{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_26942/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_26942","id":"gutenberg_26942","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26942","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics","Category: Art","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Form (Aesthetics)","Psychology, Applied"],"text":"Produced by Ruth Hart\n\n\n\n\n[Note:  for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to\nthe beginning of the text and slightly modified it to conform with the\nonline format.  I have also made two spelling corrections:\n\"chippendale\" to \"Chippendale\" and \"closely interpendent\" to\n\"closely interdependent.\"]\n\n\n\nTHE BEAUTIFUL\n\nAN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL AESTHETICS\n\nBY\n\nVERNON LEE\n\n\nAuthor of\n\"Beauty and Ugliness\"\n\"Laurus Nobilis\"\netc.\n\n\nCambridge:\nat the University Press\nNew York:\nG.P. Putnam's Sons\n1913\n\n\n[Illustration: title page]\n\n\n_With the exception of the coat of arms\nat the foot, the design on the title page is a\nreproduction of one used by the earliest known\nCambridge printer, John Siberch,_ 1521\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n       Preface and Apology                                 v\nI.     The Adjective \"Beautiful\"                           1\nII.    Contemplative Satisfaction                          8\nIII.   Aspects versus Things                              14\nIV.    Sensations                                         22\nV.     Perception of Relations                            29\nVI.    Elements of Shape                                  35\nVII.   Facility and Difficulty of Grasping                48\nVIII.  Subject and Object, or, Nominative and Accusative  55\nIX.    Empathy (Einfuehlung)                               61\nX.     The Movement of Lines                              70\nXI.    The Character of Shapes                            78\nXII.   From the Shape to the Thing                        84\nXIII.  From the Thing to the Shape                        90\nXIV.   The Aims of Art                                    98\nXV.    Attention to Shapes                               106\nXVI.   Information about Things                          111\nXVII.  Co-operation of Things and Shapes                 117\nXVIII. Aesthetic Responsiveness                          128\nXIX.   The Storage and Transfer of Emotion               139\nXX.    Aesthetic Irradiation and Purification            147\nXXI.   Conclusion (Evolutional)                          153\n       Bibliography                                      156\n       Index                                             157\n\n\n\nPREFACE AND APOLOGY\n\nI HAVE tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference,\nparticularly as regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science.\nBut my explanation is addressed to readers in whom I have no right\nto expect a previous knowledge of psychology, particularly in its\nmore modern developments. I have therefore based my explanation\nof the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts\nfamiliar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader. Now\nmental facts thus available are by no means the elementary\nprocesses with which analytical and, especially experimental,\npsychology has dealings. They are, on the contrary, the everyday,\nsuperficial and often extremely confused views which practical life\nand its wholly unscientific vocabulary present of those ascertained\nor hypothetical scientific facts. I have indeed endeavoured (for\ninstance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from\nsensation) to impart some rudiments of psychology in the course of\nmy aesthetical explanation, and I have avoided, as much as possible,\nmisleading the reader about such fearful complexes and cruxes as\n_memory, association_ and _imagination._ But I have been obliged\nto speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader, and I am fully aware\nthat these terms correspond only very approximately to what is, or at\npresent passes as, psychological fact. I would therefore beg the\npsychologist (to whom I offer this little volume as a possible slight\naddition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses) to understand that\nin speaking, for instance, of Empathy as involving a _thought_ of\ncertain activities, I mean merely that whatever happens has the same\nresult _as if we thought_; and that the processes, whatever they may\nbe (also in the case of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating),\ntranslate themselves, _when they are detected,_ into _thoughts;_ but\nthat I do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the\nprocesses, the \"thoughts,\" the measuring, comparing etc. exist on\nsubordinate planes of consciousness or whether they are mainly\nphysiological and only occasionally abutting in conscious resultants.\nSimilarly, lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me\nto write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed\nprocess of ocular perception, instead of being due, as is doubtless\nmost often the case, to every kind of associative abbreviation and\nequivalence of processes.\n\n          VERNON LEE\n     Maiano _near_ Florence,_\n          Easter_ 1913.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE ADJECTIVE \"BEAUTIFUL\"\n\nTHIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it\nis an introduction, makes no attempt to \"form the taste\" of the public\nand still less to direct the doings of the artist. It deals not with\n_ought_ but with _is,_ leaving to Criticism the inference from the\nlatter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how things can be\nmade beautiful or even how we can recognise that things _are_\nbeautiful. It takes Beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks\nto analyse and account for Beauty's existence and enjoyment. More\nstrictly speaking, it analyses and accounts for Beauty not inasmuch\nas existing in certain objects and processes, but rather as calling\nforth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental\nactivities and habits. It does not ask: What are the peculiarities of the\nthings (and the proceedings) which we call _Beautiful?_ but: What\nare the peculiarities of our thinking and feeling when in the presence\nof a thing to which we apply this adjective? The study of single\nbeautiful things, and even more, the comparison of various\ncategories thereof, is indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics, but\nonly inasmuch as it adds to our knowledge of the particular mental\nactivities which such \"Beautiful\" (and vice versa \"Ugly\") things\nelicit in us. For it is on the nature of this active response on our own\npart that depends the application of those terms _Beautiful_ and\n_Ugly_ in every single instance; and indeed their application in any\ninstances whatsoever, their very existence in the human vocabulary.\n\nIn accordance with this programme I shall not start with a formal\ndefinition of the word _Beautiful,_ but ask: on what sort of\noccasions we make use of it. Evidently, on _occasions when we feel\nsatisfaction rather than dissatisfaction,_ satisfaction meaning\nwillingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience\nwhich has called forth that word; and meaning also that if it comes\nto a choice between two or several experiences, we _prefer_ the\nexperience thus marked by the word _Beautiful. Beautiful,_ we may\ntherefore formulate, _implies on our part an attitude of satisfaction\nand preference._ But there are other words which imply that much;\nfirst and foremost the words, in reality synonyms, USEFUL and\nGOOD. I call these synonyms because _good_ always implies\n_good for,_ or _good in,_ that is to say fitness for a purpose, even\nthough that purpose may be masked under _conforming to a\nstandard_ or _obeying a commandment,_ since the standard or\ncommandment represents not the caprice of a community, a race or a\ndivinity, but some (real or imaginary) utility of a less immediate\nkind. So much for the meaning of _good_ when implying standards\nand commandments; ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is,\nhowever, no such implication, and _good_ means nothing more than\n_satisfactory in the way of use and advantage._ Thus a _good_ road\nis a road we prefer because it takes us to our destination quickly and\neasily. A _good_ speech is one we prefer because it succeeds in\nexplaining or persuading. And a _good_ character (good friend,\nfather, husband, citizen) is one that gives satisfaction by the\nfulfilment of moral obligations.\n\nBut note the difference when we come to _Beautiful._ A _beautiful_\nroad is one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at; its\nbeing devious and inconvenient will not prevent its being\n_beautiful._ A _beautiful_ speech is one we like to hear or\nremember, although it may convince or persuade neither us nor\nanybody. A _beautiful_ character is one we like to think about but\nwhich may never practically help anyone, if for instance, it exists\nnot in real life but in a novel. Thus the adjective _Beautiful_ implies\n_an attitude of preference, but not an attitude of present or future\nturning to our purposes._ There is even a significant lack of\nsymmetry in the words employed (at all events in English, French\nand German) to distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the\nway of weather. For weather which makes us uncomfortable and\nhampers our comings and goings by rain, wind or mud, is described\nas _bad;_ while the opposite kind of weather is called _beautiful,\nfine,_ or _fair,_ as if the greater comfort, convenience, usefulness of\nsuch days were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our\nmere contemplation.