive attention is accompanied by adjustments of the vocal parts, or preparations for
+such adjustments, which account for the impression of <i>following</i> a sequence of
+notes as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do <i>not</i> follow,
+in the sense of <i>connecting by our activity,</i> consecutive sensations of taste or
+smell. Besides such obvious or presumable bodily activities requisite for looking and
+listening as distinguished from mere seeing and hearing, there is moreover in all
+perception of shape, as in all <i>grasping of meaning,</i> a mental activity involving
+what are called <i>attention</i> and <i>memory.</i> A primer of aesthetics is no place
+for expounding any of the various psychological definitions of either of these, let us
+call them, faculties. Besides I should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental
+facts as can be found in the Reader's everyday (however unnoticed) experience, instead of
+requiring for their detection the artificial conditions of specialised introspection or
+laboratory experiment. So I shall give to those much fought over words <i>attention</i>
+and <i>memory</i> merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are familiar in
+everyday language, and only beg the Reader to notice that, whatever psychologists may
+eventually prove or disprove <i>attention</i> and <i>memory</i> to be, these two, let us
+unscientifically call them <i>faculties,</i> are what chiefly distinguishes
+<i>perception</i> from <i>sensation.</i> For instance, in grasping or taking stock of a
+visible or an audible shape we are doing something with our attention, or our attention
+is doing something in us: a travelling about, a returning to starting points, a summing
+up. And a travelling about not merely between what is given simultaneously in the
+present, but, even more, between what has been given in an immediately proximate past,
+and what we expect to be given in an immediately proximate future; both of which, the
+past which is put behind us as past, and the past which is projected forwards as future,
+necessitate the activity of <i>memory.</i> There is an adjustment of our feelings as well
+as our muscles not merely to the present sensation, but to the future one, and a buzz of
+continuing adjustment to the past. There is a holding over and a holding on, a reacting
+backwards and forwards of our attention, and quite a little drama of expectation,
+fulfilment and disappointment, or as psychologists call them, of tensions and
+relaxations. And this little drama involved in all looking or listening, particularly in
+all taking stock of visible or audible (and I may add intellectual or <i>verbal</i>)
+shape, has its appropriate accompaniment of emotional changes: the ease or difficulty of
+understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat which we shall deal with later. And
+although the various perceptive activities remain unnoticed in themselves (so long as
+easy and uninterrupted), we become aware of a lapse, a gap, whenever our mind's eye (if
+not our bodily one!) neglects to sweep from side to side of a geometrical figure, or from
+centre to circumference, or again whenever our mind's ear omits following from some
+particular note to another, just as when we fall asleep for a second during a lecture or
+sermon: we have, in common parlance, <i>missed the hang</i> of some detail or passage.
+What we have missed, in that lapse of attention, is a <i>relation,</i> the length and
+direction of a line, or the span of a musical interval, or, in the case of words, the
+references of noun and verb, the co-ordination of tenses of a verb. And it is such
+relations, more or less intricate and hierarchic, which transform what would otherwise be
+meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of sensations into the significant entities which
+can be remembered and recognised even when their constituent sensations are completely
+altered, namely <i>shapes.</i> To our previous formula that <i>beautiful</i> denotes
+satisfaction in contemplating an aspect, we can now add that an <i>aspect</i> consists of
+sensations grouped together into <i>relations</i> by our active, our remembering and
+foreseeing, perception.</p><a name="6"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER VI</p>
+
+<p>ELEMENTS OF SHAPE</p>
+
+<p>LET us now examine some of these relations, not in the genealogical or hierarchic
+order assigned to them by experimental psychology, but in so far as they constitute the
+elements of <i>shape,</i> and more especially as they illustrate the general principle
+which I want to impress on the Reader, namely: That the perception of Shape depends
+primarily upon movements which <i>we</i> make, and the measurements and comparisons which
+<i>we</i> institute.</p>
+
+<p>And first we must examine mere <i>extension</i> as such, which distinguishes our
+active dealings with visual and audible sensations from our passive reception of the
+sensations of taste and smell. For while in the case of the latter a succession of
+similar stimulations affects us as "more taste of strawberry" or "more smell of rose"
+when intermittent, or as a vague "there <i>is</i> a strong or faint taste of strawberry"
+and a "there is a smell of lemon flower"—when continuous; our organ of sight being
+mobile, reports not "more black on white" but "so many inches of black line on a white
+ground," that is to say reports a certain <i>extension</i> answering to its own movement.
+This quality of extension exists also in our sound-perceptions, although the explanation
+is less evident. Notes do not indeed exist (but only sounding bodies and air-vibrations)
+in the space which we call "real" because our eye and our locomotion coincide in their
+accounts of it; but notes are experienced, that is thought and felt, as existing in a
+sort of imitation space of their own. This "musical space," as M. Dauriac has rightly
+called it, has limits corresponding with those of our power of hearing or reproducing
+notes, and a central region corresponding with our habitual experience of the human
+voice; and in this "musical space" notes are experienced as moving up and down and with a
+centrifugal and centripetal direction, and also as existing at definite spans or
+<i>intervals</i> from one another; all of which probably on account of presumable
+muscular adjustments of the inner and auditive apparatus, as well as obvious sensations
+in the vocal parts when we ourselves produce, and often when we merely think of, them. In
+visual perception the sweep of the glance, that is the adjustment of the muscles of the
+inner eye, the outer eye and of the head, is susceptible of being either interrupted or
+continuous like any other muscular process; and its continuity is what unites the mere
+successive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension, so that the same
+successive colour-and-light-sensations can be experienced either as <i>one</i> extension,
+or as two or more, according as the glance is continuous or interrupted; the eye's sweep,
+when not excessive, tending to continuity <i>unless a new direction requires a new
+muscular adjustment.</i> And, except in the case of an <i>extension</i> exceeding any
+single movement of eye and head, a new adjustment answers to what we call <i>a change of
+direction. Extension</i> therefore, as we have forestalled with regard to sound, has
+various modes, corresponding to something belonging to ourselves: a <i>middle,</i>
+answering to the middle not of our field of vision, since that itself can be raised or
+lowered by a movement of the head, but to the middle of our body; and an <i>above</i> and
+<i>below,</i> a <i>right</i> and a <i>left</i> referable to our body also, or rather to
+the adjustments made by eye and head in the attempt to see our own extremities; for, as
+every primer of psychology will teach you, mere sight and its muscular adjustments
+account only for the dimensions of height (up and down) and of breadth (right and left)
+while the third or cubic dimension of <i>depth</i> is a highly complex result of
+locomotion in which I include prehension. And inasmuch as we are dealing with
+<i>aspects</i> and not with <i>things,</i> we have as yet nothing to do with this
+<i>cubic</i> or <i>third dimension,</i> but are confining ourselves to the two dimensions
+of extension in height and breadth, which are sufficient for the existence, the identity,
+or more correctly the <i>quiddity,</i> of visible shapes.</p>
+
+<p>Such a shape is therefore, primarily, a series of longer or shorter <i>extensions,</i>
+given by a separate glance towards, or away from, our own centre or extremities, and at
+some definite angle to our own axis and to the ground on which we stand. But these acts
+of extension and orientation cease to be thought of as measured and orientated, and
+indeed as accomplished, by ourselves, and are translated into objective terms whenever
+our attention is turned outwards: thus we say that each line is of a given length and
+direction, so or so much off the horizontal or vertical.</p>
+
+<p>So far we have established relations only to ourselves. We now compare the acts of
+extension one against the other, and we also measure the adjustment requisite to pass
+from one to another, continuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre; in everyday
+speech, we perceive that the various lines are <i>similar</i> and <i>dissimilar</i> in
+length, direction and orientation. We <i>compare;</i> and comparing we <i>combine</i>
+them in the unity of our intention: thought of together they are thought of as belonging
+together. Meanwhile the process of such comparison of the relation of each line with us
+to the analogous relation to us of its fellows, produces yet further acts of measurement
+and comparison. For in going from one of our lines to another we become aware of the
+presence of—how shall I express it?—well of a <i>nothing</i> between them,
+what we call <i>blank space,</i> because we experience a <i>blank</i> of the particular
+sensations, say red and black, with which we are engaged in those lines. Between the red
+and black sensations of the lines we are looking at, there will be a possibility of other
+colour sensations, say the white of the paper, and these white sensations we shall duly
+receive, for, except by shutting our eyes, we could not avoid receiving them. But though
+received these white sensations will not be attended to, because they are not what we are
+busied with. We shall be <i>passive</i> towards the white sensations while we are
+<i>active</i> towards the black and red ones; we shall not measure the white; not sweep
+our glance along it as we do along the red and the black. And as <i>ceteris paribus</i>
+our tense awareness of active states always throws into insignificance a passive state
+sandwiched between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions, and their
+comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the uninteresting white extensions as
+a <i>blank,</i> a gap, as that which separates the objects of our active interest, and
+takes what existence it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those
+interesting actively measured and compared lines. Thus the difference between our
+<i>active perception</i> and our merely <i>passive sensation</i> accounts for the fact
+that every visible shape is composed of lines (or bands) measured and compared with
+reference to our own ocular adjustments and our axis and centre; lines existing, as we
+express it, in <i>blank space,</i> that is to say space not similarly measured; lines,
+moreover, <i>enclosing</i> between each other more of this blank space, which is not
+measured in itself but subjected to the measurement of its enclosing lines. And
+similarly, every <i>audible</i> Shape consists not merely of sounds enclosing
+<i>silence,</i> but of heard tones between which we are aware of the intervening <i>blank
+interval</i> which <i>might have been</i> occupied by the intermediary tones and
+semitones. In other words, visible and audible Shape is composed of alternations between
+<i>active,</i> that is <i>moving,</i> measuring, referring, comparing, attention; and
+<i>passive,</i> that is comparatively sluggish <i>reception</i> of mere sensation.</p>
+
+<p>This fact implies another and very important one, which I have indeed already hinted
+at. If perceiving shape means comparing lines (they may <i>be bands,</i> but we will call
+them <i>lines),</i> and the lines are measured only by consecutive eye movements, then
+the act of comparison evidently includes the co-operation, however infinitesimally brief,
+of <i>memory.</i> The two halves of this Chippendale chair-back exist simultaneously in
+front of my eyes, but I cannot take stock simultaneously of the lengths and orientation
+of the curves to the right and the curves of the left. I must hold over the image of one
+half, and unite it, somewhere in what we call "the mind"—with the other; nay, I
+must do this even with the separate curves constituting the patterns each of which is
+measured by a sweep of the glance, even as I should measure them successively by applying
+a tape and then remembering and comparing their various lengths, although the ocular
+process may stand to the tape-process as a minute of our time to several hundreds of
+years. This comes to saying that the perception of visible shapes, even like that of
+audible ones, takes place <i>in time,</i> and requires therefore the co-operation of
+<i>memory.</i> Now memory, paradoxical as it may sound, practically implies
+<i>expectation:</i> the use of the past, to so speak, is to become that visionary thing
+we call the <i>future.</i> Hence, while we are measuring the extension and direction of
+one line, we are not only <i>remembering</i> the extent and direction of another
+previously measured line, but we are also <i>expecting</i> a similar, or somewhat
+similar, act of measurement of the <i>next</i> line; even as in "following a melody" we
+not only remember the preceding tone, but <i>expect</i> the succeeding ones. Such
+interplay of present, past and future is requisite for every kind of <i>meaning,</i> for
+every <i>unit of thought</i>; and among others, of the meaning, the <i>thought,</i> which
+we contemplate under the name of <i>shape.</i> It is on account of this interplay of
+present, past and future, that Wundt counts feelings <i>of tension</i> and
+<i>relaxation</i> among the <i>elements</i> of form-perception. And the mention of such
+<i>feelings,</i> i.e. rudiments of <i>emotion,</i> brings us to recognise that the
+remembering and foreseeing of our acts of measurement and orientation constitutes a
+microscopic psychological drama—shall we call it the drama of the SOUL
+MOLECULES?—whose first familiar examples are those two peculiarities of visible and
+audible shape called <i>Symmetry</i> and <i>Rythm.</i></p>
+
+<p>Both of these mean that a measurement has been made, and that the degree of its
+<i>span</i> is kept in memory to the extent of our expecting that the next act of
+measurement will be similar. <i>Symmetry</i> exists quite as much in <i>Time</i> (hence
+in shapes made up of sound-relations) as in <i>Space;</i> and <i>Rythm,</i> which is
+commonly thought of as an especially musical relation, exists as much in <i>Space</i> as
+in <i>Time</i>; because the perception of shape requires Time and movement equally
+whether the relations are between objectively co-existent and durable marks on stone or
+paper, or between objectively successive and fleeting sound-waves. Also because, while
+the single relations of lines and of sounds require to be ascertained successively, the
+combination of those various single relations, their relations with one another <i>as
+whole and parts,</i> require to be grasped by an intellectual synthesis; as much in the
+case of notes as in the case of lines. If, in either case, we did not remember the first
+measurement when we obtained the second, there would be no perception of shape however
+elementary; which is the same as saying that for an utterly oblivious mind there could be
+no relationships, and therefore no meaning. In the case of Symmetry the relations are not
+merely the lengths and directions of the single lines, that is to say their relations to
+ourselves, and the relation established by comparison between these single lines; there
+is now also the relation of both to a third, itself of course related to ourselves,
+indeed, as regards visible shape, usually answering to our own axis. The expectation
+which is liable to fulfilling or balking is therefore that of a repetition of this double
+relationship remembered between the lengths and directions on one side, by the lengths
+and directions on the other; and the repetition of a common relation to a central
+item.</p>
+
+<p>The case of RYTHM is more complex. For, although we usually think of Rythm as a
+relation of <i>two</i> items, it is in reality a relation of four (or more ); because
+what we remember and expect is a mixture of similarity with dissimilarity between
+lengths, directions or impacts. OR IMPACTS. For with Rythm we come to another point
+illustrative of the fact that all shape-elements depend upon our own activity and its
+modes. A rythmical arrangement is not necessarily one between <i>objectively</i>
+alternated elements like objectively longer or shorter lines of a pattern, or
+<i>objectively</i> higher or lower or longer and shorter notes. Rythm exists equally
+where the objective data, the sense stimulations, are uniform, as is the case with the
+ticks of a clock. These ticks would be registered as exactly similar by appropriate
+instruments. But our mind is not such an impassive instrument: our mind (whatever our
+mind may really be) is subject to an alternation of <i>more</i> and <i>less,</i> of
+<i>vivid</i> and <i>less vivid, important</i> and <i>less important,</i> of <i>strong</i>
+and <i>weak;</i> and the objectively similar stimulations from outside, of sound or
+colour or light, are perceived as vivid or less vivid, important or less important,
+according to the beat of this mutual alternation with which they coincide: thus the
+uniform, ticking of the clock will be perceived by us as a succession in which the
+stress, that is the importance, is thrown upon the first or the second member of a group;
+and the recollection and expectation are therefore of a unity of dissimilar importance.
+We hear STRONG-WEAK; and remembering <i>strong-weak,</i> we make a new <i>strong-weak</i>
+out of that objective uniformity. Here there is no objective reason for one rythm more
+than another; and we express this by saying that the tickings of a clock have no
+intrinsic form. For <i>Form,</i> or as I prefer to call it, <i>Shape,</i> although it
+exists only in the mind capable of establishing and correlating its constituent
+relationships, takes an objective existence when the material stimulations from the outer
+world are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same series and
+combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains why the artist can transmit the
+shapes existing in his own mind to the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain
+objective stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations in time, so
+as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which would, <i>ceteris paribus,</i>
+have been provoked in himself if that shape had not existed first of all <i>only</i> in
+his mind.</p>
+
+<p>A further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a combination of
+active measurements and comparisons, and of remembrance and expectations, is found in a
+fact which has very great importance in all artistic dealings with shapes. I have spoken,
+for simplicity's, sake, as if the patches of colour on a blank (i.e. uninteresting)
+ground along which the glance sweeps, were invariably contiguous and continuous. But
+these colour patches, and the sensations they afford us, are just as often, discontinuous
+in the highest degree; and the lines constituting a shape may, as for instance in
+constellations, be entirely imaginary. The fact is that what we feel as a line is not an
+objective continuity of colour-or-light-patches, but the continuity of our glance's sweep
+which may either accompany this objective continuity or replace it. Indeed such imaginary
+lines thus established between isolated colour patches, are sometimes felt as more
+vividly existing than real ones, because the glance is not obliged to take stock of their
+parts, but can rush freely from extreme point to extreme point. Moreover not only half
+the effectiveness of design, but more than half the efficiency of practical life, is due
+to our establishing such imaginary lines. We are inevitably and perpetually dividing
+visual space (and something of the sort happens also with "musical space") by objectively
+non-existent lines answering to our own bodily orientation. Every course, every
+trajectory, is of this sort. And every drawing executed by an artist, every landscape,
+offered us by "Nature," is felt, because it is measured, with reference to a set of
+imaginary horizontals or perpendiculars. While, as I remember the late Mr G. F. Watts
+showing me, every curve which we look at is <i>felt as being</i> part of an imaginary
+circle into which it could be prolonged. Our sum of measuring and comparing activities,
+and also our dramas of remembrance and expectation, are therefore multiplied by these
+imaginary lines, whether they connect, constellation-wise, a few isolated colour
+indications, or whether they are established as standards of reference (horizontals,
+verticals, etc.) for other really existing lines; or whether again they be thought of,
+like those circles, as <i>wholes</i> of which objectively perceived series of colour
+patches might possibly be <i>parts.</i> In all these cases imaginary lines are
+<i>felt,</i> as existing, inasmuch as we feel the movement by which we bring them into
+existence, and even feel that such a movement might be made by us when it is not.</p>
+
+<p>So far, however, I have dealt with these imaginary lines only as an additional proof
+that shape-perception is an establishment of two dimensional relationships, through our
+own activities, and an active remembering, foreseeing and combining thereof.</p><a name=
+"7"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER VII</p>
+
+<p>FACILITY AND DIFFICULTY OF GRASPING</p>
+
+<p>OF this we get further proof when we proceed to another and less elementary
+relationship implied in the perception of shape: the relation of Whole and Parts.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with the <i>ground</i> upon which we perceive our red and black patches to
+be extended, I have already pointed out that our operations of measuring and comparing
+are not applied to all the patches of colour which we actually see, but only to such as
+we <i>look at</i>; an observation equally applicable to sounds. In other words our
+attention selects certain sensations, and limits to these all that establishing of
+relations, all that measuring and comparing, all that remembering and expecting; the
+other sensations being excluded. Now, while whatever is thus merely seen, but not looked
+at, is excluded as so much <i>blank</i> or <i>otherness</i>; whatever is, on the
+contrary, <i>included</i> is thereby credited with the quality of belonging, that is to
+say being included, together. And the more the attention alternates between the measuring
+of <i>included</i> extensions and directions and the expectation of equivalent
+(symmetrical or rythmical) extensions or directions or stresses, the closer will become
+the relation of these items <i>included</i> by our attention and the more foreign will
+become the <i>excluded otherness</i> from which, as we feel, they <i>detach
+themselves.</i> But—by an amusing paradox—these lines measured and compared
+by our attention, are themselves not only <i>excluding</i> so much <i>otherness or
+blank;</i> they also tend, so soon as referred to one another, to <i>include</i> some of
+this uninteresting blankness; and it is across this more or less completely included
+blankness that the eye (and the imagination!) draw such imaginary lines as I have pointed
+out with reference to the constellations. Thus a circle, say of red patches,
+<i>excludes</i> some of the white paper on which it is drawn; but it <i>includes</i> or
+<i>encloses</i> the rest. Place a red patch somewhere on that <i>enclosed</i> blank; our
+glance and attention will now play not merely along the red circumference, but to and fro
+between the red circumference and the red patch, thereby establishing imaginary but
+thoroughly measured and compared lines between the two. Draw a red line from the red
+patch to the red circumference; you will begin expecting similar lengths on the other
+sides of the red patch, and you will become aware that these imaginary lines are, or are
+not, equal; in other words, that the red patch is, or is not, equidistant from every
+point of the red circumference. And if the red patch is not thus in the middle, you will
+expect, and imagine another patch which <i>is;</i> and from this <i>imaginary centre</i>
+you will draw imaginary lines, that is you will make by no means imaginary glance-sweeps,
+to the red circumference. Thus you may go on adding real red lines and imaginary lines
+connecting them with the circumference; and the more you do so the more you will feel
+that all these real lines and imaginary lines and all the blank space which the latter
+measure, are connected, or susceptible of being connected, closer and closer, every
+occasional excursion beyond the boundary only bringing you back with an increased feeling
+of this interconnexion, and an increased expectation of realising it in further details.
+But if on one of these glance-flickings beyond the circumference, your attention is
+caught by some colour patch or series of colour patches outside of it, you will either
+cease being interested in the circle and wander away to the new colour patches; or more
+probably, try to connect that outlying colour with the circle and its radii; or again
+failing that, you will "overlook it," as, in a pattern of concentric circles you overlook
+a colour band which, as you express it "has nothing to do with it," that is with what you
+are looking at. Or again listening to. For if a church-bell mixes its tones and rythm
+with that of a symphony you are listening to, you may try and bring them in, make a place
+for them, <i>expect</i> them among the other tones or rythms. Failing which you will,
+after a second or two, cease to notice those bells, cease to listen to them, giving all
+your attention once more to the sonorous whole whence you have expelled those intruders;
+or else, again, the intrusion will become an interruption, and the bells, once
+<i>listened to,</i> will prevent your listening adequately to the symphony.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, if the number of extensions, directions, real or imaginary lines or musical
+intervals, alternations of <i>something</i> and <i>nothing,</i> prove too great for your
+powers of measurement and comparison, particularly if it all surpass your habitual
+interplay of recollection and expectation, you will say (as before an over intricate
+pattern or a piece of music of unfamiliar harmonies and rythm) that "you can't grasp
+it"—that you "miss the hang of it." And what you will feel is that you cannot keep
+the parts within the whole, that the boundary vanishes, that what has been included
+unites with the excluded, in fact that all <i>shape</i> welters into chaos. And as if to
+prove once more the truth of our general principle, you will have a hateful feeling of
+having been trifled with. What has been balked and wasted are all your various activities
+of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating; what has been trifled with are your
+expectations. And so far from contemplating with satisfaction the objective cause of all
+this vexation and disappointment, you will avoid contemplating it at all, and explain
+your avoidance by calling that chaotic or futile assemblage of lines or of notes
+"ugly."</p>
+
+<p>We seem thus to have got a good way in our explanation; and indeed the older
+psychology, for instance of the late Grant Allen, did not get any further. But to explain
+why a shape difficult to perceive should be disliked and called "ugly," by no means
+amounts to explaining why some other shape should be liked and called "beautiful,"
+particularly as some ugly shapes happen to be far easier to grasp than some beautiful
+ones. The Reader will indeed remember that there is a special pleasure attached to all
+overcoming of difficulty, and to all understanding. But this double pleasure is shared
+with form-perception by every other successful grasping of meaning; and there is no
+reason why that pleasure should be repeated in the one case more than in the other; nor
+why we should repeat looking at (which is what we mean by contemplating) a shape once we
+have grasped it, any more than we continue to dwell on, to reiterate the mental processes
+by which we have worked out a geometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux.
+The sense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty overcome; the sense
+of illumination ends with the acquisition of a piece of information; and we pass on to
+some new obstacle and some new riddle. But it is different in the case of what we call
+<i>Beautiful. Beautiful</i> means satisfactory for contemplation, <i>i.e.</i> for
+reiterated perception; and the very essence of contemplative satisfaction is its desire
+for such reiteration. The older psychology would perhaps have explained this reiterative
+tendency by the pleasurableness of the sensory elements, the mere colours and sounds of
+which the easily perceived shape is made up. But this does not explain why, given that
+other shapes are made up of equally agreeable sensory elements, we should not pass on
+from a once perceived shape or combination of shapes to a new one, thus obtaining, in
+addition to the sensory agreeableness of colour or sound, a constantly new output of that
+feeling of victory and illumination attendant on every successful intellectual effort.
+Or, in other words, seeing that painting and music employ sensory elements already
+selected as agreeable, we ought never to wish to see the same picture twice, or to
+continue looking at it; we ought never to wish to repeat the same piece of music or its
+separate phrases; still less to cherish that picture or piece of music in our memory,
+going over and over again as much of its shape as had become our permanent
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>We return therefore to the fact that although balked perception is enough to make us
+reject a shape as <i>ugly, i.e.</i> such that we avoid entering into contemplation of it,
+easy perception is by no means sufficient to make us cherish a shape <i>as beautiful,
+i.e.</i> such that the reiteration of our drama of perception becomes desirable. And we
+shall have to examine whether there may not be some other factor of shape-perception
+wherewith to account for this preference of reiterated looking at the same to looking at
+something else.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we may add to our set of formulae: difficulty in shape-perception makes
+contemplation disagreeable and impossible, and hence earns for aspects the adjective
+<i>ugly.</i> But facility in perception, like agreeableness of sensation by no means
+suffices for satisfied contemplation, and hence for the use of the adjective
+Beautiful.</p><a name="8"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER VIII</p>
+
+<p>SUBJECT AND OBJECT</p>
+
+<p>BUT before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception, namely that of
+Empathic Interpretation, I require to forestall an objection which my Reader has
+doubtless been making throughout my last chapters; more particularly that in clearing
+away the ground of this objection I shall be able to lay the foundations of my further
+edifice of explanation. The objection is this: if the man on the hill was aware of
+performing any, let alone all, of the various operations described as constituting
+shape-perception, neither that man nor any other human being would be able to enjoy the
+shapes thus perceived.</p>
+
+<p>My answer is:</p>
+
+<p>When did I say or imply that he was <i>aware</i> of doing any of it? It is not only
+possible, but extremely common, to perform processes without being aware of performing
+them. The man was not <i>aware,</i> for instance, of making eye adjustments and eye
+movements, unless indeed his sight was out of order. Yet his eye movements could have
+been cinematographed, and his eye adjustments have been described minutely in a dozen
+treatises. He was no more aware of <i>doing</i> any measuring or comparing than we are
+aware of <i>doing</i> our digestion or circulation, except when we do them badly. But
+just as we are aware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of being
+aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate performance, so he was aware of
+his measuring and comparing, inasmuch as he was aware that the line A—B was longer
+than the line C—D, or that the point E was half an inch to the left of the point F.
+For so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called upon to make a choice
+between two possible proceedings, nor forced to do or suffer something difficult or
+distressing, in fact so long as we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and
+not to our processes of attending, those processes are replaced in our awareness by the
+very facts—for instance the proportions and relations of lines—resulting from
+their activity. That these results should not resemble their cause, that mental elements
+(as they are called) should appear and disappear, and also combine into unaccountable
+compounds (Browning's "not a third sound, but a star") according as we attend to them, is
+indeed the besetting difficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it
+studies. But it is so because it is one of Psychology's basic facts. And, so far as we
+are at present concerned, this difference between mental processes and their results is
+the fact upon which psychological aesthetics are based. And it is not in order to convert
+the Man on the Hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception, nor even to explain
+why he was not aware of them, that I am insisting upon this point. The principle I have
+been expounding, let us call it that of the <i>merging of the perceptive activities of
+the subject in the qualities of the object of perception,</i> explains another and quite
+as important mental process which was going on in that unsuspecting man.</p>
+
+<p>But before proceeding to that I must make it clearer how that man stood in the matter
+of <i>awareness of himself.</i> He was, indeed, aware of himself whenever, during his
+contemplation of that landscape, the thought arose, "well, I must be going away, and
+perhaps I shan't see this place again"—or some infinitely abbreviated form, perhaps
+a mere sketched out gesture of turning away, accompanied by a slight feeling of
+<i>clinging,</i> he couldn't for the life of him say in what part of his body. He was at
+that moment acutely aware that he <i>did not want</i> to do something which it was
+optional to do. Or, if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of going away, aware that
+he <i>wanted to come back,</i> or at all events wanted to carry off as much as possible
+of what he had seen. In short he was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing
+himself away, or, if some other person or mere habit, saved him this effort, he was aware
+of himself making another effort to impress that landscape on his memory, and aware of a
+future self making an effort to return to it. I call it <i>effort</i>; you may, if you
+prefer, call it will; at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a verb
+to <i>cling to,</i> (in the future tense) <i>return to,</i> to <i>choose as against some
+other alternative</i>; as nominative of a verb briefly, <i>to like</i> or <i>love.</i>
+And the accusative of these verbs would be the landscape. But unless the man's
+contemplation was thus shot with similar ideas of some action or choice of his own, he
+would express the situation by saying "this landscape <i>is</i> awfully beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>This IS. I want you to notice the formula, by which the landscape, ceasing to be the
+accusative of the man's looking and thinking, becomes the nominative of a verb <i>to be
+so-and-so.</i> That grammatical transformation is the sign of what I have designated, in
+philosophical language, <i>as the merging of the activities of the subject in the
+object.</i> It takes place already in the domain of simple sensation whenever, instead of
+saying "<i>I</i> taste or <i>I</i> smell something nice or nasty" we say—&quot;<i>this
+thing</i> tastes or smells nice or nasty." And I have now shown you how this tendency to
+put the cart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex and active
+processes called perception; turning "I measure this line"—"I compare these two
+angles" into "this line <i>extends</i> from A to B"—"these two angles <i>are
+equal</i> to two right angles."</p>
+
+<p>But before getting to the final inversion—"this landscape <i>is</i> beautiful"
+instead of "<i>I</i> like this landscape"—there is yet another, and far more
+curious merging of the subject's activities in the qualities of the object. This further
+putting of the cart before the horse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what
+only the horse can be doing!) falls under the head of what German psychologists call
+<i>Einf&uuml;hlung,</i> or "Infeeling"—which Prof. Titchener has translated
+<i>Empathy.</i> Now this new, and comparatively newly discovered element in our
+perception of shape is the one to which, leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere
+colour and sound sensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever satisfaction we
+connect with the word Beautiful. And I have already given the Reader an example of such
+Empathy when I described the landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a
+skyline "<i>dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves</i>"; to which
+I might have added that there was also a plain which <i>extended,</i> a valley which
+<i>wound along,</i> paths which <i>climbed</i> and roads which <i>followed</i> the
+<i>undulations</i> of the land. But the best example was when I said that opposite to the
+man there was a distant mountain <i>rising</i> against the sky.</p><a name="9"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER IX</p>
+
+<p>EMPATHY</p>
+
+<p><i>THE mountain rises.</i> What do we mean when we employ this form of words? Some
+mountains, we are told, have originated in an <i>upheaval.</i> But even if this
+particular mountain did, we never saw it and geologists are still disputing about HOW and
+WHETHER. So the <i>rising</i> we are talking about is evidently not that probable or
+improbable <i>upheaval.</i> On the other hand all geologists tell us that every mountain
+is undergoing a steady <i>lowering</i> through its particles being weathered away and
+washed down; and our knowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain, so
+far from rising, is <i>descending.</i> Of course we all know that, objects the Reader,
+and of course nobody imagines that the rock and the earth of the mountain is rising, or
+that the mountain is getting up or growing taller! All we mean is that the mountain
+<i>looks</i> as if it were rising.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain <i>looks!</i> Surely here is a case of putting the cart before the horse.
