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diff --git a/26942-h/26942-h.htm b/26942-h/26942-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b24ea1 --- /dev/null +++ b/26942-h/26942-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3527 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<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"> + body {margin-top:100px; + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align:justify} + hr { width: 100%; + height: 5px; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 75%;} +</style> + +</head> + +<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: 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."]</p> + +<p> </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"> </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"> 1</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">II.</td> + +<td><a href="#2">Contemplative Satisfaction</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 8</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">III.</td> + +<td><a href="#3">Aspects <i>versus</i> Things</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 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>Einfühlung</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"> 84</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">XIII.</td> + +<td><a href="#13">From the Thing to the Shape</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 90</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">XIV.</td> + +<td><a href="#14">The Aims of Art</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 98</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">XV.</td> + +<td><a href="#15">Attention to Shapes</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 106</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">XVI.</td> + +<td><a href="#16">Information about Things</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 111</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">XVII.</td> + +<td><a href="#17">Co-operation of Things and Shapes</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 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"> 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"> </td> + +<td><a href="#22">Bibliography</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 156</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right"> </td> + +<td><a href="#23">Index</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 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> VERNON LEE<br> + Maiano <i>near</i> Florence, <i><br> + 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—"<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">è</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—"</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—"</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—"<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>Einfühlung,</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">ü</font>hlung,</i> I have called Empathy.</p> + +<p>[*] From <i><font face="Times New Roman">έν</font></i> and <i><font face= +"Times New Roman">πάσχω, +έπαθον</font></i>.</p> + +<p>The German word <i>Einf<font face="Times New Roman">ü</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">ü</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">ü</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">è</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">à</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"—"<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">ë</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. <i>Lipps.</i> Raumaesthetik, Leipzig, 1897.<br> + " +Aesthetik, vol. I. part ii., Leipzig, 1906.<br> +II.<i> Karl Groos.</i> Aesthetik, Giessen, 1892.<br> + " +Der Aesthetische Genuss, Giessen, 1902.<br> +III.<i> 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. <i>M<font face="Times New Roman">ü</font>nsterberg.</i> +The Principles of Art Education, New York, 1905. (Statement of Lipps' theory in +physiological terms.)<br> +V. <i>K<font face="Times New Roman">ü</font>lpe.</i> Der +gegenw<font face="Times New Roman">ä</font>rtige Stand der experimentellen +Aesthetik, 1907.<br> +VI. <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. <i>Ribot.</i> Le R<font face= +"Times New Roman">ôl</font>e latent des Images Motrices. Revue Philosophique, March +1912.<br> +VIII. <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. <i>Haddon.</i> Evolution in Art, 1895.<br> +X. <i>Yrj<font face="Times New Roman">ö</font> Hirn.</i> +Origins of Art, Macmillan, 1900.<br> +XI. <i>Levinstein.</i> Kinderzeichnungen, Leipzig, 1905.<br> +XII. <i>Loewy.</i> Nature in early Greek Art (translation), +Duckworth, 1907.<br> +XIII. <i>Delia Seta.</i> Religione e Arte Figurata, Rome, +1912.<br> +XIV. <i>Spearing.</i> The Childhood of Art, 1913.<br> +XV. <i>Jane Harrison.</i> Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.</p> + +<p> </p><a name="23"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>INDEX</p> + +<p>Aesthetic:<br> + aridity, 136-7;<br> + imperative, 99-100;<br> + irradiation, 147-52;<br> + purification, 149-52;<br> + responsiveness, active nature of, 128-36;<br> + habit and familiarity affecting, 134-6<br> +Altamira cave frescoes, 95<br> +Art:<br> + differential characteristic of, 116-18;<br> + non-aesthetic aims of, 99-100, 137-8; utility of, 153-5<br> +Aspect:<br> + aesthetics concerned with, 15, 21, 105;<br> + shape the determining feature of, 26-8<br> +Attention, a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32</p> + +<p>Balfour, H., 95<br> +Beautiful:<br> + aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective, +147-8;<br> + attitude implied by use of adjective, 2-7, 18-19;<br> + empathy the chief factor of preference, 67-8;<br> + 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> + perception of, 85;<br> + pictorial suggestion of, importance attached to, discussed, +101-5</p> + +<p><i>Discobolus,</i> 115</p> + +<p>Einf<font face="Times New Roman">ü</font>hlung, 59;<br> + misinterpretations of, 66-7<br> +Emotion, storage and transfer of, 139-46<br> +Empathy, 61-69;<br> + complexity of movements of lines, 78-83;<br> + movements of lines, 70-77;<br> + 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> + a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32;<br> + 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> + active process involved in, 29-34, 128-9;<br> + distinguished from sensation, 32;<br> + 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> + distinguished from perceptions, 32;<br> + perception of relation between, 29-30<br> +Shape:<br> + character of, 78-83;<br> + contemplation of, its intermittent but recurrent character, +106-10;<br> + determines contemplation of an aspect, 26-8;<br> + elements of, 35-47;<br> + Empathy an element of perception of, 59;<br> + facility and difficulty of grasping, 48-54;<br> + a perception, 29-34;<br> + practical causes regarding evolution of, 90-4;<br> + preference, its evolution, 94-7;<br> + and Things, their co-operation, 117-27;<br> + 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> + 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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAUTIFUL *** + +***** This file should be named 26942-h.htm or 26942-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/9/4/26942/ + +Produced by Ruth Hart + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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