\n\n_Our mere contemplation!_ Here we have struck upon the main\ndifference between our attitude when we use the word _good_ or\n_useful,_ and when we use the word _beautiful._ And we can add to\nour partial formula \"beautiful implies satisfaction and preference\"--the\ndistinguishing predicate--\"_of a contemplative kind._\" This\ngeneral statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our\nuse of the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming\nexception will not only exemplify what I have said about our\nattitude when employing that word, but add to this information the\nname of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion\nof _admiration._ For the selfsame object or proceeding may\nsometimes be called _good_ and sometimes _beautiful,_ according\nas the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. While we\nadmonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it\n_good,_ we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic\ncoachman as _beautiful, anglice fine_ or _splendid,_ because there\nis no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely\nbeing contemplated with admiration. Similarly, we have all of us\nheard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon\nto an operation, the apparently far-fetched adjective Beautiful, or\none of the various equivalents, fine, splendid, glorious (even\noccasionally _jolly!)_ by which Englishmen express their\nadmiration. The change of word represents a change of attitude. The\nengineer is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon\nestimating the advantages of the operation. Each of these highly\npractical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an\nimperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical\nestimation or even of practice itself. The machine or operation, the\nskill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being\nconsidered _apart from action,_ and advantage, means and time,\nto-day or yesterday; _platonically_ we may call it from the first great\nteacher of aesthetics. They are being, in one word, contemplated\nwith admiration. And _admiration_ is the rough and ready name for\nthe mood, however transient, for the emotion, however faint,\nwherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because\ncontemplation happens to give satisfaction. The satisfaction may be\na mere skeleton of the \"I'd rather than not\" description; or it may be\na massive alteration in our being, radiating far beyond the present,\nevoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate it; storing\nitself up for the future; penetrating, like the joy of a fine day, into\nour animal spirits, altering pulse, breath, gait, glance and demeanour;\nand transfiguring our whole momentary outlook on life. But,\nsuperficial or overwhelming, _this hind of satisfaction connected\nwith, the word Beautiful is always of the Contemplative order._\n\nAnd upon the fact we have thus formulated depend, as we shall see,\nmost of the other facts and formulae of our subject.\n\nThis essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the\nword _Beautiful_ has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous,\nand I think, quite misleading theories. The first of these defines\naesthetic appreciation as _disinterested interest,_ gratuitously\nidentifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we\nhave not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such appreciation\nimplies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested.\nThe second philosophical theory (originally Schiller's, and revived\nby Herbert Spencer) takes advantage of the non-practical attitude\nconnected with the word _Beautiful_ to define art and its enjoyment\nas a kind of _play._ Now although leisure and freedom from cares\nare necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter\ndiffers essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For\nalthough it may be possible to watch _other people_ playing football\nor chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the\ndeepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may\ncontemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the\nconcentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part\nof the players _themselves_ an eminently practical state of mind,\none diametrically opposed to contemplation, as I hope to make\nevident in the next section.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nCONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION\n\nWE have thus defined the word _Beautiful_ as implying an attitude\nof contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes\namounting to an _emotion,_ of admiration; and so far contrasted it\nwith the practical attitude implied by the word _good._ But we\nrequire to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of\ncontemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not\nmerely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one.\n\nLet us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching\nthe behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary\nwayfarers in front of a view, which they severally consider in the\npractical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. The view was from\na hill-top in the neighbourhood of Rome or of Edinburgh, whichever\nthe Reader can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers\nhalted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts.\n\n\"It will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot\"--began one of\nthe three. \"We might have been back for tea-time if only there had\nbeen a tram and a funicular. And that makes me think: Why not start\na joint-stock company to build them? There must be water-power in\nthese hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter\nto town. Also houses could be built for people whose work takes\nthem to town, but who want good air for their children; the\nhire-purchase system, you know. It might prove a godsend and a capital\ninvestment, though I suppose some people would say it spoilt the\nview. The idea is quite a _good_ one. I shall get an expert--\"\n\n\"These hills,\" put in the second man--\"are said to be part of an\nancient volcano. I don't know whether that theory is _true!_ It would\nbe _interesting_ to examine whether the summits have been ground\ndown in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic\naction at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been\nunder the sea at no very distant period. It is also _interesting_ to\nnotice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained\nby the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural\nharbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable meeting-place of\nseafaring and pastoral populations. These investigations would\nprove, as I said, remarkably full of interest.\"\n\n\"I wish\"--complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to\nhimself--\"I wish these men would hold their tongues and let one\nenjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to _what\nmight be done_ or to _how it all came about._ They don't seem to\nfeel how _beautiful_ it all is.\" And he concentrated himself on\ncontemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab\nof reluctance to leave.\n\nMeanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there\nreally was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for\nboth tramway and funicular, and where the necessary capital could\nbe borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of\nstratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical\ndata about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country.\n\n\"I suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your\nsketching materials?\" said the scientific man, always interested in\nthe causes of phenomena, even such trifling ones as a man\nremaining quiet before a landscape.\n\n\"I reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out\nwhere you can use up a description of this place\"--corrected the\nrapid insight of the practical man, accustomed to weigh people's\nmotives in case they may be turned to use.\n\n\"I am _not_ a painter, and I'm _not_ a writer\"--exclaimed the third\ntraveller, \"and I thank Heaven I'm not! For if I were I might be\ntrying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely\nenjoying all this beauty. Not but that I should like to have a sketch\nor a few words of description for when I've turned my back upon it.\nAnd Heaven help me, I really believe that when we are all back in\nLondon I may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your\ntramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action,\nbecause your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this\nplace and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me--\"\n\n\"That's what it is to be aesthetic\"--said the two almost in the same\nbreath.\n\n\"And that, I suppose\"--answered the third with some animosity--\"is\nwhat you mean by being practical or scientific.