+No; we cannot explain the mountain <i>rising</i> by the mountain <i>looking,</i> for the
+only <i>looking</i> in the business is <i>our</i> looking <i>at</i> the mountain. And if
+the Reader objects again that these are all <i>figures of speech,</i> I shall answer that
+<i>Empathy</i> is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and occasionally
+employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain, when we know perfectly well that the
+figure we have chosen expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. Very well;
+then, (says the Reader) we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely: when we look
+at the mountain <i>we somehow or other think of the action of rising.</i> Is that
+sufficiently literal and indisputable?</p>
+
+<p>So literal and indisputable a statement of the case, I answer, that it explains, when
+we come to examine it, why we have said that the mountain rises. For if the Reader
+remembers my chapter on shape-perception, he will have no difficulty in answering why we
+should have a thought of rising when we look at the mountain, since we cannot look at the
+mountain, nor at a tree, a tower or anything of which we similarly say that it
+<i>rises,</i> without lifting our glance, raising our eye and probably raising our head
+and neck, all of which raising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something
+<i>rising.</i> The rising of which we are aware is going on in us. But, as the Reader
+will remember also, when we are engrossed by something outside ourselves, as we are
+engrossed in looking at the shape (for we can <i>look</i> at only the shape, not the
+<i>substance)</i> of that mountain we cease thinking about ourselves, and cease thinking
+about ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the mountain's shape. What
+becomes therefore of our awareness of raising or lifting or <i>rising?</i> What can
+become of it (so long as it continues to be there!) except that it coalesces with the
+shape we are looking at; in short that the <i>rising</i> continuing to be thought, but no
+longer to be thought of with reference to ourselves (since we aren't thinking of
+ourselves), is thought of in reference to what we <i>are</i> thinking about, namely the
+mountain, or rather the mountain's shape, which is, so to speak, responsible for any
+thought of rising, since it obliges us to lift, raise or rise ourselves in order to take
+stock of it. It is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done by our
+eye to the line of which we say that it <i>extends</i> from A to B, when in reality the
+only <i>extending</i> has been the extending of our glance. It is a case of what I have
+called the tendency to merge the <i>activities</i> of the perceiving subject with the
+qualities of the perceived object. Indeed if I insisted so much upon this tendency of our
+mind, I did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the phenomenon of
+<i>Empathy,</i> as we have just seen it exemplified in the <i>mountain which
+rises.</i></p>
+
+<p>If this is Empathy, says the Reader (relieved and reassured), am I to understand that
+Empathy is nothing beyond <i>attributing what goes on in us when we look at a shape to
+the shape itself?</i></p>
+
+<p>I am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple! If what we attributed to each
+single shape was only the precise action which we happen to be accomplishing in the
+process of looking at it, Empathy would indeed be a simple business, but it would also be
+a comparatively poor one. No. The <i>rising</i> of the mountain is an idea started by the
+awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes, head or neck, and it is an idea
+containing the awareness of that lifting or raising. But it is far more than the idea
+merely of that lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present moment
+and in connexion with this particular mountain. That present and particular raising and
+lifting is merely the nucleus to which gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of
+raising, or <i>rising.</i> which we have ever accomplished or seen accomplished,
+<i>raising</i> or <i>rising</i> not only of our eyes and head, but of every other part of
+our body, and of every part of every other body which we ever perceived to be rising. And
+not merely the thought of past <i>rising</i> but the thought also of future rising. All
+these risings, done by ourselves or watched in others, actually experienced or merely
+imagined, have long since united together in our mind, constituting a sort of composite
+photograph whence all differences are eliminated and wherein all similarities are fused
+and intensified: the general idea of <i>rising,</i> not "I rise, rose, will rise, it
+rises, has risen or will rise" but merely <i>rising as</i> such, <i>rising</i> as it is
+expressed not in any particular tense or person of the verb <i>to rise,</i> but in that
+verb's infinitive. It is this universally applicable notion of rising, which is started
+in our mind by the awareness of the particular present acts of raising or rising involved
+in our looking at that mountain, and it is this general idea of rising, <i>i.e.</i> of
+<i>upward movement,</i> which gets transferred to the mountain along with our own
+particular present activity of raising some part of us, and which thickens and enriches
+and marks that poor little thought of a definite raising with the interest, the emotional
+fullness gathered and stored up in its long manifold existence. In other words: what we
+are transferring (owing to that tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving
+subject with the qualities of the perceived object) from ourselves to the looked at shape
+of the mountain, is not merely the thought of the rising which is really being done by us
+at that moment, but the thought and emotion, the <i>idea of rising as such</i> which had
+been accumulating in our mind long before we ever came into the presence of that
+particular mountain. And it is this complex mental process, by which we (all
+unsuspectingly) invest that inert mountain, that bodiless shape, with the stored up and
+averaged and essential modes of our activity—it is this process whereby we make the
+mountain <i>raise itself,</i> which constitutes what, accepting Prof. Titchener's
+translation[*] of the German word <i>Einf<font face=
+"Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>hlung,</i> I have called Empathy.</p>
+
+<p>[*] From <i><font face="Times New Roman">&#941;&nu;</font></i> and <i><font face=
+"Times New Roman">&pi;&#940;&sigma;&chi;&omega;,
+&#941;&pi;&alpha;&theta;&omicron;&nu;</font></i>.</p>
+
+<p>The German word <i>Einf<font face="Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>hlung</i> "feeling
+into"—derived from a <i>verb to feel oneself into something</i> ("sich in Etwas ein
+f<font face="Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>hlen") was in current use even before Lotze
+and Viscber applied it to aesthetics, and some years before Lipps (1897) and Wundt (1903)
+adopted it into psychological terminology; and as it is now consecrated, and no better
+occurs to me, I have had to adopt it, although the literal connotations of the German
+word have surrounded its central meaning (as I have just defined it) with several
+mischievous misinterpretations. Against two of these I think it worth while to warn the
+Reader, especially as, while so doing, I can, in showing what it is not, make it even
+clearer what Empathy really is. The first of these two main misinterpretations is based
+upon the reflexive form of the German verb "<i>sich einf<font face=
+"Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>hlen</i>" (to feel <i>oneself</i> into) and it defines, or
+rather does not define, Empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of
+the ego into the object or shape under observation; a notion incompatible with the fact
+that Empathy, being only another of those various mergings of the activities of the
+perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already
+dealt, depends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought of an ego; if we
+became aware that it is <i>we</i> who are thinking the rising, we who are <i>feeling</i>
+the rising, we should not think or feel that the mountain did the rising. The other (and
+as we shall later see) more justifiable misinterpretation of the word Empathy is based on
+its analogy with <i>sympathy,</i> and turns it into a kind of sympathetic, or as it has
+been called, <i>inner, i.e.</i> merely <i>felt, mimicry</i> of, for instance, the
+mountain's <i>rising.</i> Such mimicry, not only <i>inner</i> and <i>felt,</i> but
+outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result from very lively <i>empathic</i>
+imagination. But as it is the mimicking, inner or outer, of movements and actions which,
+like the <i>rising</i> of the mountain, take place only in our imagination, it
+presupposes such previous animation of the inanimate, and cannot therefore be taken
+either as constituting or explaining Empathy itself.</p>
+
+<p>Such as I have defined and exemplified it in our Rising Mountain, Empathy is, together
+with mere Sensation, probably the chief factor of preference, that is of an alternative
+of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, in aesthetic contemplation, the muscular adjustments
+and the measuring, comparing and coordinating activities by which Empathy is started,
+being indeed occasionally difficult and distressing, but giving in themselves little more
+than a negative satisfaction, at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense
+relieved. But although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation of shapes, Empathy
+exists or tends to exist throughout our mental life. It is, indeed, one of our simpler,
+though far from absolutely elementary, psychological processes, entering into what is
+called imagination, sympathy, and also into that inference from our own inner experience
+which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer world, and given to the intermittent and
+heterogeneous sensations received from without the framework of our constant and highly
+unified inner experience, that is to say, of our own activities and aims. Empathy can be
+traced in all of modes of speech and thought, particularly in the universal attribution
+of <i>doing</i> and <i>having</i> and <i>tending</i> where all we can really assert is
+successive and varied <i>being.</i> Science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic
+implications of <i>Force</i> and <i>Energy, Attraction</i> and <i>Repulsion</i>; and
+philosophy has reduced <i>Cause</i> and <i>Effect</i> from implying intention and effort
+to meaning mere constant succession. But Empathy still helps us to many valuable
+analogies; and it is possible that without its constantly checked but constantly renewed
+action, human thought would be without logical cogency, as it certainly would be without
+poetical charm. Indeed if Empathy is so recent a discovery, this may be due to its being
+part and parcel of our thinking; so that we are surprised to learn its existence, as
+Moli<font face="Times New Roman">&egrave;</font>re's good man was to hear that be talked
+prose.</p><a name="10"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER X</p>
+
+<p>THE MOVEMENT OF LINES</p>
+
+<p>ANY tendency to Empathy is perpetually being checked by the need for practical
+thinking. We are made to think in the most summary fashion from one to another of those
+grouped possibilities, past, present and future, which we call a Thing; and in such
+discursive thinking we not only leave far behind the <i>aspect,</i> the shape, which has
+started a given scheme of Empathy, a given <i>movement of lines,</i> but we are often
+faced by facts which utterly contradict it. When, instead of looking at a particular
+<i>aspect</i> of that mountain, we set to climbing it ourselves, the mountain ceases to
+"rise"; it becomes passive to the activity which our muscular sensations and our
+difficulty of breathing locate most unmistakably in ourselves. Besides which, in thus
+dealing with the mountain as a <i>thing,</i> we are presented with a series of totally
+different aspects or shapes, some of which suggest empathic activities totally different
+from that of rising. And the mountain in question, seen from one double its height, will
+suggest the empathic activity of <i>spreading itself out.</i> Moreover practical life
+hustles us into a succession of more and more summary perceptions; we do not actually see
+more than is necessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with and the
+adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is, as to what it is likely to
+become. And this which is true of seeing with the bodily eye, is even more so of seeing,
+or rather <i>not</i> seeing but <i>recognising,</i> with the eye of the spirit. The
+practical man on the hill, and his scientific companion, (who is merely, so to speak, a
+man <i>unpractically</i> concerned with practical causes and changes) do not thoroughly
+see the shapes of the landscape before them; and still less do they see the precise shape
+of the funiculars, tramways, offices, cheques, volcanoes, ice-caps and prehistoric
+inhabitants of their thoughts. There is not much chance of Empathy and Empathy's
+pleasures and pains in their lightning-speed, touch-and-go visions!</p>
+
+<p>But now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically contemplative
+fellow-traveller. And, for simplicity's sake, let us imagine him contemplating more
+especially one shape in that landscape, the shape of that distant mountain, the one whose
+"rising"—came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it. The mountain is so far
+off that its detail is entirely lost; all we can see is a narrow and pointed cone,
+perhaps a little <i>toppling</i> to one side, of uniform hyacinth blue <i>detaching</i>
+itself from the clear evening sky, into which, from the paler misty blue of the plain, it
+<i>rises,</i> a mere bodiless shape. It <i>rises.</i> There is at present no doubt about
+its <i>rising.</i> It rises and keeps on rising, never stopping unless <i>we</i> stop
+looking at it. It rises and never <i>has</i> risen. Its drama of two lines
+<i>striving</i> (one with more suddenness of energy and purpose than the other) to
+<i>arrive</i> at a particular imaginary point in the sky, <i>arresting</i> each other's
+<i>progress</i> as they <i>meet</i> in their <i>endeavour,</i> this simplest empathic
+action of an irregular and by no means rectilinear triangle, goes on repeating itself,
+like the parabola of a steadily spirting fountain: for ever accomplishing itself anew and
+for ever accompanied by the same effect on the feelings of the beholder.</p>
+
+<p>It is this reiterative nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness, gives
+Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have tried to make clear to the
+Reader, is due not only to the movements which we are actually making in the course of
+shape-perception, to present movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and
+facility and their accompanying intentions; it is due at least as much to our accumulated
+and averaged past experience of movements of the same kind, also with <i>their</i>
+cognate various modes of speed, intensity, facility, and <i>their</i> accompanying
+intentions. And being thus residual averaged, and essential, this empathic movement, this
+movement attributed to the lines of a shape, is not clogged and inhibited by whatever
+clogs and inhibits each separate concrete experience of the kind; still less is it
+overshadowed in our awareness by the <i>result</i> which we foresee as goal of our real
+active proceedings. For unless they involve bodily or mental strain, our real and
+therefore transient movements do not affect us as pleasant or unpleasant, because our
+attention is always outrunning them to some momentary goal; and the faint awareness of
+them is usually mixed up with other items, sensations and perceptions, of wholly
+different characters. Thus, in themselves and apart from their aims, our bodily movements
+are never interesting except inasmuch as requiring new and difficult adjustments, or
+again as producing perceptible repercussions in our circulatory, breathing and balancing
+apparatus: a waltz, or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly exciting, thanks to its
+resultant organic perturbations and its concomitants of overcome difficulty and danger,
+but even a dancing dervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the
+specific interest of movement as movement. Yet every movement which we accomplish implies
+a change in our debit and credit of vital economy, a change in our balance of bodily and
+mental expenditure and replenishment; and this, if brought to our awareness, is not only
+interesting, but interesting in the sense either of pleasure or displeasure, since it
+implies the more or less furtherance or hindrance of our life-processes. Now it is this
+complete awareness, this brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes, in our various and
+variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as <i>energy</i> and <i>intention,</i> it
+is this sense of the <i>values of movement</i> which Empathy, by its schematic simplicity
+and its reiteration, is able to reinstate. The contemplation, that is to say the
+<i>isolating and reiterating perception,</i> of shapes and in so far of the qualities and
+relations of movement which Empathy invests them with, therefore shields our dynamic
+sense from all competing interests, clears it from all varying and irrelevant
+concomitants, gives it, as Faust would have done to the instant of happiness, a
+sufficient duration; and reinstating it in the centre of our consciousness, allows it to
+add the utmost it can to our satisfaction or dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the mysterious importance, the attraction or repulsion, possessed by shapes,
+audible as well as visible, according to their empathic character; movement and energy,
+all that we feel as being life, is furnished by them in its essence and allowed to fill
+our consciousness. This fact explains also another phenomenon, which in its turn greatly
+adds to the power of that very Empathy of which it is a result. I am speaking once more
+of that phenomenon called <i>Inner Mimicry</i> which certain observers, themselves highly
+subject to it, have indeed considered as Empathy's explanation, rather than its result.
+In the light of all I have said about the latter, it becomes intelligible that when
+empathic imagination (itself varying from individual to individual) happens to be united
+to a high degree of (also individually very varying) muscular responsiveness, there may
+be set up reactions, actual or incipient, <i>e.g.</i> alterations of bodily attitude or
+muscular tension which (unless indeed they withdraw attention from the contemplated
+object to our own body) will necessarily add to the sum of activity empathically
+attributed to the contemplated object. There are moreover individuals in whom such
+"mimetic" accompaniment consists (as is so frequently the case in listening to music) in
+changes of the bodily balance, the breathing and heart-beats, in which cases additional
+doses of satisfaction or dissatisfaction result from the participation of bodily
+functions themselves so provocative of comfort or discomfort. Now it is obvious that such
+mimetic accompaniments, and every other associative repercussion into the seat of what
+our fathers correctly called "animal spirits," would be impossible unless reiteration,
+the reiteration of repeated acts of attention, had allowed the various empathic
+significance, the various <i>dynamic values,</i> of given shapes to sink so deeply into
+us, to become so habitual, that even a rapid glance (as when we perceive the upspringing
+lines of a mountain from the window of an express train) may suffice to evoke their
+familiar dynamic associations. Thus contemplation explains, so to speak, why
+contemplation may be so brief as to seem no contemplation at all: past repetition has
+made present repetition unnecessary, and the empathic, the dynamic scheme of any
+particular shape may go on working long after the eye is fixed on something else, or be
+started by what is scarcely a perception at all; we feel joy at the mere foot-fall of
+some beloved person, but we do so because he is already beloved. Thus does the
+reiterative character essential to Empathy explain how our contemplative satisfaction in
+shapes, our pleasure in the variously combined <i>movements of lines,</i> irradiates even
+the most practical, the apparently least contemplative, moments and occupations of our
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not all. This reiterative character of Empathy, this fact that the
+mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or adding a single cubit to its
+stature, joined to the abstract (the <i>infinitive of the verb)</i> nature of the
+suggested activity, together account for art's high impersonality and its existing, in a
+manner, <i>sub specie aeternitatis.</i> The drama of lines and curves presented by the
+humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the strange immortality of the youths
+and maidens on the <i>Grecian Urn,</i> to whom Keats, as you remember, says:—</p>
+
+<p>"Fond lover, never, never canst thou kiss,<br>
+Though winning near the goal. Yet, do not grieve;<br>
+She cannot fade; though thou hast not thy bliss,<br>
+For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair."</p>
+
+<p>And thus, in considering the process of Aesthetic Empathy, we find ourselves suddenly
+back at our original formula: Beautiful means satisfactory in contemplation, and
+contemplation not of Things but of Shapes which are only Aspects of them.</p><a name=
+"11"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XI</p>
+
+<p>THE CHARACTER OF SHAPES</p>
+
+<p>IN my example of the Rising Mountain, I have been speaking as if Empathy invested the
+shapes we look at with only one mode of activity at a time. This, which I have assumed
+for the simplicity of exposition, is undoubtedly true in the case either of extremely
+simple shapes requiring <i>few</i> and homogeneous perceptive activities. It is true also
+in the case of shapes of which familiarity (as explained on p. 76) has made the actual
+perception very summary; for instance when, walking quickly among trees, we notice only
+what I may call their dominant empathic gesture of <i>thrusting</i> or <i>drooping</i>
+their branches, because habit allows us to pick out the most characteristic outlines.
+But, except in these and similar cases, the <i>movement</i> with which Empathy invests
+shapes is a great deal more complex, indeed we should speak more correctly of movements
+than of movement of lines. Thus the mountain rises, and does nothing but rise so long as
+we are taking stock only of the relation of its top with the plain, referring its lines
+solely to real or imaginary horizontals. But if, instead of our glance making a single
+swish upwards, we look at the two sides of the mountain successively and compare each
+with the other as well as with the plain, our impression (and our verbal description)
+will be that <i>one slope goes up while the other goes down.</i> When the empathic scheme
+of the mountain thus ceases to be mere <i>rising</i> and becomes <i>rising plus
+descending,</i> the two <i>movements</i> with which we have thus invested that shape will
+be felt as being interdependent; one side <i>goes down</i> because the other has <i>gone
+up,</i> or the movement rises <i>in order to</i> descend. And if we look at a mountain
+chain we get a still more complex and co-ordinated empathic scheme, the peaks and valleys
+(as in my description of what the Man saw from his Hillside) appearing to us as a
+sequence of risings and sinkings with correlated intensities; a slope <i>springing up</i>
+in proportion as the previously seen one <i>rushed down</i>; the movements of the eye,
+slight and sketchy in themselves, awakening the composite dynamic memory of all our
+experience of the impetus gained by switch-back descent. Moreover this sequence, being a
+sequence, will awaken expectation of repetition, hence sense of rythm; the long chain of
+peaks will seem to perform a dance, they will furl and unfurl like waves. Thus as soon as
+we get a combination of empathic <i>forces</i> (for that is how they affect us) these
+will henceforth be in definite relation to one another. But the relation need not be that
+of mere give and take and rythmical cooperation. Lines meeting one another may conflict,
+check, deflect one another; or again resist each other's effort as the steady
+determination of a circumference resists, opposes a "Quos ego!" to the rushing impact of
+the spokes of a wheel-pattern. And, along with the empathic suggestion of the mechanical
+forces experienced in ourselves, will come the empathic suggestion of spiritual
+characteristics: the lines will have aims, intentions, desires, moods; their various
+little dramas of endeavour, victory, defeat or peacemaking, will, according to their
+dominant empathic suggestion, be lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or
+brutal; inexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar or
+dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief dynamic modes
+which determine the expressiveness of music. But on the other hand there will remain
+innumerable emphatic combinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal
+classification because, as must be clearly understood, Empathy deals not directly with
+mood and emotion, but with dynamic conditions which enter into moods and emotions and
+take their names from them. Be this as it may, and definable or not in terms of human
+feeling, these various and variously combined (into coordinate scenes and acts) dramas
+enacted by lines and curves and angles, take place not in the marble or pigment embodying
+those contemplated shapes, but solely in ourselves, in what we call our memory,
+imagination and feeling. Ours are the energy, the effort, the victory or the peace and
+cooperation; and all the manifold modes of swiftness or gravity, arduousness or ease,
+with which their every minutest dynamic detail is fraught. And since we are their only
+real actors, these empathic dramas of lines are bound to affect us, either as
+corroborating or as thwarting our vital needs and habits; either as making our felt life
+easier or more difficult, that is to say as bringing us peace and joy, or depression and
+exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>Quite apart therefore from the convenience or not of the adjustments requisite for
+their ocular measurement, and apart even from the facility or difficulty of comparing and
+coordinating these measurements, certain shapes and elements of shape are made welcome to
+us, and other ones made unwelcome, by the sole working of Empathy, which identifies the
+modes of being and moving of lines with our own. For this reason meetings of lines which
+affect us as neither victory nor honourable submission nor willing cooperation are felt
+to be ineffectual and foolish. Lines also (like those of insufficiently tapered Doric
+columns) which do not <i>rise with enough impetus</i> because they do not seem <i>to
+start with sufficient pressure at the base;</i> oblique lines (as in certain imitation
+Gothic) which <i>lose their balance</i> for lack of a countervailing <i>thrust</i>
+against them, all these, and alas many hundreds of other possible combinations, are
+detestable to our feelings. And similarly we are fussed and bored by the tentative lines,
+the uncoordinated directions and impacts, of inferior, even if technically expert and
+realistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm at first glance by
+some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but reveal with every additional day their
+complete insignificance as movement, their utter empathic nullity. Indeed, if we analyse
+the censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of material instability, or
+on wrong perspective or anatomical "out of drawing" we shall find that much of this
+hostile criticism is really that of empathic un-satisfactoriness, which escapes verbal
+detection but is revealed by the finger <i>following,</i> as we say (and that is itself
+an instance of empathy) the movement, the development of, boring or fussing lines.</p>
+
+<p>Empathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with regard to shape,
+but also those particular degrees of liking which are matters of personal temperament and
+even of momentary mood (<i>cf</i>. p. 131). Thus Mantegna, with his preponderance of
+horizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and reassuring, but repel
+another beholder (or the same in a different mood) as dull and lifeless; while the
+unstable equilibrium and syncopated rythm of Botticelli may either fascinate or repel as
+morbidly excited. And Leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced circles will merely
+baffle (the "enigmatic" quality we hear so much of) the perfunctory beholder, while
+rewarding more adequate empathic imagination by allowing us to live, for a while, in the
+modes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious energy.</p>
+
+<p>Intensity and purposefulness and harmony. These are what everyday life affords but
+rarely to our longings. And this is what, thanks to this strange process of Empathy, a
+few inches of painted canvas, will sometimes allow us to realise completely and
+uninterruptedly. And it is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment, but mere
+psychological fact, to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles of a Byzantine
+floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation, this is because the modes of being
+which we are obliged to invest them with are such as we vainly seek, or experience only
+to lose, in our scattered or hustled existence.</p><a name="12"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XII</p>
+
+<p>FROM THE SHAPE TO THE THING</p>
+
+<p>SUCH are the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, impersonal and unpractical, we can
+receive, or in reality, give ourselves, in the contemplation of shape.</p>
+
+<p>But life has little leisure for contemplation; it demands <i>recognition,</i>
+inference and readiness for active adaptation. Or rather life forces us to deal with
+shapes mainly inasmuch as they indicate the actual or possible existence of other groups
+of qualities which may help or hurt us. Life hurries us into recognising
+<i>Things.</i></p>
+
+<p>Now the first peculiarity distinguishing <i>things</i> from <i>shapes</i> is <i>that
+they can occupy more or less cubic space:</i> we can hit up against them, displace them
+or be displaced by them, and in such process of displacing or resisting displacement, we
+become aware of two other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes: they have
+<i>weight</i> in varying degrees and <i>texture</i> of various sorts. Otherwise
+expressed, things have <i>body,</i> they exist in three dimensional space; while
+<i>shapes</i> although they are often aspects of things (say statues or vases) having
+body and cubic existence, shapes <i>as</i> shapes are two dimensional and bodiless.</p>
+
+<p>So many of the critical applications of aesthetic, as well as of the historical
+problems of art-evolution are connected with this fact or rather the continued
+misunderstanding of it, that it is well to remind the Reader of what general Psychology
+can teach us of the perception of the Third Dimension. A very slight knowledge of cubic
+existence, in the sense of <i>relief,</i> is undoubtedly furnished as the stereoscope
+furnishes it, by the inevitable slight divergence between the two eyes; an even more
+infinitesimal dose of such knowledge is claimed for the surfaces of each eye separately.
+But whatever notions of three-dimensional space might have been developed from such
+rudiments, the perception of cubic existence which we actually possess and employ, is
+undeniably based upon the incomparably more important data afforded by locomotion, under
+which term I include even the tiny pressure of a finger against a surface, and the
+exploration of a hollow tooth by the tip of the tongue. The muscular adjustments made in
+such locomotion become associated by repetition with the two-dimensional arrangements of
+colour and light revealed by the eye, the two-dimensional being thus turned into the
+three-dimensional in our everyday experience. But the mistakes we occasionally make, for
+instance taking a road seen from above for a church-tower projecting out of the plain, or
+the perspective of a mountain range for its cubic shape, occasionally reveal that we do
+not really <i>see</i> three-dimensional objects, but merely <i>infer</i> them by
+connecting visual data with the result of locomotor experience. The truth of this
+commonplace of psychology can be tested by the experiment of making now one, now the
+other, colour of a floor pattern seem convex or concave according as we think of it as a
+light flower on a dark ground, or as a white cavity banked in by a dark ridge. And when
+the philistine (who may be you or me!) exclaims against the "out of drawing" and false
+perspective of unfamiliar styles of painting, he is, nine times out of ten, merely
+expressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as "representing"
+three-dimensional things; so far proving that we do not decipher the cubic relations of a
+picture until we have guessed what that picture is supposed to stand for. And this is my
+reason for saying that visible shapes, though they may be aspects of cubic objects, have
+no body; and that the thought of their volume, their weight and their texture, is due to
+an interruption of our contemplation of shape by an excursion among the recollections of
+qualities which shapes, <i>as</i> shapes, cannot possess.</p>
+
+<p>And here I would forestall the Reader's objection that the feeling of effort and
+resistance, essential to all our empathic dealings with two-dimensional shapes, must,
+after all, be due to <i>weight,</i> which we have just described as a quality shapes
+cannot possess. My answer is that Empathy has extracted and schematised effort and
+resistance by the elimination of the thought of weight, as by the elimination of the
+awareness of our bodily tensions; and that it is just this elimination of all
+incompatible qualities which allows us to attribute activities to those two-dimensional
+shapes, and to feel these activities, with a vividness undiminished by the thought of any
+other circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>With cubic existence (and its correlative three-dimensional space), with weight and
+texture we have therefore got from the contemplated shape to a thought alien to that
+shape and its contemplation. The thought, to which life and its needs and dangers has
+given precedence over every other: What <i>Thing</i> is behind this shape, what qualities
+must be inferred from this <i>aspect?</i> After the possibility of occupying so much
+space, the most important quality which things can have for our hopes and fears, is
+<i>the possibility of altering their occupation of space;</i> not our locomotion, but
+<i>theirs.</i> I call it <i>locomotion</i> rather than <i>movement,</i> because we have
+<i>direct</i> experience only of our own movements, and <i>infer</i> similar movement in
+other beings and objects because of their change of place either across our motionless
+eye or across some other object whose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged. I
+call it <i>locomotion</i> also to accentuate its difference from the <i>movement</i>
+attributed to the shape of the Rising Mountain, movement <i>felt</i> by us to be going on
+but not expected to result in any change of the mountain's space relations, which are
+precisely what would be altered by the mountain's <i>locomotion.</i></p>
+
+<p>The <i>practical</i> question about a shape is therefore: Does it warrant the
+inference of a <i>thing</i> able to change its position in three-dimensional space? to
+advance or recede from us? And if so in what manner? Will it, like a loose stone, fall
+upon us? like flame, rise towards us? like water, spread over us? Or will it change its
+place only if <i>we</i> supply the necessary <i>locomotion?</i> Briefly: is the thing of
+which we see the shape inert or active? And if this shape belongs to a thing possessing
+activity of its own, is its locomotion of that slow regular kind we call the growth and
+spreading of plants? Or of the sudden, wilful kind we know in animals and men? What does
+this shape tell us of such more formidable locomotion? Are these details of curve and
+colour to be interpreted into jointed limbs, can the <i>thing</i> fling out laterally,
+run after us, can it catch and swallow us? Or is it such that <i>we</i> can do thus by
+it? Does this shape suggest the thing's possession of desires and purposes which we can
+deal with? And if so, <i>why is it where it is?</i> Whence does it come? What is it going
+to do? What is it <i>thinking</i> of (if it can think)? How will it <i>feel</i> towards
+us (if it can feel)? What would it say (if it could speak)? What will be its future and
+what may have been its past? To sum all up: What does the presence of this shape lead us
+to think and do and feel?</p>
+
+<p>Such are a few of the thoughts started by that shape and the possibility of its
+belonging to a thing. And even when, as we shall sometimes find, they continually return
+back to the shape and play round and round it in centrifugal and centripetal
+alternations, yet all these thoughts are excursions, however brief, from the world of
+definite unchanging shapes into that of various and ever varying things; interruptions,
+even if (as we shall later see) intensifying interruptions, of that concentrated and
+coordinated contemplation of shapes, with which we have hitherto dealt. And these
+excursions, and a great many more, from the world of shapes into that of things, are what
+we shall deal with, when we come to Art, under the heading of <i>representation</i> and
+<i>suggestion,</i> or, as is usually said, of <i>subject</i> and <i>expression</i> as
+opposed to <i>form.</i></p><a name="13"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XIII</p>
+
+<p>FROM THE THING TO THE SHAPE</p>
+
+<p>THE necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the Shape to the Thing,
+from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and practical thinking. But, as the foregoing
+chapter itself suggests, the real order of precedence, both for the individual and the
+race, is inevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest in things
+no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in shapes.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, considering the imperative need for an ever abbreviated and often automatic
+system of human reactions to sense data, it is by no means easy to understand (and the
+problem has therefore been utterly neglected) how mankind ever came to evolve any process
+as lengthy and complicated as that form-contemplation upon which all aesthetic preference
+depends. I will hazard the suggestion that familiarity with shapes took its original
+evolutional utility, as well as its origin, from the dangers of over rapid and uncritical
+inference concerning the qualities of things and man's proper reactions towards them. It
+was necessary, no doubt, that the roughest suggestion of a bear's growl and a bear's
+outline should send our earliest ancestors into their sheltering caves. But the
+occasional discovery that the bear was not a bear but some more harmless and edible
+animal must have brought about a comparison, a discrimination between the visible aspects
+of the two beasts, and a mental storage of their difference in shape, gait and colour.
+Similarly the deluding resemblance between poisonous and nutritious fruits and roots,
+would result, as the resemblance between the nurse's finger and nipple results with the
+infant, in attention to visible details, until the acquisition of vivid mental images
+became the chief item of the savage man's education, as it still is of the self-education
+of the modern child. This evolution of interest in visible aspects would of course
+increase tenfold as soon as mankind took to making things whose usefulness (<i>i.e.</i>
+their still non-existent qualities) might be jeopardised by a mistake concerning their
+shape. For long after <i>over</i> and <i>under, straight</i> and <i>oblique, right</i>
+and <i>left,</i> had become habitual perceptions in dealing with food and fuel, the
+effective aim of a stone, the satisfactory flight of an arrow, would be discovered to
+depend upon more or less of what we call horizontals and perpendiculars, curves and
+angles; and the stability of a fibrous tissue upon the intervals of crossing and
+recrossing, the rythmical or symmetrical arrangements revealed by the hand or eye. In
+short, <i>making,</i> being inevitably <i>shaping,</i> would have developed a more and
+more accurate perception and recollection of every detail of shape. And not only would
+there arise a comparison between one shape and another shape, but between the shape
+actually under one's eyes and the shape no longer present, between the shape as it really
+was and the shape as it ought to be. Thus in the very course of practical making of
+things there would come to be little interludes, recognised as useful, first of more and
+more careful looking and comparing, and then of real contemplation: contemplation of the
+arrow-head you were chipping, of the mat you were weaving, of the pot you were rubbing
+into shape; contemplation also of the <i>other</i> arrow-head or mat or pot existing only
+in your wishes; of the shape you were trying to obtain with a premonitory emotion of the
+effect which its peculiarities would produce when once made visible to your eye! For the
+man cutting the arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with the
+appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual arrow-heads or mats of
+the same type, <i>would become aware of the different effect which such shapes had on the
+person who looked at them.</i> Some of these shapes would be so dull, increasing the
+tediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand; others so alert,
+entertaining and likeable, as if they were helping in the work; others, although equally
+compatible with utility, fussing or distressing one, never doing what one expected their
+lines and curves to do. To these suppositions I would add a few more suggestions
+regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of man's perfunctory and
+semi-automatic seeing of "Things." The handicraftsman, armourer, weaver, or potter,
+benefits by his own and his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more
+adapted for use and wear, and which way to set about producing it; his technical skill
+becomes half automatic, so that his eye and mind, acting as mere overseers to his
+muscles, have plenty of time for contemplation so long as everything goes right and no
+new moves have to be made. And once the handicraftsman contemplates the shape as it
+issues from his fingers, his mind will be gripped by that liking or disliking expressed
+by the words "beautiful" and "ugly." Neither is this all. The owner of a weapon or a
+vessel or piece of tissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its
+usefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill or strength
+required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn from a slave into a comrade. It
+is furbished or mended, displayed to others, boasted over, perhaps sung over as Alan
+Breck sang over his sword. The owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the
+owner!) caresses its shape; and its shape, all its well-known ins-and-outs and
+ups-and-downs, haunts the memory, ready to start into vividness whenever similar objects
+come under comparison. Now what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of
+civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and easily replaced
+properties. The shape of the things we make and use offers itself for contemplation in
+those interludes of inattention which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it
+is this normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which explains how art
+has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects have acquired for our feelings an
+importance rivalling that of things.</p>
+
+<p>I therefore commend to the Reader the now somewhat unfashionable hypothesis of Semper
+and his school, according to which the first preference for beauty of shape must be
+sought for in those arts like stone and metal work, pottery and weaving, which give
+opportunities for repetition, reduplication, hence rythm and symmetry, and whose material
+and technique produce what are called geometric patterns, meaning such as exist in two
+dimensions and do not imitate the shapes of real objects. This theory has been
+discredited by the discovery that very primitive and savage mankind possessed a kind of
+art of totally different nature, and which analogy with that of children suggests as
+earlier than that of pattern: the art which the ingenious hypothesis of Mr Henry Balfour
+derives from recognition of accidental resemblances between the shapes and stains of wood
+or stone and such creatures and objects as happen to be uppermost in the mind of the
+observer, who cuts or paints whatever may be needed to complete the likeness and enable
+others to perceive the suggestion. Whether or not this was its origin, there seems to
+have existed in earliest times such an art of a strictly representative kind, serving
+(like the spontaneous art of children) to evoke the idea of whatever was interesting to
+the craftsman and his clients, and doubtless practically to have some desirable magic
+effect upon the realities of things. But (to return to the hypothesis of the aesthetic
+primacy of geometric and non-representative art) it is certain that although such early
+representations occasionally attain marvellous life-likeness and anatomical correctness,
+yet they do not at first show any corresponding care for symmetrical and rythmical
+arrangement. The bisons and wild boars, for instance, of the Altamira cave frescoes, do
+indeed display vigour and beauty in the lines constituting them, proving that successful
+dealing with shape, even if appealing only to practical interest, inevitably calls forth
+the empathic imagination of the more gifted artists; but these marvellously drawn figures
+are all huddled together or scattered as out of a rag-bag; and, what is still more
+significant, they lack that insistence on the feet which not only suggests ground beneath
+them but, in so doing, furnishes a horizontal by which to start, measure and take the
+bearings of all other lines. These astonishing palaeolithic artists (and indeed the very
+earliest Egyptian and Greek ones) seem to have thought only of the living models and
+their present and future movements, and to have cared as little for lines and angles as
+the modern children whose drawings have been instructively compared with theirs by
+Levinstein and others. I therefore venture to suggest that such aesthetically essential
+attention to direction and composition must have been applied to representative art when
+its realistic figures were gradually incorporated into the patterns of the weaver and the
+potter. Such "stylisation" is still described by art historians as a "degeneration" due
+to unintelligent repetition; but it was on the contrary the integrating process by which
+the representative element was subjected to such aesthetic preferences as had been
+established in the manufacture of objects whose usefulness or whose production involved
+accurate measurement and equilibrium as in the case of pottery or weapons, or rythmical
+reduplication as in that of textiles.</p>
+
+<p>Be this question as it may (and the increasing study of the origin and evolution of
+human faculties will some day settle it!) we already know enough to affirm that while in
+the very earliest art the shape-element and the element of representation are usually
+separate, the two get gradually combined as civilisation advances, and the shapes
+originally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions (hence as magical equivalents) or
+things, and employed for religious, recording, or self-expressive purposes, become
+subjected to selection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable perceptive
+and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to agreeable ones. Nay the whole
+subsequent history of painting and sculpture could be formulated as the perpetual
+starting up of new representative interests, new interests in <i>things,</i> their
+spatial existence, locomotion, anatomy, their reaction to light, and also their
+psychological and dramatic possibilities; and the subordination of these ever-changing
+interests in things to the unchanging habit of arranging visible shapes so as to diminish
+opportunities for the contemplative dissatisfaction and increase opportunities for the
+contemplative satisfaction to which we attach the respective names of "ugly" and
+"beautiful."</p><a name="14"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XIV</p>
+
+<p>THE AIMS OF ART</p>
+
+<p>WE have thus at last got to Art, which the Reader may have expected to be dealt with
+at the outset of a primer on the Beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Why this could not be the case, will be more and more apparent in my remaining
+chapters. And, in order to make those coming chapters easier to grasp, I may as well
+forestall and tabulate the views they embody upon the relation between the Beautiful and
+Art. These generalisations are as follows:</p>
+
+<p>Although it is historically probable that the habit of avoiding ugliness and seeking
+beauty of shape may have been originally established by utilitarian attention to the
+non-imitative ("geometrical") shapes of weaving, pottery and implement-making, and
+transferred from these crafts to the shapes intended to represent or imitate natural
+objects, yet the distinction between <i>Beautiful</i> and <i>Ugly</i> does not belong
+either solely or necessarily to what we call <i>Art.</i> Therefore the satisfaction of
+the shape-perceptive or aesthetic preferences must not be confused with any of the many
+and various other aims and activities to which art is due and by which it is carried on.
+Conversely: although in its more developed phases, and after the attainment of technical
+facility, art has been differentiated from other human employment by its foreseeing the
+possibility of shape-contemplation and therefore submitting itself to what I have
+elsewhere called the <i>aesthetic imperative,</i> yet art has invariably started from
+some desire other than that of affording satisfactory shape-contemplation, with the one
+exception of cases where it has been used to keep or reproduce opportunities of such
+shape contemplation already accidentally afforded by natural shapes, say, those of
+flowers or animals or landscapes, or even occasionally of human beings, which had already
+been enjoyed as beautiful. All art therefore, except that of children, savages,
+ignoramuses and extreme innovators, invariably avoids ugly shapes and seeks for beautiful
+ones; <i>but art does this while pursuing all manner of different aims.</i> These
+non-aesthetic aims of art may be roughly divided into (A) the making of useful objects
+ranging from clothes to weapons and from a pitcher to a temple; (B) the registering or
+transmitting of facts and their visualising, as in portraits, historical pictures or
+literature, and book illustration; and (C) the awakening, intensifying or maintaining of
+definite emotional states, as especially by music and literature, but also by painting
+and architecture when employed as "aids to devotion." And these large classes may again
+be subdivided and connected, if the Reader has a mind to, into utilitarian, social,
+ritual, sentimental, scientific and other aims, some of them not countenanced or not
+avowed by contemporary morality.</p>
+
+<p>How the aesthetic imperative, i.e. the necessities of satisfactory
+shape-contemplation, qualifies and deflects the pursuit of such non-aesthetic aims of art
+can be shown by comparing, for instance, the mere audible devices for conveying
+conventional meaning and producing and keeping up emotional conditions, viz. the hootings
+and screechings of modern industrialism no less than the ritual noises of savages, with
+the arrangements of well constituted pitch, rythm, tonality and harmony in which
+military, religious or dance music has disguised its non-aesthetic functions of conveying
+signals or acting on the nerves. Whatever is unnecessary for either of these motives (or
+any others) for making a noise, can be put to the account of the desire to avoid ugliness
+and enjoy beauty. But the workings of the aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the
+Art of the visual-representative group, and especially in painting, which allows us to
+follow the interplay of the desire to be told (or tell) <i>facts about things</i> with
+the desire to <i>contemplate shapes,</i> and to contemplate them (otherwise we should
+<i>not</i> contemplate!) with sensuous, intellectual and empathic satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>This brings us back to the Third Dimension, of which the possession is, as have we
+seen, the chief difference between <i>Things,</i> which can alter their aspect in the
+course of their own and our actions, and <i>Shapes,</i> which can only be contemplated by
+our bodily and mental eye, and neither altered nor thought of as altered without more or
+less jeopardising their identity.</p>
+
+<p>I daresay the Reader may not have been satisfied with the reference to the locomotor
+nature of cubic perception as sufficient justification of my thus connecting cubic
+existence with Things rather than with Shapes, and my implying that aesthetic preference,
+due to the sensory, intellectual and empathic factors of perception, is applicable only
+to the two other dimensions. And the Reader's incredulity and surprise will have been all
+the greater, because recent art-criticism has sedulously inculcated that the suggestion
+of cubic existence is the chief function of pictorial genius, and the realisation of such
+cubic existence the highest delight which pictures can afford to their worthy beholder.
+This particular notion, entirely opposed to the facts of visual perception and visual
+empathy, will repay discussion, inasmuch as it accidentally affords an easy entrance into
+a subject which has hitherto presented inextricable confusion, namely the relations of
+<i>Form</i> and <i>Subject,</i> or, as I have accustomed the Reader to consider them, the
+<i>contemplated Shape</i> and the <i>thought-of Thing.</i></p>
+
+<p>Let us therefore examine why art-criticism should lay so great a stress on the
+suggestion and the acceptance of that suggestion, of three-dimensional existence in
+paintings. <i>In paintings.</i> For this alleged aesthetic desideratum ceases to be a
+criterion of merit when we come to sculpture, about which critics are more and more
+persistently teaching (and with a degree of reason) that one of the greatest merits of
+the artist, and of the greatest desiderata of the beholder, is precisely the reduction of
+real cubic existence by avoiding all projection beyond a unified level, that is to say by
+making a solid block of stone look as if it were a representation on a flat surface. This
+contradiction explains the origin of the theory giving supreme pictorial importance to
+the Third Dimension. For art criticism though at length (thanks especially to the
+sculptor Hildebrand) busying itself also with plastic art, has grown up mainly in
+connexion with painting. Now in painting the greatest scientific problem, and technical
+difficulty, has been the suggestion of three-dimensional existences by pigments applied
+to a two-dimensional surface; and this problem has naturally been most successfully
+handled by the artists possessing most energy and imagination, and equally naturally
+shirked or bungled or treated parrot-wise by the artists of less energy and imagination.
+And, as energy and imagination also show themselves in finer perception, more vivid
+empathy and more complex dealings with shapes which are only two-dimensional, it has come
+about that the efficient and original solutions of the cubic problem have coincided,
+<i>ceteris paribus,</i> with the production of pictures whose two-dimensional qualities
+have called forth the adjective <i>beautiful,</i> and <i>beautiful</i> in the most
+intense and complicated manner. Hence successful treatment of cubic suggestion has become
+an habitual (and threatens to become a rule-of-thumb) criterion of pictorial merit; the
+more so that qualities of two-dimensional shape, being intrinsic and specific, are
+difficult to run to ground and describe; whereas the quality of three-dimensional
+suggestion is ascertainable by mere comparison between the shapes in the picture and the
+shapes afforded by real things when seen in the same perspective and lighting. Most
+people can judge whether an apple in a picture "looks as if" it were solid, round, heavy
+and likely to roll off a sideboard in the same picture; and some people may even, when
+the picture has no other claims on their interest, experience incipient muscular
+contractions such as would eventually interfere with a real apple rolling off a real
+sideboard. Apples and sideboards offer themselves to the meanest experience and can be
+dealt with adequately in everyday language, whereas the precise curves and angles, the
+precise relations of directions and impacts, of parts to whole, which together make up
+the identity of a two-dimensional shape, are indeed perceived and felt by the attentive
+beholder, but not habitually analysed or set forth in words. Moreover the creation of
+two-dimensional shapes satisfying to contemplation depends upon two very different
+factors: on traditional experience with regard to the more general arrangements of lines,
+and on individual energy and sensitiveness, i.e. on genius in carrying out, and ringing
+changes on, such traditional arrangements. And the possession of tradition or genius,
+although no doubt the most important advantage of an artist, happens not to be one to
+which he can apply himself as to a problem. On the other hand a problem to be solved is
+eternally being pressed upon every artist; pressed on him by his clients, by the fashion
+of his time and also by his own self inasmuch as he is a man interested not only in
+<i>shapes</i> but in <i>things.</i> And thus we are back at the fact that the problem
+given to the painter to solve by means of lines and colours on a flat surface, is the
+problem of telling us something new or something important about <i>things:</i> what
+things are made of, how they will react to our doings, how they move, what they feel and
+think; and above all, I repeat it, what amount of space they occupy with reference to the
+space similarly occupied, in present or future, by other things including ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Our enquiry into the excessive importance attributed by critics to pictorial
+suggestion of cubic existence has thus led us back to the conclusion contained in
+previous chapters, namely that beauty depending negatively on ease of visual perception,
+and positively upon emphatic corroboration of our dynamic habits, is a quality of
+<i>aspects,</i> independent of cubic existence and every other possible quality of
+<i>things</i>; except in so far as the thought of three-dimensional, and other, qualities
+of things may interfere with the freedom and readiness of mind requisite for such highly
+active and sensitive processes as those of empathic form interpretation. But the
+following chapter will, I trust, make it clear that such interference of the <i>Thought
+about Things</i> with the <i>Contemplation of Shapes</i> is essential to the rythm of our
+mental life, and therefore a chief factor in all artistic production and
+appreciation.</p><a name="15"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XV</p>
+
+<p>ATTENTION TO SHAPES</p>
+
+<p>TO explain how art in general, and any art in particular, succeeds in reconciling
+these contradictory demands, I must remind the Reader of what I said (p. 93) about the
+satisfactory or unsatisfactory possibilities of shapes having begun to be noticed in the
+moments of slackened attention to the processes of manufacturing the objects embodying
+those shapes, and in the intervals between practical employment of these more or less
+<i>shapely</i> objects. And I must ask him to connect with these remarks a previous
+passage (p. 44) concerning the intermittent nature of normal acts of attention, and their
+alternation as constituting <i>on-and-off beats.</i> The deduction from these two
+converging statements is that, contrary to the a-priori theories making aesthetic
+contemplation an exception, a kind of bank holiday, to daily life, it is in reality
+one-half of daily life's natural and healthy rythm. That the real state of affairs, as
+revealed by psychological experiment and observation, should have escaped the notice of
+so many aestheticians, is probably due to their theories starting from artistic
+production rather than from aesthetic appreciation, without which art would after all
+probably never have come into existence.</p>
+
+<p>The production of the simplest work of art cannot indeed be thought of as one of the
+alternations of everyday attention, because it is a long, complex and repeatedly resumed
+process, a whole piece of life, including in itself hundreds and thousands of
+alternations of <i>doing</i> and <i>looking,</i> of discursive thinking of aims and ways
+and means and of contemplation of aesthetic results. For even the humblest artist has to
+think of whatever objects or processes his work aims at representing, conveying or
+facilitating; and to think also of the objects, marble, wood, paints, voices, and of the
+processes, drawing, cutting, harmonic combining, by which he attempts to compass one of
+the above-mentioned results. The artist is not only an aesthetically appreciative person;
+he is, in his own way, a man of science and a man of practical devices, an expert, a
+craftsman and an engineer. To produce a work of art is not an interlude in his life, but
+his life's main business; and he therefore stands apart, as every busy specialist must,
+from the business of other specialists, of those ministering to mankind's scientific and
+practical interests.</p>
+
+<p>But while it takes days, months, sometimes years to produce a work of art, it may
+require (the process has been submitted to exact measurement by the stop-watch) not
+minutes but seconds, to take stock of that work of art in such manner as to carry away
+its every detail of shape, and to continue dealing with it in memory. The unsuspected
+part played by memory explains why aesthetic contemplation can be and normally is, an
+intermittent function alternating with practical doing and thinking. It is in memory,
+though memory dealing with what we call the present, that we gather up parts into wholes
+and turn consecutive measurements into simultaneous relations; and it is probably in
+memory that we deal empathically with shapes, investing their already perceived
+directions and relations with the remembered qualities of our own activities, aims and
+moods. And similarly it is thanks to memory that the brief and intermittent acts of
+aesthetic appreciation are combined into a network of contemplation which intermeshes
+with our other thoughts and doings, and yet remains different from them, as the
+restorative functions of life remain different from life's expenditure, although
+interwoven with them. Every Reader with any habit of self-observation knows how poignant
+an impression of beauty may be got, as through the window of an express train, in the
+intermittence of practical business or abstract thinking, nay even in what I have called
+the <i>off-beat</i> of deepest personal emotion, the very stress of the practical,
+intellectual or personal instant (for the great happenings of life are measured in
+seconds!) apparently driving in by contrast, or conveying on its excitement, that
+irrelevant aesthetic contents of the <i>off-beat</i> of attention. And while the
+practical or intellectual interest changes, while the personal emotion subsides, that
+aesthetic impression remains; remains or recurs, united, through every intermittence, by
+the feeling of identity, that identity which, like <i>the rising of the mountain,</i> is
+due to the reiterative nature of shape-contemplation: the fragments of melody may be
+interrupted in our memory by all manner of other thoughts, but they will recur and
+coalesce, and recurring and coalescing, bring with them the particular mood which their
+rythms and intervals have awakened in us and awaken once more.</p>
+
+<p>That diagrammatic Man on the Hill in reality <i>thought away</i> from the landscape
+quite as much as his practical and scientific companions; what he did, and they did not,
+was to think <i>back</i> to it; and think back to it always with the same references of
+lines and angles, the same relations of directions and impacts, of parts and wholes. And
+perhaps the restorative, the healing quality of aesthetic contemplation is due, in large
+part, to the fact that, in the perpetual flux of action and thought, it represents
+reiteration and therefore stability.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the intermittent but recurrent character of shape contemplation,
+the fact that it is inconceivably brief and amazingly repetitive, that it has the
+essential quality of identity because of reiteration, all this explains also two chief
+points of our subject. First: how an aesthetic impression, intentionally or accidentally
+conveyed in the course of wholly different interests, can become a constant accompaniment
+to the shifting preoccupations of existence, like the remembered songs which sing
+themselves silently in our mind and the remembered landscapes becoming an intangible
+background to our ever-varying thoughts. And, secondly, it explains how art can fulfil
+the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things while satisfying the
+imperious unchanging demands of the contemplated preference for beautiful aspects. And
+thus we return to my starting-point in dealing with art: that art is conditioned by the
+desire for beauty while pursuing entirely different aims, and executing any one of a
+variety of wholly independent non-aesthetic tasks.</p><a name="16"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XVI</p>
+
+<p>INFORMATION ABOUT THINGS</p>
+
+<p>AMONG the facts which Painting is set to tell us about things, the most important,
+after cubic existence, is Locomotion. Indeed in the development of the race as well as in
+that of the individual, pictorial attention to locomotion seems to precede attention to
+cubic existence. For when the palaeolithic, or the Egyptian draughtsman, or even the
+Sixth Century Greek, unites profile legs and head with a full-face chest; and when the
+modern child supplements the insufficiently projecting full-face nose by a profile nose
+tacked on where we expect the ear, we are apt to think that these mistakes are due to
+indifference to the cubic nature of things. The reverse is, however, the case. The
+primitive draughtsman and the child are recording impressions received in the course of
+the locomotion either of the thing looked at or of the spectator. When they unite
+whatever consecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest to copy,
+they are in the clutches of their cubic experience, and what they are indifferent about,
+perhaps unconscious of, is the <i>two-dimensional</i> appearance which a body presents
+when its parts are seen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view. The
+progress of painting is always from representing the Consecutive to representing the
+Simultaneous; perspective, foreshortening, and later, light and shade, being the
+scientific and technical means towards this end.</p>
+
+<p>Upon our knowledge of the precise stage of such pictorial development depends our
+correct recognition of what things, and particularly what spatial relations and
+locomotion, of things, the painter is intended to represent. Thus when a Byzantine
+draughtsman puts his figures in what look to us as superposed tiers, he is merely trying
+to convey their existence behind one another on a common level. And what we take for the
+elaborate contortions of athletes and Athenas on Sixth Century vases turns out to be
+nothing but an archaic representation of ordinary walking and running.</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion of locomotion depends furthermore on anatomy. What the figures of a
+painting are intended to be doing, what they are intended to have just done and to be
+going to do, in fact all questions about their action and business, are answered by
+reference to their bodily structure and its real or supposed possibilities. The same
+applies to expression of mood.</p>
+
+<p>The impassiveness of archaic Apollos is more likely to be due to anatomical
+difficulties in displacing arms and legs, than to lack of emotion on the part of artists
+who were, after all, contemporaries either of Sappho or Pindar. And it is more probable
+that the sculptors of Aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of lips and
+cheeks than that, having Homer by heart, they imagined his heroes to die silently and
+with a smirk.</p>
+
+<p>I have entered into this question of perspective and anatomy, and given the above
+examples, because they will bring home to the reader one of the chief principles deduced
+from our previous examination into the psychology of our subject, namely that <i>all
+thinking about things is thinking away from the Shapes suggesting those things, since it
+involves knowledge which the Shapes in themselves do not afford.</i> And I have insisted
+particularly upon the dependence of representations of locomotion upon knowledge of
+three-dimensional existence, because, before proceeding to the relations of Subject and
+Form in painting, I want to impress once more upon the reader the distinction between the
+<i>locomotion of things</i> (locomotion active or passive) and what, in my example of the
+<i>mountain which rises,</i> I have called the <i>empathic movement of lines.</i> Such
+<i>movement of lines</i> we have seen to be a scheme of activity suggested by our own
+activity in taking stock of a two-dimensional-shape; an <i>idea,</i> or <i>feeling</i> of
+activity which we, being normally unaware of its origin in ourselves, project into the
+shape which has suggested it, precisely as we project our sensation of <i>red</i> from
+our own eye and mind into the object which has deflected the rays of light in such a way
+as to give us that <i>red</i> sensation. Such <i>empathic,</i> attributed, movements of
+lines are therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception has called
+them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being qualities of the shapes, they
+inevitably change with every alteration which a shape undergoes, every shape, actively
+perceived, having its own special <i>movement of lines;</i> and every <i>movement of
+lines,</i> or <i>combination of movements of lines</i> existing in proportion as we go
+over and over again the particular shape of which it is a quality. The case is absolutely
+reversed when we perceive or think of, the <i>locomotion of things.</i> The thought of a
+thing's locomotion, whether locomotion done by itself or inflicted by something else,
+necessitates our thinking away from the particular shape before us to another shape more
+or less different. In other words locomotion necessarily alters what we are looking at or
+thinking of. If we think of Michel Angelo's seated Moses as getting up, we think
+<i>away</i> from the approximately pyramidal shape of the statue to the elongated oblong
+of a standing figure. If we think of the horse of Marcus Aurelius as taking the next
+step, we think of a straightened leg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended
+in the air. And if we think of the Myronian Discobolus as letting go his quoit and
+"recovering," we think of the matchless spiral composition as unwinding and straightening
+itself into a shape as different as that of a tree is different from that of a shell.</p>
+
+<p>The pictorial representation of locomotion affords therefore the extreme example of
+the difference between discursive thinking about things and contemplation of shape.
+Bearing this example in mind we cannot fail to understand that, just as the thought of
+<i>locomotion</i> is opposed to the thought of <i>movement of lines,</i> so, in more or
+less degree, the thought of the objects and actions represented by a picture or statue,
+is likely to divert the mind from the pictorial and plastic shapes which do the
+representing. And we can also understand that the problem unconsciously dealt with by all
+art (though by no means consciously by every artist) is to execute the order of
+suggesting interesting facts about things in a manner such as to satisfy at the same time
+the aesthetic demand for shapes which shall be satisfactory to contemplate. Unless this
+demand for sensorially, intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be complied with
+a work of art may be interesting as a diagram, a record or an illustration, but once the
+facts have been conveyed and assimilated with the rest of our knowledge, there will
+remain a shape which we shall never want to lay eyes upon. I cannot repeat too often that
+the differentiating characteristic of art is that it gives its works a value for
+contemplation independent of their value for fact-transmission, their value as
+nerve-and-emotion-excitant and of their value for immediate, for practical, utility. This
+aesthetic value, depending upon the unchanging processes of perception and empathy,
+asserts itself in answer to every act of contemplative attention, and is as enduring and
+intrinsic as the other values are apt to be momentary and relative. A Greek vase with its
+bottom knocked out and with a scarce intelligible incident of obsolete mythology
+portrayed upon it, has claims upon our feelings which the most useful modern mechanism
+ceases to have even in the intervals of its use, and which the newspaper, crammed full of
+the most important tidings, loses as soon as we have taken in its contents.</p><a name=
+"17"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XVII</p>
+
+<p>THE CO-OPERATION OF THINGS AND SHAPES</p>
+
+<p>DURING the Middle Ages and up to recent times the chief task of painting has been,
+ostensibly, the telling and re-telling of the same Scripture stories; and, incidentally,
+the telling them with the addition of constantly new items of information about
+<i>things:</i> their volume, position, structure, locomotion, light and shade and
+interactions of texture and atmosphere; to which items must be added others of
+psychological or (pseudo)-historical kind, how it all came about, in what surroundings
+and dresses, and accompanied by what feelings. This task, official and unofficial, is in
+no way different from those fulfilled by the man of science and the practical man, both
+of whom are perpetually dealing with additional items of information. But mark the
+difference in the artist's way of accomplishing this task: a scientific fact is embodied
+in the progressive mass of knowledge, assimilated, corrected; a practical fact is taken
+in consideration, built upon; but the treatise, the newspaper or letter, once it has
+conveyed these facts, is forgotten or discarded. The work of art on the contrary is
+remembered and cherished; or at all events it is made with the intention of being
+remembered and cherished. In other words and as I shall never tire of repeating, the
+differentiating characteristic of art is that it makes <i>you think back to the shape</i>
+once that shape has conveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention
+or exciting your emotions. And the first and foremost problem, for instance of painting,
+is that of preventing the beholder's eye from being carried, by lines of perspective,
+outside the frame and even persistently out of the centre of the picture; the sculptor
+(and this is the real reason of the sculptor Hildebrand's rules for plastic composition)
+obeying a similar necessity of keeping the beholder's eye upon the main masses of his
+statue, instead of diverting it, by projections at different distances, like the sticking
+out arms and hands of Roman figures. So much for the eye of the body: the beholder's
+curiosity must similarly not be carried outside the work of art by, for instance, an
+incomplete figure (legs without a body!) or an unfinished gesture, this being, it seems
+to roe, the only real reason against the representation of extremely rapid action and
+transitory positions. But when the task of conveying information implies that the
+beholder's thoughts be deliberately led from what is represented to what is not, then
+this centrifugal action is dealt with so as to produce a centripetal one back to the work
+of art: the painter suggests questions of <i>how</i> and <i>why</i> which get their
+answers in some item obliging you to take fresh stock of the picture. What Is the meaning
+of the angels and evidently supernatural horseman in the foreground of Raphael's
+<i>Heliodorus?</i> Your mind flies to the praying High Priest in the central recess of
+the temple, and in going backwards and forwards between him, the main group and the
+scattered astonished bystanders, you are effectually enclosed within the arches of that
+marvellous composition, and induced to explore every detail of its lovely and noble
+constituent shapes.</p>
+
+<p>The methods employed thus to keep the beholder's attention inside the work of art
+while suggesting things beyond it, naturally vary with the exact nature of the
+non-aesthetic task which has been set to the artist; and with the artist's individual
+endowment and even more with the traditional artistic formulae of his country and time:
+Raphael's devices in <i>Heliodorus</i> could not have been compassed by Giotto; and, on
+the other hand, would have been rejected as "academic" by Manet. But whatever the methods
+employed, and however obviously they reveal that satisfactory form-contemplation is the
+one and invariable <i>condition</i> as distinguished from the innumerable varying
+<i>aims,</i> of all works of art, the Reader will find them discussed not as methods for
+securing attention to the shape, but as methods of employing that shape for some
+non-aesthetic purpose; whether that purpose be inducing you to drink out of a cup by
+making its shape convenient or suggestive; or inducing you to buy a particular commodity
+by branding its name and virtues on your mind; or fixing your thoughts on the Madonna's
+sorrows; or awaking your sympathy for Isolde's love tragedy. And yet it is evident that
+the artist who shaped the cup or designed the poster would be horribly disappointed if
+you thought only of drinking or of shopping and never gave another look to the cup or the
+poster; and that Perugino or Wagner would have died of despair if his suggestion of the
+Madonna's sorrows or of Isolde's love-agonies had been so efficacious as to prevent
+anybody from looking twice at the fresco or listening to the end of the opera. This
+inversion of the question is worth inquiring into, because, like the analogous paradox
+about the pictorial "realisation" of cubic existence, it affords an illustration of some
+of the psychological intricacies of the relation between Art and the Beautiful. This is
+how I propose to explain it.</p>
+
+<p>The task to which an artist is set varies from one work to another, while the shapes
+employed for the purpose are, as already said, limited by his powers and especially by
+the precise moment in artistic evolution. The artist therefore thinks of his available
+shapes as something given, as <i>means,</i> and the subject he is ordered to represent
+(or the emotion he is commissioned to elicit) as the all-important <i>aim.</i> Thus he
+thinks of himself (and makes the critic think of him) not as preventing the represented
+subject or expressed emotion from withdrawing the beholder from the artistic shapes, but,
+on the contrary, as employing these artistic shapes for the sole purpose of that
+representation or emotional expression. And this most explicable inversion of the real
+state of affairs ends by making the beholder believe that what <i>he</i> cares for in a
+masterpiece is not the beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have, but the
+efficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which could be just as
+efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest daub or the wretchedest barrel organ!
+This inevitable, and I believe, salutary illusion of the artist, is further in creased by
+the fact that while the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and
+diminishing opportunities for ugliness, the actual beauty of the shapes he is creating
+arises from the depths of his unreasoned, traditional and organised consciousness, from
+activities which might be called automatic if they were not accompanied by a critical
+feeling that what is produced thus spontaneously and inevitably is either turning out as
+it must and should, or, contrariwise, insists upon turning out exactly as it <i>should
+not.</i> The particular system of curves and angles, of directions and impacts of lines,
+the particular "whole-and-part" scheme of, let us say, Michelangelo, is due to his modes
+of aesthetic perceiving, feeling, living, added to those of all the other artists whose
+peculiarities have been averaged in what we call the school whence Michelangelo issued.
+He can no more depart from these shapes than he can paint Rembrandt's Pilgrims of Emmaus
+without Rembrandt's science of light and shade and Rembrandt's oil-and-canvas technique.
+There is no alternative, hence no choice, hence no feeling of a problem to resolve, in
+this question of shapes to employ. But there are dozens of alternatives and of acts of
+choice, there is a whole series of problems when Michelangelo sets to employing these
+inevitable shapes to telling the Parting of the Light from the Darkness, or the Creation
+of Adam on the Vault of the Sixtine, and to surrounding the stories from Genesis with
+Prophets and Sibyls and Ancestors of Christ. Is the ceiling to remain a unity, or be
+broken up into irrelevant compositions? Here comes in, alongside of his almost automatic
+genius for shapes, the man's superhuman constructive ingenuity. See how he divides that
+ceiling in such a way that the frames of the separate compositions combine into a huge
+structure of painted rafters and brackets, nay the Prophets and Sibyls, the Ancestors and
+Ancestresses themselves, and the naked antique genii, turn into architectural members,
+holding that imaginary roof together, securing its seeming stability, increasing, by
+their gesture its upspring and its weightiness, and at the same time determining the
+tracks along which the eye is forced to travel. Backwards and forwards the eye is driven
+by that living architecture, round and round in its search now for completion of visible
+pattern, now for symbolic and narrative meaning. And ever back to the tale of the
+Creation, so that the remote historic incidents of the Ancestors, the tremendous and
+tremendously present lyric excitement and despair of the prophetic men and women, the
+pagan suggestion of the athletic genii, all unite like the simultaneous and consecutive
+harmonies of a titanic symphony, round the recurrent and dominant phrases of those
+central stories of how the universe and man were made, so that the beholder has the
+emotion of hearing not one part of the Old Testament, but the whole of it. But meanwhile,
+and similarly interchanging and multiplying their imaginative and emotional appeal, the
+thought of those most memorable of all written stories unites with the perception and
+empathy of those marvellous systems of living lines and curves and angles, throbbing with
+their immortal impacts and speeds and directions in a great coordinated movement that
+always begins and never ends, until it seems to the beholder as if those painted shapes
+were themselves the crowning work of some eighth day of Creation, gathering up in
+reposeful visible synthesis the whole of Creation's ineffable energy and harmony and
+splendour.</p>
+
+<p>This example of Michelangelo's ceiling shows how, thanks to the rythmical nature of
+perception, art fulfils the mission of making us think from Shapes to Things and from
+Things back to Shapes. And it allows us to see the workings of that psychological law,
+already manifest in the elementary relations of line to line and dot to dot, by which
+whatever can be thought and felt in continuous alternation tends to be turned into a
+whole by such reiteration of common activities. And this means that Art adds to its
+processes of selection and exclusion a process of <i>inclusion,</i> safeguarding
+aesthetic contemplation by drawing whatever is not wholly refractory into that
+contemplation's orbit. This turning of non-aesthetic interests from possible competitors
+and invaders into co-operating allies is an incomparable multiplying factor of aesthetic
+satisfaction, enlarging the sphere of aesthetic emotion and increasing that emotion's
+volume and stability by inclusion of just those elements which would have competed to
+diminish them. The typical instance of such a possible competitor turned into an ally, is
+that of the cubic element, which I have described (p. 85) as the first and most constant
+intruder from the thought of <i>Things</i> into the contemplation of <i>Shapes.</i> For
+the introduction into a picture of a suggested third dimension is what prevents our
+<i>thinking away from</i> a merely two-dimensional aspect by supplying subsidiary
+imaginary aspects susceptible of being co-ordinated to it. So perspective and modelling
+in light and shade satisfy our habit of locomotion by allowing us, as the phrase is,
+<i>to go into</i> a picture; and <i>going into,</i> we remain there and establish on its
+imaginary planes schemes of horizontals and verticals besides those already existing on
+the real two-dimensional surface. This addition of shapes due to perspective increases
+the already existing dramas of empathy, instead of interrupting them by our looking away
+from the picture, which we should infallibly do if our exploring and so to speak
+<i>cubic-locomotor</i> tendencies were not thus employed inside the picture's limits.</p>
+
+<p>This alliance of aesthetic contemplation with our interest in cubic existence and our
+constant thought of locomotion, does more however than merely safeguard and multiply our
+chances of empathic activity. It also increases the sensory discrimination, and hence
+pleasureableness, of colour, inasmuch as colour becomes, considered as light and shade
+and <i>values,</i> a suggestion of three-dimensional <i>Things</i> instead of merely a
+constituent of two-dimensional <i>Shapes.</i> Moreover, one easily tires of "following"
+verticals and horizontals and their intermediate directions; while empathic imagination,
+with its dynamic feelings and frequent semi-mimetic accompaniments, requires sufficient
+intervals of repose; and such repose, such alternation of different mental functions, is
+precisely afforded by thinking in terms of cubic existence. Art-critics have often
+pointed out what may be called the thinness, the lack of <i>staying power,</i> of
+pictures deficient in the cubic element; they ought also to have drawn attention to the
+fatiguing, the almost hallucinatory excitement, resulting from uninterrupted attention to
+two-dimensional pattern and architectural outlines, which were, indeed, intended to be
+incidentally looked at in the course of taking stock of the cubic qualities of furniture
+and buildings.</p>
+
+<p>And since the limits of this volume have restricted me to painting as a type of
+aesthetic contemplation, I must ask the Reader to accept on my authority and if possible
+verify for himself, the fact that what I have been saying applies, <i>mutatis
+mutandis,</i> to the other arts. As we have already noticed, something analogous to a
+third dimension exists also in music; and even, as I have elsewhere shown,[*] in
+literature. The harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our tendency to think of other
+notes and particularly of other allied tonalities; while as to literature, the whole
+handling of words, indeed the whole of logical thinking, is but a cubic working backwards
+and forwards between <i>what</i> and <i>how,</i> a co-ordinating of items and themes,
+keeping the mind enclosed in one scheme of ideas by forestalling answers to the questions
+which would otherwise divert the attention. And if the realisation of the third dimension
+has come to be mistaken for the chief factor of aesthetic satisfaction, this error is due
+not merely to the already noticed coincidence between cubic imagination and artistic
+genius, but even more to the fact that cubic imagination is the type of the various
+multiplying factors by which the empathic, that is to say the essentially aesthetic,
+activity, can increase its sphere of operations, its staying power and its intensity.</p>
+
+<p>[*] <i>The Handling of Words,</i> English Review, 1911-12.</p><a name="18"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XVIII</p>
+
+<p>AESTHETIC RESPONSIVENESS</p>
+
+<p>OUR examination has thus proceeded from aesthetic contemplation to the work of Art,
+which seeks to secure and satisfy it while furthering some of life's various other
+claims. We must now go back to aesthetic contemplation and find out how the beholder
+meets these efforts made to secure and satisfy his contemplative attention. For the
+Reader will by this time have grasped that art can do nothing without the collaboration
+of the beholder or listener; and that this collaboration, so far from consisting in the
+passive "being impressed by beauty" which unscientific aestheticians imagined as
+analogous to "being impressed by sensuous qualities," by hot or cold or sweet or sour, is
+in reality a combination of higher activities, second in complexity and intensity only to
+that of the artist himself.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen in the immediately preceding chapter that the most deliberate, though not
+the essential, part of the artist's business is to provide against any possible
+disturbance of the beholder's responsive activity, and of course also to increase by
+every means that output of responsive activity. But the sources of it are in the
+beholder, and beyond the control of the most ingenious artistic devices and the most
+violent artistic appeals. There is indeed no better proof of the active nature of
+aesthetic appreciation than the fact that such appreciation is so often not forthcoming.
+Even mere sensations, those impressions of single qualities to which we are most
+unresistingly passive, are not pleasurable without a favourable reaction of the body's
+chemistry: the same taste or smell will be attractive or repulsive according as we have
+recently eaten. And however indomitably colour- and sound-sensations force themselves
+upon us, our submission to them will not be accompanied by even the most "passive"
+pleasure if we are bodily or mentally out of sorts. How much more frequent must be lack
+of receptiveness when, instead of dealing with <i>sensations</i> whose intensity depends
+after all two thirds upon the strength of the outer stimulation, we deal with
+<i>perceptions</i> which include the bodily and mental activities of exploring a shape
+and establishing among its constituent sensations relationships both to each other and to
+ourselves; activities without which there would be for the beholder no shape at all, but
+mere ragbag chaos!—And in calculating the likelihood of a perceptive empathic
+response we must remember that such active shape-perception, however instantaneous as
+compared with the cumbrous processes of locomotion, nevertheless requires a perfectly
+measurable time, and requires therefore that its constituent processes be held in memory
+for comparison and coordination, quite as much as the similar processes by which we take
+stock of the relations of sequence of sounds. All this mental activity, less explicit but
+not less intense or complex than that of logically "following" an argument, is therefore
+such that we are by no means always able or willing to furnish it. Not able, because the
+need for practical decisions hurries us into that rapid inference from a minimum of
+perception to a minimum of associated experience which we call "recognising things," and
+thus out of the presence of the perfunctorily dealt with shapes. Not willing, because our
+nervous condition may be unable for the strain of shape perception; and our emotional
+bias (what we call our <i>interest)</i> may be favourable to some incompatible kind of
+activity. Until quite recently (and despite Fechner's famous introductory experiments)
+aesthetics have been little more than a branch of metaphysical speculation, and it is
+only nowadays that the bare fact of aesthetic responsiveness is beginning to be studied.
+So far as I have myself succeeded in doing so, I think I can assure the Reader that if he
+will note down, day by day, the amount of pleasure he has been able to take in works of
+art, he will soon recognise the existence of aesthetic responsiveness and its highly
+variable nature. Should the same Reader develop an interest in such (often humiliating)
+examination into his own aesthetic experience, he will discover varieties of it which
+will illustrate some of the chief principles contained in this little book. His diary
+will report days when aesthetic appreciation has begun with the instant of entering a
+collection of pictures or statues, indeed sometimes pre-existed as he went through the
+streets noticing the unwonted charm of familiar objects; other days when enjoyment has
+come only after an effort of attention; others when, to paraphrase Coleridge, <i>he saw,
+not felt, how beautiful things are;</i> and finally, through other varieties of aesthetic
+experience, days upon which only shortcomings and absurdities have laid hold of his
+attention. In the course of such aesthetical self-examination and confession, the Reader
+might also become acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never sufficiently
+repeated distinction between <i>contemplating Shapes and thinking about Things</i>; or,
+in ordinary aesthetic terminology between <i>form</i> and <i>subject.</i> For there are
+days when pictures or statues will indeed afford pleasurable interest, but interest in
+the things <i>represented,</i> not in the <i>shapes;</i> a picture appealing even
+forcibly to our dramatic or religious or romantic side; or contrariwise, to our
+scientific one. There are days when he may be deeply moved by a Guido Reni martyrdom, or
+absorbed in the "Marriage <font face="Times New Roman">&agrave;</font> la Mode"; days
+when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the
+languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash
+of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest
+and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards
+scientific interest and pleasure, there may be days when the diarist will be quite
+delighted with a hideous picture, because it affords some chronological clue, or new
+point of comparison. "This <i>dates</i> such or such a style"—&quot;<i>Plein Air</i>
+already attempted by a Giottesque! Degas forestalled by a Cave Dweller!" etc. etc. And
+finally days when the Diarist is haunted by the thought of what the represented person
+will do next: "Would Michelangelo's Jeremiah knock his head if he got up?"—"How
+will the Discobolus recover when he has let go the quoit?"—or haunted by thoughts
+even more frivolous (though not any less aesthetically irrelevant!) like "How wonderfully
+like Mrs So and So!" "The living image of Major Blank!"—"How I detest auburn people
+with sealing-wax lips!" <i>ad lib.</i></p>
+
+<p>Such different <i>thinkings away from the shapes</i> are often traceable to previous
+orientation of the thoughts or to special states of body and feelings. But explicable or
+not in the particular case, these varieties of one's own aesthetic responsiveness will
+persuade the Reader who has verified their existence, that contemplative satisfaction in
+shapes and its specific emotion cannot be given by the greatest artist or the finest
+tradition, unless the beholder meets their efforts more than half way.</p>
+
+<p>The spontaneous collaboration of the beholder is especially indispensable for
+Aesthetic Empathy. As we have seen, empathic modes of movement and energy and intention
+are attributed to shapes and to shape elements, in consequence of the modes of movement
+and energy involved in mere shape perception; but shape perception does not necessarily
+call forth empathic imagination. And the larger or smaller dynamic dramas of effort,
+resistance, reconciliation, cooperation which constitute the most poignant interest of a
+pictorial or plastic composition, are inhibited by bodily or mental states of a contrary
+character. We cease to <i>feel</i> (although we may continue, like Coleridge, to
+<i>see</i>) that the lines of a mountain or a statue <i>are rising,</i> if we ourselves
+happen to feel as if our feet were of lead and our joints turning to water. The
+coordinated interplay of empathic movement which makes certain mediaeval floor patterns,
+and also Leonardo's compositions, into whirling harmonies as of a planetary system,
+cannot take place in our imagination on days of restlessness and lack of concentration.