\"\n\nNow the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of\nscience, though differing so obviously from one another (the first\nbent upon producing new and advantageous _results,_ the second\nexamining, without thought of advantage, into possible _causes),_\nboth differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was\nmerely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. They\nwere, as he complained, thinking of _what might be done_ and of\n_how it had all come about._ That is to say they were both thinking\n_away_ from that landscape. The scientific man actually turned his\nback to it in examining first one rock, then another. The practical\nman must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he\nwas on, since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and\nthat the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a\nfunicular. But besides the different items of landscape, and the same\nitems under different angles, which were thus offered to these two\nmen's bodily eyes, there was a far greater variety, and rapider\nsuccession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their\nspirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills, plain,\nand town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time,\nbut tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress,\ndairy-products, pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices,\nadvertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and the scientific man's inner\nvision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and\nseas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals\nunder the microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let\nalone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries. Moreover,\nmost, if not all these mental images (blocking out from attention the\nreally existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy,\nswished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just\nenough seen to know what it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all,\nmere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought. So that what\nsatisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly\nscampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next\none, and to a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to\nwit, pounds, shillings, and pence in the one case, and a coherent\nexplanation in the other. In both cases equally there was a\nkaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of\naspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed. Or, more\nstrictly speaking, there was no interest whatever in aspects as such,\nbut only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied;\nwhether actions future and personally profitable, like building\ntram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and\nquite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or\nprehistoric civilisations.\n\nNow let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the\ntwo others had first mistaken for an artist or writer, and then\ndismissed as an aesthetic person.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nASPECTS _VERSUS_ THINGS\n\nHAVING settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked\nbest, he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded\nhim. Had he descended another twenty minutes, or looked through\npowerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a\njuxtaposition of emerald green, raw Sienna, and pale yellow,\nwhereas, at the distance where he chose to remain, its colours fused\ninto indescribably lovely lilacs and russets. Had he moved freely\nabout he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of\nsharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their\nvarious angles, must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges,\nand roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate. Also that the\nfoothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains\nbehind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the\nattention by their aggressive projection. While, as if to spoil the\naspect still more, he would have been forced to recognise (as Ruskin\nexplains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the Matterhorn peak)\nthat the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked\nup at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely\nto rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of\nperspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let\nalone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. But\nto how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope,\nthat man did not give one thought, any more than to how they might\nlook after a hundred years of tramways and funiculars or how they\nhad looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial action.\nHe was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light\nand colour, the pattern (more and more detailed, more and more\nco-ordinated with every additional exploring glance) of keenly\nthrusting, delicately yielding lines, meeting as purposefully as if\nthey had all been alive and executing some great, intricate dance. He\ndid not concern himself whether what he was looking at was an\naggregate of things; still less what might be these things' other\nproperties. He was not concerned with things at all, but only with a\nparticular appearance (he did not care whether it answered to reality),\nonly with one (he did not want to know whether there might be any\nother) _aspect._\n\nFor, odd as it may sound, a _Thing_ is both much more and much\nless than an _Aspect._ Much more, because a _Thing_ really means\nnot only qualities of its own and reactions of ours which are actual\nand present, but a far greater number and variety thereof which are\npotential. Much _less,_ on the other hand, because of these potential\nqualities and reactions constituting a Thing only a minimum need be\nthought of at any given time; instead of which, an aspect is all there,\nits qualities closely interdependent, and our reactions entirely taken\nup in connecting them as whole and parts. A rose, for instance, is\nnot merely a certain assemblage of curves and straight lines and\ncolours, seen as the painter sees it, at a certain angle, petals masking\npart of stem, leaf protruding above bud: it is the possibility of other\ncombinations of shapes, including those seen when the rose (or the\nperson looking) is placed head downwards. Similarly it is the\npossibility of certain sensations of resistance, softness, moisture,\npricking if we attempt to grasp it, of a certain fragrance if we breathe\nin the air. It is the possibility of turning into a particular fruit, with\nthe possibility of our finding that fruit bitter and non-edible; of being\ndeveloped from cuttings, pressed in a book, made a present of or\ncultivated for lucre. Only one of these groups of possibilities may\noccupy our thoughts, the rest not glanced at, or only glanced at\nsubsequently; but if, on trial, any of these grouped possibilities\ndisappoint us, we decide that this is not a real rose, but a paper rose,\nor a painted one, or no rose at all, but some _other thing._ For, so far\nas our consciousness is concerned, _things_ are merely groups of\nactual and potential reactions on our own part, that is to say of\nexpectations which experience has linked together in more or less\nstable groups. The practical man and the man of science in my fable,\nwere both of them dealing with _Things_: passing from one group\nof potential reaction to another, hurrying here, dallying there, till of\nthe actual _aspect_ of the landscape there remained nothing in their\nthoughts, trams and funiculars in the future, volcanoes and icecaps\nin the past, having entirely altered all that; only the material\nconstituents and the geographical locality remaining as the unshifted\nitem in those much pulled about bundles of thoughts of possibilities.\n\nEvery _thing_ may have a great number of very different _Aspects;_\nand some of these _Aspects_ may invite contemplation, as that\nlandscape invited the third man to contemplate it; while other\n_aspects_ (say the same place after a proper course of tramways and\nfuniculars and semi-detached residences, or _before_ the needful\nvolcanic and glacial action) may be such as are dismissed or slurred\nas fast as possible. Indeed, with the exception of a very few cubes\nnot in themselves especially attractive, I cannot remember any\n_things_ which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects as\npleasing ones. The most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood\non its head; the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at\nthrough a microscope or from too far off; the most beautiful melody\nis not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . Here the Reader may\ninterrupt: \"What nonsense! Of course the building _is_ a building\nonly when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a\nmicroscope; the melody isn't a melody except begun at the\nbeginning\"--all which means that when we speak of a building, a\npicture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer\nof a _Thing,_ but of one of the possible _Aspects_ of a thing; _and\nthat when we say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords\none or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction._ But if\na beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be\n_contemplated,_ if the mountain could not also be climbed or\ntunnelled, if the woman could not also get married, bear children\nand have (or not have!) a vote, we should say that the mountain and\nthe woman were not _real things._ Hence we come to the conclusion,\nparadoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking\nabout, _that what we contemplate as beautiful is an Aspect of a\nThing, but never a Thing itself._ In other words: Beautiful is an\nadjective applicable to Aspects not to Things, or to Things only,\ninasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other\npotentialities) beautiful Aspects. So that we can now formulate:\n_The word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the\ncontemplation not of things but of aspects._\n\nThis summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject; and\nI should wish the Reader to get it by heart, until he grow\nfamiliarised therewith in the course of our further examinations.\nBefore proceeding upon these, I would, however, ask him to reflect\nhow this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless,\nsquabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth,\nand whether art, as certain moralists contend, is a school of lying.\nFor _true_ or _false_ is a judgment of existence; it refers to\n_Things;_ it implies that besides the qualities and reactions shown\nor described, our further action or analysis will call forth certain\nother groups of qualities and reactions constituting the _thing which\nis said to exist._ But aspects, in the case in which I have used that\nword, _are_ what they are and do not necessarily imply anything\nbeyond their own peculiarities. The words _true_ or _false_ can be\napplied to them only with the meaning of _aspects truly existing_ or\n_not truly existing;_ _i.e._ aspects of which it is true or not to _say\nthat they exist._ But as to an aspect being true or false in the sense\nof _misleading,_ that question refers not to the _aspect_ itself, but to\nthe thing of which the aspect is taken as a part and a sign. Now the\ncontemplation of the mere aspect, the beauty (or ugliness) of the\naspect, does not itself necessitate or imply any such reference to a\nthing. Our contemplation of the beauty of a statue representing a\nCentaur may indeed be disturbed by the reflexion that a creature\nwith two sets of lungs and digestive organs would be a monster and\nnot likely to grow to the age of having a beard. But this disturbing\nthought need not take place. And when it takes place it is not part of\nour contemplation of the _aspect_ of that statue; it is, on the contrary,\noutside it, an excursion away from it due to our inveterate (and very\nnecessary) habit of interrupting the contemplation of _Aspects_ by\nthe thinking and testing of _Things._ The Aspect never implied the\nexistence of a Thing beyond itself; it did not affirm that anything\nwas true, _i.e._ that anything could or would happen besides the fact\nof our contemplation. In other words the formula that _beautiful is\nan adjective applying only to aspects,_ shows us that art can be\ntruthful or untruthful only in so far as art (as is often the case)\ndeliberately sets to making statements about the existence and nature\nof Things. If Art says \"Centaurs can be born and grow up to man's\nestate with two sets of respiratory and digestive organs\"--then Art is\ntelling lies. Only, before accusing it of being a liar, better make sure\nthat the statement about the possibility of centaurs has been intended\nby the Art, and not merely read into it by ourselves.\n\nBut more of this when we come to the examination of Subject and\nForm.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nSENSATIONS\n\nIN the contemplation of the _Aspect_ before him, what gave that\naesthetic man the most immediate and undoubted pleasure was its\ncolour, or, more correctly speaking, its colours. Psycho-Physiologists\nhave not yet told us why colours, taken singly and apart\nfrom their juxtaposition, should possess so extraordinary a\npower over what used to be called our animal spirits, and through\nthem over our moods; and we can only guess from analogy with\nwhat is observed in plants, as well as from the nature of the\nphenomenon itself, that various kinds of luminous stimulation must\nhave some deep chemical repercussion throughout the human\norganism. The same applies, though in lesser degree, to sounds,\nquite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies.\nAs there are colours which _feel, i.e._ make _us_ feel, more or less\nwarm or cool, colours which are refreshing or stifling, depressing or\nexhilarating quite independent of any associations, so also there are\nqualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the trumpet, or\nharrow us like the quaver of the accordion. Similarly with regard to\nimmediacy of effect: the first chords of an organ will change our\nwhole mode of being like the change of light and colour on first\nentering a church, although the music which that organ is playing\nmay, after a few seconds of listening, bore us beyond endurance;\nand the architecture of that church, once we begin to take stock of it,\nentirely dispel that first impression made by the church's light and\ncolour. It is on account of this doubtless physiological power of\ncolour and sound, this way which they have of invading and\nsubjugating us with or without our consent and long before our\nconscious co-operation, that the Man-on-the-Hill's pleasure in the\naspect before him was, as I have said, first of all, pleasure in colour.\nAlso, because pleasure in colour, like pleasure in mere sound-quality\nor _timbre,_ is accessible to people who never go any further in their\naesthetic preference. Children, as every one knows, are sensitive to\ncolours, long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes.\nAnd the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used\nto bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the\nsubtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers incapable of\ndistinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of\nfollowing a modulation.\n\nThe Man on the Hill, therefore, received immediate pleasure from\nthe colours of the landscape. _Received_ pleasure, rather than\n_took_ it, since colours, like smells, seem, as I have said, to invade\nus, and insist upon pleasing whether we want to be pleased or not. In\nthis meaning of the word we may be said to be _passive_ to sound\nand colour quality: our share in the effects of these sensations, as in\nthe effect of agreeable temperatures, contacts and tastes, is a\nquestion of bodily and mental reflexes in which our conscious\nactivity, our voluntary attention, play no part: we are not _doing,_\nbut _done to_ by those stimulations from without; and the pleasure\nor displeasure which they set up in us is therefore one which we\n_receive,_ as distinguished from one which _we take._\n\nBefore passing on to the pleasure which the Man on the Hill _did\ntake,_ as distinguished from thus passively _receiving,_ from the\naspect before him, before investigating into the activities to which\nthis other kind of pleasure, _pleasure taken, not received,_ is due,\nwe must dwell a little longer on the colours which delighted him,\nand upon the importance or unimportance of those colours with\nregard to that _Aspect_ he was contemplating.\n\nThese colours--particularly a certain rain-washed blue, a pale lilac\nand a faded russet--gave him, as I said, immediate and massive\npleasure like that of certain delicious tastes and smells, indeed\nanyone who had watched him attentively might have noticed that he\nwas making rather the same face as a person rolling, as Meredith\nsays, a fine vintage against his palate, or drawing in deeper draughts\nof exquisitely scented air; he himself, if not too engaged in looking,\nmight have noticed the accompanying sensations in his mouth,\nthroat and nostrils; all of which, his only active response to the\ncolour, was merely the attempt to _receive more_ of the already\nreceived sensation. But this pleasure which he received from the\nmere colours of the landscape was the same pleasure which they\nwould have given him if he had met them in so many skeins of silk;\nthe more complex pleasure due to their juxtaposition, was the\npleasure he might have had if those skeins, instead of being on\nseparate leaves of a pattern-book, had been lying tangled together in\nan untidy work-basket. He might then probably have said, \"Those\nare exactly the colours, and in much the same combination, as in\nthat landscape we saw such and such a day, at such and such a\nseason and hour, from the top of that hill.\" But he would never have\nsaid (or been crazy if he had) \"Those skeins of silk are the landscape\nwe saw in that particular place and oh that particular occasion.\" Now\nthe odd thing is that he would have used that precise form of words,\n\"that is the landscape,\" etc. etc., if you had shown him a pencil\ndrawing or a photograph taken from that particular place and point\nof view. And similarly if you had made him look through stained\nglass which changed the pale blue, pale lilac and faded russet into\nemerald green and blood red. He would have exclaimed at the loss\nof those exquisite colours when you showed him the monochrome,\nand perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when you\nforced him to look through that atrocious glass. But he would have\nidentified the aspect as the one he had seen before; just as even the\nleast musical person would identify \"God save the King\" whether\nplayed with three sharps on the flute or with four flats on the\ntrombone.