+Nay it may happen that arrangements of lines which would flutter and flurry us on days of
+quiet appreciativeness, will become in every sense "sympathetic" on days when we
+ourselves feel fluttered and flurried. But lack of responsiveness may be due to other
+causes. As there are combinations of lines which take longer to perceive because their
+elements or their coordinating principles are unfamiliar, so, and even more so, are there
+empathic schemes (or dramas) which baffle dynamic imagination when accustomed to
+something else and when it therefore meets the new demand with an unsuitable empathic
+response. Empathy is, even more than mere perception, a question of our activities and
+therefore of our habits; and the aesthetic sensitiveness of a time and country (say the
+Florentine fourteenth century) with a habit of round arch and horizontals like that of
+Pisan architecture, could never take with enthusiasm to the pointed ogeeval ellipse, the
+oblique directions and unstable equilibrium, the drama of touch and go strain and
+resistance, of French Gothic; whence a constant readmission of the round arched shapes
+into the imported style, and a speedy return to the familiar empathic schemes in the
+architecture of the early Renaissance. On the other hand the persistence of Gothic detail
+in Northern architecture of the sixteenth and occasionally the seventeenth century, shows
+how insipid the round arch and straight entablature must have felt to people accustomed
+to the empathy of Gothic shapes. Nothing is so routinist as imagination and emotion; and
+empathy, which partakes of both, is therefore more dependent on familiarity than is the
+perception by which it is started: Spohr, and the other professional contemporaries of
+Beethoven, probably heard and technically understood all the peculiarities of his last
+quartets; but they liked them none the better.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand continued repetition notoriously begets indifference. We cease to
+look at a shape which we "know by heart" and we cease to interpret in terms of our own
+activities and intentions when curiosity and expectation no longer let loose our dynamic
+imagination. Hence while utter unfamiliarity baffles aesthetic responsiveness, excessive
+familiarity prevents its starting at all. Indeed both perceptive clearness and empathic
+intensity reach their climax in the case of shapes which afford the excitement of
+tracking familiarity in novelty, the stimulation of acute comparison, the emotional ups
+and downs of expectation and partial recognition, or of recognition when unexpected, the
+latter having, as we know when we notice that a stranger has the trick of speech or
+gesture of an acquaintance, a very penetrating emotional warmth. Such discovery of the
+novel in the familiar, and of the familiar in the new, will he frequent in proportion to
+the definiteness and complexity of the shapes, and in proportion also to the
+sensitiveness and steadiness of the beholder's attention; while on the contrary "obvious"
+qualities of shape and superficial attention both tend to exhaust interest and demand
+change. This exhaustion of interest and consequent demand for change unites with the
+changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on art, together producing innovation. And the more
+superficial the aesthetic attention given by the beholders, the quicker will style
+succeed style, and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by exaggeration or left in
+the lurch before their maturity; a state of affairs especially noticeable in our own
+day.</p>
+
+<p>The above is a series of illustrations of the fact that aesthetic pleasure depends as
+much on the activities of the beholder as on those of the artist. Unfamiliarity or
+over-familiarity explain a large part of the aesthetic non-responsiveness summed up in
+the saying <i>that there is no disputing of tastes.</i> And even within the circle of
+habitual responsiveness to some particular style, or master, there are, as we have just
+seen, days and hours when an individual beholder's perception and empathic imagination do
+not act in such manner as to afford the usual pleasure. But these occasional, even
+frequent, lapses must not diminish our belief either in the power of art or in the deeply
+organised and inevitable nature of aesthetic preference as a whole. What the knowledge of
+such fluctuations ought to bring home is that beauty of shape is most spontaneously and
+completely appreciated when the attention, instead of being called upon, as in galleries
+and concerts, for the mere purpose of aesthetic enjoyment, is on the contrary, directed
+to the artistic or "natural" beauty of shapes, in consequence of some other already
+existing interest. No one except an art-critic sees a new picture or statue without first
+asking "What does it represent?"; shape-perception and aesthetic empathy arising
+incidentally in the examination which this question leads to. The truth is that even the
+art-critic is oftenest brought into enforced contemplation of the artistic shape by some
+other question which arises from his particular bias: By whom? of what precise date? Even
+such technical questions as "where and when restored or repainted?" will elicit the
+necessary output of attention. It is possible and legitimate to be interested in a work
+of art for a dozen reasons besides aesthetic appreciation; each of these interests has
+its own sentimental, scientific, dramatic or even moneymaking emotion; and there is no
+loss for art, but rather a gain, if we fall back upon one of them when the specific
+aesthetic response is slow or not forthcoming. Art has other aims besides aesthetic
+satisfaction; and aesthetic satisfaction will not come any the quicker for turning our
+backs upon these non-aesthetic aims. The very worst attitude towards art is that of the
+holiday-maker who comes into its presence with no ulterior interest or business, and
+nothing but the hope of an aesthetic emotion which is most often denied him. Indeed such
+seeking of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake would lead to even more of the blank
+despondency characteristic of so many gallery goers, were it not for another peculiarity
+of aesthetic responsiveness, which is responsible for very puzzling effects. This saving
+grace of the tourist, and (as we shall see) this pitfall of the art-expert, is what I
+propose to call the <i>Transferability of Aesthetic Emotion.</i></p><a name=
+"19"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XIX</p>
+
+<p>THE STORAGE AND TRANSFER OF EMOTION</p>
+
+<p>IN dealing with familiarity as a multiplying factor of aesthetic appreciation, I have
+laid stress on its effect in facilitating the perception and the empathic interpretation
+of shapes. But repetition directly affects the emotion which may result from these
+processes; and when any emotion has become habitual, it tends to be stored in what we
+call memory, and to be called forth not merely by the processes in which it originated,
+but also independently of the whole of them, or in answer to some common or equivalent
+factor. We are so accustomed to this psychological fact that we do not usually seem to
+recognise its existence. It is the explanation of the power of words, which, apart from
+any images they awaken, are often irresistibly evocative of emotion. And among other
+emotions words can evoke the one due to the easy perception and to the life-corroborating
+empathic interpretation of shapes. The word <i>Beautiful,</i> and its various quasi
+synonyms, are among the most emotionally suggestive in our vocabulary, carrying perhaps a
+vague but potent remembrance of our own bodily reaction to the emotion of admiration; nay
+even eliciting an incipient rehearsal of the half-parted lips and slightly thrown-back
+head, the drawn-in breath and wide-opened eyes, with which we are wont to meet
+opportunities of aesthetic satisfaction. Be this last as it may, it is certain that the
+emotion connected with the word <i>Beautiful</i> can be evoked by that word alone, and
+without an accompanying act of visual or auditive perception. Indeed beautiful shapes
+would lose much of their importance in our life, if they did not leave behind them such
+emotional traces, capable of revival under emotionally appropriate, though outwardly very
+dissimilar, circumstances; and thereby enormously increasing some of our safest, perhaps
+because our most purely subjective, happiness. Instead therefore of despising the
+raptures which the presence of a Venus of Milo or a Sixtine Madonna can inspire in people
+manifestly incapable of appreciating a masterpiece, and sometimes barely glancing at it,
+we critical persons ought to recognise in this funny, but consoling, phenomenon an
+additional proof of the power of Beauty, whose specific emotion can thus be evoked by a
+mere name and so transferred from some past experience of aesthetic admiration to a.
+present occasion which would otherwise be mere void and disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>Putting aside these kind of cases, the transfer (usually accomplished by a word) of
+the aesthetic emotion, or at least of a willingness for aesthetic emotion, is probably
+one of the explanations of the spread of aesthetic interest from one art to another, as
+it is the explanation of some phases of aesthetic development in the individual. The
+present writer can vouch for the case of at least one real child in whom the possibility
+of aesthetic emotion, and subsequently of aesthetic appreciation, was extended from music
+and natural scenery to pictures and statues, by the application of the word
+<i>Beautiful</i> to each of these different categories. And something analogous probably
+helped on the primaeval recognition that the empathic pleasures hitherto attached to
+geometrical shapes might be got from realistic shapes, say of bisons and reindeer, which
+had hitherto been admired for their lifelikeness and skill, but not yet subjected to any
+aesthetic discrimination (<i>cf</i>. p. 96). Similarly, in our own times, the delight in
+natural scenery is being furthered by the development of landscape painting, rather than
+furthering it. Nay I venture to suggest that it was the habit of the aesthetic emotion
+such as mediaeval men received from the proportions, directions, and coordination of
+lines in their cathedrals of stone or brick which set their musicians to build up, like
+Browning's <i>Abt Vogler,</i> the soul's first balanced and coordinated dwellings made of
+sounds.</p>
+
+<p>Be this last as it may, it is desirable that the Reader should accept, and possibly
+verify for himself, the psychological fact of the <i>storage and transfer of aesthetic
+emotion.</i> Besides, the points already mentioned, it helps to explain several of the
+cruxes and paradoxes of aesthetics. First and foremost that dictum <i>De Gustibus non est
+disputandum</i> which some philosophers and even aestheticians develop into an explicit
+denial of all intrinsic shape-preferences, and an assertion that <i>beautiful</i> and
+<i>ugly</i> are merely other names for <i>fashionable</i> and <i>unfashionable,
+original</i> and <i>unoriginal,</i> or <i>suitable</i> and <i>unsuitable.</i> As I have
+already pointed out, differences of taste are started by the perceptive and empathic
+habits, schematically various, of given times and places, and also by those, especially
+the empathic habits, connected with individual nervous condition: people accustomed to
+the round arch finding the Gothic one unstable and eccentric; and, on the other hand, a
+person taking keen pleasure in the sudden and lurching lines of Lotto finding those of
+Titian tame and humdrum. But such intrinsically existing preferences and incompatibility
+are quite enormously increased by an emotional bias for or against a particular kind of
+art; by which I mean a bias not due to that art's peculiarities, but preventing our
+coming in real contact with them.</p>
+
+<p align="left">Aesthetic perception and especially aesthetic empathy, like other
+intellectual and emotional activities, are at the mercy of a hostile mental attitude,
+just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of the limbs. I do not hesitate to
+say that we are perpetually refusing to look at certain kinds of art because, for one
+reason or another, we are emotionally prepossessed against them. On the other hand, once
+the favourable emotional condition is supplied to us, often by means of words, our
+perceptive and empathic activities follow with twice the ease they would if the business
+had begun with them. It is quite probable that a good deal of the enhancement of
+aesthetic appreciation by fashion or sympathy should be put to the account, not merely of
+gregarious imitativeness, but of the knowledge that a favourable or unfavourable feeling
+is "in the air." The emotion precedes the appreciation, and both are genuine.</p>
+
+<p>A more personally humiliating aesthetic experience may be similarly explained. Unless
+we are very unobservant or very self-deluded, we are all familiar with the sudden
+checking (often almost physically painful) of our aesthetic emotion by the hostile
+criticism of a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert: "Dreadfully
+old-fashioned," "<i>Archi-connu,</i>""second-rate school work," "completely painted
+over," "utterly hashed in the performance" (of a piece of music), "mere
+prettiness"—etc. etc. How often has not a sentence like these turned the tide of
+honest incipient enjoyment; and transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable
+quality (even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry, euphony or
+pleasant colour!) into shrivelled cavillers at everything save brand-new formulae and
+tip-top genius! Indeed, while teaching a few privileged persons to taste the special
+"quality" which Botticelli has and Botticelli's pupils have not, and thus occasionally
+intensifying aesthetic enjoyment by distinguishing whatever differentiates the finer
+artistic products from the commoner, modern art-criticism has probably wasted much honest
+but shamefaced capacity for appreciating the qualities common, because indispensable, to,
+all good art. It is therefore not without a certain retributive malignity that I end
+these examples of the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent
+bias to artistic appreciation, with that of the Nemesis dogging the steps of the
+connoisseur. We have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase, of a wonderful
+masterpiece on the authority of some famous expert; and of the masterpiece proving to be
+a mere school imitation, and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. The foregoing
+remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, joined with what we have
+learned about shape-perception and empathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this
+paradoxical enormity to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly owned
+up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess enough elements in common with
+a masterpiece, otherwise it could never suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable
+emotional attitude and the absence of obvious <i>extrinsic</i> (technical or historical)
+reasons for scepticism, these elements of resemblance must awaken the vague idea,
+especially the empathic scheme, of the particular master's work, and his name—shall
+we say Leonardo's?—will rise to the lips. But <i>Leonardo</i> is a name to conjure
+with, and in this case to destroy the conjurer himself: the word <i>Leonardo</i> implies
+an emotion, distilled from a number of highly prized and purposely repeated experiences,
+kept to gather strength in respectful isolation, and further heightened by a thrill of
+initiate veneration whenever it is mentioned. This <i>Leonardo-emotion,</i> once set on
+foot, checks all unworthy doubts, sweeps out of consciousness all thoughts of inferior
+work (<i>inferiority</i> and <i>Leonardo</i> being emotionally incompatible!),
+respectfully holds the candle while the elements common to the imitation and the
+masterpiece are gone over and over, and the differentiating elements exclusively
+belonging to Leonardo evoked in the expert's memory, until at last the objective work of
+art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces which impart to it their emotionally
+communicable virtue. And when the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule, the
+Philistine shrewdly decides that a sham Leonardo is just as good as a genuine one, that
+these are all matters of fashion, and that there is really no disputing of
+tastes!</p><a name="20"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XX</p>
+
+<p>AESTHETIC IRRADIATION AND PURIFICATION</p>
+
+<p>THE storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another fact, with which
+indeed I began this little book: namely that the word <i>Beautiful</i> has been extended
+from whatever is satisfactory in our contemplation of shapes, to a great number of cases
+where there can be no question of shapes at all, as in speaking of a "beautiful
+character" and a "fine moral attitude"; or else, as in the case of a "beautiful bit of
+machinery," a "fine scientific demonstration" or a "splendid surgical operation" where
+the shapes involved are not at all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such
+cases the word <i>Beautiful</i> has been brought over with the emotion of satisfied
+contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the minds of those who are thus
+applying it, we might perhaps detect, round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable
+but nowise <i>shapely</i> thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of
+half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic experience,
+and evoked by that word <i>Beautiful</i> whose application they partially justify. Nor is
+this all. Recent psychology teaches that, odd as it at first appears, our more or less
+definite images, auditive as well as visual, and whether actually perceived or merely
+remembered, are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's contents, coming and going
+and weaving themselves on to a constant woof of our own activities and feelings. It is
+precisely such activities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply the
+words <i>Beautiful</i> and <i>Ugly.</i> Thus everything which has come in connexion with
+occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation, will meet with somewhat of the same
+reception as that shape-contemplation originally elicited. And even the merest items of
+information which the painter conveys concerning the visible universe; the merest detail
+of human character conveyed by the poet; nay even the mere nervous intoxication furnished
+by the musician, will all be irradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been
+conveyed in, and will therefore be felt as beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, as the "beautiful character" and "splendid operation" have taught us, rare
+and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a "platonic" way. And even objects
+of bodily desire, so long as that desire is not acute and pressing, may give rise to
+merely contemplative longings. All this, added to what has previously been said,
+sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which are irradiated by the word
+<i>Beautiful</i> and the emotion originally arising from the satisfied contemplation of
+mere shapes.</p>
+
+<p>And that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so
+life-corroborating and so strangely impersonal, and that its special emotion should be so
+susceptible of radiation and transfer, is sufficient explanation of the elevating and
+purifying influence which, ever since Plato, philosophers have usually ascribed to the
+Beautiful. Other moralists however have not failed to point out that art has,
+occasionally and even frequently, effects of the very opposite kind. The ever-recurrent
+discussion of this seeming contradiction is, however, made an end of, once we recognise
+that art has many aims besides its distinguishing one of increasing our contemplation of
+the beautiful. Indeed some of art's many non-aesthetic aims may themselves be foreign to
+elevation and purification, or even, as for instance the lewd or brutal subjects of some
+painting and poetry, and the nervous intoxication of certain music, exert a debasing or
+enervating influence. But, as the whole of this book has tried to establish, the
+contemplation of beautiful shapes involves perceptive processes in themselves mentally
+invigorating and refining, and a play of empathic feelings which realise the greatest
+desiderata of spiritual life, viz. intensity, purposefulness and harmony; and such
+perceptive and empathic activities cannot fail to raise the present level of existence
+and to leave behind them a higher standard for future experience. This exclusively
+elevating effect of beautiful shape as such, is of course proportioned to the attention
+it receives and the exclusion of other, and possibly baser, interests connected with the
+work of art. On the other hand the purifying effects of beautiful shapes depend upon the
+attention oscillating to and fro between them and those other interests, e.g.
+<i>subject</i> in the <i>representative</i> arts, <i>fitness</i> in the <i>applied</i>
+ones, and <i>expression</i> in music; all of which non-aesthetic interests benefit
+(enhanced if noble, redeemed if base) by irradiation of the nobler feelings wherewith
+they are thus associated. For we must not forget that where opposed groups of feeling are
+elicited, whichever happens to be more active and complex will neutralise its opponent.
+Thus, while an even higher intensity and complexity of aesthetic feelings is obtained
+when the "subject" of a picture, the use of a building or a chattel, or the expression of
+a piece of music, is in itself noble; and a Degas ballet girl can never have the dignity
+of a Phidian goddess, nor a gambling <i>casino</i> that of a cathedral, nor the music to
+Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' <i>German Requiem,</i> yet whatever of beauty there may be
+in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the
+non-aesthetic suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory
+embodied in Correggio's <i>Dana<font face="Times New Roman">&euml;</font>,</i> or else we
+reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the Earth's
+wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a common observation that while
+<i>unmusical</i> Bayreuth-goers often attribute demoralising effects to some of Wagner's
+music, the genuinely musical listeners are unaware, and usually incredulous, of any such
+evil possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>This question of the purifying power of the Beautiful has brought us back to our
+starting-point. It illustrates the distinction between <i>contemplating an aspect</i> and
+<i>thinking about things,</i> and this distinction's corollary that shape as such is
+yon-side of <i>real</i> and <i>unreal,</i> taking on the character of reality and
+unreality only inasmuch as it is thought of in connexion with a <i>thing.</i> As regards
+the possibility of being <i>good</i> or <i>evil,</i> it is evident from all the foregoing
+that <i>shape as shape,</i> and without the suggestion of things, can be evil only in the
+sense of being ugly, ugliness diminishing its own drawbacks by being, <i>ipso facto,</i>
+difficult to dwell upon, inasmuch as it goes against the grain of our perceptive and
+empathic activities. The contemplation of beautiful shape is, on the other hand, favoured
+by its pleasurableness, and such contemplation of beautiful shape lifts our perceptive
+and empathic activities, that is to say a large part of our intellectual and emotional
+life, on to a level which can only be spiritually, organically, and in so far, morally
+beneficial.</p><a name="21"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER XXI</p>
+
+<p>CONCLUSION (EVOLUTIONAL)</p>
+
+<p>SOME of my Readers, not satisfied by the answer implicit in the last chapter and
+indeed in the whole of this little book, may ask a final question concerning our subject.
+Not: What is the use of Art? since, as we have seen, Art has many and various uses both
+to the individual and to the community, each of which uses is independent of the
+attainment of Beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining question concerns the usefulness of the very demand for Beauty, of that
+<i>Aesthetic Imperative</i> by which the other uses of art are more or less qualified or
+dominated. In what way, the Reader may ask, has sensitiveness to Beauty contributed to
+the survival of mankind, that it should not only have been preserved and established by
+evolutional selection, but invested with the tremendous power of the pleasure and pain
+alternative?</p>
+
+<p>The late William James, as some readers may remember, placed musical pleasure between
+sentimental love and sea-sickness as phenomena unaccountable by any value for human
+survival, in fact masteries, if not paradoxes, of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>The riddle, though not necessarily the mystery, does not consist in the survival of
+the aesthetic instinct of which the musical one is a mere sub-category, but in the origin
+and selectional establishment of its elementary constituents, say for instance
+space-perception and empathy, both of which exist equally outside that instinct which is
+a mere compound of them and other primary tendencies. For given space-perception and
+empathy and their capacity of being felt as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, the aesthetic
+imperative is not only intelligible but inevitable. Instead therefore of asking: Why is
+there a preference for what we call Beauty? we should have to ask: why has perception,
+feeling, logic, imagination, come to be just what it is? Indeed why are our sense-organs,
+our bodily structure and chemical composition, what they are; and why do they exist at
+all in contradistinction to the ways of being of other living or other inanimate things?
+So long as these elementary facts continue shrouded in darkness or taken for granted, the
+genesis and evolutional reason of the particular compound which we call aesthetic
+preference must remain only one degree less mysterious than the genesis and evolutional
+reason of its psychological components.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile all we can venture to say is that as satisfaction derived from shapes we
+call <i>beautiful,</i> undoubtedly involves intense, complex, and reiterative mental
+activities, as it has an undeniable power for happiness and hence for spiritual
+refreshment, and as it moreover tends to inhibit most of the instincts whose
+superabundance can jeopardise individual and social existence, the capacity for such
+aesthetic satisfaction, once arisen, would be fostered in virtue of a mass of evolutional
+advantages which are as complex and difficult to analyse, but also as deep-seated and
+undeniable, as itself.</p><a name="22"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>BIBLIOGRAPHY</p>
+
+<p>I.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Lipps.</i> Raumaesthetik, Leipzig, 1897.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Aesthetik, vol. I. part ii., Leipzig, 1906.<br>
+II.<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Karl Groos.</i> Aesthetik, Giessen, 1892.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Der Aesthetische Genuss, Giessen, 1902.<br>
+III.<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wundt.</i> Physiologische Psychologie (5th Edition,
+1903), vol. III. pg. 107 to 209. But the whole volume is full of indirect suggestion on
+aesthetics.<br>
+IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>M<font face="Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>nsterberg.</i>
+The Principles of Art Education, New York, 1905. (Statement of Lipps' theory in
+physiological terms.)<br>
+V.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>K<font face="Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>lpe.</i> Der
+gegenw<font face="Times New Roman">&auml;</font>rtige Stand der experimentellen
+Aesthetik, 1907.<br>
+VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Vernon Lee and Anstruther-Thomson.</i> Beauty and
+Ugliness, 1912 (contains abundant quotations from most of the above works and other
+sources).<br>
+VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Ribot.</i> Le R<font face=
+"Times New Roman">&ocirc;l</font>e latent des Images Motrices. Revue Philosophique, March
+1912.<br>
+VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Witasek.</i> Psychologie der Raumwahrnehmung des Auges
+(1910). These two last named are only indirectly connected with visual aesthetics.</p>
+
+<p>For art-evolutional questions consult:<br>
+IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Haddon.</i> Evolution in Art, 1895.<br>
+X.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Yrj<font face="Times New Roman">&ouml;</font> Hirn.</i>
+Origins of Art, Macmillan, 1900.<br>
+XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Levinstein.</i> Kinderzeichnungen, Leipzig, 1905.<br>
+XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Loewy.</i> Nature in early Greek Art (translation),
+Duckworth, 1907.<br>
+XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Delia Seta.</i> Religione e Arte Figurata, Rome,
+1912.<br>
+XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Spearing.</i> The Childhood of Art, 1913.<br>
+XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Jane Harrison.</i> Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><a name="23"></a><br>
+<br>
+
+<p>INDEX</p>
+
+<p>Aesthetic:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; aridity, 136-7;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; imperative, 99-100;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; irradiation, 147-52;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; purification, 149-52;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; responsiveness, active nature of, 128-36;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; habit and familiarity affecting, 134-6<br>
+Altamira cave frescoes, 95<br>
+Art:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; differential characteristic of, 116-18;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; non-aesthetic aims of, 99-100, 137-8; utility of, 153-5<br>
+Aspect:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; aesthetics concerned with, 15, 21, 105;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; shape the determining feature of, 26-8<br>
+Attention, a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32</p>
+
+<p>Balfour, H., 95<br>
+Beautiful:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective,
+147-8;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; attitude implied by use of adjective, 2-7, 18-19;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; empathy the chief factor of preference, 67-8;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; implies desire for reiterated perception, 53-4<br>
+Botticelli, 83<br>
+Brahms' <i>German Requiem,</i> 150<br>
+Browning's <i>Abt Vogler,</i> 141</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge's <i>Ode to Dejection,</i> 131<br>
+Colour, passive reception of, 23-4, 29<br>
+Contemplative satisfaction marking aesthetic attitude, 8-15<br>
+Correggio's <i>Danae,</i> 151<br>
+Cubic Existence:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; perception of, 85;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; pictorial suggestion of, importance attached to, discussed,
+101-5</p>
+
+<p><i>Discobolus,</i> 115</p>
+
+<p>Einf<font face="Times New Roman">&uuml;</font>hlung, 59;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; misinterpretations of, 66-7<br>
+Emotion, storage and transfer of, 139-46<br>
+Empathy, 61-69;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; complexity of movements of lines, 78-83;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; movements of lines, 70-77;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; second element of shape-perception, 59-60<br>
+Extension existing in perception, 35-8</p>
+
+<p>Fechner, 130</p>
+
+<p>Hildebrand, 102, 118</p>
+
+<p>Inner Mimicry, 74-5</p>
+
+<p>James, W., 153</p>
+
+<p>Keats' <i>Grecian Urn,</i> 77</p>
+
+<p>Levinstein, 96<br>
+Lipps, 66<br>
+Locomotion of Things, distinction between, and empathic movement of lines, 111-16<br>
+Lotze, 66</p>
+
+<p>Mantegna, 82<br>
+Memory:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; in perception, 40-1<br>
+Michel Angelo, 114, 122<br>
+Movement of Lines, distinction between, and locomotion of Things, 111-16; <i>see also</i>
+Empathy</p>
+
+<p>Object of Perception, subject's activities merged in, 57, 58</p>
+
+<p>Perception:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; active process involved in, 29-34, 128-9;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; distinguished from sensation, 32;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; subject and object of, 55-60</p>
+
+<p>Raphael's <i>Heliodorus,</i> 119<br>
+Relaxation an element of form-perception, 42<br>
+Rembrandt, 122<br>
+Rythm, 42-5</p>
+
+<p>Semper, hypothesis regarding shape-preference, 94<br>
+Sensations:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; distinguished from perceptions, 32;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; perception of relation between, 29-30<br>
+Shape:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; character of, 78-83;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; contemplation of, its intermittent but recurrent character,
+106-10;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; determines contemplation of an aspect, 26-8;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; elements of, 35-47;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Empathy an element of perception of, 59;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; facility and difficulty of grasping, 48-54;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; a perception, 29-34;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; practical causes regarding evolution of, 90-4;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; preference, its evolution, 94-7;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; and Things, their co-operation, 117-27;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; thinking away from, to Things, 131-2, 84-9<br>
+Sound, passive reception of, 23-4, 29<br>
+Subject of perception, extent of awareness of self, 57-9<br>
+Symmetry, 42-3</p>
+
+<p>Tension, an element of form-perception, 42<br>
+Things and Shapes, their cooperation, 117-27;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; thoughts about, entering into shape-contemplation, 84-9<br>
+Third Dimension, locomotor nature of knowledge of, 85-6, 101<br>
+Titchener, 59</p>
+
+<p>Vinci, Leonardo da, 83, 145-6<br>
+Vischer, 66</p>
+
+<p>Watts, G. F., 46<br>
+Whole and Parts, perception of relation of, 48-54<br>
+Wilde's <i>Salome,</i> 150<br>
+Wundt, 42, 66</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beautiful, by Vernon Lee
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beautiful, by Vernon Lee
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Beautiful
+       An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
+
+Author: Vernon Lee
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2008 [EBook #26942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAUTIFUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ruth Hart
+
+
+
+
+[Note:  for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to
+the beginning of the text and slightly modified it to conform with the
+online format.  I have also made two spelling corrections:
+"chippendale" to "Chippendale" and "closely interpendent" to
+"closely interdependent."]
+
+
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
+
+BY
+
+VERNON LEE
+
+
+Author of
+"Beauty and Ugliness"
+"Laurus Nobilis"
+etc.
+
+
+Cambridge:
+at the University Press
+New York:
+G.P. Putnam's Sons
+1913
+
+
+[Illustration: title page]
+
+
+_With the exception of the coat of arms
+at the foot, the design on the title page is a
+reproduction of one used by the earliest known
+Cambridge printer, John Siberch,_ 1521
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       Preface and Apology                                 v
+I.     The Adjective "Beautiful"                           1
+II.    Contemplative Satisfaction                          8
+III.   Aspects versus Things                              14
+IV.    Sensations                                         22
+V.     Perception of Relations                            29
+VI.    Elements of Shape                                  35
+VII.   Facility and Difficulty of Grasping                48
+VIII.  Subject and Object, or, Nominative and Accusative  55
+IX.    Empathy (Einfuehlung)                               61
+X.     The Movement of Lines                              70
+XI.    The Character of Shapes                            78
+XII.   From the Shape to the Thing                        84
+XIII.  From the Thing to the Shape                        90
+XIV.   The Aims of Art                                    98
+XV.    Attention to Shapes                               106
+XVI.   Information about Things                          111
+XVII.  Co-operation of Things and Shapes                 117
+XVIII. Aesthetic Responsiveness                          128
+XIX.   The Storage and Transfer of Emotion               139
+XX.    Aesthetic Irradiation and Purification            147
+XXI.   Conclusion (Evolutional)                          153
+       Bibliography                                      156
+       Index                                             157
+
+
+
+PREFACE AND APOLOGY
+
+I HAVE tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference,
+particularly as regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science.
+But my explanation is addressed to readers in whom I have no right
+to expect a previous knowledge of psychology, particularly in its
+more modern developments. I have therefore based my explanation
+of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts
+familiar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader. Now
+mental facts thus available are by no means the elementary
+processes with which analytical and, especially experimental,
+psychology has dealings. They are, on the contrary, the everyday,
+superficial and often extremely confused views which practical life
+and its wholly unscientific vocabulary present of those ascertained
+or hypothetical scientific facts. I have indeed endeavoured (for
+instance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from
+sensation) to impart some rudiments of psychology in the course of
+my aesthetical explanation, and I have avoided, as much as possible,
+misleading the reader about such fearful complexes and cruxes as
+_memory, association_ and _imagination._ But I have been obliged
+to speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader, and I am fully aware
+that these terms correspond only very approximately to what is, or at
+present passes as, psychological fact. I would therefore beg the
+psychologist (to whom I offer this little volume as a possible slight
+addition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses) to understand that
+in speaking, for instance, of Empathy as involving a _thought_ of
+certain activities, I mean merely that whatever happens has the same
+result _as if we thought_; and that the processes, whatever they may
+be (also in the case of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating),
+translate themselves, _when they are detected,_ into _thoughts;_ but
+that I do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the
+processes, the "thoughts," the measuring, comparing etc. exist on
+subordinate planes of consciousness or whether they are mainly
+physiological and only occasionally abutting in conscious resultants.
+Similarly, lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me
+to write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed
+process of ocular perception, instead of being due, as is doubtless
+most often the case, to every kind of associative abbreviation and
+equivalence of processes.
+
+          VERNON LEE
+     Maiano _near_ Florence,_
+          Easter_ 1913.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ADJECTIVE "BEAUTIFUL"
+
+THIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it
+is an introduction, makes no attempt to "form the taste" of the public
+and still less to direct the doings of the artist. It deals not with
+_ought_ but with _is,_ leaving to Criticism the inference from the
+latter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how things can be
+made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things _are_
+beautiful. It takes Beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks
+to analyse and account for Beauty's existence and enjoyment. More
+strictly speaking, it analyses and accounts for Beauty not inasmuch
+as existing in certain objects and processes, but rather as calling
+forth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental
+activities and habits. It does not ask: What are the peculiarities of the
+things (and the proceedings) which we call _Beautiful?_ but: What
+are the peculiarities of our thinking and feeling when in the presence
+of a thing to which we apply this adjective? The study of single
+beautiful things, and even more, the comparison of various
+categories thereof, is indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics, but
+only inasmuch as it adds to our knowledge of the particular mental
+activities which such "Beautiful" (and vice versa "Ugly") things
+elicit in us. For it is on the nature of this active response on our own
+part that depends the application of those terms _Beautiful_ and
+_Ugly_ in every single instance; and indeed their application in any
+instances whatsoever, their very existence in the human vocabulary.
+
+In accordance with this programme I shall not start with a formal
+definition of the word _Beautiful,_ but ask: on what sort of
+occasions we make use of it. Evidently, on _occasions when we feel
+satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction,_ satisfaction meaning
+willingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience
+which has called forth that word; and meaning also that if it comes
+to a choice between two or several experiences, we _prefer_ the
+experience thus marked by the word _Beautiful. Beautiful,_ we may
+therefore formulate, _implies on our part an attitude of satisfaction
+and preference._ But there are other words which imply that much;
+first and foremost the words, in reality synonyms, USEFUL and
+GOOD. I call these synonyms because _good_ always implies
+_good for,_ or _good in,_ that is to say fitness for a purpose, even
+though that purpose may be masked under _conforming to a
+standard_ or _obeying a commandment,_ since the standard or
+commandment represents not the caprice of a community, a race or a
+divinity, but some (real or imaginary) utility of a less immediate
+kind. So much for the meaning of _good_ when implying standards
+and commandments; ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is,
+however, no such implication, and _good_ means nothing more than
+_satisfactory in the way of use and advantage._ Thus a _good_ road
+is a road we prefer because it takes us to our destination quickly and
+easily. A _good_ speech is one we prefer because it succeeds in
+explaining or persuading. And a _good_ character (good friend,
+father, husband, citizen) is one that gives satisfaction by the
+fulfilment of moral obligations.
+
+But note the difference when we come to _Beautiful._ A _beautiful_
+road is one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at; its
+being devious and inconvenient will not prevent its being
+_beautiful._ A _beautiful_ speech is one we like to hear or
+remember, although it may convince or persuade neither us nor
+anybody. A _beautiful_ character is one we like to think about but
+which may never practically help anyone, if for instance, it exists
+not in real life but in a novel. Thus the adjective _Beautiful_ implies
+_an attitude of preference, but not an attitude of present or future
+turning to our purposes._ There is even a significant lack of
+symmetry in the words employed (at all events in English, French
+and German) to distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the
+way of weather. For weather which makes us uncomfortable and
+hampers our comings and goings by rain, wind or mud, is described
+as _bad;_ while the opposite kind of weather is called _beautiful,
+fine,_ or _fair,_ as if the greater comfort, convenience, usefulness of
+such days were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our
+mere contemplation.
+
+_Our mere contemplation!_ Here we have struck upon the main
+difference between our attitude when we use the word _good_ or
+_useful,_ and when we use the word _beautiful._ And we can add to
+our partial formula "beautiful implies satisfaction and preference"--the
+distinguishing predicate--"_of a contemplative kind._" This
+general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our
+use of the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming
+exception will not only exemplify what I have said about our
+attitude when employing that word, but add to this information the
+name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion
+of _admiration._ For the selfsame object or proceeding may
+sometimes be called _good_ and sometimes _beautiful,_ according
+as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. While we
+admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it
+_good,_ we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic
+coachman as _beautiful, anglice fine_ or _splendid,_ because there
+is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely
+being contemplated with admiration. Similarly, we have all of us
+heard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon
+to an operation, the apparently far-fetched adjective Beautiful, or
+one of the various equivalents, fine, splendid, glorious (even
+occasionally _jolly!)_ by which Englishmen express their
+admiration. The change of word represents a change of attitude. The
+engineer is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon
+estimating the advantages of the operation. Each of these highly
+practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an
+imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical
+estimation or even of practice itself. The machine or operation, the
+skill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being
+considered _apart from action,_ and advantage, means and time,
+to-day or yesterday; _platonically_ we may call it from the first great
+teacher of aesthetics. They are being, in one word, contemplated
+with admiration. And _admiration_ is the rough and ready name for
+the mood, however transient, for the emotion, however faint,
+wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because
+contemplation happens to give satisfaction. The satisfaction may be
+a mere skeleton of the "I'd rather than not" description; or it may be
+a massive alteration in our being, radiating far beyond the present,
+evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate it; storing
+itself up for the future; penetrating, like the joy of a fine day, into
+our animal spirits, altering pulse, breath, gait, glance and demeanour;
+and transfiguring our whole momentary outlook on life. But,
+superficial or overwhelming, _this hind of satisfaction connected
+with, the word Beautiful is always of the Contemplative order._
+
+And upon the fact we have thus formulated depend, as we shall see,
+most of the other facts and formulae of our subject.
+
+This essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the
+word _Beautiful_ has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous,
+and I think, quite misleading theories. The first of these defines
+aesthetic appreciation as _disinterested interest,_ gratuitously
+identifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we
+have not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such appreciation
+implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested.
+The second philosophical theory (originally Schiller's, and revived
+by Herbert Spencer) takes advantage of the non-practical attitude
+connected with the word _Beautiful_ to define art and its enjoyment
+as a kind of _play._ Now although leisure and freedom from cares
+are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter
+differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For
+although it may be possible to watch _other people_ playing football
+or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the
+deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may
+contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the
+concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part
+of the players _themselves_ an eminently practical state of mind,
+one diametrically opposed to contemplation, as I hope to make
+evident in the next section.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION
+
+WE have thus defined the word _Beautiful_ as implying an attitude
+of contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes
+amounting to an _emotion,_ of admiration; and so far contrasted it
+with the practical attitude implied by the word _good._ But we
+require to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of
+contemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not
+merely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one.
+
+Let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching
+the behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary
+wayfarers in front of a view, which they severally consider in the
+practical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. The view was from
+a hill-top in the neighbourhood of Rome or of Edinburgh, whichever
+the Reader can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers
+halted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts.
+
+"It will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot"--began one of
+the three. "We might have been back for tea-time if only there had
+been a tram and a funicular. And that makes me think: Why not start
+a joint-stock company to build them? There must be water-power in
+these hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter
+to town. Also houses could be built for people whose work takes
+them to town, but who want good air for their children; the
+hire-purchase system, you know. It might prove a godsend and a capital
+investment, though I suppose some people would say it spoilt the
+view. The idea is quite a _good_ one. I shall get an expert--"
+
+"These hills," put in the second man--"are said to be part of an
+ancient volcano. I don't know whether that theory is _true!_ It would
+be _interesting_ to examine whether the summits have been ground
+down in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic
+action at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been
+under the sea at no very distant period. It is also _interesting_ to
+notice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained
+by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural
+harbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable meeting-place of
+seafaring and pastoral populations. These investigations would
+prove, as I said, remarkably full of interest."
+
+"I wish"--complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to
+himself--"I wish these men would hold their tongues and let one
+enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to _what
+might be done_ or to _how it all came about._ They don't seem to
+feel how _beautiful_ it all is." And he concentrated himself on
+contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab
+of reluctance to leave.
+
+Meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there
+really was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for
+both tramway and funicular, and where the necessary capital could
+be borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of
+stratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical
+data about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country.
+
+"I suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your
+sketching materials?" said the scientific man, always interested in
+the causes of phenomena, even such trifling ones as a man
+remaining quiet before a landscape.
+
+"I reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out
+where you can use up a description of this place"--corrected the
+rapid insight of the practical man, accustomed to weigh people's
+motives in case they may be turned to use.
+
+"I am _not_ a painter, and I'm _not_ a writer"--exclaimed the third
+traveller, "and I thank Heaven I'm not! For if I were I might be
+trying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely
+enjoying all this beauty. Not but that I should like to have a sketch
+or a few words of description for when I've turned my back upon it.
+And Heaven help me, I really believe that when we are all back in
+London I may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your
+tramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action,
+because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this
+place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me--"
+
+"That's what it is to be aesthetic"--said the two almost in the same
+breath.
+
+"And that, I suppose"--answered the third with some animosity--"is
+what you mean by being practical or scientific."