\n\nThere is therefore in an _Aspect_ something over and above the\nquality of the colours (or in a piece of music, of the sounds) in\nwhich that aspect is, at any particular moment, embodied for your\nsenses; something which can be detached from the particular colours\nor sounds and re-embodied in other colours or sounds, existing\nmeanwhile in a curious potential schematic condition in our memory.\nThat something is _Shape._\n\nIt is Shape which we contemplate; and it is only because they enter\ninto shapes that colours and sounds, as distinguished from\ntemperatures, textures, tastes and smells, can be said to be\ncontemplated at all. Indeed if we apply to single isolated colour or\nsound-qualities (that blue or russet, or the mere timbre of a voice or\nan orchestra) the adjective _beautiful_ while we express our liking\nfor smells, tastes, temperatures and textures merely by the adjectives\n_agreeable, delicious_; this difference in our speech is doubtless due\nto the fact that colours or sounds are more often than not connected\neach with other colours or other sounds into a Shape and thereby\nbecome subject to contemplation more frequently than temperatures,\ntextures, smells and tastes which cannot themselves be grouped into\nshapes, and are therefore objects of contemplation only when\nassociated with colours and sounds, as for instance, the smell of\nburning weeds in a description of autumnal sights, or the cool\nwetness of a grotto in the perception of its darkness and its murmur\nof waters.\n\nOn dismissing the practical and the scientific man because they were\n_thinking away from aspects to things,_ I attempted to inventory the\n_aspect_ in whose contemplation their aesthetic companion had\nremained absorbed. There were the colours, that delicious\nrecently-washed blue, that lilac and russet, which gave the man his\nimmediate shock of passive and (as much as smell and taste) bodily\npleasure. But besides these my inventory contained another kind of\nitem: what I described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply\nconvergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills, picked\nup at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down\nmerely to rush up again in long rapid concave curves. And besides\nall this, there was the outline of a distant mountain, rising flamelike\nagainst the sky. It was all these items made up of _lines_ (skyline,\noutline, and lines of perspective!) which remained unchanged when\nthe colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass,\nand unchanged also when the colouring was reduced to the barest\nmonochrome of a photograph or a pencil drawing; nay remained the\nsame despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless\npresentment of them. Those items of the aspect were, as we all know,\n_Shapes._ And with altered colours, and colours diminished to just\nenough for each line to detach itself from its ground, those Shapes\ncould be contemplated and called beautiful.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nPERCEPTION OF RELATIONS\n\nWHY should this be the case? Briefly, because colours (and sounds)\nas such are forced upon us by external stimulation of our organs of\nsight and hearing, neither more nor less than various temperatures,\ntextures, tastes and smells are forced upon us from without through\nthe nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin,\nmuscle, palate and nose. Whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly\nwilly _seen_ or _heard,_ are, at least until we know them, _looked_\nat or _listened_ to, that is to say _taken in_ or _grasped,_ by mental\nand bodily activities which meet, but may also refuse to meet, those\nsense stimulations. Moreover, because these mental and bodily\nactivities, being our own, can be rehearsed in what we call our\nmemory without the repetition of the sensory stimulations which\noriginally started them, and even in the presence of different ones.\n\nIn terms of mental science, colour and sound, like temperature,\ntexture, taste and smell, are _sensations_; while _shape_ is, in the\nmost complete sense, a _perception._ This distinction between\n_sensation_ and _perception_ is a technicality of psychology; but\nupon it rests the whole question why shapes can be contemplated\nand afford the satisfaction connected with the word _beautiful,_\nwhile colours and sounds, except as grouped or groupable into\nshapes, cannot. Moreover this distinction will prepare us for\nunderstanding the main fact of all psychological aesthetics: namely\nthat the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction which we get from shapes\nis satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what are, directly or indirectly,\nactivities of our own.\n\nEtymologically and literally, _perception_ means the act of\n_grasping_ or _taking_ in, and also the result of that action. But\nwhen we thus _perceive_ a shape, what is it precisely that we grasp\nor take in? At first it might seem to be the _sensations_ in which that\nform is embodied. But a moment's reflection will show that this\ncannot be the case, since the sensations are furnished us simply\nwithout our performing any act of perception, thrust on us from\noutside, and, unless our sensory apparatus and its correlated brain\ncentre were out of order, received by us passively, nilly willy, the\nMan on the Hill being invaded by the sense of that blue, that lilac\nand that russet exactly as he might have been invaded by the smell\nof the hay in the fields below. No: what we grasp or take in thus\nactively are not the sensations themselves, but the _relations_\nbetween these sensations, and it is of these relations, more truly than\nof the sensations themselves, that a shape is, in the most literal sense,\n_made up._ And it is this _making up of shapes,_ this grasping or\ntaking in of their constituent relations, which is an active process on\nour part, and one which we can either perform or not perform. When,\ninstead of merely _seeing_ a colour, we _look at_ a shape, our eye\nceases to be merely passive to the action of the various light-waves,\nand becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way;\nturning its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the\nstimulus, adjusting its focus like that of an opera glass, and like an\nopera glass, turning it to the right or left, higher or lower.\n\nMoreover, except in dealing with very small surfaces, our eye\nmoves about in our head and moves our head, and sometimes our\nwhole body, along with it. An analogous active process undoubtedly\ndistinguishes _listening_ from mere _hearing;_ and although\npsycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments\nof the inner ear corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye,\nit is generally recognised that auditive attention is accompanied by\nadjustments of the vocal parts, or preparations for such adjustments,\nwhich account for the impression of _following_ a sequence of\nnotes as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do\n_not_ follow, in the sense of _connecting by our activity,_\nconsecutive sensations of taste or smell. Besides such obvious or\npresumable bodily activities requisite for looking and listening as\ndistinguished from mere seeing and hearing, there is moreover in all\nperception of shape, as in all _grasping of meaning,_ a mental\nactivity involving what are called _attention_ and _memory._ A\nprimer of aesthetics is no place for expounding any of the various\npsychological definitions of either of these, let us call them, faculties.\nBesides I should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental\nfacts as can be found in the Reader's everyday (however unnoticed)\nexperience, instead of requiring for their detection the artificial\nconditions of specialised introspection or laboratory experiment. So\nI shall give to those much fought over words _attention_ and\n_memory_ merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are\nfamiliar in everyday language, and only beg the Reader to notice\nthat, whatever psychologists may eventually prove or disprove\n_attention_ and _memory_ to be, these two, let us unscientifically\ncall them _faculties,_ are what chiefly distinguishes _perception_\nfrom _sensation._ For instance, in grasping or taking stock of a\nvisible or an audible shape we are doing something with our\nattention, or our attention is doing something in us: a travelling\nabout, a returning to starting points, a summing up. And a travelling\nabout not merely between what is given simultaneously in the\npresent, but, even more, between what has been given in an\nimmediately proximate past, and what we expect to be given in an\nimmediately proximate future; both of which, the past which is put\nbehind us as past, and the past which is projected forwards as future,\nnecessitate the activity of _memory._ There is an adjustment of our\nfeelings as well as our muscles not merely to the present sensation,\nbut to the future one, and a buzz of continuing adjustment to the past.\nThere is a holding over and a holding on, a reacting backwards and\nforwards of our attention, and quite a little drama of expectation,\nfulfilment and disappointment, or as psychologists call them, of\ntensions and relaxations. And this little drama involved in all\nlooking or listening, particularly in all taking stock of visible or\naudible (and I may add intellectual or _verbal_) shape, has its\nappropriate accompaniment of emotional changes: the ease or\ndifficulty of understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat\nwhich we shall deal with later. And although the various perceptive\nactivities remain unnoticed in themselves (so long as easy and\nuninterrupted), we become aware of a lapse, a gap, whenever our\nmind's eye (if not our bodily one!) neglects to sweep from side to\nside of a geometrical figure, or from centre to circumference, or\nagain whenever our mind's ear omits following from some particular\nnote to another, just as when we fall asleep for a second during a\nlecture or sermon: we have, in common parlance, _missed the hang_\nof some detail or passage. What we have missed, in that lapse of\nattention, is a _relation,_ the length and direction of a line, or the\nspan of a musical interval, or, in the case of words, the references of\nnoun and verb, the co-ordination of tenses of a verb. And it is such\nrelations, more or less intricate and hierarchic, which transform what\nwould otherwise be meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of\nsensations into the significant entities which can be remembered and\nrecognised even when their constituent sensations are completely\naltered, namely _shapes._ To our previous formula that _beautiful_\ndenotes satisfaction in contemplating an aspect, we can now add that\nan _aspect_ consists of sensations grouped together into _relations_\nby our active, our remembering and foreseeing, perception.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nELEMENTS OF SHAPE\n\nLET us now examine some of these relations, not in the\ngenealogical or hierarchic order assigned to them by experimental\npsychology, but in so far as they constitute the elements of _shape,_\nand more especially as they illustrate the general principle which I\nwant to impress on the Reader, namely: That the perception of\nShape depends primarily upon movements which _we_ make, and\nthe measurements and comparisons which _we_ institute.\n\nAnd first we must examine mere _extension_ as such, which\ndistinguishes our active dealings with visual and audible sensations\nfrom our passive reception of the sensations of taste and smell. For\nwhile in the case of the latter a succession of similar stimulations\naffects us as \"more taste of strawberry\" or \"more smell of rose\"\nwhen intermittent, or as a vague \"there _is_ a strong or faint taste of\nstrawberry\" and a \"there is a smell of lemon flower\"--when\ncontinuous; our organ of sight being mobile, reports not \"more black\non white\" but \"so many inches of black line on a white ground,\" that\nis to say reports a certain _extension_ answering to its\nown movement. This quality of extension exists also in our\nsound-perceptions, although the explanation is less evident. Notes do not\nindeed exist (but only sounding bodies and air-vibrations) in the\nspace which we call \"real\" because our eye and our locomotion\ncoincide in their accounts of it; but notes are experienced, that is\nthought and felt, as existing in a sort of imitation space of their own.\nThis \"musical space,\" as M. Dauriac has rightly called it, has limits\ncorresponding with those of our power of hearing or reproducing\nnotes, and a central region corresponding with our habitual\nexperience of the human voice; and in this \"musical space\" notes are\nexperienced as moving up and down and with a centrifugal and\ncentripetal direction, and also as existing at definite spans or\n_intervals_ from one another; all of which probably on account of\npresumable muscular adjustments of the inner and auditive\napparatus, as well as obvious sensations in the vocal parts when we\nourselves produce, and often when we merely think of, them. In\nvisual perception the sweep of the glance, that is the adjustment of\nthe muscles of the inner eye, the outer eye and of the head, is\nsusceptible of being either interrupted or continuous like any other\nmuscular process; and its continuity is what unites the mere\nsuccessive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension,\nso that the same successive colour-and-light-sensations can be\nexperienced either as _one_ extension, or as two or more, according\nas the glance is continuous or interrupted; the eye's sweep, when not\nexcessive, tending to continuity _unless a new direction requires a\nnew muscular adjustment._ And, except in the case of an\n_extension_ exceeding any single movement of eye and head, a new\nadjustment answers to what we call _a change of direction.\nExtension_ therefore, as we have forestalled with regard to sound,\nhas various modes, corresponding to something belonging to\nourselves: a _middle,_ answering to the middle not of our field of\nvision, since that itself can be raised or lowered by a movement of\nthe head, but to the middle of our body; and an _above_ and\n_below,_ a _right_ and a _left_ referable to our body also, or rather\nto the adjustments made by eye and head in the attempt to see our\nown extremities; for, as every primer of psychology will teach you,\nmere sight and its muscular adjustments account only for the\ndimensions of height (up and down) and of breadth (right and left)\nwhile the third or cubic dimension of _depth_ is a highly complex\nresult of locomotion in which I include prehension. And inasmuch\nas we are dealing with _aspects_ and not with _things,_ we have as\nyet nothing to do with this _cubic_ or _third dimension,_ but are\nconfining ourselves to the two dimensions of extension in height and\nbreadth, which are sufficient for the existence, the identity, or more\ncorrectly the _quiddity,_ of visible shapes.\n\nSuch a shape is therefore, primarily, a series of longer or shorter\n_extensions,_ given by a separate glance towards, or away from, our\nown centre or extremities, and at some definite angle to our own\naxis and to the ground on which we stand. But these acts of\nextension and orientation cease to be thought of as measured and\norientated, and indeed as accomplished, by ourselves, and are\ntranslated into objective terms whenever our attention is turned\noutwards: thus we say that each line is of a given length and\ndirection, so or so much off the horizontal or vertical.\n\nSo far we have established relations only to ourselves. We now\ncompare the acts of extension one against the other, and we also\nmeasure the adjustment requisite to pass from one to another,\ncontinuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre; in everyday\nspeech, we perceive that the various lines are _similar_ and\n_dissimilar_ in length, direction and orientation. We _compare;_\nand comparing we _combine_ them in the unity of our intention:\nthought of together they are thought of as belonging together.\nMeanwhile the process of such comparison of the relation of each\nline with us to the analogous relation to us of its fellows, produces\nyet further acts of measurement and comparison. For in going from\none of our lines to another we become aware of the presence\nof--how shall I express it?--well of a _nothing_ between them, what we\ncall _blank space,_ because we experience a _blank_ of the\nparticular sensations, say red and black, with which we are engaged\nin those lines. Between the red and black sensations of the lines we\nare looking at, there will be a possibility of other colour sensations,\nsay the white of the paper, and these white sensations we shall duly\nreceive, for, except by shutting our eyes, we could not avoid\nreceiving them. But though received these white sensations will not\nbe attended to, because they are not what we are busied with. We\nshall be _passive_ towards the white sensations while we are\n_active_ towards the black and red ones; we shall not measure the\nwhite; not sweep our glance along it as we do along the red and the\nblack. And as _ceteris paribus_ our tense awareness of active states\nalways throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched\nbetween them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions,\nand their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the\nuninteresting white extensions as a _blank,_ a gap, as that which\nseparates the objects of our active interest, and takes what existence\nit has for our mind only from its relation of separating those\ninteresting actively measured and compared lines. Thus the\ndifference between our _active perception_ and our merely _passive\nsensation_ accounts for the fact that every visible shape is composed\nof lines (or bands) measured and compared with reference to our\nown ocular adjustments and our axis and centre; lines existing, as\nwe express it, in _blank space,_ that is to say space not similarly\nmeasured; lines, moreover, _enclosing_ between each other more of\nthis blank space, which is not measured in itself but subjected to the\nmeasurement of its enclosing lines. And similarly, every _audible_\nShape consists not merely of sounds enclosing _silence,_ but of\nheard tones between which we are aware of the intervening _blank\ninterval_ which _might have been_ occupied by the intermediary\ntones and semitones. In other words, visible and audible Shape is\ncomposed of alternations between _active,_ that is _moving,_\nmeasuring, referring, comparing, attention; and _passive,_ that is\ncomparatively sluggish _reception_ of mere sensation.