+
+Now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of
+science, though differing so obviously from one another (the first
+bent upon producing new and advantageous _results,_ the second
+examining, without thought of advantage, into possible _causes),_
+both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was
+merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. They
+were, as he complained, thinking of _what might be done_ and of
+_how it had all come about._ That is to say they were both thinking
+_away_ from that landscape. The scientific man actually turned his
+back to it in examining first one rock, then another. The practical
+man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he
+was on, since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and
+that the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a
+funicular. But besides the different items of landscape, and the same
+items under different angles, which were thus offered to these two
+men's bodily eyes, there was a far greater variety, and rapider
+succession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their
+spirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills, plain,
+and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time,
+but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress,
+dairy-products, pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices,
+advertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and the scientific man's inner
+vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and
+seas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals
+under the microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let
+alone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries. Moreover,
+most, if not all these mental images (blocking out from attention the
+really existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy,
+swished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just
+enough seen to know what it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all,
+mere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought. So that what
+satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly
+scampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next
+one, and to a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to
+wit, pounds, shillings, and pence in the one case, and a coherent
+explanation in the other. In both cases equally there was a
+kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of
+aspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed. Or, more
+strictly speaking, there was no interest whatever in aspects as such,
+but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied;
+whether actions future and personally profitable, like building
+tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and
+quite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or
+prehistoric civilisations.
+
+Now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the
+two others had first mistaken for an artist or writer, and then
+dismissed as an aesthetic person.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ASPECTS _VERSUS_ THINGS
+
+HAVING settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked
+best, he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded
+him. Had he descended another twenty minutes, or looked through
+powerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a
+juxtaposition of emerald green, raw Sienna, and pale yellow,
+whereas, at the distance where he chose to remain, its colours fused
+into indescribably lovely lilacs and russets. Had he moved freely
+about he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of
+sharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their
+various angles, must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges,
+and roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate. Also that the
+foothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains
+behind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the
+attention by their aggressive projection. While, as if to spoil the
+aspect still more, he would have been forced to recognise (as Ruskin
+explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the Matterhorn peak)
+that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked
+up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely
+to rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of
+perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let
+alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. But
+to how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope,
+that man did not give one thought, any more than to how they might
+look after a hundred years of tramways and funiculars or how they
+had looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial action.
+He was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light
+and colour, the pattern (more and more detailed, more and more
+co-ordinated with every additional exploring glance) of keenly
+thrusting, delicately yielding lines, meeting as purposefully as if
+they had all been alive and executing some great, intricate dance. He
+did not concern himself whether what he was looking at was an
+aggregate of things; still less what might be these things' other
+properties. He was not concerned with things at all, but only with a
+particular appearance (he did not care whether it answered to reality),
+only with one (he did not want to know whether there might be any
+other) _aspect._
+
+For, odd as it may sound, a _Thing_ is both much more and much
+less than an _Aspect._ Much more, because a _Thing_ really means
+not only qualities of its own and reactions of ours which are actual
+and present, but a far greater number and variety thereof which are
+potential. Much _less,_ on the other hand, because of these potential
+qualities and reactions constituting a Thing only a minimum need be
+thought of at any given time; instead of which, an aspect is all there,
+its qualities closely interdependent, and our reactions entirely taken
+up in connecting them as whole and parts. A rose, for instance, is
+not merely a certain assemblage of curves and straight lines and
+colours, seen as the painter sees it, at a certain angle, petals masking
+part of stem, leaf protruding above bud: it is the possibility of other
+combinations of shapes, including those seen when the rose (or the
+person looking) is placed head downwards. Similarly it is the
+possibility of certain sensations of resistance, softness, moisture,
+pricking if we attempt to grasp it, of a certain fragrance if we breathe
+in the air. It is the possibility of turning into a particular fruit, with
+the possibility of our finding that fruit bitter and non-edible; of being
+developed from cuttings, pressed in a book, made a present of or
+cultivated for lucre. Only one of these groups of possibilities may
+occupy our thoughts, the rest not glanced at, or only glanced at
+subsequently; but if, on trial, any of these grouped possibilities
+disappoint us, we decide that this is not a real rose, but a paper rose,
+or a painted one, or no rose at all, but some _other thing._ For, so far
+as our consciousness is concerned, _things_ are merely groups of
+actual and potential reactions on our own part, that is to say of
+expectations which experience has linked together in more or less
+stable groups. The practical man and the man of science in my fable,
+were both of them dealing with _Things_: passing from one group
+of potential reaction to another, hurrying here, dallying there, till of
+the actual _aspect_ of the landscape there remained nothing in their
+thoughts, trams and funiculars in the future, volcanoes and icecaps
+in the past, having entirely altered all that; only the material
+constituents and the geographical locality remaining as the unshifted
+item in those much pulled about bundles of thoughts of possibilities.
+
+Every _thing_ may have a great number of very different _Aspects;_
+and some of these _Aspects_ may invite contemplation, as that
+landscape invited the third man to contemplate it; while other
+_aspects_ (say the same place after a proper course of tramways and
+funiculars and semi-detached residences, or _before_ the needful
+volcanic and glacial action) may be such as are dismissed or slurred
+as fast as possible. Indeed, with the exception of a very few cubes
+not in themselves especially attractive, I cannot remember any
+_things_ which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects as
+pleasing ones. The most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood
+on its head; the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at
+through a microscope or from too far off; the most beautiful melody
+is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . Here the Reader may
+interrupt: "What nonsense! Of course the building _is_ a building
+only when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a
+microscope; the melody isn't a melody except begun at the
+beginning"--all which means that when we speak of a building, a
+picture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer
+of a _Thing,_ but of one of the possible _Aspects_ of a thing; _and
+that when we say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords
+one or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction._ But if
+a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be
+_contemplated,_ if the mountain could not also be climbed or
+tunnelled, if the woman could not also get married, bear children
+and have (or not have!) a vote, we should say that the mountain and
+the woman were not _real things._ Hence we come to the conclusion,
+paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking
+about, _that what we contemplate as beautiful is an Aspect of a
+Thing, but never a Thing itself._ In other words: Beautiful is an
+adjective applicable to Aspects not to Things, or to Things only,
+inasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other
+potentialities) beautiful Aspects. So that we can now formulate:
+_The word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the
+contemplation not of things but of aspects._
+
+This summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject; and
+I should wish the Reader to get it by heart, until he grow
+familiarised therewith in the course of our further examinations.
+Before proceeding upon these, I would, however, ask him to reflect
+how this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless,
+squabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth,
+and whether art, as certain moralists contend, is a school of lying.
+For _true_ or _false_ is a judgment of existence; it refers to
+_Things;_ it implies that besides the qualities and reactions shown
+or described, our further action or analysis will call forth certain
+other groups of qualities and reactions constituting the _thing which
+is said to exist._ But aspects, in the case in which I have used that
+word, _are_ what they are and do not necessarily imply anything
+beyond their own peculiarities. The words _true_ or _false_ can be
+applied to them only with the meaning of _aspects truly existing_ or
+_not truly existing;_ _i.e._ aspects of which it is true or not to _say
+that they exist._ But as to an aspect being true or false in the sense
+of _misleading,_ that question refers not to the _aspect_ itself, but to
+the thing of which the aspect is taken as a part and a sign. Now the
+contemplation of the mere aspect, the beauty (or ugliness) of the
+aspect, does not itself necessitate or imply any such reference to a
+thing. Our contemplation of the beauty of a statue representing a
+Centaur may indeed be disturbed by the reflexion that a creature
+with two sets of lungs and digestive organs would be a monster and
+not likely to grow to the age of having a beard. But this disturbing
+thought need not take place. And when it takes place it is not part of
+our contemplation of the _aspect_ of that statue; it is, on the contrary,
+outside it, an excursion away from it due to our inveterate (and very
+necessary) habit of interrupting the contemplation of _Aspects_ by
+the thinking and testing of _Things._ The Aspect never implied the
+existence of a Thing beyond itself; it did not affirm that anything
+was true, _i.e._ that anything could or would happen besides the fact
+of our contemplation. In other words the formula that _beautiful is
+an adjective applying only to aspects,_ shows us that art can be
+truthful or untruthful only in so far as art (as is often the case)
+deliberately sets to making statements about the existence and nature
+of Things. If Art says "Centaurs can be born and grow up to man's
+estate with two sets of respiratory and digestive organs"--then Art is
+telling lies. Only, before accusing it of being a liar, better make sure
+that the statement about the possibility of centaurs has been intended
+by the Art, and not merely read into it by ourselves.
+
+But more of this when we come to the examination of Subject and
+Form.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SENSATIONS
+
+IN the contemplation of the _Aspect_ before him, what gave that
+aesthetic man the most immediate and undoubted pleasure was its
+colour, or, more correctly speaking, its colours. Psycho-Physiologists
+have not yet told us why colours, taken singly and apart
+from their juxtaposition, should possess so extraordinary a
+power over what used to be called our animal spirits, and through
+them over our moods; and we can only guess from analogy with
+what is observed in plants, as well as from the nature of the
+phenomenon itself, that various kinds of luminous stimulation must
+have some deep chemical repercussion throughout the human
+organism. The same applies, though in lesser degree, to sounds,
+quite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies.
+As there are colours which _feel, i.e._ make _us_ feel, more or less
+warm or cool, colours which are refreshing or stifling, depressing or
+exhilarating quite independent of any associations, so also there are
+qualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the trumpet, or
+harrow us like the quaver of the accordion. Similarly with regard to
+immediacy of effect: the first chords of an organ will change our
+whole mode of being like the change of light and colour on first
+entering a church, although the music which that organ is playing
+may, after a few seconds of listening, bore us beyond endurance;
+and the architecture of that church, once we begin to take stock of it,
+entirely dispel that first impression made by the church's light and
+colour. It is on account of this doubtless physiological power of
+colour and sound, this way which they have of invading and
+subjugating us with or without our consent and long before our
+conscious co-operation, that the Man-on-the-Hill's pleasure in the
+aspect before him was, as I have said, first of all, pleasure in colour.
+Also, because pleasure in colour, like pleasure in mere sound-quality
+or _timbre,_ is accessible to people who never go any further in their
+aesthetic preference. Children, as every one knows, are sensitive to
+colours, long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes.
+And the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used
+to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the
+subtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers incapable of
+distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of
+following a modulation.
+
+The Man on the Hill, therefore, received immediate pleasure from
+the colours of the landscape. _Received_ pleasure, rather than
+_took_ it, since colours, like smells, seem, as I have said, to invade
+us, and insist upon pleasing whether we want to be pleased or not. In
+this meaning of the word we may be said to be _passive_ to sound
+and colour quality: our share in the effects of these sensations, as in
+the effect of agreeable temperatures, contacts and tastes, is a
+question of bodily and mental reflexes in which our conscious
+activity, our voluntary attention, play no part: we are not _doing,_
+but _done to_ by those stimulations from without; and the pleasure
+or displeasure which they set up in us is therefore one which we
+_receive,_ as distinguished from one which _we take._
+
+Before passing on to the pleasure which the Man on the Hill _did
+take,_ as distinguished from thus passively _receiving,_ from the
+aspect before him, before investigating into the activities to which
+this other kind of pleasure, _pleasure taken, not received,_ is due,
+we must dwell a little longer on the colours which delighted him,
+and upon the importance or unimportance of those colours with
+regard to that _Aspect_ he was contemplating.
+
+These colours--particularly a certain rain-washed blue, a pale lilac
+and a faded russet--gave him, as I said, immediate and massive
+pleasure like that of certain delicious tastes and smells, indeed
+anyone who had watched him attentively might have noticed that he
+was making rather the same face as a person rolling, as Meredith
+says, a fine vintage against his palate, or drawing in deeper draughts
+of exquisitely scented air; he himself, if not too engaged in looking,
+might have noticed the accompanying sensations in his mouth,
+throat and nostrils; all of which, his only active response to the
+colour, was merely the attempt to _receive more_ of the already
+received sensation. But this pleasure which he received from the
+mere colours of the landscape was the same pleasure which they
+would have given him if he had met them in so many skeins of silk;
+the more complex pleasure due to their juxtaposition, was the
+pleasure he might have had if those skeins, instead of being on
+separate leaves of a pattern-book, had been lying tangled together in
+an untidy work-basket. He might then probably have said, "Those
+are exactly the colours, and in much the same combination, as in
+that landscape we saw such and such a day, at such and such a
+season and hour, from the top of that hill." But he would never have
+said (or been crazy if he had) "Those skeins of silk are the landscape
+we saw in that particular place and oh that particular occasion." Now
+the odd thing is that he would have used that precise form of words,
+"that is the landscape," etc. etc., if you had shown him a pencil
+drawing or a photograph taken from that particular place and point
+of view. And similarly if you had made him look through stained
+glass which changed the pale blue, pale lilac and faded russet into
+emerald green and blood red. He would have exclaimed at the loss
+of those exquisite colours when you showed him the monochrome,
+and perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when you
+forced him to look through that atrocious glass. But he would have
+identified the aspect as the one he had seen before; just as even the
+least musical person would identify "God save the King" whether
+played with three sharps on the flute or with four flats on the
+trombone.
+
+There is therefore in an _Aspect_ something over and above the
+quality of the colours (or in a piece of music, of the sounds) in
+which that aspect is, at any particular moment, embodied for your
+senses; something which can be detached from the particular colours
+or sounds and re-embodied in other colours or sounds, existing
+meanwhile in a curious potential schematic condition in our memory.
+That something is _Shape._
+
+It is Shape which we contemplate; and it is only because they enter
+into shapes that colours and sounds, as distinguished from
+temperatures, textures, tastes and smells, can be said to be
+contemplated at all. Indeed if we apply to single isolated colour or
+sound-qualities (that blue or russet, or the mere timbre of a voice or
+an orchestra) the adjective _beautiful_ while we express our liking
+for smells, tastes, temperatures and textures merely by the adjectives
+_agreeable, delicious_; this difference in our speech is doubtless due
+to the fact that colours or sounds are more often than not connected
+each with other colours or other sounds into a Shape and thereby
+become subject to contemplation more frequently than temperatures,
+textures, smells and tastes which cannot themselves be grouped into
+shapes, and are therefore objects of contemplation only when
+associated with colours and sounds, as for instance, the smell of
+burning weeds in a description of autumnal sights, or the cool
+wetness of a grotto in the perception of its darkness and its murmur
+of waters.
+
+On dismissing the practical and the scientific man because they were
+_thinking away from aspects to things,_ I attempted to inventory the
+_aspect_ in whose contemplation their aesthetic companion had
+remained absorbed. There were the colours, that delicious
+recently-washed blue, that lilac and russet, which gave the man his
+immediate shock of passive and (as much as smell and taste) bodily
+pleasure. But besides these my inventory contained another kind of
+item: what I described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply
+convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills, picked
+up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down
+merely to rush up again in long rapid concave curves. And besides
+all this, there was the outline of a distant mountain, rising flamelike
+against the sky. It was all these items made up of _lines_ (skyline,
+outline, and lines of perspective!) which remained unchanged when
+the colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass,
+and unchanged also when the colouring was reduced to the barest
+monochrome of a photograph or a pencil drawing; nay remained the
+same despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless
+presentment of them. Those items of the aspect were, as we all know,
+_Shapes._ And with altered colours, and colours diminished to just
+enough for each line to detach itself from its ground, those Shapes
+could be contemplated and called beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+PERCEPTION OF RELATIONS
+
+WHY should this be the case? Briefly, because colours (and sounds)
+as such are forced upon us by external stimulation of our organs of
+sight and hearing, neither more nor less than various temperatures,
+textures, tastes and smells are forced upon us from without through
+the nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin,
+muscle, palate and nose. Whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly
+willy _seen_ or _heard,_ are, at least until we know them, _looked_
+at or _listened_ to, that is to say _taken in_ or _grasped,_ by mental
+and bodily activities which meet, but may also refuse to meet, those
+sense stimulations. Moreover, because these mental and bodily
+activities, being our own, can be rehearsed in what we call our
+memory without the repetition of the sensory stimulations which
+originally started them, and even in the presence of different ones.
+
+In terms of mental science, colour and sound, like temperature,
+texture, taste and smell, are _sensations_; while _shape_ is, in the
+most complete sense, a _perception._ This distinction between
+_sensation_ and _perception_ is a technicality of psychology; but
+upon it rests the whole question why shapes can be contemplated
+and afford the satisfaction connected with the word _beautiful,_
+while colours and sounds, except as grouped or groupable into
+shapes, cannot. Moreover this distinction will prepare us for
+understanding the main fact of all psychological aesthetics: namely
+that the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction which we get from shapes
+is satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what are, directly or indirectly,
+activities of our own.
+
+Etymologically and literally, _perception_ means the act of
+_grasping_ or _taking_ in, and also the result of that action. But
+when we thus _perceive_ a shape, what is it precisely that we grasp
+or take in? At first it might seem to be the _sensations_ in which that
+form is embodied. But a moment's reflection will show that this
+cannot be the case, since the sensations are furnished us simply
+without our performing any act of perception, thrust on us from
+outside, and, unless our sensory apparatus and its correlated brain
+centre were out of order, received by us passively, nilly willy, the
+Man on the Hill being invaded by the sense of that blue, that lilac
+and that russet exactly as he might have been invaded by the smell
+of the hay in the fields below. No: what we grasp or take in thus
+actively are not the sensations themselves, but the _relations_
+between these sensations, and it is of these relations, more truly than
+of the sensations themselves, that a shape is, in the most literal sense,
+_made up._ And it is this _making up of shapes,_ this grasping or
+taking in of their constituent relations, which is an active process on
+our part, and one which we can either perform or not perform. When,
+instead of merely _seeing_ a colour, we _look at_ a shape, our eye
+ceases to be merely passive to the action of the various light-waves,
+and becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way;
+turning its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the
+stimulus, adjusting its focus like that of an opera glass, and like an
+opera glass, turning it to the right or left, higher or lower.
+
+Moreover, except in dealing with very small surfaces, our eye
+moves about in our head and moves our head, and sometimes our
+whole body, along with it. An analogous active process undoubtedly
+distinguishes _listening_ from mere _hearing;_ and although
+psycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments
+of the inner ear corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye,
+it is generally recognised that auditive attention is accompanied by
+adjustments of the vocal parts, or preparations for such adjustments,
+which account for the impression of _following_ a sequence of
+notes as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do
+_not_ follow, in the sense of _connecting by our activity,_
+consecutive sensations of taste or smell. Besides such obvious or
+presumable bodily activities requisite for looking and listening as
+distinguished from mere seeing and hearing, there is moreover in all
+perception of shape, as in all _grasping of meaning,_ a mental
+activity involving what are called _attention_ and _memory._ A
+primer of aesthetics is no place for expounding any of the various
+psychological definitions of either of these, let us call them, faculties.
+Besides I should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental
+facts as can be found in the Reader's everyday (however unnoticed)
+experience, instead of requiring for their detection the artificial
+conditions of specialised introspection or laboratory experiment. So
+I shall give to those much fought over words _attention_ and
+_memory_ merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are
+familiar in everyday language, and only beg the Reader to notice
+that, whatever psychologists may eventually prove or disprove
+_attention_ and _memory_ to be, these two, let us unscientifically
+call them _faculties,_ are what chiefly distinguishes _perception_
+from _sensation._ For instance, in grasping or taking stock of a
+visible or an audible shape we are doing something with our
+attention, or our attention is doing something in us: a travelling
+about, a returning to starting points, a summing up. And a travelling
+about not merely between what is given simultaneously in the
+present, but, even more, between what has been given in an
+immediately proximate past, and what we expect to be given in an
+immediately proximate future; both of which, the past which is put
+behind us as past, and the past which is projected forwards as future,
+necessitate the activity of _memory._ There is an adjustment of our
+feelings as well as our muscles not merely to the present sensation,
+but to the future one, and a buzz of continuing adjustment to the past.
+There is a holding over and a holding on, a reacting backwards and
+forwards of our attention, and quite a little drama of expectation,
+fulfilment and disappointment, or as psychologists call them, of
+tensions and relaxations. And this little drama involved in all
+looking or listening, particularly in all taking stock of visible or
+audible (and I may add intellectual or _verbal_) shape, has its
+appropriate accompaniment of emotional changes: the ease or
+difficulty of understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat
+which we shall deal with later. And although the various perceptive
+activities remain unnoticed in themselves (so long as easy and
+uninterrupted), we become aware of a lapse, a gap, whenever our
+mind's eye (if not our bodily one!) neglects to sweep from side to
+side of a geometrical figure, or from centre to circumference, or
+again whenever our mind's ear omits following from some particular
+note to another, just as when we fall asleep for a second during a
+lecture or sermon: we have, in common parlance, _missed the hang_
+of some detail or passage. What we have missed, in that lapse of
+attention, is a _relation,_ the length and direction of a line, or the
+span of a musical interval, or, in the case of words, the references of
+noun and verb, the co-ordination of tenses of a verb. And it is such
+relations, more or less intricate and hierarchic, which transform what
+would otherwise be meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of
+sensations into the significant entities which can be remembered and
+recognised even when their constituent sensations are completely
+altered, namely _shapes._ To our previous formula that _beautiful_
+denotes satisfaction in contemplating an aspect, we can now add that
+an _aspect_ consists of sensations grouped together into _relations_
+by our active, our remembering and foreseeing, perception.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ELEMENTS OF SHAPE
+
+LET us now examine some of these relations, not in the
+genealogical or hierarchic order assigned to them by experimental
+psychology, but in so far as they constitute the elements of _shape,_
+and more especially as they illustrate the general principle which I
+want to impress on the Reader, namely: That the perception of
+Shape depends primarily upon movements which _we_ make, and
+the measurements and comparisons which _we_ institute.
+
+And first we must examine mere _extension_ as such, which
+distinguishes our active dealings with visual and audible sensations
+from our passive reception of the sensations of taste and smell. For
+while in the case of the latter a succession of similar stimulations
+affects us as "more taste of strawberry" or "more smell of rose"
+when intermittent, or as a vague "there _is_ a strong or faint taste of
+strawberry" and a "there is a smell of lemon flower"--when
+continuous; our organ of sight being mobile, reports not "more black
+on white" but "so many inches of black line on a white ground," that
+is to say reports a certain _extension_ answering to its
+own movement. This quality of extension exists also in our
+sound-perceptions, although the explanation is less evident. Notes do not
+indeed exist (but only sounding bodies and air-vibrations) in the
+space which we call "real" because our eye and our locomotion
+coincide in their accounts of it; but notes are experienced, that is
+thought and felt, as existing in a sort of imitation space of their own.
+This "musical space," as M. Dauriac has rightly called it, has limits
+corresponding with those of our power of hearing or reproducing
+notes, and a central region corresponding with our habitual
+experience of the human voice; and in this "musical space" notes are
+experienced as moving up and down and with a centrifugal and
+centripetal direction, and also as existing at definite spans or
+_intervals_ from one another; all of which probably on account of
+presumable muscular adjustments of the inner and auditive
+apparatus, as well as obvious sensations in the vocal parts when we
+ourselves produce, and often when we merely think of, them. In
+visual perception the sweep of the glance, that is the adjustment of
+the muscles of the inner eye, the outer eye and of the head, is
+susceptible of being either interrupted or continuous like any other
+muscular process; and its continuity is what unites the mere
+successive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension,
+so that the same successive colour-and-light-sensations can be
+experienced either as _one_ extension, or as two or more, according
+as the glance is continuous or interrupted; the eye's sweep, when not
+excessive, tending to continuity _unless a new direction requires a
+new muscular adjustment._ And, except in the case of an
+_extension_ exceeding any single movement of eye and head, a new
+adjustment answers to what we call _a change of direction.
+Extension_ therefore, as we have forestalled with regard to sound,
+has various modes, corresponding to something belonging to
+ourselves: a _middle,_ answering to the middle not of our field of
+vision, since that itself can be raised or lowered by a movement of
+the head, but to the middle of our body; and an _above_ and
+_below,_ a _right_ and a _left_ referable to our body also, or rather
+to the adjustments made by eye and head in the attempt to see our
+own extremities; for, as every primer of psychology will teach you,
+mere sight and its muscular adjustments account only for the
+dimensions of height (up and down) and of breadth (right and left)
+while the third or cubic dimension of _depth_ is a highly complex
+result of locomotion in which I include prehension. And inasmuch
+as we are dealing with _aspects_ and not with _things,_ we have as
+yet nothing to do with this _cubic_ or _third dimension,_ but are
+confining ourselves to the two dimensions of extension in height and
+breadth, which are sufficient for the existence, the identity, or more
+correctly the _quiddity,_ of visible shapes.
+
+Such a shape is therefore, primarily, a series of longer or shorter
+_extensions,_ given by a separate glance towards, or away from, our
+own centre or extremities, and at some definite angle to our own
+axis and to the ground on which we stand. But these acts of
+extension and orientation cease to be thought of as measured and
+orientated, and indeed as accomplished, by ourselves, and are
+translated into objective terms whenever our attention is turned
+outwards: thus we say that each line is of a given length and
+direction, so or so much off the horizontal or vertical.
+
+So far we have established relations only to ourselves. We now
+compare the acts of extension one against the other, and we also
+measure the adjustment requisite to pass from one to another,
+continuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre; in everyday
+speech, we perceive that the various lines are _similar_ and
+_dissimilar_ in length, direction and orientation. We _compare;_
+and comparing we _combine_ them in the unity of our intention:
+thought of together they are thought of as belonging together.
+Meanwhile the process of such comparison of the relation of each
+line with us to the analogous relation to us of its fellows, produces
+yet further acts of measurement and comparison. For in going from
+one of our lines to another we become aware of the presence
+of--how shall I express it?--well of a _nothing_ between them, what we
+call _blank space,_ because we experience a _blank_ of the
+particular sensations, say red and black, with which we are engaged
+in those lines. Between the red and black sensations of the lines we
+are looking at, there will be a possibility of other colour sensations,
+say the white of the paper, and these white sensations we shall duly
+receive, for, except by shutting our eyes, we could not avoid
+receiving them. But though received these white sensations will not
+be attended to, because they are not what we are busied with. We
+shall be _passive_ towards the white sensations while we are
+_active_ towards the black and red ones; we shall not measure the
+white; not sweep our glance along it as we do along the red and the
+black. And as _ceteris paribus_ our tense awareness of active states
+always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched
+between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions,
+and their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the
+uninteresting white extensions as a _blank,_ a gap, as that which
+separates the objects of our active interest, and takes what existence
+it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those
+interesting actively measured and compared lines. Thus the
+difference between our _active perception_ and our merely _passive
+sensation_ accounts for the fact that every visible shape is composed
+of lines (or bands) measured and compared with reference to our
+own ocular adjustments and our axis and centre; lines existing, as
+we express it, in _blank space,_ that is to say space not similarly
+measured; lines, moreover, _enclosing_ between each other more of
+this blank space, which is not measured in itself but subjected to the
+measurement of its enclosing lines. And similarly, every _audible_
+Shape consists not merely of sounds enclosing _silence,_ but of
+heard tones between which we are aware of the intervening _blank
+interval_ which _might have been_ occupied by the intermediary
+tones and semitones. In other words, visible and audible Shape is
+composed of alternations between _active,_ that is _moving,_
+measuring, referring, comparing, attention; and _passive,_ that is
+comparatively sluggish _reception_ of mere sensation.
+
+
+This fact implies another and very important one, which I have
+indeed already hinted at. If perceiving shape means comparing lines
+(they may _be bands,_ but we will call them _lines),_ and the lines
+are measured only by consecutive eye movements, then the act of
+comparison evidently includes the co-operation, however
+infinitesimally brief, of _memory._ The two halves of this
+Chippendale chair-back exist simultaneously in front of my eyes,
+but I cannot take stock simultaneously of the lengths and orientation
+of the curves to the right and the curves of the left. I must hold over
+the image of one half, and unite it, somewhere in what we call "the
+mind"--with the other; nay, I must do this even with the separate
+curves constituting the patterns each of which is measured by a
+sweep of the glance, even as I should measure them successively by
+applying a tape and then remembering and comparing their various
+lengths, although the ocular process may stand to the tape-process as
+a minute of our time to several hundreds of years. This comes to
+saying that the perception of visible shapes, even like that of audible
+ones, takes place _in time,_ and requires therefore the
+co-operation of _memory._ Now memory, paradoxical as it may sound,
+practically implies _expectation:_ the use of the past, to so speak, is
+to become that visionary thing we call the _future._ Hence, while we
+are measuring the extension and direction of one line, we are not
+only _remembering_ the extent and direction of another previously
+measured line, but we are also _expecting_ a similar, or somewhat
+similar, act of measurement of the _next_ line; even as in "following
+a melody" we not only remember the preceding tone, but _expect_
+the succeeding ones. Such interplay of present, past and future is
+requisite for every kind of _meaning,_ for every _unit of thought_;
+and among others, of the meaning, the _thought,_ which we
+contemplate under the name of _shape._ It is on account of this
+interplay of present, past and future, that Wundt counts feelings _of
+tension_ and _relaxation_ among the _elements_ of form-perception.
+And the mention of such _feelings,_ i.e. rudiments of _emotion,_
+brings us to recognise that the remembering and foreseeing of our
+acts of measurement and orientation constitutes a microscopic
+psychological drama--shall we call it the drama of the SOUL
+MOLECULES?--whose first familiar examples are those two
+peculiarities of visible and audible shape called _Symmetry_ and
+_Rythm._
+
+Both of these mean that a measurement has been made, and that the
+degree of its _span_ is kept in memory to the extent of our expecting
+that the next act of measurement will be similar. _Symmetry_
+exists quite as much in _Time_ (hence in shapes made up of
+sound-relations) as in _Space;_ and _Rythm,_ which is commonly thought
+of as an especially musical relation, exists as much in _Space_ as in
+_Time_; because the perception of shape requires Time and
+movement equally whether the relations are between objectively
+co-existent and durable marks on stone or paper, or between objectively
+successive and fleeting sound-waves. Also because, while the single
+relations of lines and of sounds require to be ascertained
+successively, the combination of those various single relations, their
+relations with one another _as whole and parts,_ require to be
+grasped by an intellectual synthesis; as much in the case of notes as
+in the case of lines. If, in either case, we did not remember the first
+measurement when we obtained the second, there would be no
+perception of shape however elementary; which is the same as
+saying that for an utterly oblivious mind there could be no
+relationships, and therefore no meaning. In the case of Symmetry
+the relations are not merely the lengths and directions of the single
+lines, that is to say their relations to ourselves, and the relation
+established by comparison between these single lines; there is now
+also the relation of both to a third, itself of course related to
+ourselves, indeed, as regards visible shape, usually answering to our
+own axis. The expectation which is liable to fulfilling or balking is
+therefore that of a repetition of this double relationship remembered
+between the lengths and directions on one side, by the lengths and
+directions on the other; and the repetition of a common relation to a
+central item.
+
+The case of RYTHM is more complex. For, although we usually
+think of Rythm as a relation of _two_ items, it is in reality a relation
+of four (or more ); because what we remember and expect is a
+mixture of similarity with dissimilarity between lengths, directions
+or impacts. OR IMPACTS. For with Rythm we come to another
+point illustrative of the fact that all shape-elements depend upon our
+own activity and its modes. A rythmical arrangement is not
+necessarily one between _objectively_ alternated elements like
+objectively longer or shorter lines of a pattern, or _objectively_
+higher or lower or longer and shorter notes. Rythm exists equally
+where the objective data, the sense stimulations, are uniform, as is
+the case with the ticks of a clock. These ticks would be registered as
+exactly similar by appropriate instruments. But our mind is not such
+an impassive instrument: our mind (whatever our mind may really
+be) is subject to an alternation of _more_ and _less,_ of _vivid_ and
+_less vivid, important_ and _less important,_ of _strong_ and
+_weak;_ and the objectively similar stimulations from outside, of
+sound or colour or light, are perceived as vivid or less vivid,
+important or less important, according to the beat of this mutual
+alternation with which they coincide: thus the uniform, ticking of the
+clock will be perceived by us as a succession in which the stress,
+that is the importance, is thrown upon the first or the second member
+of a group; and the recollection and expectation are therefore of a
+unity of dissimilar importance. We hear STRONG-WEAK; and
+remembering _strong-weak,_ we make a new _strong-weak_ out of
+that objective uniformity. Here there is no objective reason for one
+rythm more than another; and we express this by saying that the
+tickings of a clock have no intrinsic form. For _Form,_ or as I prefer
+to call it, _Shape,_ although it exists only in the mind capable of
+establishing and correlating its constituent relationships, takes an
+objective existence when the material stimulations from the outer
+world are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same
+series and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains
+why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to
+the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective
+stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations
+in time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which
+would, _ceteris paribus,_ have been provoked in himself if that
+shape had not existed first of all _only_ in his mind.
+
+A further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a
+combination of active measurements and comparisons, and of
+remembrance and expectations, is found in a fact which has very
+great importance in all artistic dealings with shapes. I have spoken,
+for simplicity's, sake, as if the patches of colour on a blank (i.e.
+uninteresting) ground along which the glance sweeps, were
+invariably contiguous and continuous. But these colour patches, and
+the sensations they afford us, are just as often, discontinuous in the
+highest degree; and the lines constituting a shape may, as for
+instance in constellations, be entirely imaginary. The fact is that
+what we feel as a line is not an objective continuity of
+colour-or-light-patches, but the continuity of our glance's sweep which
+may either accompany this objective continuity or replace it. Indeed
+such imaginary lines thus established between isolated colour patches,
+are sometimes felt as more vividly existing than real ones, because the
+glance is not obliged to take stock of their parts, but can rush freely
+from extreme point to extreme point. Moreover not only half the
+effectiveness of design, but more than half the efficiency of practical
+life, is due to our establishing such imaginary lines. We are
+inevitably and perpetually dividing visual space (and something of
+the sort happens also with "musical space") by objectively
+non-existent lines answering to our own bodily orientation. Every course,
+every trajectory, is of this sort. And every drawing executed by an
+artist, every landscape, offered us by "Nature," is felt, because it is
+measured, with reference to a set of imaginary horizontals or
+perpendiculars. While, as I remember the late Mr G. F. Watts
+showing me, every curve which we look at is _felt as being_ part of
+an imaginary circle into which it could be prolonged. Our sum of
+measuring and comparing activities, and also our dramas of
+remembrance and expectation, are therefore multiplied by these
+imaginary lines, whether they connect, constellation-wise, a few
+isolated colour indications, or whether they are established as
+standards of reference (horizontals, verticals, etc.) for other really
+existing lines; or whether again they be thought of, like those circles,
+as _wholes_ of which objectively perceived series of colour patches
+might possibly be _parts._ In all these cases imaginary lines are
+_felt,_ as existing, inasmuch as we feel the movement by which we
+bring them into existence, and even feel that such a movement might
+be made by us when it is not.
+
+So far, however, I have dealt with these imaginary lines only as an
+additional proof that shape-perception is an establishment of two
+dimensional relationships, through our own activities, and an active
+remembering, foreseeing and combining thereof.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FACILITY AND DIFFICULTY OF GRASPING
+
+OF this we get further proof when we proceed to another and less
+elementary relationship implied in the perception of shape: the
+relation of Whole and Parts.
+
+In dealing with the _ground_ upon which we perceive our red and
+black patches to be extended, I have already pointed out that our
+operations of measuring and comparing are not applied to all the
+patches of colour which we actually see, but only to such as we
+_look at_; an observation equally applicable to sounds. In other
+words our attention selects certain sensations, and limits to these all
+that establishing of relations, all that measuring and comparing, all
+that remembering and expecting; the other sensations being
+excluded. Now, while whatever is thus merely seen, but not looked
+at, is excluded as so much _blank_ or _otherness_; whatever is, on
+the contrary, _included_ is thereby credited with the quality of
+belonging, that is to say being included, together. And the more the
+attention alternates between the measuring of _included_ extensions
+and directions and the expectation of equivalent (symmetrical or
+rythmical) extensions or directions or stresses, the closer will
+become the relation of these items _included_ by our attention and
+the more foreign will become the _excluded otherness_ from which,
+as we feel, they _detach themselves._ But--by an amusing
+paradox--these lines measured and compared by our attention, are
+themselvesnot only _excluding_ so much _otherness or blank;_ they also
+tend, so soon as referred to one another, to _include_ some of this
+uninteresting blankness; and it is across this more or less completely
+included blankness that the eye (and the imagination!) draw such
+imaginary lines as I have pointed out with reference to the
+constellations. Thus a circle, say of red patches, _excludes_ some of
+the white paper on which it is drawn; but it _includes_ or _encloses_
+the rest. Place a red patch somewhere on that _enclosed_ blank; our
+glance and attention will now play not merely along the red
+circumference, but to and fro between the red circumference and the
+red patch, thereby establishing imaginary but thoroughly measured
+and compared lines between the two. Draw a red line from the red
+patch to the red circumference; you will begin expecting similar
+lengths on the other sides of the red patch, and you will become
+aware that these imaginary lines are, or are not, equal; in other
+words, that the red patch is, or is not, equidistant from every point of
+the red circumference. And if the red patch is not thus in the middle,
+you will expect, and imagine another patch which _is;_ and from
+this _imaginary centre_ you will draw imaginary lines, that is you
+will make by no means imaginary glance-sweeps, to the red
+circumference. Thus you may go on adding real red lines and
+imaginary lines connecting them with the circumference; and the
+more you do so the more you will feel that all these real lines and
+imaginary lines and all the blank space which the latter measure, are
+connected, or susceptible of being connected, closer and closer,
+every occasional excursion beyond the boundary only bringing you
+back with an increased feeling of this interconnexion, and an
+increased expectation of realising it in further details. But if on one
+of these glance-flickings beyond the circumference, your attention is
+caught by some colour patch or series of colour patches outside of it,
+you will either cease being interested in the circle and wander away
+to the new colour patches; or more probably, try to connect that
+outlying colour with the circle and its radii; or again failing that, you
+will "overlook it," as, in a pattern of concentric circles you overlook
+a colour band which, as you express it "has nothing to do with it,"
+that is with what you are looking at. Or again listening to. For if a
+church-bell mixes its tones and rythm with that of a symphony you
+are listening to, you may try and bring them in, make a place for
+them, _expect_ them among the other tones or rythms. Failing
+which you will, after a second or two, cease to notice those bells,
+cease to listen to them, giving all your attention once more to the
+sonorous whole whence you have expelled those intruders; or else,
+again, the intrusion will become an interruption, and the bells, once
+_listened to,_ will prevent your listening adequately to the
+symphony.