\n\n\nThis fact implies another and very important one, which I have\nindeed already hinted at. If perceiving shape means comparing lines\n(they may _be bands,_ but we will call them _lines),_ and the lines\nare measured only by consecutive eye movements, then the act of\ncomparison evidently includes the co-operation, however\ninfinitesimally brief, of _memory._ The two halves of this\nChippendale chair-back exist simultaneously in front of my eyes,\nbut I cannot take stock simultaneously of the lengths and orientation\nof the curves to the right and the curves of the left. I must hold over\nthe image of one half, and unite it, somewhere in what we call \"the\nmind\"--with the other; nay, I must do this even with the separate\ncurves constituting the patterns each of which is measured by a\nsweep of the glance, even as I should measure them successively by\napplying a tape and then remembering and comparing their various\nlengths, although the ocular process may stand to the tape-process as\na minute of our time to several hundreds of years. This comes to\nsaying that the perception of visible shapes, even like that of audible\nones, takes place _in time,_ and requires therefore the\nco-operation of _memory._ Now memory, paradoxical as it may sound,\npractically implies _expectation:_ the use of the past, to so speak, is\nto become that visionary thing we call the _future._ Hence, while we\nare measuring the extension and direction of one line, we are not\nonly _remembering_ the extent and direction of another previously\nmeasured line, but we are also _expecting_ a similar, or somewhat\nsimilar, act of measurement of the _next_ line; even as in \"following\na melody\" we not only remember the preceding tone, but _expect_\nthe succeeding ones. Such interplay of present, past and future is\nrequisite for every kind of _meaning,_ for every _unit of thought_;\nand among others, of the meaning, the _thought,_ which we\ncontemplate under the name of _shape._ It is on account of this\ninterplay of present, past and future, that Wundt counts feelings _of\ntension_ and _relaxation_ among the _elements_ of form-perception.\nAnd the mention of such _feelings,_ i.e. rudiments of _emotion,_\nbrings us to recognise that the remembering and foreseeing of our\nacts of measurement and orientation constitutes a microscopic\npsychological drama--shall we call it the drama of the SOUL\nMOLECULES?--whose first familiar examples are those two\npeculiarities of visible and audible shape called _Symmetry_ and\n_Rythm._\n\nBoth of these mean that a measurement has been made, and that the\ndegree of its _span_ is kept in memory to the extent of our expecting\nthat the next act of measurement will be similar. _Symmetry_\nexists quite as much in _Time_ (hence in shapes made up of\nsound-relations) as in _Space;_ and _Rythm,_ which is commonly thought\nof as an especially musical relation, exists as much in _Space_ as in\n_Time_; because the perception of shape requires Time and\nmovement equally whether the relations are between objectively\nco-existent and durable marks on stone or paper, or between objectively\nsuccessive and fleeting sound-waves. Also because, while the single\nrelations of lines and of sounds require to be ascertained\nsuccessively, the combination of those various single relations, their\nrelations with one another _as whole and parts,_ require to be\ngrasped by an intellectual synthesis; as much in the case of notes as\nin the case of lines. If, in either case, we did not remember the first\nmeasurement when we obtained the second, there would be no\nperception of shape however elementary; which is the same as\nsaying that for an utterly oblivious mind there could be no\nrelationships, and therefore no meaning. In the case of Symmetry\nthe relations are not merely the lengths and directions of the single\nlines, that is to say their relations to ourselves, and the relation\nestablished by comparison between these single lines; there is now\nalso the relation of both to a third, itself of course related to\nourselves, indeed, as regards visible shape, usually answering to our\nown axis. The expectation which is liable to fulfilling or balking is\ntherefore that of a repetition of this double relationship remembered\nbetween the lengths and directions on one side, by the lengths and\ndirections on the other; and the repetition of a common relation to a\ncentral item.\n\nThe case of RYTHM is more complex. For, although we usually\nthink of Rythm as a relation of _two_ items, it is in reality a relation\nof four (or more ); because what we remember and expect is a\nmixture of similarity with dissimilarity between lengths, directions\nor impacts. OR IMPACTS. For with Rythm we come to another\npoint illustrative of the fact that all shape-elements depend upon our\nown activity and its modes. A rythmical arrangement is not\nnecessarily one between _objectively_ alternated elements like\nobjectively longer or shorter lines of a pattern, or _objectively_\nhigher or lower or longer and shorter notes. Rythm exists equally\nwhere the objective data, the sense stimulations, are uniform, as is\nthe case with the ticks of a clock. These ticks would be registered as\nexactly similar by appropriate instruments. But our mind is not such\nan impassive instrument: our mind (whatever our mind may really\nbe) is subject to an alternation of _more_ and _less,_ of _vivid_ and\n_less vivid, important_ and _less important,_ of _strong_ and\n_weak;_ and the objectively similar stimulations from outside, of\nsound or colour or light, are perceived as vivid or less vivid,\nimportant or less important, according to the beat of this mutual\nalternation with which they coincide: thus the uniform, ticking of the\nclock will be perceived by us as a succession in which the stress,\nthat is the importance, is thrown upon the first or the second member\nof a group; and the recollection and expectation are therefore of a\nunity of dissimilar importance. We hear STRONG-WEAK; and\nremembering _strong-weak,_ we make a new _strong-weak_ out of\nthat objective uniformity. Here there is no objective reason for one\nrythm more than another; and we express this by saying that the\ntickings of a clock have no intrinsic form. For _Form,_ or as I prefer\nto call it, _Shape,_ although it exists only in the mind capable of\nestablishing and correlating its constituent relationships, takes an\nobjective existence when the material stimulations from the outer\nworld are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same\nseries and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains\nwhy the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to\nthe mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective\nstimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations\nin time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which\nwould, _ceteris paribus,_ have been provoked in himself if that\nshape had not existed first of all _only_ in his mind.\n\nA further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a\ncombination of active measurements and comparisons, and of\nremembrance and expectations, is found in a fact which has very\ngreat importance in all artistic dealings with shapes. I have spoken,\nfor simplicity's, sake, as if the patches of colour on a blank (i.e.\nuninteresting) ground along which the glance sweeps, were\ninvariably contiguous and continuous. But these colour patches, and\nthe sensations they afford us, are just as often, discontinuous in the\nhighest degree; and the lines constituting a shape may, as for\ninstance in constellations, be entirely imaginary. The fact is that\nwhat we feel as a line is not an objective continuity of\ncolour-or-light-patches, but the continuity of our glance's sweep which\nmay either accompany this objective continuity or replace it. Indeed\nsuch imaginary lines thus established between isolated colour patches,\nare sometimes felt as more vividly existing than real ones, because the\nglance is not obliged to take stock of their parts, but can rush freely\nfrom extreme point to extreme point. Moreover not only half the\neffectiveness of design, but more than half the efficiency of practical\nlife, is due to our establishing such imaginary lines. We are\ninevitably and perpetually dividing visual space (and something of\nthe sort happens also with \"musical space\") by objectively\nnon-existent lines answering to our own bodily orientation. Every course,\nevery trajectory, is of this sort. And every drawing executed by an\nartist, every landscape, offered us by \"Nature,\" is felt, because it is\nmeasured, with reference to a set of imaginary horizontals or\nperpendiculars. While, as I remember the late Mr G. F. Watts\nshowing me, every curve which we look at is _felt as being_ part of\nan imaginary circle into which it could be prolonged. Our sum of\nmeasuring and comparing activities, and also our dramas of\nremembrance and expectation, are therefore multiplied by these\nimaginary lines, whether they connect, constellation-wise, a few\nisolated colour indications, or whether they are established as\nstandards of reference (horizontals, verticals, etc.) for other really\nexisting lines; or whether again they be thought of, like those circles,\nas _wholes_ of which objectively perceived series of colour patches\nmight possibly be _parts._ In all these cases imaginary lines are\n_felt,_ as existing, inasmuch as we feel the movement by which we\nbring them into existence, and even feel that such a movement might\nbe made by us when it is not.