+
+Moreover, if the number of extensions, directions, real or imaginary
+lines or musical intervals, alternations of _something_ and
+_nothing,_ prove too great for your powers of measurement and
+comparison, particularly if it all surpass your habitual interplay of
+recollection and expectation, you will say (as before an over
+intricate pattern or a piece of music of unfamiliar harmonies and
+rythm) that "you can't grasp it"--that you "miss the hang of it." And
+what you will feel is that you cannot keep the parts within the whole,
+that the boundary vanishes, that what has been included unites with
+the excluded, in fact that all _shape_ welters into chaos. And as if to
+prove once more the truth of our general principle, you will have a
+hateful feeling of having been trifled with. What has been balked
+and wasted are all your various activities of measuring, comparing
+and co-ordinating; what has been trifled with are your expectations.
+And so far from contemplating with satisfaction the objective cause
+of all this vexation and disappointment, you will avoid
+contemplating it at all, and explain your avoidance by calling that
+chaotic or futile assemblage of lines or of notes "ugly."
+
+We seem thus to have got a good way in our explanation; and indeed
+the older psychology, for instance of the late Grant Allen, did not
+get any further. But to explain why a shape difficult to perceive
+should be disliked and called "ugly," by no means amounts to
+explaining why some other shape should be liked and called
+"beautiful," particularly as some ugly shapes happen to be far easier
+to grasp than some beautiful ones. The Reader will indeed remember
+that there is a special pleasure attached to all overcoming of
+difficulty, and to all understanding. But this double pleasure is
+shared with form-perception by every other successful grasping of
+meaning; and there is no reason why that pleasure should be
+repeated in the one case more than in the other; nor why we should
+repeat looking at (which is what we mean by contemplating) a shape
+once we have grasped it, any more than we continue to dwell on, to
+reiterate the mental processes by which we have worked out a
+geometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux. The
+sense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty
+overcome; the sense of illumination ends with the acquisition of a
+piece of information; and we pass on to some new obstacle and
+some new riddle. But it is different in the case of what we call
+_Beautiful. Beautiful_ means satisfactory for contemplation, _i.e._
+for reiterated perception; and the very essence of contemplative
+satisfaction is its desire for such reiteration. The older psychology
+would perhaps have explained this reiterative tendency by the
+pleasurableness of the sensory elements, the mere colours and
+sounds of which the easily perceived shape is made up. But this does
+not explain why, given that other shapes are made up of equally
+agreeable sensory elements, we should not pass on from a once
+perceived shape or combination of shapes to a new one, thus
+obtaining, in addition to the sensory agreeableness of colour or
+sound, a constantly new output of that feeling of victory and
+illumination attendant on every successful intellectual effort. Or, in
+other words, seeing that painting and music employ sensory
+elements already selected as agreeable, we ought never to wish to
+see the same picture twice, or to continue looking at it; we ought
+never to wish to repeat the same piece of music or its separate
+phrases; still less to cherish that picture or piece of music in our
+memory, going over and over again as much of its shape as had
+become our permanent possession.
+
+We return therefore to the fact that although balked perception is
+enough to make us reject a shape as _ugly, i.e._ such that we avoid
+entering into contemplation of it, easy perception is by no means
+sufficient to make us cherish a shape _as beautiful, i.e._ such that
+the reiteration of our drama of perception becomes desirable. And
+we shall have to examine whether there may not be some other
+factor of shape-perception wherewith to account for this preference
+of reiterated looking at the same to looking at something else.
+
+Meanwhile we may add to our set of formulae: difficulty in
+shape-perception makes contemplation disagreeable and impossible, and
+hence earns for aspects the adjective _ugly._ But facility in
+perception, like agreeableness of sensation by no means suffices for
+satisfied contemplation, and hence for the use of the adjective
+Beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SUBJECT AND OBJECT
+
+BUT before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception,
+namely that of Empathic Interpretation, I require to forestall an
+objection which my Reader has doubtless been making throughout
+my last chapters; more particularly that in clearing away the ground
+of this objection I shall be able to lay the foundations of my further
+edifice of explanation. The objection is this: if the man on the hill
+was aware of performing any, let alone all, of the various operations
+described as constituting shape-perception, neither that man nor any
+other human being would be able to enjoy the shapes thus perceived.
+
+My answer is:
+
+When did I say or imply that he was _aware_ of doing any of it? It is
+not only possible, but extremely common, to perform processes
+without being aware of performing them. The man was not _aware,_
+for instance, of making eye adjustments and eye movements, unless
+indeed his sight was out of order. Yet his eye movements could have
+been cinematographed, and his eye adjustments have been described
+minutely in a dozen treatises. He was no more aware of _doing_ any
+measuring or comparing than we are aware of _doing_ our digestion
+or circulation, except when we do them badly. But just as we are
+aware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of
+being aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate
+performance, so he was aware of his measuring and comparing,
+inasmuch as he was aware that the line A--B was longer than the
+line C--D, or that the point E was half an inch to the left of the point
+F. For so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called
+upon to make a choice between two possible proceedings, nor forced
+to do or suffer something difficult or distressing, in fact so long as
+we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our
+processes of attending, those processes are replaced in our
+awareness by the very facts--for instance the proportions and
+relations of lines--resulting from their activity. That these results
+should not resemble their cause, that mental elements (as they are
+called) should appear and disappear, and also combine into
+unaccountable compounds (Browning's "not a third sound, but a
+star") according as we attend to them, is indeed the besetting
+difficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it
+studies. But it is so because it is one of Psychology's basic facts.
+And, so far as we are at present concerned, this difference between
+mental processes and their results is the fact upon which
+psychological aesthetics are based. And it is not in order to convert
+the Man on the Hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception,
+nor even to explain why he was not aware of them, that I am
+insisting upon this point. The principle I have been expounding, let
+us call it that of the _merging of the perceptive activities of the
+subject in the qualities of the object of perception,_ explains another
+and quite as important mental process which was going on in that
+unsuspecting man.
+
+But before proceeding to that I must make it clearer how that man
+stood in the matter of _awareness of himself._ He was, indeed,
+aware of himself whenever, during his contemplation of that
+landscape, the thought arose, "well, I must be going away, and
+perhaps I shan't see this place again"--or some infinitely abbreviated
+form, perhaps a mere sketched out gesture of turning away,
+accompanied by a slight feeling of _clinging,_ he couldn't for the
+life of him say in what part of his body. He was at that moment
+acutely aware that he _did not want_ to do something which it was
+optional to do. Or, if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of
+going away, aware that he _wanted to come back,_ or at all events
+wanted to carry off as much as possible of what he had seen. In short
+he was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing himself
+away, or, if some other person or mere habit, saved him this effort,
+he was aware of himself making another effort to impress that
+landscape on his memory, and aware of a future self making an
+effort to return to it. I call it _effort_; you may, if you prefer, call it
+will; at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a
+verb to _cling to,_ (in the future tense) _return to,_ to _choose as
+against some other alternative_; as nominative of a verb briefly, _to
+like_ or _love._ And the accusative of these verbs would be the
+landscape. But unless the man's contemplation was thus shot with
+similar ideas of some action or choice of his own, he would express
+the situation by saying "this landscape _is_ awfully beautiful."
+
+This IS. I want you to notice the formula, by which the landscape,
+ceasing to be the accusative of the man's looking and thinking,
+becomes the nominative of a verb _to be so-and-so._ That
+grammatical transformation is the sign of what I have designated, in
+philosophical language, _as the merging of the activities of the
+subject in the object._ It takes place already in the domain of simple
+sensation whenever, instead of saying "_I_ taste or _I_ smell
+something nice or nasty" we say--"_this thing_ tastes or smells nice
+or nasty." And I have now shown you how this tendency to put the
+cart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex
+and active processes called perception; turning "I measure this
+line"--"I compare these two angles" into "this line _extends_ from A to
+B"--"these two angles _are equal_ to two right angles."
+
+But before getting to the final inversion--"this landscape _is_
+beautiful" instead of "_I_ like this landscape"--there is yet another,
+and far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the
+qualities of the object. This further putting of the cart before the
+horse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what only the horse
+can be doing!) falls under the head of what German psychologists
+call _Einfuehlung,_ or "Infeeling"--which Prof. Titchener has
+translated _Empathy._ Now this new, and comparatively newly
+discovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which,
+leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound
+sensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever
+satisfaction we connect with the word Beautiful. And I have already
+given the Reader an example of such Empathy when I described the
+landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline
+"_dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves_";
+to which I might have added that there was also a plain which
+_extended,_ a valley which _wound along,_ paths which _climbed_
+and roads which _followed_ the _undulations_ of the land. But the
+best example was when I said that opposite to the man there was a
+distant mountain _rising_ against the sky.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EMPATHY
+
+_THE mountain rises._ What do we mean when we employ this
+form of words? Some mountains, we are told, have originated in an
+_upheaval._ But even if this particular mountain did, we never saw
+it and geologists are still disputing about HOW and WHETHER. So
+the _rising_ we are talking about is evidently not that probable or
+improbable _upheaval._ On the other hand all geologists tell us that
+every mountain is undergoing a steady _lowering_ through its
+particles being weathered away and washed down; and our
+knowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain,
+so far from rising, is _descending._ Of course we all know that,
+objects the Reader, and of course nobody imagines that the rock and
+the earth of the mountain is rising, or that the mountain is getting up
+or growing taller! All we mean is that the mountain _looks_ as if it
+were rising.
+
+The mountain _looks!_ Surely here is a case of putting the cart
+before the horse. No; we cannot explain the mountain _rising_ by
+the mountain _looking,_ for the only _looking_ in the business is
+_our_ looking _at_ the mountain. And if the Reader objects again
+that these are all _figures of speech,_ I shall answer that _Empathy_
+is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and
+occasionally employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain,
+when we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen
+expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. Very well; then,
+(says the Reader) we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely:
+when we look at the mountain _we somehow or other think of the
+action of rising._ Is that sufficiently literal and indisputable?
+
+So literal and indisputable a statement of the case, I answer, that it
+explains, when we come to examine it, why we have said that the
+mountain rises. For if the Reader remembers my chapter on
+shape-perception, he will have no difficulty in answering why we should
+have a thought of rising when we look at the mountain, since we
+cannot look at the mountain, nor at a tree, a tower or anything of
+which we similarly say that it _rises,_ without lifting our glance,
+raising our eye and probably raising our head and neck, all of which
+raising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something
+_rising._ The rising of which we are aware is going on in us. But, as
+the Reader will remember also, when we are engrossed by
+something outside ourselves, as we are engrossed in looking at the
+shape (for we can _look_ at only the shape, not the _substance)_ of
+that mountain we cease thinking about ourselves, and cease thinking
+about ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the
+mountain's shape. What becomes therefore of our awareness of
+raising or lifting or _rising?_ What can become of it (so long as it
+continues to be there!) except that it coalesces with the shape we are
+looking at; in short that the _rising_ continuing to be thought, but no
+longer to be thought of with reference to ourselves (since we aren't
+thinking of ourselves), is thought of in reference to what we _are_
+thinking about, namely the mountain, or rather the mountain's shape,
+which is, so to speak, responsible for any thought of rising, since it
+obliges us to lift, raise or rise ourselves in order to take stock of
+it. It is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done
+by our eye to the line of which we say that it _extends_ from A to B,
+when in reality the only _extending_ has been the extending of our
+glance. It is a case of what I have called the tendency to merge the
+_activities_ of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the
+perceived object. Indeed if I insisted so much upon this tendency of
+our mind, I did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the
+phenomenon of _Empathy,_ as we have just seen it exemplified in
+the _mountain which rises._
+
+If this is Empathy, says the Reader (relieved and reassured), am I to
+understand that Empathy is nothing beyond _attributing what goes
+on in us when we look at a shape to the shape itself?_
+
+I am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple! If what we
+attributed to each single shape was only the precise action which we
+happen to be accomplishing in the process of looking at it, Empathy
+would indeed be a simple business, but it would also be a
+comparatively poor one. No. The _rising_ of the mountain is an idea
+started by the awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes,
+head or neck, and it is an idea containing the awareness of that
+lifting or raising. But it is far more than the idea merely of that
+lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present
+moment and in connexion with this particular mountain. That
+present and particular raising and lifting is merely the nucleus to
+which gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of raising, or
+_rising._ which we have ever accomplished or seen accomplished,
+_raising_ or _rising_ not only of our eyes and head, but of every
+other part of our body, and of every part of every other body which
+we ever perceived to be rising. And not merely the thought of past
+_rising_ but the thought also of future rising. All these risings, done
+by ourselves or watched in others, actually experienced or merely
+imagined, have long since united together in our mind, constituting a
+sort of composite photograph whence all differences are eliminated
+and wherein all similarities are fused and intensified: the general
+idea of _rising,_ not "I rise, rose, will rise, it rises, has risen or will
+rise" but merely _rising as_ such, _rising_ as it is expressed not in
+any particular tense or person of the verb _to rise,_ but in that verb's
+infinitive. It is this universally applicable notion of rising, which is
+started in our mind by the awareness of the particular present acts of
+raising or rising involved in our looking at that mountain, and it is
+this general idea of rising, _i.e._ of _upward movement,_ which gets
+transferred to the mountain along with our own particular present
+activity of raising some part of us, and which thickens and enriches
+and marks that poor little thought of a definite raising with the
+interest, the emotional fullness gathered and stored up in its long
+manifold existence. In other words: what we are transferring (owing
+to that tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving subject
+with the qualities of the perceived object) from ourselves to the
+looked at shape of the mountain, is not merely the thought of the
+rising which is really being done by us at that moment, but the
+thought and emotion, the _idea of rising as such_ which had been
+accumulating in our mind long before we ever came into the
+presence of that particular mountain. And it is this complex mental
+process, by which we (all unsuspectingly) invest that inert mountain,
+that bodiless shape, with the stored up and averaged and essential
+modes of our activity--it is this process whereby we make the
+mountain _raise itself,_ which constitutes what, accepting Prof.
+Titchener's translation[*] of the German word _Einfuehlung,_ I have
+called Empathy.
+
+[*] From _en_ and _pascho, epathon_.
+
+The German word _Einfuehlung_ "feeling into"--derived from a
+_verb to feel oneself into something_ ("sich in Etwas ein fuehlen")
+was in current use even before Lotze and Viscber applied it to
+aesthetics, and some years before Lipps (1897) and Wundt (1903)
+adopted it into psychological terminology; and as it is now
+consecrated, and no better occurs to me, I have had to adopt it,
+although the literal connotations of the German word have
+surrounded its central meaning (as I have just defined it) with
+several mischievous misinterpretations. Against two of these I think
+it worth while to warn the Reader, especially as, while so doing, I
+can, in showing what it is not, make it even clearer what Empathy
+really is. The first of these two main misinterpretations is based
+upon the reflexive form of the German verb "_sich einfuehlen_" (to
+feel _oneself_ into) and it defines, or rather does not define,
+Empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the
+ego into the object or shape under observation; a notion
+incompatible with the fact that Empathy, being only another of those
+various mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the
+qualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already dealt,
+depends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought
+of an ego; if we became aware that it is _we_ who are thinking the
+rising, we who are _feeling_ the rising, we should not think or feel
+that the mountain did the rising. The other (and as we shall later see)
+more justifiable misinterpretation of the word Empathy is based on
+its analogy with _sympathy,_ and turns it into a kind of sympathetic,
+or as it has been called, _inner, i.e._ merely _felt, mimicry_ of, for
+instance, the mountain's _rising._ Such mimicry, not only _inner_
+and _felt,_ but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result
+from very lively _empathic_ imagination. But as it is the mimicking,
+inner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the _rising_ of
+the mountain, take place only in our imagination, it presupposes
+such previous animation of the inanimate, and cannot therefore be
+taken either as constituting or explaining Empathy itself.
+
+Such as I have defined and exemplified it in our Rising Mountain,
+Empathy is, together with mere Sensation, probably the chief factor
+of preference, that is of an alternative of satisfaction and
+dissatisfaction, in aesthetic contemplation, the muscular adjustments
+and the measuring, comparing and coordinating activities by which
+Empathy is started, being indeed occasionally difficult and
+distressing, but giving in themselves little more than a negative
+satisfaction, at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense
+relieved. But although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation
+of shapes, Empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental
+life. It is, indeed, one of our simpler, though far from absolutely
+elementary, psychological processes, entering into what is called
+imagination, sympathy, and also into that inference from our own
+inner experience which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer
+world, and given to the intermittent and heterogeneous sensations
+received from without the framework of our constant and highly
+unified inner experience, that is to say, of our own activities and
+aims. Empathy can be traced in all of modes of speech and thought,
+particularly in the universal attribution of _doing_ and _having_ and
+_tending_ where all we can really assert is successive and varied
+_being._ Science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic
+implications of _Force_ and _Energy, Attraction_ and _Repulsion_;
+and philosophy has reduced _Cause_ and _Effect_ from implying
+intention and effort to meaning mere constant succession. But
+Empathy still helps us to many valuable analogies; and it is possible
+that without its constantly checked but constantly renewed action,
+human thought would be without logical cogency, as it certainly
+would be without poetical charm. Indeed if Empathy is so recent a
+discovery, this may be due to its being part and parcel of our
+thinking; so that we are surprised to learn its existence, as Moliere's
+good man was to hear that be talked prose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MOVEMENT OF LINES
+
+ANY tendency to Empathy is perpetually being checked by the need
+for practical thinking. We are made to think in the most summary
+fashion from one to another of those grouped possibilities, past,
+present and future, which we call a Thing; and in such discursive
+thinking we not only leave far behind the _aspect,_ the shape, which
+has started a given scheme of Empathy, a given _movement of
+lines,_ but we are often faced by facts which utterly contradict it.
+When, instead of looking at a particular _aspect_ of that mountain,
+we set to climbing it ourselves, the mountain ceases to "rise"; it
+becomes passive to the activity which our muscular sensations and
+our difficulty of breathing locate most unmistakably in ourselves.
+Besides which, in thus dealing with the mountain as a _thing,_ we
+are presented with a series of totally different aspects or shapes,
+some of which suggest empathic activities totally different from that
+of rising. And the mountain in question, seen from one double its
+height, will suggest the empathic activity of _spreading itself out._
+Moreover practical life hustles us into a succession of more and
+more summary perceptions; we do not actually see more than is
+necessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with
+and the adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is,
+as to what it is likely to become. And this which is true of seeing
+with the bodily eye, is even more so of seeing, or rather _not_ seeing
+but _recognising,_ with the eye of the spirit. The practical man on
+the hill, and his scientific companion, (who is merely, so to speak, a
+man _unpractically_ concerned with practical causes and changes)
+do not thoroughly see the shapes of the landscape before them; and
+still less do they see the precise shape of the funiculars, tramways,
+offices, cheques, volcanoes, ice-caps and prehistoric inhabitants of
+their thoughts. There is not much chance of Empathy and Empathy's
+pleasures and pains in their lightning-speed, touch-and-go visions!
+
+But now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically
+contemplative fellow-traveller. And, for simplicity's sake, let us
+imagine him contemplating more especially one shape in that
+landscape, the shape of that distant mountain, the one whose
+"rising"--came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it. The
+mountain is so far off that its detail is entirely lost; all we can see is
+a narrow and pointed cone, perhaps a little _toppling_ to one side, of
+uniform hyacinth blue _detaching_ itself from the clear evening sky,
+into which, from the paler misty blue of the plain, it _rises,_ a mere
+bodiless shape. It _rises._ There is at present no doubt about its
+_rising._ It rises and keeps on rising, never stopping unless _we_
+stop looking at it. It rises and never _has_ risen. Its drama of two
+lines _striving_ (one with more suddenness of energy and purpose
+than the other) to _arrive_ at a particular imaginary point in the sky,
+_arresting_ each other's _progress_ as they _meet_ in their
+_endeavour,_ this simplest empathic action of an irregular and by no
+means rectilinear triangle, goes on repeating itself, like the parabola
+of a steadily spirting fountain: for ever accomplishing itself anew
+and for ever accompanied by the same effect on the feelings of the
+beholder.
+
+It is this reiterative nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness,
+gives Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have
+tried to make clear to the Reader, is due not only to the movements
+which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to
+present movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and
+facility and their accompanying intentions; it is due at least as much
+to our accumulated and averaged past experience of movements of
+the same kind, also with _their_ cognate various modes of speed,
+intensity, facility, and _their_ accompanying intentions. And being
+thus residual averaged, and essential, this empathic movement, this
+movement attributed to the lines of a shape, is not clogged and
+inhibited by whatever clogs and inhibits each separate concrete
+experience of the kind; still less is it overshadowed in our awareness
+by the _result_ which we foresee as goal of our real active
+proceedings. For unless they involve bodily or mental strain, our
+real and therefore transient movements do not affect us as pleasant
+or unpleasant, because our attention is always outrunning them to
+some momentary goal; and the faint awareness of them is usually
+mixed up with other items, sensations and perceptions, of wholly
+different characters. Thus, in themselves and apart from their aims,
+our bodily movements are never interesting except inasmuch as
+requiring new and difficult adjustments, or again as producing
+perceptible repercussions in our circulatory, breathing and balancing
+apparatus: a waltz, or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly
+exciting, thanks to its resultant organic perturbations and its
+concomitants of overcome difficulty and danger, but even a dancing
+dervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the
+specific interest of movement as movement. Yet every movement
+which we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of
+vital economy, a change in our balance of bodily and mental
+expenditure and replenishment; and this, if brought to our awareness,
+is not only interesting, but interesting in the sense either of pleasure
+or displeasure, since it implies the more or less furtherance or
+hindrance of our life-processes. Now it is this complete awareness,
+this brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes, in our various
+and variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as _energy_
+and _intention,_ it is this sense of the _values of movement_ which
+Empathy, by its schematic simplicity and its reiteration, is able to
+reinstate. The contemplation, that is to say the _isolating and
+reiterating perception,_ of shapes and in so far of the qualities and
+relations of movement which Empathy invests them with, therefore
+shields our dynamic sense from all competing interests, clears it
+from all varying and irrelevant concomitants, gives it, as Faust
+would have done to the instant of happiness, a sufficient duration;
+and reinstating it in the centre of our consciousness, allows it to add
+the utmost it can to our satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
+
+Hence the mysterious importance, the attraction or repulsion,
+possessed by shapes, audible as well as visible, according to their
+empathic character; movement and energy, all that we feel as being
+life, is furnished by them in its essence and allowed to fill our
+consciousness. This fact explains also another phenomenon, which
+in its turn greatly adds to the power of that very Empathy of which it
+is a result. I am speaking once more of that phenomenon called
+_Inner Mimicry_ which certain observers, themselves highly subject
+to it, have indeed considered as Empathy's explanation, rather than
+its result. In the light of all I have said about the latter, it becomes
+intelligible that when empathic imagination (itself varying from
+individual to individual) happens to be united to a high degree of
+(also individually very varying) muscular responsiveness, there may
+be set up reactions, actual or incipient, _e.g._ alterations of bodily
+attitude or muscular tension which (unless indeed they withdraw
+attention from the contemplated object to our own body) will
+necessarily add to the sum of activity empathically attributed to the
+contemplated object. There are moreover individuals in whom such
+"mimetic" accompaniment consists (as is so frequently the case in
+listening to music) in changes of the bodily balance, the breathing
+and heart-beats, in which cases additional doses of satisfaction or
+dissatisfaction result from the participation of bodily functions
+themselves so provocative of comfort or discomfort. Now it is
+obvious that such mimetic accompaniments, and every other
+associative repercussion into the seat of what our fathers correctly
+called "animal spirits," would be impossible unless reiteration, the
+reiteration of repeated acts of attention, had allowed the various
+empathic significance, the various _dynamic values,_ of given
+shapes to sink so deeply into us, to become so habitual, that even a
+rapid glance (as when we perceive the upspringing lines of a
+mountain from the window of an express train) may suffice to evoke
+their familiar dynamic associations. Thus contemplation explains, so
+to speak, why contemplation may be so brief as to seem no
+contemplation at all: past repetition has made present repetition
+unnecessary, and the empathic, the dynamic scheme of any
+particular shape may go on working long after the eye is fixed on
+something else, or be started by what is scarcely a perception at all;
+we feel joy at the mere foot-fall of some beloved person, but we do
+so because he is already beloved. Thus does the reiterative character
+essential to Empathy explain how our contemplative satisfaction in
+shapes, our pleasure in the variously combined _movements of
+lines,_ irradiates even the most practical, the apparently least
+contemplative, moments and occupations of our existence.
+
+But this is not all. This reiterative character of Empathy, this fact
+that the mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or
+adding a single cubit to its stature, joined to the abstract (the
+_infinitive of the verb)_ nature of the suggested activity, together
+account for art's high impersonality and its existing, in a manner,
+_sub specie aeternitatis._ The drama of lines and curves presented
+by the humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the
+strange immortality of the youths and maidens on the _Grecian
+Urn,_ to whom Keats, as you remember, says:--
+
+"Fond lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
+Though winning near the goal. Yet, do not grieve;
+She cannot fade; though thou hast not thy bliss,
+For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair."
+
+And thus, in considering the process of Aesthetic Empathy, we find
+ourselves suddenly back at our original formula: Beautiful means
+satisfactory in contemplation, and contemplation not of Things but
+of Shapes which are only Aspects of them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CHARACTER OF SHAPES
+
+IN my example of the Rising Mountain, I have been speaking as if
+Empathy invested the shapes we look at with only one mode of
+activity at a time. This, which I have assumed for the simplicity of
+exposition, is undoubtedly true in the case either of extremely
+simple shapes requiring _few_ and homogeneous perceptive
+activities. It is true also in the case of shapes of which familiarity (as
+explained on p. 76) has made the actual perception very summary;
+for instance when, walking quickly among trees, we notice only
+what I may call their dominant empathic gesture of _thrusting_ or
+_drooping_ their branches, because habit allows us to pick out the
+most characteristic outlines. But, except in these and similar cases,
+the _movement_ with which Empathy invests shapes is a great
+deal more complex, indeed we should speak more correctly of
+movements than of movement of lines. Thus the mountain rises, and
+does nothing but rise so long as we are taking stock only of the
+relation of its top with the plain, referring its lines solely to real or
+imaginary horizontals. But if, instead of our glance making a single
+swish upwards, we look at the two sides of the mountain
+successively and compare each with the other as well as with the
+plain, our impression (and our verbal description) will be that _one
+slope goes up while the other goes down._ When the empathic
+scheme of the mountain thus ceases to be mere _rising_ and
+becomes _rising plus descending,_ the two _movements_ with
+which we have thus invested that shape will be felt as being
+interdependent; one side _goes down_ because the other has _gone
+up,_ or the movement rises _in order to_ descend. And if we look at
+a mountain chain we get a still more complex and co-ordinated
+empathic scheme, the peaks and valleys (as in my description of
+what the Man saw from his Hillside) appearing to us as a sequence
+of risings and sinkings with correlated intensities; a slope _springing
+up_ in proportion as the previously seen one _rushed down_; the
+movements of the eye, slight and sketchy in themselves, awakening
+the composite dynamic memory of all our experience of the impetus
+gained by switch-back descent. Moreover this sequence, being a
+sequence, will awaken expectation of repetition, hence sense of
+rythm; the long chain of peaks will seem to perform a dance, they
+will furl and unfurl like waves. Thus as soon as we get a
+combination of empathic _forces_ (for that is how they affect us)
+these will henceforth be in definite relation to one another. But the
+relation need not be that of mere give and take and rythmical
+cooperation. Lines meeting one another may conflict, check, deflect
+one another; or again resist each other's effort as the steady
+determination of a circumference resists, opposes a "Quos ego!" to
+the rushing impact of the spokes of a wheel-pattern. And, along with
+the empathic suggestion of the mechanical forces experienced in
+ourselves, will come the empathic suggestion of spiritual
+characteristics: the lines will have aims, intentions, desires, moods;
+their various little dramas of endeavour, victory, defeat or
+peacemaking, will, according to their dominant empathic suggestion,
+be lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or brutal;
+inexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar
+or dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief
+dynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music. But
+on the other hand there will remain innumerable emphatic
+combinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal
+classification because, as must be clearly understood, Empathy deals
+not directly with mood and emotion, but with dynamic conditions
+which enter into moods and emotions and take their names from
+them. Be this as it may, and definable or not in terms of human
+feeling, these various and variously combined (into coordinate
+scenes and acts) dramas enacted by lines and curves and angles, take
+place not in the marble or pigment embodying those contemplated
+shapes, but solely in ourselves, in what we call our memory,
+imagination and feeling. Ours are the energy, the effort, the victory
+or the peace and cooperation; and all the manifold modes of
+swiftness or gravity, arduousness or ease, with which their every
+minutest dynamic detail is fraught. And since we are their only real
+actors, these empathic dramas of lines are bound to affect us, either
+as corroborating or as thwarting our vital needs and habits; either as
+making our felt life easier or more difficult, that is to say as bringing
+us peace and joy, or depression and exasperation.
+
+Quite apart therefore from the convenience or not of the adjustments
+requisite for their ocular measurement, and apart even from the
+facility or difficulty of comparing and coordinating these
+measurements, certain shapes and elements of shape are made
+welcome to us, and other ones made unwelcome, by the sole
+working of Empathy, which identifies the modes of being and
+moving of lines with our own. For this reason meetings of lines
+which affect us as neither victory nor honourable submission nor
+willing cooperation are felt to be ineffectual and foolish. Lines also
+(like those of insufficiently tapered Doric columns) which do not
+_rise with enough impetus_ because they do not seem _to start with
+sufficient pressure at the base;_ oblique lines (as in certain imitation
+Gothic) which _lose their balance_ for lack of a countervailing
+_thrust_ against them, all these, and alas many hundreds of other
+possible combinations, are detestable to our feelings. And similarly
+we are fussed and bored by the tentative lines, the uncoordinated
+directions and impacts, of inferior, even if technically expert and
+realistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm
+at first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but
+reveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as
+movement, their utter empathic nullity. Indeed, if we analyse the
+censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of
+material instability, or on wrong perspective or anatomical "out of
+drawing" we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really
+that of empathic un-satisfactoriness, which escapes verbal detection
+but is revealed by the finger _following,_ as we say (and that is
+itself an instance of empathy) the movement, the development of,
+boring or fussing lines.
+
+Empathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with
+regard to shape, but also those particular degrees of liking which are
+matters of personal temperament and even of momentary mood
+(_cf_. p. 131). Thus Mantegna, with his preponderance of
+horizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and
+reassuring, but repel another beholder (or the same in a different
+mood) as dull and lifeless; while the unstable equilibrium and
+syncopated rythm of Botticelli may either fascinate or repel as
+morbidly excited. And Leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced
+circles will merely baffle (the "enigmatic" quality we hear so much
+of) the perfunctory beholder, while rewarding more adequate
+empathic imagination by allowing us to live, for a while, in the
+modes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious
+energy.
+
+Intensity and purposefulness and harmony. These are what everyday
+life affords but rarely to our longings. And this is what, thanks to
+this strange process of Empathy, a few inches of painted canvas, will
+sometimes allow us to realise completely and uninterruptedly. And
+it is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment, but mere
+psychological fact, to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles
+of a Byzantine floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation,
+this is because the modes of being which we are obliged to invest
+them with are such as we vainly seek, or experience only to lose, in
+our scattered or hustled existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FROM THE SHAPE TO THE THING
+
+SUCH are the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, impersonal and
+unpractical, we can receive, or in reality, give ourselves, in the
+contemplation of shape.
+
+But life has little leisure for contemplation; it demands
+_recognition,_ inference and readiness for active adaptation. Or
+rather life forces us to deal with shapes mainly inasmuch as they
+indicate the actual or possible existence of other groups of qualities
+which may help or hurt us. Life hurries us into recognising
+_Things._
+
+Now the first peculiarity distinguishing _things_ from _shapes_ is
+_that they can occupy more or less cubic space:_ we can hit up
+against them, displace them or be displaced by them, and in such
+process of displacing or resisting displacement, we become aware of
+two other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes: they have
+_weight_ in varying degrees and _texture_ of various sorts.
+Otherwise expressed, things have _body,_ they exist in three
+dimensional space; while _shapes_ although they are often aspects
+of things (say statues or vases) having body and cubic existence,
+shapes _as_ shapes are two dimensional and bodiless.
+
+So many of the critical applications of aesthetic, as well as of the
+historical problems of art-evolution are connected with this fact or
+rather the continued misunderstanding of it, that it is well to remind
+the Reader of what general Psychology can teach us of the
+perception of the Third Dimension. A very slight knowledge of
+cubic existence, in the sense of _relief,_ is undoubtedly furnished as
+the stereoscope furnishes it, by the inevitable slight divergence
+between the two eyes; an even more infinitesimal dose of such
+knowledge is claimed for the surfaces of each eye separately. But
+whatever notions of three-dimensional space might have been
+developed from such rudiments, the perception of cubic existence
+which we actually possess and employ, is undeniably based upon the
+incomparably more important data afforded by locomotion, under
+which term I include even the tiny pressure of a finger against a
+surface, and the exploration of a hollow tooth by the tip of the
+tongue. The muscular adjustments made in such locomotion become
+associated by repetition with the two-dimensional arrangements of
+colour and light revealed by the eye, the two-dimensional being thus
+turned into the three-dimensional in our everyday experience. But
+the mistakes we occasionally make, for instance taking a road seen
+from above for a church-tower projecting out of the plain, or the
+perspective of a mountain range for its cubic shape, occasionally
+reveal that we do not really _see_ three-dimensional objects, but
+merely _infer_ them by connecting visual data with the result of
+locomotor experience. The truth of this commonplace of psychology
+can be tested by the experiment of making now one, now the other,
+colour of a floor pattern seem convex or concave according as we
+think of it as a light flower on a dark ground, or as a white cavity
+banked in by a dark ridge. And when the philistine (who may be you
+or me!) exclaims against the "out of drawing" and false perspective
+of unfamiliar styles of painting, he is, nine times out of ten, merely
+expressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as
+"representing" three-dimensional things; so far proving that we do
+not decipher the cubic relations of a picture until we have guessed
+what that picture is supposed to stand for. And this is my reason for
+saying that visible shapes, though they may be aspects of cubic
+objects, have no body; and that the thought of their volume, their
+weight and their texture, is due to an interruption of our
+contemplation of shape by an excursion among the recollections of
+qualities which shapes, _as_ shapes, cannot possess.
+
+And here I would forestall the Reader's objection that the feeling of
+effort and resistance, essential to all our empathic dealings with
+two-dimensional shapes, must, after all, be due to _weight,_ which we
+have just described as a quality shapes cannot possess. My answer is
+that Empathy has extracted and schematised effort and resistance by
+the elimination of the thought of weight, as by the elimination of the
+awareness of our bodily tensions; and that it is just this elimination
+of all incompatible qualities which allows us to attribute activities to
+those two-dimensional shapes, and to feel these activities, with a
+vividness undiminished by the thought of any other circumstances.
+
+With cubic existence (and its correlative three-dimensional
+space), with weight and texture we have therefore got from the
+contemplated shape to a thought alien to that shape and its
+contemplation. The thought, to which life and its needs and dangers
+has given precedence over every other: What _Thing_ is behind this
+shape, what qualities must be inferred from this _aspect?_ After the
+possibility of occupying so much space, the most important quality
+which things can have for our hopes and fears, is _the possibility of
+altering their occupation of space;_ not our locomotion, but _theirs._
+I call it _locomotion_ rather than _movement,_ because we have
+_direct_ experience only of our own movements, and _infer_ similar
+movement in other beings and objects because of their change of
+place either across our motionless eye or across some other object
+whose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged. I call it
+_locomotion_ also to accentuate its difference from the _movement_
+attributed to the shape of the Rising Mountain, movement _felt_ by
+us to be going on but not expected to result in any change of the
+mountain's space relations, which are precisely what would be
+altered by the mountain's _locomotion._
+
+The _practical_ question about a shape is therefore: Does it warrant
+the inference of a _thing_ able to change its position in
+three-dimensional space? to advance or recede from us? And if so in
+what manner? Will it, like a loose stone, fall upon us? like flame, rise
+towards us? like water, spread over us? Or will it change its place
+only if _we_ supply the necessary _locomotion?_ Briefly: is the
+thing of which we see the shape inert or active? And if this shape
+belongs to a thing possessing activity of its own, is its locomotion of
+that slow regular kind we call the growth and spreading of plants?
+Or of the sudden, wilful kind we know in animals and men? What
+does this shape tell us of such more formidable locomotion? Are
+these details of curve and colour to be interpreted into jointed limbs,
+can the _thing_ fling out laterally, run after us, can it catch and
+swallow us? Or is it such that _we_ can do thus by it? Does this
+shape suggest the thing's possession of desires and purposes which
+we can deal with? And if so, _why is it where it is?_ Whence does it
+come? What is it going to do? What is it _thinking_ of (if it can
+think)? How will it _feel_ towards us (if it can feel)? What would it
+say (if it could speak)? What will be its future and what may have
+been its past? To sum all up: What does the presence of this shape
+lead us to think and do and feel?
+
+Such are a few of the thoughts started by that shape and the
+possibility of its belonging to a thing. And even when, as we shall
+sometimes find, they continually return back to the shape and play
+round and round it in centrifugal and centripetal alternations, yet all
+these thoughts are excursions, however brief, from the world of
+definite unchanging shapes into that of various and ever varying
+things; interruptions, even if (as we shall later see) intensifying
+interruptions, of that concentrated and coordinated contemplation of
+shapes, with which we have hitherto dealt. And these excursions,
+and a great many more, from the world of shapes into that of things,
+are what we shall deal with, when we come to Art, under the
+heading of _representation_ and _suggestion,_ or, as is usually said,
+of _subject_ and _expression_ as opposed to _form._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FROM THE THING TO THE SHAPE
+
+THE necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the
+Shape to the Thing, from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and
+practical thinking. But, as the foregoing chapter itself suggests, the
+real order of precedence, both for the individual and the race, is
+inevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest
+in things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in
+shapes.
+
+Indeed, considering the imperative need for an ever abbreviated and
+often automatic system of human reactions to sense data, it is by no
+means easy to understand (and the problem has therefore been
+utterly neglected) how mankind ever came to evolve any process as
+lengthy and complicated as that form-contemplation upon which all
+aesthetic preference depends. I will hazard the suggestion that
+familiarity with shapes took its original evolutional utility, as well as
+its origin, from the dangers of over rapid and uncritical inference
+concerning the qualities of things and man's proper reactions
+towards them. It was necessary, no doubt, that the roughest
+suggestion of a bear's growl and a bear's outline should send our
+earliest ancestors into their sheltering caves. But the occasional
+discovery that the bear was not a bear but some more harmless
+and edible animal must have brought about a comparison, a
+discrimination between the visible aspects of the two beasts, and a
+mental storage of their difference in shape, gait and colour.
+Similarly the deluding resemblance between poisonous and
+nutritious fruits and roots, would result, as the resemblance between
+the nurse's finger and nipple results with the infant, in attention to
+visible details, until the acquisition of vivid mental images became
+the chief item of the savage man's education, as it still is of the
+self-education of the modern child. This evolution of interest in visible
+aspects would of course increase tenfold as soon as mankind took to
+making things whose usefulness (_i.e._ their still non-existent
+qualities) might be jeopardised by a mistake concerning their shape.
+For long after _over_ and _under, straight_ and _oblique, right_ and
+_left,_ had become habitual perceptions in dealing with food and
+fuel, the effective aim of a stone, the satisfactory flight of an arrow,
+would be discovered to depend upon more or less of what we call
+horizontals and perpendiculars, curves and angles; and the stability
+of a fibrous tissue upon the intervals of crossing and recrossing, the
+rythmical or symmetrical arrangements revealed by the hand or eye.
+In short, _making,_ being inevitably _shaping,_ would have
+developed a more and more accurate perception and recollection of
+every detail of shape. And not only would there arise a comparison
+between one shape and another shape, but between the shape
+actually under one's eyes and the shape no longer present, between
+the shape as it really was and the shape as it ought to be. Thus in the
+very course of practical making of things there would come to be
+little interludes, recognised as useful, first of more and more
+careful looking and comparing, and then of real contemplation:
+contemplation of the arrow-head you were chipping, of the mat
+you were weaving, of the pot you were rubbing into shape;
+contemplation also of the _other_ arrow-head or mat or pot existing
+only in your wishes; of the shape you were trying to obtain with a
+premonitory emotion of the effect which its peculiarities would
+produce when once made visible to your eye! For the man cutting
+the arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with
+the appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual
+arrow-heads or mats of the same type, _would become aware of the
+different effect which such shapes had on the person who looked at
+them._ Some of these shapes would be so dull, increasing the
+tediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand;
+others so alert, entertaining and likeable, as if they were helping in
+the work; others, although equally compatible with utility, fussing or
+distressing one, never doing what one expected their lines and
+curves to do. To these suppositions I would add a few more
+suggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of
+man's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of "Things." The
+handicraftsman, armourer, weaver, or potter, benefits by his own
+and his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more
+adapted for use and wear, and which way to set about producing it;
+his technical skill becomes half automatic, so that his eye and mind,
+acting as mere overseers to his muscles, have plenty of time for
+contemplation so long as everything goes right and no new moves
+have to be made. And once the handicraftsman contemplates the
+shape as it issues from his fingers, his mind will be gripped by that
+liking or disliking expressed by the words "beautiful" and "ugly."
+Neither is this all. The owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of
+tissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its
+usefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill
+or strength required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn
+from a slave into a comrade. It is furbished or mended, displayed to
+others, boasted over, perhaps sung over as Alan Breck sang over his
+sword. The owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the
+owner!) caresses its shape; and its shape, all its well-known
+ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs, haunts the memory, ready to start into
+vividness whenever similar objects come under comparison. Now
+what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of
+civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and
+easily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use
+offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention
+which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this
+normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which
+explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects
+have acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling that of things.
+
+I therefore commend to the Reader the now somewhat unfashionable
+hypothesis of Semper and his school, according to which the first
+preference for beauty of shape must be sought for in those arts
+like stone and metal work, pottery and weaving, which give
+opportunities for repetition, reduplication, hence rythm and
+symmetry, and whose material and technique produce what are
+called geometric patterns, meaning such as exist in two dimensions
+and do not imitate the shapes of real objects. This theory has been
+discredited by the discovery that very primitive and savage mankind
+possessed a kind of art of totally different nature, and which analogy
+with that of children suggests as earlier than that of pattern: the art
+which the ingenious hypothesis of Mr Henry Balfour derives from
+recognition of accidental resemblances between the shapes and
+stains of wood or stone and such creatures and objects as happen to
+be uppermost in the mind of the observer, who cuts or paints
+whatever may be needed to complete the likeness and enable others
+to perceive the suggestion. Whether or not this was its origin, there
+seems to have existed in earliest times such an art of a strictly
+representative kind, serving (like the spontaneous art of children) to
+evoke the idea of whatever was interesting to the craftsman and his
+clients, and doubtless practically to have some desirable magic
+effect upon the realities of things. But (to return to the hypothesis of
+the aesthetic primacy of geometric and non-representative art) it is
+certain that although such early representations occasionally attain
+marvellous life-likeness and anatomical correctness, yet they do not
+at first show any corresponding care for symmetrical and rythmical
+arrangement. The bisons and wild boars, for instance, of the
+Altamira cave frescoes, do indeed display vigour and beauty in the
+lines constituting them, proving that successful dealing with shape,
+even if appealing only to practical interest, inevitably calls forth the
+empathic imagination of the more gifted artists; but these
+marvellously drawn figures are all huddled together or scattered as
+out of a rag-bag; and, what is still more significant, they lack that
+insistence on the feet which not only suggests ground beneath them
+but, in so doing, furnishes a horizontal by which to start, measure
+and take the bearings of all other lines. These astonishing
+palaeolithic artists (and indeed the very earliest Egyptian and Greek
+ones) seem to have thought only of the living models and their
+present and future movements, and to have cared as little for lines
+and angles as the modern children whose drawings have been
+instructively compared with theirs by Levinstein and others. I
+therefore venture to suggest that such aesthetically essential
+attention to direction and composition must have been applied to
+representative art when its realistic figures were gradually
+incorporated into the patterns of the weaver and the potter. Such
+"stylisation" is still described by art historians as a "degeneration"
+due to unintelligent repetition; but it was on the contrary the
+integrating process by which the representative element was
+subjected to such aesthetic preferences as had been established in
+the manufacture of objects whose usefulness or whose production
+involved accurate measurement and equilibrium as in the case of
+pottery or weapons, or rythmical reduplication as in that of textiles.
+
+Be this question as it may (and the increasing study of the origin and
+evolution of human faculties will some day settle it!) we already
+know enough to affirm that while in the very earliest art the
+shape-element and the element of representation are usually separate, the
+two get gradually combined as civilisation advances, and the shapes
+originally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions (hence as
+magical equivalents) or things, and employed for religious,
+recording, or self-expressive purposes, become subjected to
+selection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable
+perceptive and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to
+agreeable ones. Nay the whole subsequent history of painting and
+sculpture could be formulated as the perpetual starting up of new
+representative interests, new interests in _things,_ their spatial
+existence, locomotion, anatomy, their reaction to light, and also their
+psychological and dramatic possibilities; and the subordination of
+these ever-changing interests in things to the unchanging habit of
+arranging visible shapes so as to diminish opportunities for the
+contemplative dissatisfaction and increase opportunities for the
+contemplative satisfaction to which we attach the respective names
+of "ugly" and "beautiful."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE AIMS OF ART
+
+WE have thus at last got to Art, which the Reader may have
+expected to be dealt with at the outset of a primer on the Beautiful.
+
+Why this could not be the case, will be more and more apparent in
+my remaining chapters. And, in order to make those coming
+chapters easier to grasp, I may as well forestall and tabulate the
+views they embody upon the relation between the Beautiful and Art.
+These generalisations are as follows:
+
+Although it is historically probable that the habit of avoiding
+ugliness and seeking beauty of shape may have been originally
+established by utilitarian attention to the non-imitative
+("geometrical") shapes of weaving, pottery and implement-making,
+and transferred from these crafts to the shapes intended to represent
+or imitate natural objects, yet the distinction between _Beautiful_
+and _Ugly_ does not belong either solely or necessarily to what we
+call _Art._ Therefore the satisfaction of the shape-perceptive or
+aesthetic preferences must not be confused with any of the many and
+various other aims and activities to which art is due and by which it
+is carried on. Conversely: although in its more developed phases,
+and after the attainment of technical facility, art has been
+differentiated from other human employment by its foreseeing the
+possibility of shape-contemplation and therefore submitting itself to
+what I have elsewhere called the _aesthetic imperative,_ yet art has
+invariably started from some desire other than that of affording
+satisfactory shape-contemplation, with the one exception of cases
+where it has been used to keep or reproduce opportunities of such
+shape contemplation already accidentally afforded by natural shapes,
+say, those of flowers or animals or landscapes, or even occasionally
+of human beings, which had already been enjoyed as beautiful. All
+art therefore, except that of children, savages, ignoramuses and
+extreme innovators, invariably avoids ugly shapes and seeks for
+beautiful ones; _but art does this while pursuing all manner of
+different aims._ These non-aesthetic aims of art may be roughly
+divided into (A) the making of useful objects ranging from clothes
+to weapons and from a pitcher to a temple; (B) the registering or
+transmitting of facts and their visualising, as in portraits, historical
+pictures or literature, and book illustration; and (C) the awakening,
+intensifying or maintaining of definite emotional states, as especially
+by music and literature, but also by painting and architecture when
+employed as "aids to devotion." And these large classes may again
+be subdivided and connected, if the Reader has a mind to, into
+utilitarian, social, ritual, sentimental, scientific and other aims, some
+of them not countenanced or not avowed by contemporary morality.
+
+How the aesthetic imperative, i.e. the necessities of satisfactory
+shape-contemplation, qualifies and deflects the pursuit of such
+non-aesthetic aims of art can be shown by comparing, for instance, the
+mere audible devices for conveying conventional meaning and
+producing and keeping up emotional conditions, viz. the hootings
+and screechings of modern industrialism no less than the ritual
+noises of savages, with the arrangements of well constituted pitch,
+rythm, tonality and harmony in which military, religious or dance
+music has disguised its non-aesthetic functions of conveying signals
+or acting on the nerves. Whatever is unnecessary for either of these
+motives (or any others) for making a noise, can be put to the account
+of the desire to avoid ugliness and enjoy beauty. But the workings of
+the aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the Art of the
+visual-representative group, and especially in painting, which allows us to
+follow the interplay of the desire to be told (or tell) _facts about
+things_ with the desire to _contemplate shapes,_ and to contemplate
+them (otherwise we should _not_ contemplate!) with sensuous,
+intellectual and empathic satisfaction.
+
+This brings us back to the Third Dimension, of which the possession
+is, as have we seen, the chief difference between _Things,_ which
+can alter their aspect in the course of their own and our actions, and
+_Shapes,_ which can only be contemplated by our bodily and mental
+eye, and neither altered nor thought of as altered without more or
+less jeopardising their identity.
+
+I daresay the Reader may not have been satisfied with the reference
+to the locomotor nature of cubic perception as sufficient justification
+of my thus connecting cubic existence with Things rather than with
+Shapes, and my implying that aesthetic preference, due to the
+sensory, intellectual and empathic factors of perception, is
+applicable only to the two other dimensions. And the Reader's
+incredulity and surprise will have been all the greater, because
+recent art-criticism has sedulously inculcated that the suggestion of
+cubic existence is the chief function of pictorial genius, and the
+realisation of such cubic existence the highest delight which pictures
+can afford to their worthy beholder. This particular notion, entirely
+opposed to the facts of visual perception and visual empathy, will
+repay discussion, inasmuch as it accidentally affords an easy
+entrance into a subject which has hitherto presented inextricable
+confusion, namely the relations of _Form_ and _Subject,_ or, as I
+have accustomed the Reader to consider them, the _contemplated
+Shape_ and the _thought-of Thing._
+
+Let us therefore examine why art-criticism should lay so great a
+stress on the suggestion and the acceptance of that suggestion, of
+three-dimensional existence in paintings. _In paintings._ For this
+alleged aesthetic desideratum ceases to be a criterion of merit when
+we come to sculpture, about which critics are more and more
+persistently teaching (and with a degree of reason) that one of the
+greatest merits of the artist, and of the greatest desiderata of the
+beholder, is precisely the reduction of real cubic existence by
+avoiding all projection beyond a unified level, that is to say by
+making a solid block of stone look as if it were a representation on a
+flat surface. This contradiction explains the origin of the theory
+giving supreme pictorial importance to the Third Dimension. For art
+criticism though at length (thanks especially to the sculptor
+Hildebrand) busying itself also with plastic art, has grown up mainly
+in connexion with painting. Now in painting the greatest scientific
+problem, and technical difficulty, has been the suggestion of
+three-dimensional existences by pigments applied to a two-dimensional
+surface; and this problem has naturally been most successfully
+handled by the artists possessing most energy and imagination, and
+equally naturally shirked or bungled or treated parrot-wise by the
+artists of less energy and imagination. And, as energy and
+imagination also show themselves in finer perception, more vivid
+empathy and more complex dealings with shapes which are only
+two-dimensional, it has come about that the efficient and original
+solutions of the cubic problem have coincided, _ceteris paribus,_
+with the production of pictures whose two-dimensional qualities
+have called forth the adjective _beautiful,_ and _beautiful_ in the
+most intense and complicated manner. Hence successful treatment
+of cubic suggestion has become an habitual (and threatens to
+become a rule-of-thumb) criterion of pictorial merit; the more so
+that qualities of two-dimensional shape, being intrinsic and specific,
+are difficult to run to ground and describe; whereas the quality of
+three-dimensional suggestion is ascertainable by mere comparison
+between the shapes in the picture and the shapes afforded by real
+things when seen in the same perspective and lighting. Most people
+can judge whether an apple in a picture "looks as if" it were solid,
+round, heavy and likely to roll off a sideboard in the same picture;
+and some people may even, when the picture has no other claims on
+their interest, experience incipient muscular contractions such as
+would eventually interfere with a real apple rolling off a real
+sideboard. Apples and sideboards offer themselves to the meanest
+experience and can be dealt with adequately in everyday language,
+whereas the precise curves and angles, the precise relations of
+directions and impacts, of parts to whole, which together make up
+the identity of a two-dimensional shape, are indeed perceived and
+felt by the attentive beholder, but not habitually analysed or set forth
+in words. Moreover the creation of two-dimensional shapes
+satisfying to contemplation depends upon two very different factors:
+on traditional experience with regard to the more general
+arrangements of lines, and on individual energy and sensitiveness,
+i.e. on genius in carrying out, and ringing changes on, such
+traditional arrangements. And the possession of tradition or genius,
+although no doubt the most important advantage of an artist,
+happens not to be one to which he can apply himself as to a problem.
+On the other hand a problem to be solved is eternally being pressed
+upon every artist; pressed on him by his clients, by the fashion of his
+time and also by his own self inasmuch as he is a man interested not
+only in _shapes_ but in _things._ And thus we are back at the fact
+that the problem given to the painter to solve by means of lines and
+colours on a flat surface, is the problem of telling us something new
+or something important about _things:_ what things are made of,
+how they will react to our doings, how they move, what they feel
+and think; and above all, I repeat it, what amount of space they
+occupy with reference to the space similarly occupied, in present or
+future, by other things including ourselves.
+
+Our enquiry into the excessive importance attributed by critics to
+pictorial suggestion of cubic existence has thus led us back to the
+conclusion contained in previous chapters, namely that beauty
+depending negatively on ease of visual perception, and positively
+upon emphatic corroboration of our dynamic habits, is a quality of
+_aspects,_ independent of cubic existence and every other possible
+quality of _things_; except in so far as the thought of
+three-dimensional, and other, qualities of things may interfere with the
+freedom and readiness of mind requisite for such highly active and
+sensitive processes as those of empathic form interpretation. But the
+following chapter will, I trust, make it clear that such interference of
+the _Thought about Things_ with the _Contemplation of Shapes_ is
+essential to the rythm of our mental life, and therefore a chief factor
+in all artistic production and appreciation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ATTENTION TO SHAPES
+
+TO explain how art in general, and any art in particular, succeeds in
+reconciling these contradictory demands, I must remind the Reader
+of what I said (p. 93) about the satisfactory or unsatisfactory
+possibilities of shapes having begun to be noticed in the moments of
+slackened attention to the processes of manufacturing the objects
+embodying those shapes, and in the intervals between practical
+employment of these more or less _shapely_ objects. And I must ask
+him to connect with these remarks a previous passage (p. 44)
+concerning the intermittent nature of normal acts of attention, and
+their alternation as constituting _on-and-off beats._ The deduction
+from these two converging statements is that, contrary to the a-priori
+theories making aesthetic contemplation an exception, a kind of
+bank holiday, to daily life, it is in reality one-half of daily life's
+natural and healthy rythm. That the real state of affairs, as revealed
+by psychological experiment and observation, should have escaped
+the notice of so many aestheticians, is probably due to their theories
+starting from artistic production rather than from aesthetic
+appreciation, without which art would after all probably never have
+come into existence.
+
+The production of the simplest work of art cannot indeed be thought
+of as one of the alternations of everyday attention, because it is a
+long, complex and repeatedly resumed process, a whole piece of life,
+including in itself hundreds and thousands of alternations of _doing_
+and _looking,_ of discursive thinking of aims and ways and means
+and of contemplation of aesthetic results. For even the humblest
+artist has to think of whatever objects or processes his work aims at
+representing, conveying or facilitating; and to think also of the
+objects, marble, wood, paints, voices, and of the processes, drawing,
+cutting, harmonic combining, by which he attempts to compass one
+of the above-mentioned results. The artist is not only an aesthetically
+appreciative person; he is, in his own way, a man of science and a
+man of practical devices, an expert, a craftsman and an engineer. To
+produce a work of art is not an interlude in his life, but his life's
+main business; and he therefore stands apart, as every busy specialist
+must, from the business of other specialists, of those ministering to
+mankind's scientific and practical interests.
+
+But while it takes days, months, sometimes years to produce a work
+of art, it may require (the process has been submitted to exact
+measurement by the stop-watch) not minutes but seconds, to take
+stock of that work of art in such manner as to carry away its every
+detail of shape, and to continue dealing with it in memory. The
+unsuspected part played by memory explains why aesthetic
+contemplation can be and normally is, an intermittent function
+alternating with practical doing and thinking. It is in memory,
+though memory dealing with what we call the present, that we
+gather up parts into wholes and turn consecutive measurements into
+simultaneous relations; and it is probably in memory that we deal
+empathically with shapes, investing their already perceived
+directions and relations with the remembered qualities of our own
+activities, aims and moods. And similarly it is thanks to memory that
+the brief and intermittent acts of aesthetic appreciation are combined
+into a network of contemplation which intermeshes with our other
+thoughts and doings, and yet remains different from them, as the
+restorative functions of life remain different from life's expenditure,
+although interwoven with them. Every Reader with any habit of
+self-observation knows how poignant an impression of beauty may be
+got, as through the window of an express train, in the intermittence
+of practical business or abstract thinking, nay even in what I have
+called the _off-beat_ of deepest personal emotion, the very stress of
+the practical, intellectual or personal instant (for the great
+happenings of life are measured in seconds!) apparently driving in
+by contrast, or conveying on its excitement, that irrelevant aesthetic
+contents of the _off-beat_ of attention. And while the practical or
+intellectual interest changes, while the personal emotion subsides,
+that aesthetic impression remains; remains or recurs, united, through
+every intermittence, by the feeling of identity, that identity which,
+like _the rising of the mountain,_ is due to the reiterative nature of
+shape-contemplation: the fragments of melody may be interrupted in
+our memory by all manner of other thoughts, but they will recur and
+coalesce, and recurring and coalescing, bring with them the
+particular mood which their rythms and intervals have awakened in
+us and awaken once more.
+
+That diagrammatic Man on the Hill in reality _thought away_ from
+the landscape quite as much as his practical and scientific
+companions; what he did, and they did not, was to think _back_ to it;
+and think back to it always with the same references of lines and
+angles, the same relations of directions and impacts, of parts and
+wholes. And perhaps the restorative, the healing quality of aesthetic
+contemplation is due, in large part, to the fact that, in the perpetual
+flux of action and thought, it represents reiteration and therefore
+stability.
+
+Be that as it may, the intermittent but recurrent character of shape
+contemplation, the fact that it is inconceivably brief and amazingly
+repetitive, that it has the essential quality of identity because of
+reiteration, all this explains also two chief points of our subject. First:
+how an aesthetic impression, intentionally or accidentally conveyed
+in the course of wholly different interests, can become a constant
+accompaniment to the shifting preoccupations of existence, like the
+remembered songs which sing themselves silently in our mind and
+the remembered landscapes becoming an intangible background to
+our ever-varying thoughts. And, secondly, it explains how art can
+fulfil the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things
+while satisfying the imperious unchanging demands of the
+contemplated preference for beautiful aspects. And thus we return to
+my starting-point in dealing with art: that art is conditioned by the
+desire for beauty while pursuing entirely different aims, and
+executing any one of a variety of wholly independent non-aesthetic
+tasks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+INFORMATION ABOUT THINGS
+
+AMONG the facts which Painting is set to tell us about things, the
+most important, after cubic existence, is Locomotion. Indeed in the
+development of the race as well as in that of the individual, pictorial
+attention to locomotion seems to precede attention to cubic existence.
+For when the palaeolithic, or the Egyptian draughtsman, or even the
+Sixth Century Greek, unites profile legs and head with a full-face
+chest; and when the modern child supplements the insufficiently
+projecting full-face nose by a profile nose tacked on where we
+expect the ear, we are apt to think that these mistakes are due to
+indifference to the cubic nature of things. The reverse is, however,
+the case. The primitive draughtsman and the child are recording
+impressions received in the course of the locomotion either of the
+thing looked at or of the spectator. When they unite whatever
+consecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest
+to copy, they are in the clutches of their cubic experience, and what
+they are indifferent about, perhaps unconscious of, is the
+_two-dimensional_ appearance which a body presents when its parts are
+seen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view. The
+progress of painting is always from representing the Consecutive to
+representing the Simultaneous; perspective, foreshortening, and later,
+light and shade, being the scientific and technical means towards
+this end.
+
+Upon our knowledge of the precise stage of such pictorial
+development depends our correct recognition of what things, and
+particularly what spatial relations and locomotion, of things, the
+painter is intended to represent. Thus when a Byzantine
+draughtsman puts his figures in what look to us as superposed tiers,
+he is merely trying to convey their existence behind one another on
+a common level. And what we take for the elaborate contortions of
+athletes and Athenas on Sixth Century vases turns out to be nothing
+but an archaic representation of ordinary walking and running.
+
+The suggestion of locomotion depends furthermore on anatomy.
+What the figures of a painting are intended to be doing, what they
+are intended to have just done and to be going to do, in fact all
+questions about their action and business, are answered by reference
+to their bodily structure and its real or supposed possibilities. The
+same applies to expression of mood.
+
+The impassiveness of archaic Apollos is more likely to be due to
+anatomical difficulties in displacing arms and legs, than to lack of
+emotion on the part of artists who were, after all, contemporaries
+either of Sappho or Pindar. And it is more probable that the
+sculptors of Aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of
+lips and cheeks than that, having Homer by heart, they imagined his
+heroes to die silently and with a smirk.
+
+I have entered into this question of perspective and anatomy, and
+given the above examples, because they will bring home to the
+reader one of the chief principles deduced from our previous
+examination into the psychology of our subject, namely that _all
+thinking about things is thinking away from the Shapes suggesting
+those things, since it involves knowledge which the Shapes in
+themselves do not afford._ And I have insisted particularly upon the
+dependence of representations of locomotion upon knowledge of
+three-dimensional existence, because, before proceeding to the
+relations of Subject and Form in painting, I want to impress once
+more upon the reader the distinction between the _locomotion of
+things_ (locomotion active or passive) and what, in my example of
+the _mountain which rises,_ I have called the _empathic movement
+of lines._ Such _movement of lines_ we have seen to be a scheme of
+activity suggested by our own activity in taking stock of a
+two-dimensional-shape; an _idea,_ or _feeling_ of activity which we,
+being normally unaware of its origin in ourselves, project into the
+shape which has suggested it, precisely as we project our sensation
+of _red_ from our own eye and mind into the object which has
+deflected the rays of light in such a way as to give us that _red_
+sensation. Such _empathic,_ attributed, movements of lines are
+therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception
+has called them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being
+qualities of the shapes, they inevitably change with every alteration
+which a shape undergoes, every shape, actively perceived, having its
+own special _movement of lines;_ and every _movement of lines,_
+or _combination of movements of lines_ existing in proportion as
+we go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a
+quality. The case is absolutely reversed when we perceive or think
+of, the _locomotion of things._ The thought of a thing's locomotion,
+whether locomotion done by itself or inflicted by something else,
+necessitates our thinking away from the particular shape before us to
+another shape more or less different. In other words locomotion
+necessarily alters what we are looking at or thinking of. If we think
+of Michel Angelo's seated Moses as getting up, we think _away_
+from the approximately pyramidal shape of the statue to the
+elongated oblong of a standing figure. If we think of the horse of
+Marcus Aurelius as taking the next step, we think of a straightened
+leg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended in the air.
+And if we think of the Myronian Discobolus as letting go his quoit
+and "recovering," we think of the matchless spiral composition as
+unwinding and straightening itself into a shape as different as that of
+a tree is different from that of a shell.
+
+The pictorial representation of locomotion affords therefore the
+extreme example of the difference between discursive thinking
+about things and contemplation of shape. Bearing this example in
+mind we cannot fail to understand that, just as the thought of
+_locomotion_ is opposed to the thought of _movement of lines,_ so,
+in more or less degree, the thought of the objects and actions
+represented by a picture or statue, is likely to divert the mind from
+the pictorial and plastic shapes which do the representing. And we
+can also understand that the problem unconsciously dealt with by all
+art (though by no means consciously by every artist) is to execute
+the order of suggesting interesting facts about things in a manner
+such as to satisfy at the same time the aesthetic demand for shapes
+which shall be satisfactory to contemplate. Unless this demand for
+sensorially, intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be
+complied with a work of art may be interesting as a diagram, a
+record or an illustration, but once the facts have been conveyed and
+assimilated with the rest of our knowledge, there will remain a shape
+which we shall never want to lay eyes upon. I cannot repeat too
+often that the differentiating characteristic of art is that it gives its
+works a value for contemplation independent of their value for
+fact-transmission, their value as nerve-and-emotion-excitant and of their
+value for immediate, for practical, utility. This aesthetic value,
+depending upon the unchanging processes of perception and
+empathy, asserts itself in answer to every act of contemplative
+attention, and is as enduring and intrinsic as the other values are apt
+to be momentary and relative. A Greek vase with its bottom
+knocked out and with a scarce intelligible incident of obsolete
+mythology portrayed upon it, has claims upon our feelings which the
+most useful modern mechanism ceases to have even in the intervals
+of its use, and which the newspaper, crammed full of the most
+important tidings, loses as soon as we have taken in its contents.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE CO-OPERATION OF THINGS AND SHAPES
+
+DURING the Middle Ages and up to recent times the chief task of
+painting has been, ostensibly, the telling and re-telling of the same
+Scripture stories; and, incidentally, the telling them with the addition
+of constantly new items of information about _things:_ their volume,
+position, structure, locomotion, light and shade and interactions of
+texture and atmosphere; to which items must be added others of
+psychological or (pseudo)-historical kind, how it all came about, in
+what surroundings and dresses, and accompanied by what feelings.
+This task, official and unofficial, is in no way different from those
+fulfilled by the man of science and the practical man, both of whom
+are perpetually dealing with additional items of information. But
+mark the difference in the artist's way of accomplishing this task: a
+scientific fact is embodied in the progressive mass of knowledge,
+assimilated, corrected; a practical fact is taken in consideration, built
+upon; but the treatise, the newspaper or letter, once it has conveyed
+these facts, is forgotten or discarded. The work of art on the contrary
+is remembered and cherished; or at all events it is made with the
+intention of being remembered and cherished. In other words and as
+I shall never tire of repeating, the differentiating characteristic of art
+is that it makes _you think back to the shape_ once that shape has
+conveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention
+or exciting your emotions. And the first and foremost problem, for
+instance of painting, is that of preventing the beholder's eye from
+being carried, by lines of perspective, outside the frame and even
+persistently out of the centre of the picture; the sculptor (and this is
+the real reason of the sculptor Hildebrand's rules for plastic
+composition) obeying a similar necessity of keeping the beholder's
+eye upon the main masses of his statue, instead of diverting it, by
+projections at different distances, like the sticking out arms and
+hands of Roman figures. So much for the eye of the body: the
+beholder's curiosity must similarly not be carried outside the work of
+art by, for instance, an incomplete figure (legs without a body!) or
+an unfinished gesture, this being, it seems to roe, the only real
+reason against the representation of extremely rapid action and
+transitory positions. But when the task of conveying information
+implies that the beholder's thoughts be deliberately led from what is
+represented to what is not, then this centrifugal action is dealt with
+so as to produce a centripetal one back to the work of art: the painter
+suggests questions of _how_ and _why_ which get their answers in
+some item obliging you to take fresh stock of the picture. What Is
+the meaning of the angels and evidently supernatural horseman in
+the foreground of Raphael's _Heliodorus?_ Your mind flies to the
+praying High Priest in the central recess of the temple, and in going
+backwards and forwards between him, the main group and the
+scattered astonished bystanders, you are effectually enclosed within
+the arches of that marvellous composition, and induced to explore
+every detail of its lovely and noble constituent shapes.
+
+The methods employed thus to keep the beholder's attention inside
+the work of art while suggesting things beyond it, naturally vary
+with the exact nature of the non-aesthetic task which has been set to
+the artist; and with the artist's individual endowment and even more
+with the traditional artistic formulae of his country and time:
+Raphael's devices in _Heliodorus_ could not have been compassed
+by Giotto; and, on the other hand, would have been rejected as
+"academic" by Manet. But whatever the methods employed, and
+however obviously they reveal that satisfactory form-contemplation
+is the one and invariable _condition_ as distinguished from the
+innumerable varying _aims,_ of all works of art, the Reader will find
+them discussed not as methods for securing attention to the shape,
+but as methods of employing that shape for some non-aesthetic
+purpose; whether that purpose be inducing you to drink out of a cup
+by making its shape convenient or suggestive; or inducing you to
+buy a particular commodity by branding its name and virtues on
+your mind; or fixing your thoughts on the Madonna's sorrows; or
+awaking your sympathy for Isolde's love tragedy. And yet it is
+evident that the artist who shaped the cup or designed the poster
+would be horribly disappointed if you thought only of drinking or of
+shopping and never gave another look to the cup or the poster; and
+that Perugino or Wagner would have died of despair if his
+suggestion of the Madonna's sorrows or of Isolde's love-agonies had
+been so efficacious as to prevent anybody from looking twice at the
+fresco or listening to the end of the opera. This inversion of the
+question is worth inquiring into, because, like the analogous paradox
+about the pictorial "realisation" of cubic existence, it affords an
+illustration of some of the psychological intricacies of the relation
+between Art and the Beautiful. This is how I propose to explain it.
+
+The task to which an artist is set varies from one work to another,
+while the shapes employed for the purpose are, as already said,
+limited by his powers and especially by the precise moment in
+artistic evolution. The artist therefore thinks of his available shapes
+as something given, as _means,_ and the subject he is ordered to
+represent (or the emotion he is commissioned to elicit) as the
+all-important _aim._ Thus he thinks of himself (and makes the critic
+think of him) not as preventing the represented subject or expressed
+emotion from withdrawing the beholder from the artistic shapes, but,
+on the contrary, as employing these artistic shapes for the sole
+purpose of that representation or emotional expression. And this
+most explicable inversion of the real state of affairs ends by making
+the beholder believe that what _he_ cares for in a masterpiece is not
+the beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have, but the
+efficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which
+could be just as efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest
+daub or the wretchedest barrel organ! This inevitable, and I believe,
+salutary illusion of the artist, is further in creased by the fact that
+while the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and
+diminishing opportunities for ugliness, the actual beauty of the
+shapes he is creating arises from the depths of his unreasoned,
+traditional and organised consciousness, from activities which might
+be called automatic if they were not accompanied by a critical
+feeling that what is produced thus spontaneously and inevitably is
+either turning out as it must and should, or, contrariwise, insists
+upon turning out exactly as it _should not._ The particular system of
+curves and angles, of directions and impacts of lines, the particular
+"whole-and-part" scheme of, let us say, Michelangelo, is due to his
+modes of aesthetic perceiving, feeling, living, added to those of all
+the other artists whose peculiarities have been averaged in what we
+call the school whence Michelangelo issued. He can no more depart
+from these shapes than he can paint Rembrandt's Pilgrims of
+Emmaus without Rembrandt's science of light and shade and
+Rembrandt's oil-and-canvas technique. There is no alternative, hence
+no choice, hence no feeling of a problem to resolve, in this question
+of shapes to employ. But there are dozens of alternatives and of acts
+of choice, there is a whole series of problems when Michelangelo
+sets to employing these inevitable shapes to telling the Parting of the
+Light from the Darkness, or the Creation of Adam on the Vault of
+the Sixtine, and to surrounding the stories from Genesis with
+Prophets and Sibyls and Ancestors of Christ. Is the ceiling to remain
+a unity, or be broken up into irrelevant compositions? Here comes in,
+alongside of his almost automatic genius for shapes, the man's
+superhuman constructive ingenuity. See how he divides that ceiling
+in such a way that the frames of the separate compositions combine
+into a huge structure of painted rafters and brackets, nay the
+Prophets and Sibyls, the Ancestors and Ancestresses themselves,
+and the naked antique genii, turn into architectural members,
+holding that imaginary roof together, securing its seeming stability,
+increasing, by their gesture its upspring and its weightiness, and at
+the same time determining the tracks along which the eye is forced
+to travel. Backwards and forwards the eye is driven by that living
+architecture, round and round in its search now for completion of
+visible pattern, now for symbolic and narrative meaning. And ever
+back to the tale of the Creation, so that the remote historic incidents
+of the Ancestors, the tremendous and tremendously present lyric
+excitement and despair of the prophetic men and women, the pagan
+suggestion of the athletic genii, all unite like the simultaneous and
+consecutive harmonies of a titanic symphony, round the recurrent
+and dominant phrases of those central stories of how the universe
+and man were made, so that the beholder has the emotion of hearing
+not one part of the Old Testament, but the whole of it. But
+meanwhile, and similarly interchanging and multiplying their
+imaginative and emotional appeal, the thought of those most
+memorable of all written stories unites with the perception and
+empathy of those marvellous systems of living lines and curves and
+angles, throbbing with their immortal impacts and speeds and
+directions in a great coordinated movement that always begins and
+never ends, until it seems to the beholder as if those painted shapes
+were themselves the crowning work of some eighth day of Creation,
+gathering up in reposeful visible synthesis the whole of Creation's
+ineffable energy and harmony and splendour.
+
+This example of Michelangelo's ceiling shows how, thanks to the
+rythmical nature of perception, art fulfils the mission of making us
+think from Shapes to Things and from Things back to Shapes. And it
+allows us to see the workings of that psychological law, already
+manifest in the elementary relations of line to line and dot to dot, by
+which whatever can be thought and felt in continuous alternation
+tends to be turned into a whole by such reiteration of common
+activities. And this means that Art adds to its processes of selection
+and exclusion a process of _inclusion,_ safeguarding aesthetic
+contemplation by drawing whatever is not wholly refractory into
+that contemplation's orbit. This turning of non-aesthetic interests
+from possible competitors and invaders into co-operating allies is an
+incomparable multiplying factor of aesthetic satisfaction, enlarging
+the sphere of aesthetic emotion and increasing that emotion's volume
+and stability by inclusion of just those elements which would have
+competed to diminish them. The typical instance of such a possible
+competitor turned into an ally, is that of the cubic element, which I
+have described (p. 85) as the first and most constant intruder from
+the thought of _Things_ into the contemplation of _Shapes._ For the
+introduction into a picture of a suggested third dimension is what
+prevents our _thinking away from_ a merely two-dimensional aspect
+by supplying subsidiary imaginary aspects susceptible of being
+co-ordinated to it. So perspective and modelling in light and shade
+satisfy our habit of locomotion by allowing us, as the phrase is, _to
+go into_ a picture; and _going into,_ we remain there and establish
+on its imaginary planes schemes of horizontals and verticals besides
+those already existing on the real two-dimensional surface. This
+addition of shapes due to perspective increases the already existing
+dramas of empathy, instead of interrupting them by our looking
+away from the picture, which we should infallibly do if our
+exploring and so to speak _cubic-locomotor_ tendencies were not
+thus employed inside the picture's limits.
+
+This alliance of aesthetic contemplation with our interest in cubic
+existence and our constant thought of locomotion, does more
+however than merely safeguard and multiply our chances of
+empathic activity. It also increases the sensory discrimination, and
+hence pleasureableness, of colour, inasmuch as colour becomes,
+considered as light and shade and _values,_ a suggestion of
+three-dimensional _Things_ instead of merely a constituent of
+two-dimensional _Shapes._ Moreover, one easily tires of "following"
+verticals and horizontals and their intermediate directions; while
+empathic imagination, with its dynamic feelings and frequent
+semi-mimetic accompaniments, requires sufficient intervals of repose;
+and such repose, such alternation of different mental functions,
+isprecisely afforded by thinking in terms of cubic existence.
+Art-critics have often pointed out what may be called the thinness, the
+lack of _staying power,_ of pictures deficient in the cubic element;
+they ought also to have drawn attention to the fatiguing, the almost
+hallucinatory excitement, resulting from uninterrupted attention to
+two-dimensional pattern and architectural outlines, which were,
+indeed, intended to be incidentally looked at in the course of taking
+stock of the cubic qualities of furniture and buildings.
+
+And since the limits of this volume have restricted me to painting as
+a type of aesthetic contemplation, I must ask the Reader to accept on
+my authority and if possible verify for himself, the fact that what I
+have been saying applies, _mutatis mutandis,_ to the other arts. As
+we have already noticed, something analogous to a third dimension
+exists also in music; and even, as I have elsewhere shown,[*] in
+literature. The harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our
+tendency to think of other notes and particularly of other allied
+tonalities; while as to literature, the whole handling of words, indeed
+the whole of logical thinking, is but a cubic working backwards and
+forwards between _what_ and _how,_ a co-ordinating of items and
+themes, keeping the mind enclosed in one scheme of ideas by
+forestalling answers to the questions which would otherwise divert
+the attention. And if the realisation of the third dimension has come
+to be mistaken for the chief factor of aesthetic satisfaction, this error
+is due not merely to the already noticed coincidence between cubic
+imagination and artistic genius, but even more to the fact that cubic
+imagination is the type of the various multiplying factors by which
+the empathic, that is to say the essentially aesthetic, activity, can
+increase its sphere of operations, its staying power and its intensity.
+
+[*] _The Handling of Words,_ English Review, 1911-12.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AESTHETIC RESPONSIVENESS
+
+OUR examination has thus proceeded from aesthetic contemplation
+to the work of Art, which seeks to secure and satisfy it while
+furthering some of life's various other claims. We must now go back
+to aesthetic contemplation and find out how the beholder meets
+these efforts made to secure and satisfy his contemplative attention.
+For the Reader will by this time have grasped that art can do nothing
+without the collaboration of the beholder or listener; and that this
+collaboration, so far from consisting in the passive "being impressed
+by beauty" which unscientific aestheticians imagined as analogous
+to "being impressed by sensuous qualities," by hot or cold or sweet
+or sour, is in reality a combination of higher activities, second in
+complexity and intensity only to that of the artist himself.
+
+We have seen in the immediately preceding chapter that the most
+deliberate, though not the essential, part of the artist's business is to
+provide against any possible disturbance of the beholder's
+responsive activity, and of course also to increase by every means
+that output of responsive activity. But the sources of it are in the
+beholder, and beyond the control of the most ingenious artistic
+devices and the most violent artistic appeals. There is indeed no
+better proof of the active nature of aesthetic appreciation than the
+fact that such appreciation is so often not forthcoming. Even mere
+sensations, those impressions of single qualities to which we are
+most unresistingly passive, are not pleasurable without a favourable
+reaction of the body's chemistry: the same taste or smell will be
+attractive or repulsive according as we have recently eaten. And
+however indomitably colour- and sound-sensations force themselves
+upon us, our submission to them will not be accompanied by even
+the most "passive" pleasure if we are bodily or mentally out of sorts.
+How much more frequent must be lack of receptiveness when,
+instead of dealing with _sensations_ whose intensity depends after
+all two thirds upon the strength of the outer stimulation, we deal
+with _perceptions_ which include the bodily and mental activities of
+exploring a shape and establishing among its constituent sensations
+relationships both to each other and to ourselves; activities without
+which there would be for the beholder no shape at all, but
+mere ragbag chaos!--And in calculating the likelihood of a
+perceptive empathic response we must remember that such active
+shape-perception, however instantaneous as compared with the cumbrous
+processes of locomotion, nevertheless requires a perfectly
+measurable time, and requires therefore that its constituent processes
+be held in memory for comparison and coordination, quite as much
+as the similar processes by which we take stock of the relations of
+sequence of sounds. All this mental activity, less explicit but not less
+intense or complex than that of logically "following" an argument, is
+therefore such that we are by no means always able or willing to
+furnish it. Not able, because the need for practical decisions hurries
+us into that rapid inference from a minimum of perception to a
+minimum of associated experience which we call "recognising
+things," and thus out of the presence of the perfunctorily dealt with
+shapes. Not willing, because our nervous condition may be unable
+for the strain of shape perception; and our emotional bias (what we
+call our _interest)_ may be favourable to some incompatible kind of
+activity. Until quite recently (and despite Fechner's famous
+introductory experiments) aesthetics have been little more than a
+branch of metaphysical speculation, and it is only nowadays that the
+bare fact of aesthetic responsiveness is beginning to be studied. So
+far as I have myself succeeded in doing so, I think I can assure the
+Reader that if he will note down, day by day, the amount of pleasure
+he has been able to take in works of art, he will soon recognise the
+existence of aesthetic responsiveness and its highly variable nature.
+Should the same Reader develop an interest in such (often
+humiliating) examination into his own aesthetic experience, he will
+discover varieties of it which will illustrate some of the chief
+principles contained in this little book. His diary will report days
+when aesthetic appreciation has begun with the instant of entering a
+collection of pictures or statues, indeed sometimes pre-existed as he
+went through the streets noticing the unwonted charm of familiar
+objects; other days when enjoyment has come only after an effort of
+attention; others when, to paraphrase Coleridge, _he saw, not felt,
+how beautiful things are;_ and finally, through other varieties of
+aesthetic experience, days upon which only shortcomings and
+absurdities have laid hold of his attention. In the course of such
+aesthetical self-examination and confession, the Reader might also
+become acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never
+sufficiently repeated distinction between _contemplating Shapes and
+thinking about Things_; or, in ordinary aesthetic terminology
+between _form_ and _subject._ For there are days when pictures or
+statues will indeed afford pleasurable interest, but interest in the
+things _represented,_ not in the _shapes;_ a picture appealing even
+forcibly to our dramatic or religious or romantic side; or
+contrariwise, to our scientific one. There are days when he may be
+deeply moved by a Guido Reni martyrdom, or absorbed in the
+"Marriage a la Mode"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as
+in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of
+sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of
+water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion,
+the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an
+inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure,
+there may be days when the diarist will be quite delighted with a
+hideous picture, because it affords some chronological clue, or new
+point of comparison. "This _dates_ such or such a style"--"_Plein
+Air_ already attempted by a Giottesque! Degas forestalled by a Cave
+Dweller!" etc. etc. And finally days when the Diarist is haunted by
+the thought of what the represented person will do next: "Would
+Michelangelo's Jeremiah knock his head if he got up?"--"How will
+the Discobolus recover when he has let go the quoit?"--or haunted
+by thoughts even more frivolous (though not any less aesthetically
+irrelevant!) like "How wonderfully like Mrs So and So!" "The living
+image of Major Blank!"--"How I detest auburn people with
+sealing-wax lips!" _ad lib._
+
+Such different _thinkings away from the shapes_ are often traceable
+to previous orientation of the thoughts or to special states of body
+and feelings. But explicable or not in the particular case, these
+varieties of one's own aesthetic responsiveness will persuade the
+Reader who has verified their existence, that contemplative
+satisfaction in shapes and its specific emotion cannot be given by the
+greatest artist or the finest tradition, unless the beholder meets their
+efforts more than half way.
+
+The spontaneous collaboration of the beholder is especially
+indispensable for Aesthetic Empathy. As we have seen, empathic
+modes of movement and energy and intention are attributed to
+shapes and to shape elements, in consequence of the modes of
+movement and energy involved in mere shape perception; but shape
+perception does not necessarily call forth empathic imagination. And
+the larger or smaller dynamic dramas of effort, resistance,
+reconciliation, cooperation which constitute the most poignant
+interest of a pictorial or plastic composition, are inhibited by bodily
+or mental states of a contrary character. We cease to _feel_
+(although we may continue, like Coleridge, to _see_) that the lines
+of a mountain or a statue _are rising,_ if we ourselves happen to feel
+as if our feet were of lead and our joints turning to water. The
+coordinated interplay of empathic movement which makes certain
+mediaeval floor patterns, and also Leonardo's compositions, into
+whirling harmonies as of a planetary system, cannot take place in
+our imagination on days of restlessness and lack of concentration.
+Nay it may happen that arrangements of lines which would flutter
+and flurry us on days of quiet appreciativeness, will become in every
+sense "sympathetic" on days when we ourselves feel fluttered and
+flurried. But lack of responsiveness may be due to other causes. As
+there are combinations of lines which take longer to perceive
+because their elements or their coordinating principles are
+unfamiliar, so, and even more so, are there empathic schemes (or
+dramas) which baffle dynamic imagination when accustomed to
+something else and when it therefore meets the new demand with an
+unsuitable empathic response. Empathy is, even more than mere
+perception, a question of our activities and therefore of our habits;
+and the aesthetic sensitiveness of a time and country (say the
+Florentine fourteenth century) with a habit of round arch and
+horizontals like that of Pisan architecture, could never take with
+enthusiasm to the pointed ogeeval ellipse, the oblique directions and
+unstable equilibrium, the drama of touch and go strain and resistance,
+of French Gothic; whence a constant readmission of the round
+arched shapes into the imported style, and a speedy return to the
+familiar empathic schemes in the architecture of the early
+Renaissance. On the other hand the persistence of Gothic detail in
+Northern architecture of the sixteenth and occasionally the
+seventeenth century, shows how insipid the round arch and straight
+entablature must have felt to people accustomed to the empathy of
+Gothic shapes. Nothing is so routinist as imagination and emotion;
+and empathy, which partakes of both, is therefore more dependent
+on familiarity than is the perception by which it is started: Spohr,
+and the other professional contemporaries of Beethoven, probably
+heard and technically understood all the peculiarities of his last
+quartets; but they liked them none the better.
+
+On the other hand continued repetition notoriously begets
+indifference. We cease to look at a shape which we "know by heart"
+and we cease to interpret in terms of our own activities and
+intentions when curiosity and expectation no longer let loose our
+dynamic imagination. Hence while utter unfamiliarity baffles
+aesthetic responsiveness, excessive familiarity prevents its starting
+at all. Indeed both perceptive clearness and empathic intensity reach
+their climax in the case of shapes which afford the excitement of
+tracking familiarity in novelty, the stimulation of acute comparison,
+the emotional ups and downs of expectation and partial recognition,
+or of recognition when unexpected, the latter having, as we know
+when we notice that a stranger has the trick of speech or gesture of
+an acquaintance, a very penetrating emotional warmth. Such
+discovery of the novel in the familiar, and of the familiar in the new,
+will he frequent in proportion to the definiteness and complexity of
+the shapes, and in proportion also to the sensitiveness and steadiness
+of the beholder's attention; while on the contrary "obvious" qualities
+of shape and superficial attention both tend to exhaust interest and
+demand change. This exhaustion of interest and consequent demand
+for change unites with the changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on
+art, together producing innovation. And the more superficial the
+aesthetic attention given by the beholders, the quicker will style
+succeed style, and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by
+exaggeration or left in the lurch before their maturity; a state of
+affairs especially noticeable in our own day.
+
+The above is a series of illustrations of the fact that aesthetic
+pleasure depends as much on the activities of the beholder as on
+those of the artist. Unfamiliarity or over-familiarity explain a large
+part of the aesthetic non-responsiveness summed up in the saying
+_that there is no disputing of tastes._ And even within the circle of
+habitual responsiveness to some particular style, or master, there are,
+as we have just seen, days and hours when an individual beholder's
+perception and empathic imagination do not act in such manner as to
+afford the usual pleasure. But these occasional, even frequent, lapses
+must not diminish our belief either in the power of art or in the
+deeply organised and inevitable nature of aesthetic preference as a
+whole. What the knowledge of such fluctuations ought to bring
+home is that beauty of shape is most spontaneously and completely
+appreciated when the attention, instead of being called upon, as in
+galleries and concerts, for the mere purpose of aesthetic enjoyment,
+is on the contrary, directed to the artistic or "natural" beauty of
+shapes, in consequence of some other already existing interest. No
+one except an art-critic sees a new picture or statue without first
+asking "What does it represent?"; shape-perception and aesthetic
+empathy arising incidentally in the examination which this question
+leads to. The truth is that even the art-critic is oftenest brought into
+enforced contemplation of the artistic shape by some other question
+which arises from his particular bias: By whom? of what precise
+date? Even such technical questions as "where and when restored or
+repainted?" will elicit the necessary output of attention. It is possible
+and legitimate to be interested in a work of art for a dozen reasons
+besides aesthetic appreciation; each of these interests has its own
+sentimental, scientific, dramatic or even moneymaking emotion; and
+there is no loss for art, but rather a gain, if we fall back upon one of
+them when the specific aesthetic response is slow or not
+forthcoming. Art has other aims besides aesthetic satisfaction; and
+aesthetic satisfaction will not come any the quicker for turning our
+backs upon these non-aesthetic aims. The very worst attitude
+towards art is that of the holiday-maker who comes into its presence
+with no ulterior interest or business, and nothing but the hope of an
+aesthetic emotion which is most often denied him. Indeed such
+seeking of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake would lead to even
+more of the blank despondency characteristic of so many gallery
+goers, were it not for another peculiarity of aesthetic responsiveness,
+which is responsible for very puzzling effects. This saving grace of
+the tourist, and (as we shall see) this pitfall of the art-expert, is what
+I propose to call the _Transferability of Aesthetic Emotion._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE STORAGE AND TRANSFER OF EMOTION
+
+IN dealing with familiarity as a multiplying factor of aesthetic
+appreciation, I have laid stress on its effect in facilitating the
+perception and the empathic interpretation of shapes. But repetition
+directly affects the emotion which may result from these processes;
+and when any emotion has become habitual, it tends to be stored in
+what we call memory, and to be called forth not merely by the
+processes in which it originated, but also independently of the whole
+of them, or in answer to some common or equivalent factor. We are
+so accustomed to this psychological fact that we do not usually seem
+to recognise its existence. It is the explanation of the power of words,
+which, apart from any images they awaken, are often irresistibly
+evocative of emotion. And among other emotions words can evoke
+the one due to the easy perception and to the life-corroborating
+empathic interpretation of shapes. The word _Beautiful,_ and its
+various quasi synonyms, are among the most emotionally suggestive
+in our vocabulary, carrying perhaps a vague but potent remembrance
+of our own bodily reaction to the emotion of admiration; nay even
+eliciting an incipient rehearsal of the half-parted lips and slightly
+thrown-back head, the drawn-in breath and wide-opened eyes, with
+which we are wont to meet opportunities of aesthetic satisfaction. Be
+this last as it may, it is certain that the emotion connected with the
+word _Beautiful_ can be evoked by that word alone, and without an
+accompanying act of visual or auditive perception. Indeed beautiful
+shapes would lose much of their importance in our life, if they did
+not leave behind them such emotional traces, capable of revival
+under emotionally appropriate, though outwardly very dissimilar,
+circumstances; and thereby enormously increasing some of our
+safest, perhaps because our most purely subjective, happiness.
+Instead therefore of despising the raptures which the presence of a
+Venus of Milo or a Sixtine Madonna can inspire in people
+manifestly incapable of appreciating a masterpiece, and sometimes
+barely glancing at it, we critical persons ought to recognise in this
+funny, but consoling, phenomenon an additional proof of the power
+of Beauty, whose specific emotion can thus be evoked by a mere
+name and so transferred from some past experience of aesthetic
+admiration to a. present occasion which would otherwise be mere
+void and disappointment.
+
+Putting aside these kind of cases, the transfer (usually accomplished
+by a word) of the aesthetic emotion, or at least of a willingness for
+aesthetic emotion, is probably one of the explanations of the spread
+of aesthetic interest from one art to another, as it is the explanation
+of some phases of aesthetic development in the individual. The
+present writer can vouch for the case of at least one real child in
+whom the possibility of aesthetic emotion, and subsequently of
+aesthetic appreciation, was extended from music and natural scenery
+to pictures and statues, by the application of the word _Beautiful_ to
+each of these different categories. And something analogous
+probably helped on the primaeval recognition that the empathic
+pleasures hitherto attached to geometrical shapes might be got from
+realistic shapes, say of bisons and reindeer, which had hitherto been
+admired for their lifelikeness and skill, but not yet subjected to any
+aesthetic discrimination (_cf_. p. 96). Similarly, in our own times,
+the delight in natural scenery is being furthered by the development
+of landscape painting, rather than furthering it. Nay I venture to
+suggest that it was the habit of the aesthetic emotion such as
+mediaeval men received from the proportions, directions, and
+coordination of lines in their cathedrals of stone or brick which set
+their musicians to build up, like Browning's _Abt Vogler,_ the soul's
+first balanced and coordinated dwellings made of sounds.
+
+Be this last as it may, it is desirable that the Reader should accept,
+and possibly verify for himself, the psychological fact of the
+_storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion._ Besides, the points
+already mentioned, it helps to explain several of the cruxes and
+paradoxes of aesthetics. First and foremost that dictum _De
+Gustibus non est disputandum_ which some philosophers and even
+aestheticians develop into an explicit denial of all intrinsic
+shape-preferences, and an assertion that _beautiful_ and _ugly_ are merely
+other names for _fashionable_ and _unfashionable, original_ and
+_unoriginal,_ or _suitable_ and _unsuitable._ As I have already
+pointed out, differences of taste are started by the perceptive and
+empathic habits, schematically various, of given times and places,
+and also by those, especially the empathic habits, connected with
+individual nervous condition: people accustomed to the round arch
+finding the Gothic one unstable and eccentric; and, on the other
+hand, a person taking keen pleasure in the sudden and lurching lines
+of Lotto finding those of Titian tame and humdrum. But such
+intrinsically existing preferences and incompatibility are quite
+enormously increased by an emotional bias for or against a
+particular kind of art; by which I mean a bias not due to that art's
+peculiarities, but preventing our coming in real contact with them.
+
+Aesthetic perception and especially aesthetic empathy, like other
+intellectual and emotional activities, are at the mercy of a hostile
+mental attitude, just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of
+the limbs. I do not hesitate to say that we are perpetually refusing to
+look at certain kinds of art because, for one reason or another, we
+are emotionally prepossessed against them. On the other hand, once
+the favourable emotional condition is supplied to us, often by means
+of words, our perceptive and empathic activities follow with twice
+the ease they would if the business had begun with them. It is quite
+probable that a good deal of the enhancement of aesthetic
+appreciation by fashion or sympathy should be put to the account,
+not merely of gregarious imitativeness, but of the knowledge that a
+favourable or unfavourable feeling is "in the air." The emotion
+precedes the appreciation, and both are genuine.
+
+A more personally humiliating aesthetic experience may be
+similarly explained. Unless we are very unobservant or very
+self-deluded, we are all familiar with the sudden checking (often almost
+physically painful) of our aesthetic emotion by the hostile criticism
+of a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert: "Dreadfully
+old-fashioned," "_Archi-connu,_""second-rate school work,"
+"completely painted over," "utterly hashed in the performance" (of a
+piece of music), "mere prettiness"--etc. etc. How often has not a
+sentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment;
+and transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality
+(even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry,
+euphony or pleasant colour!) into shrivelled cavillers at everything
+save brand-new formulae and tip-top genius! Indeed, while teaching
+a few privileged persons to taste the special "quality" which
+Botticelli has and Botticelli's pupils have not, and thus occasionally
+intensifying aesthetic enjoyment by distinguishing whatever
+differentiates the finer artistic products from the commoner, modern
+art-criticism has probably wasted much honest but shamefaced
+capacity for appreciating the qualities common, because
+indispensable, to, all good art. It is therefore not without a certain
+retributive malignity that I end these examples of the storage and
+transfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent bias to artistic
+appreciation, with that of the Nemesis dogging the steps of the
+connoisseur. We have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase,
+of a wonderful masterpiece on the authority of some famous
+expert; and of the masterpiece proving to be a mere school
+imitation, and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. The
+foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion,
+joined with what we have learned about shape-perception and
+empathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity
+to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly
+owned up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess
+enough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could
+never suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable emotional
+attitude and the absence of obvious _extrinsic_ (technical or
+historical) reasons for scepticism, these elements of resemblance
+must awaken the vague idea, especially the empathic scheme, of the
+particular master's work, and his name--shall we say Leonardo's?--will
+rise to the lips. But _Leonardo_ is a name to conjure with, and
+in this case to destroy the conjurer himself: the word _Leonardo_
+implies an emotion, distilled from a number of highly prized and
+purposely repeated experiences, kept to gather strength in respectful
+isolation, and further heightened by a thrill of initiate veneration
+whenever it is mentioned. This _Leonardo-emotion,_ once set on
+foot, checks all unworthy doubts, sweeps out of consciousness all
+thoughts of inferior work (_inferiority_ and _Leonardo_ being
+emotionally incompatible!), respectfully holds the candle while the
+elements common to the imitation and the masterpiece are gone over
+and over, and the differentiating elements exclusively belonging to
+Leonardo evoked in the expert's memory, until at last the objective
+work of art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces
+which impart to it their emotionally communicable virtue. And
+when the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule, the
+Philistine shrewdly decides that a sham Leonardo is just as good as a
+genuine one, that these are all matters of fashion, and that there is
+really no disputing of tastes!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+AESTHETIC IRRADIATION AND PURIFICATION
+
+THE storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another
+fact, with which indeed I began this little book: namely that the
+word _Beautiful_ has been extended from whatever is satisfactory in
+our contemplation of shapes, to a great number of cases where there
+can be no question of shapes at all, as in speaking of a "beautiful
+character" and a "fine moral attitude"; or else, as in the case of a
+"beautiful bit of machinery," a "fine scientific demonstration" or a
+"splendid surgical operation" where the shapes involved are not at
+all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such cases the
+word _Beautiful_ has been brought over with the emotion of
+satisfied contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the
+minds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect,
+round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise
+_shapely_ thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of
+half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic
+experience, and evoked by that word _Beautiful_ whose application
+they partially justify. Nor is this all. Recent psychology teaches that,
+odd as it at first appears, our more or less definite images, auditive
+as well as visual, and whether actually perceived or merely
+remembered, are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's
+contents, coming and going and weaving themselves on to a
+constant woof of our own activities and feelings. It is precisely such
+activities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply
+the words _Beautiful_ and _Ugly._ Thus everything which has come
+in connexion with occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation,
+will meet with somewhat of the same reception as that shape-contemplation
+originally elicited. And even the merest items of information which
+the painter conveys concerning the visible universe; the merest
+detail of human character conveyed by the poet; nay even the
+mere nervous intoxication furnished by the musician, will all be
+irradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been conveyed
+in, and will therefore be felt as beautiful.
+
+Moreover, as the "beautiful character" and "splendid operation" have
+taught us, rare and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a
+"platonic" way. And even objects of bodily desire, so long as that
+desire is not acute and pressing, may give rise to merely
+contemplative longings. All this, added to what has previously been
+said, sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which
+are irradiated by the word _Beautiful_ and the emotion originally
+arising from the satisfied contemplation of mere shapes.
+
+And that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so
+life-corroborating and so strangely impersonal, and that its special
+emotion should be so susceptible of radiation and transfer, is
+sufficient explanation of the elevating and purifying influence which,
+ever since Plato, philosophers have usually ascribed to the Beautiful.
+Other moralists however have not failed to point out that art has,
+occasionally and even frequently, effects of the very opposite kind.
+The ever-recurrent discussion of this seeming contradiction is,
+however, made an end of, once we recognise that art has many aims
+besides its distinguishing one of increasing our contemplation of the
+beautiful. Indeed some of art's many non-aesthetic aims may
+themselves be foreign to elevation and purification, or even, as for
+instance the lewd or brutal subjects of some painting and poetry, and
+the nervous intoxication of certain music, exert a debasing or
+enervating influence. But, as the whole of this book has tried to
+establish, the contemplation of beautiful shapes involves perceptive
+processes in themselves mentally invigorating and refining, and a
+play of empathic feelings which realise the greatest desiderata of
+spiritual life, viz. intensity, purposefulness and harmony; and such
+perceptive and empathic activities cannot fail to raise the present
+level of existence and to leave behind them a higher standard for
+future experience. This exclusively elevating effect of beautiful
+shape as such, is of course proportioned to the attention it receives
+and the exclusion of other, and possibly baser, interests connected
+with the work of art. On the other hand the purifying effects of
+beautiful shapes depend upon the attention oscillating to and fro
+between them and those other interests, e.g. _subject_ in the
+_representative_ arts, _fitness_ in the _applied_ ones, and
+_expression_ in music; all of which non-aesthetic interests benefit
+(enhanced if noble, redeemed if base) by irradiation of the nobler
+feelings wherewith they are thus associated. For we must not forget
+that where opposed groups of feeling are elicited, whichever
+happens to be more active and complex will neutralise its opponent.
+Thus, while an even higher intensity and complexity of aesthetic
+feelings is obtained when the "subject" of a picture, the use of a
+building or a chattel, or the expression of a piece of music, is in
+itself noble; and a Degas ballet girl can never have the dignity of a
+Phidian goddess, nor a gambling _casino_ that of a cathedral, nor
+the music to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' _German Requiem,_
+yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the
+attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic
+suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine
+allegory embodied in Correggio's _Danae,_ or else we reinterpret
+that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the
+Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a
+common observation that while _unmusical_ Bayreuth-goers often
+attribute demoralising effects to some of Wagner's music, the
+genuinely musical listeners are unaware, and usually incredulous, of
+any such evil possibilities.
+
+This question of the purifying power of the Beautiful has brought us
+back to our starting-point. It illustrates the distinction between
+_contemplating an aspect_ and _thinking about things,_ and this
+distinction's corollary that shape as such is yon-side of _real_ and
+_unreal,_ taking on the character of reality and unreality only
+inasmuch as it is thought of in connexion with a _thing._ As regards
+the possibility of being _good_ or _evil,_ it is evident from all the
+foregoing that _shape as shape,_ and without the suggestion of
+things, can be evil only in the sense of being ugly, ugliness
+diminishing its own drawbacks by being, _ipso facto,_ difficult to
+dwell upon, inasmuch as it goes against the grain of our perceptive
+and empathic activities. The contemplation of beautiful shape is, on
+the other hand, favoured by its pleasurableness, and such
+contemplation of beautiful shape lifts our perceptive and empathic
+activities, that is to say a large part of our intellectual and emotional
+life, on to a level which can only be spiritually, organically, and in
+so far, morally beneficial.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+CONCLUSION (EVOLUTIONAL)
+
+SOME of my Readers, not satisfied by the answer implicit in the last
+chapter and indeed in the whole of this little book, may ask a final
+question concerning our subject. Not: What is the use of Art? since,
+as we have seen, Art has many and various uses both to the
+individual and to the community, each of which uses is independent
+of the attainment of Beauty.
+
+The remaining question concerns the usefulness of the very demand
+for Beauty, of that _Aesthetic Imperative_ by which the other uses
+of art are more or less qualified or dominated. In what way, the
+Reader may ask, has sensitiveness to Beauty contributed to the
+survival of mankind, that it should not only have been preserved and
+established by evolutional selection, but invested with the
+tremendous power of the pleasure and pain alternative?
+
+The late William James, as some readers may remember, placed
+musical pleasure between sentimental love and sea-sickness as
+phenomena unaccountable by any value for human survival, in fact
+masteries, if not paradoxes, of evolution.
+
+The riddle, though not necessarily the mystery, does not consist in
+the survival of the aesthetic instinct of which the musical one is a
+mere sub-category, but in the origin and selectional establishment of
+its elementary constituents, say for instance space-perception and
+empathy, both of which exist equally outside that instinct which is a
+mere compound of them and other primary tendencies. For given
+space-perception and empathy and their capacity of being felt as
+satisfactory or unsatisfactory, the aesthetic imperative is not only
+intelligible but inevitable. Instead therefore of asking: Why is there a
+preference for what we call Beauty? we should have to ask: why has
+perception, feeling, logic, imagination, come to be just what it is?
+Indeed why are our sense-organs, our bodily structure and chemical
+composition, what they are; and why do they exist at all in
+contradistinction to the ways of being of other living or other
+inanimate things? So long as these elementary facts continue
+shrouded in darkness or taken for granted, the genesis and
+evolutional reason of the particular compound which we call
+aesthetic preference must remain only one degree less mysterious
+than the genesis and evolutional reason of its psychological
+components.
+
+Meanwhile all we can venture to say is that as satisfaction derived
+from shapes we call _beautiful,_ undoubtedly involves intense,
+complex, and reiterative mental activities, as it has an undeniable
+power for happiness and hence for spiritual refreshment, and
+as it moreover tends to inhibit most of the instincts whose
+superabundance can jeopardise individual and social existence, the
+capacity for such aesthetic satisfaction, once arisen, would be
+fostered in virtue of a mass of evolutional advantages which are as
+complex and difficult to analyse, but also as deep-seated and
+undeniable, as itself.
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+I.      _Lipps._ Raumaesthetik, Leipzig, 1897.
+         "       Aesthetik, vol. I. part ii., Leipzig, 1906.
+II.     _Karl Groos._ Aesthetik, Giessen, 1892.
+         "       Der Aesthetische Genuss, Giessen, 1902.
+III.    _Wundt._ Physiologische Psychologie (5th Edition, 1903), vol.
+III. pg. 107 to 209. But the whole volume is full of indirect
+suggestion on aesthetics.
+IV.     _Muensterberg._ The Principles of Art Education, New York,
+1905. (Statement of Lipps' theory in physiological terms.)
+V.      _Kuelpe._ Der gegenwaertige Stand der experimentellen
+Aesthetik, 1907.
+VI.     _Vernon Lee and Anstruther-Thomson._ Beauty and Ugliness,
+1912 (contains abundant quotations from most of the above works
+and other sources).
+VII.    _Ribot._ Le Role latent des Images Motrices. Revue
+Philosophique, March 1912.
+VIII.   _Witasek._ Psychologie der Raumwahrnehmung des Auges
+(1910). These two last named are only indirectly connected with
+visual aesthetics.
+
+For art-evolutional questions consult:
+IX.     _Haddon._ Evolution in Art, 1895.
+X.      _Yrjoe Hirn._ Origins of Art, Macmillan, 1900.
+XI.     _Levinstein._ Kinderzeichnungen, Leipzig, 1905.
+XII.    _Loewy._ Nature in early Greek Art (translation), Duckworth,
+1907.
+XIII.   _Delia Seta._ Religione e Arte Figurata, Rome, 1912.
+XIV.    _Spearing._ The Childhood of Art, 1913.
+XV.     _Jane Harrison._ Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Aesthetic:
+     aridity, 136-7;
+     imperative, 99-100;
+     irradiation, 147-52;
+     purification, 149-52;
+     responsiveness, active nature of, 128-36;
+     habit and familiarity affecting, 134-6
+Altamira cave frescoes, 95
+Art:
+     differential characteristic of, 116-18;
+     non-aesthetic aims of, 99-100, 137-8; utility of, 153-5
+Aspect:
+     aesthetics concerned with, 15, 21, 105;
+     shape the determining feature of, 26-8
+Attention, a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32
+
+Balfour, H., 95
+Beautiful:
+     aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective, 147-8;
+     attitude implied by use of adjective, 2-7, 18-19;
+     empathy the chief factor of preference, 67-8;
+     implies desire for reiterated perception, 53-4
+Botticelli, 83
+Brahms' _German Requiem,_ 150
+Browning's _Abt Vogler,_ 141
+
+Coleridge's _Ode to Dejection,_ 131
+Colour, passive reception of, 23-4, 29
+Contemplative satisfaction marking aesthetic attitude, 8-15
+Correggio's _Danae,_ 151
+Cubic Existence:
+     perception of, 85;
+     pictorial suggestion of, importance attached to, discussed, 101-5
+
+_Discobolus,_ 115
+
+Einfuehlung, 59;
+     misinterpretations of, 66-7
+Emotion, storage and transfer of, 139-46
+Empathy, 61-69;
+     complexity of movements of lines, 78-83;
+     movements of lines, 70-77;
+     second element of shape-perception, 59-60
+Extension existing in perception, 35-8
+
+Fechner, 130
+
+Hildebrand, 102, 118
+
+Inner Mimicry, 74-5
+
+James, W., 153
+
+Keats' _Grecian Urn,_ 77
+
+Levinstein, 96
+Lipps, 66
+Locomotion of Things, distinction between, and empathic
+movement of lines, 111-16
+Lotze, 66
+
+Mantegna, 82
+Memory:
+     a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32;
+     in perception, 40-1
+Michel Angelo, 114, 122
+Movement of Lines, distinction between, and locomotion of Things,
+111-16; _see also_ Empathy
+
+Object of Perception, subject's activities merged in, 57, 58
+
+Perception:
+     active process involved in, 29-34, 128-9;
+     distinguished from sensation, 32;
+     subject and object of, 55-60
+
+Raphael's _Heliodorus,_ 119
+Relaxation an element of form-perception, 42
+Rembrandt, 122
+Rythm, 42-5
+
+Semper, hypothesis regarding shape-preference, 94
+Sensations:
+     distinguished from perceptions, 32;
+     perception of relation between, 29-30
+Shape:
+     character of, 78-83;
+     contemplation of, its intermittent but recurrent character, 106-10;
+     determines contemplation of an aspect, 26-8;
+     elements of, 35-47;
+     Empathy an element of perception of, 59;
+     facility and difficulty of grasping, 48-54;
+     a perception, 29-34;
+     practical causes regarding evolution of, 90-4;
+     preference, its evolution, 94-7;
+     and Things, their co-operation, 117-27;
+     thinking away from, to Things, 131-2, 84-9
+Sound, passive reception of, 23-4, 29
+Subject of perception, extent of awareness of self, 57-9
+Symmetry, 42-3
+
+Tension, an element of form-perception, 42
+Things and Shapes, their cooperation, 117-27;
+     thoughts about, entering into shape-contemplation, 84-9
+Third Dimension, locomotor nature of knowledge of, 85-6, 101
+Titchener, 59
+
+Vinci, Leonardo da, 83, 145-6
+Vischer, 66
+
+Watts, G. F., 46
+Whole and Parts, perception of relation of, 48-54
+Wilde's _Salome,_ 150
+Wundt, 42, 66
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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