\n\nSo far, however, I have dealt with these imaginary lines only as an\nadditional proof that shape-perception is an establishment of two\ndimensional relationships, through our own activities, and an active\nremembering, foreseeing and combining thereof.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nFACILITY AND DIFFICULTY OF GRASPING\n\nOF this we get further proof when we proceed to another and less\nelementary relationship implied in the perception of shape: the\nrelation of Whole and Parts.\n\nIn dealing with the _ground_ upon which we perceive our red and\nblack patches to be extended, I have already pointed out that our\noperations of measuring and comparing are not applied to all the\npatches of colour which we actually see, but only to such as we\n_look at_; an observation equally applicable to sounds. In other\nwords our attention selects certain sensations, and limits to these all\nthat establishing of relations, all that measuring and comparing, all\nthat remembering and expecting; the other sensations being\nexcluded. Now, while whatever is thus merely seen, but not looked\nat, is excluded as so much _blank_ or _otherness_; whatever is, on\nthe contrary, _included_ is thereby credited with the quality of\nbelonging, that is to say being included, together. And the more the\nattention alternates between the measuring of _included_ extensions\nand directions and the expectation of equivalent (symmetrical or\nrythmical) extensions or directions or stresses, the closer will\nbecome the relation of these items _included_ by our attention and\nthe more foreign will become the _excluded otherness_ from which,\nas we feel, they _detach themselves._ But--by an amusing\nparadox--these lines measured and compared by our attention, are\nthemselvesnot only _excluding_ so much _otherness or blank;_ they also\ntend, so soon as referred to one another, to _include_ some of this\nuninteresting blankness; and it is across this more or less completely\nincluded blankness that the eye (and the imagination!) draw such\nimaginary lines as I have pointed out with reference to the\nconstellations. Thus a circle, say of red patches, _excludes_ some of\nthe white paper on which it is drawn; but it _includes_ or _encloses_\nthe rest. Place a red patch somewhere on that _enclosed_ blank; our\nglance and attention will now play not merely along the red\ncircumference, but to and fro between the red circumference and the\nred patch, thereby establishing imaginary but thoroughly measured\nand compared lines between the two. Draw a red line from the red\npatch to the red circumference; you will begin expecting similar\nlengths on the other sides of the red patch, and you will become\naware that these imaginary lines are, or are not, equal; in other\nwords, that the red patch is, or is not, equidistant from every point of\nthe red circumference. And if the red patch is not thus in the middle,\nyou will expect, and imagine another patch which _is;_ and from\nthis _imaginary centre_ you will draw imaginary lines, that is you\nwill make by no means imaginary glance-sweeps, to the red\ncircumference. Thus you may go on adding real red lines and\nimaginary lines connecting them with the circumference; and the\nmore you do so the more you will feel that all these real lines and\nimaginary lines and all the blank space which the latter measure, are\nconnected, or susceptible of being connected, closer and closer,\nevery occasional excursion beyond the boundary only bringing you\nback with an increased feeling of this interconnexion, and an\nincreased expectation of realising it in further details. But if on one\nof these glance-flickings beyond the circumference, your attention is\ncaught by some colour patch or series of colour patches outside of it,\nyou will either cease being interested in the circle and wander away\nto the new colour patches; or more probably, try to connect that\noutlying colour with the circle and its radii; or again failing that, you\nwill \"overlook it,\" as, in a pattern of concentric circles you overlook\na colour band which, as you express it \"has nothing to do with it,\"\nthat is with what you are looking at. Or again listening to. For if a\nchurch-bell mixes its tones and rythm with that of a symphony you\nare listening to, you may try and bring them in, make a place for\nthem, _expect_ them among the other tones or rythms. Failing\nwhich you will, after a second or two, cease to notice those bells,\ncease to listen to them, giving all your attention once more to the\nsonorous whole whence you have expelled those intruders; or else,\nagain, the intrusion will become an interruption, and the bells, once\n_listened to,_ will prevent your listening adequately to the\nsymphony.\n\nMoreover, if the number of extensions, directions, real or imaginary\nlines or musical intervals, alternations of _something_ and\n_nothing,_ prove too great for your powers of measurement and\ncomparison, particularly if it all surpass your habitual interplay of\nrecollection and expectation, you will say (as before an over\nintricate pattern or a piece of music of unfamiliar harmonies and\nrythm) that \"you can't grasp it\"--that you \"miss the hang of it.\" And\nwhat you will feel is that you cannot keep the parts within the whole,\nthat the boundary vanishes, that what has been included unites with\nthe excluded, in fact that all _shape_ welters into chaos. And as if to\nprove once more the truth of our general principle, you will have a\nhateful feeling of having been trifled with. What has been balked\nand wasted are all your various activities of measuring, comparing\nand co-ordinating; what has been trifled with are your expectations.\nAnd so far from contemplating with satisfaction the objective cause\nof all this vexation and disappointment, you will avoid\ncontemplating it at all, and explain your avoidance by calling that\nchaotic or futile assemblage of lines or of notes \"ugly.\"\n\nWe seem thus to have got a good way in our explanation; and indeed\nthe older psychology, for instance of the late Grant Allen, did not\nget any further. But to explain why a shape difficult to perceive\nshould be disliked and called \"ugly,\" by no means amounts to\nexplaining why some other shape should be liked and called\n\"beautiful,\" particularly as some ugly shapes happen to be far easier\nto grasp than some beautiful ones. The Reader will indeed remember\nthat there is a special pleasure attached to all overcoming of\ndifficulty, and to all understanding. But this double pleasure is\nshared with form-perception by every other successful grasping of\nmeaning; and there is no reason why that pleasure should be\nrepeated in the one case more than in the other; nor why we should\nrepeat looking at (which is what we mean by contemplating) a shape\nonce we have grasped it, any more than we continue to dwell on, to\nreiterate the mental processes by which we have worked out a\ngeometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux. The\nsense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty\novercome; the sense of illumination ends with the acquisition of a\npiece of information; and we pass on to some new obstacle and\nsome new riddle. But it is different in the case of what we call\n_Beautiful. Beautiful_ means satisfactory for contemplation, _i.e._\nfor reiterated perception; and the very essence of contemplative\nsatisfaction is its desire for such reiteration. The older psychology\nwould perhaps have explained this reiterative tendency by the\npleasurableness of the sensory elements, the mere colours and\nsounds of which the easily perceived shape is made up. But this does\nnot explain why, given that other shapes are made up of equally\nagreeable sensory elements, we should not pass on from a once\nperceived shape or combination of shapes to a new one, thus\nobtaining, in addition to the sensory agreeableness of colour or\nsound, a constantly new output of that feeling of victory and\nillumination attendant on every successful intellectual effort. Or, in\nother words, seeing that painting and music employ sensory\nelements already selected as agreeable, we ought never to wish to\nsee the same picture twice, or to continue looking at it; we ought\nnever to wish to repeat the same piece of music or its separate\nphrases; still less to cherish that picture or piece of music in our\nmemory, going over and over again as much of its shape as had\nbecome our permanent possession.\n\nWe return therefore to the fact that although balked perception is\nenough to make us reject a shape as _ugly, i.e._ such that we avoid\nentering into contemplation of it, easy perception is by no means\nsufficient to make us cherish a shape _as beautiful, i.e._ such that\nthe reiteration of our drama of perception becomes desirable. And\nwe shall have to examine whether there may not be some other\nfactor of shape-perception wherewith to account for this preference\nof reiterated looking at the same to looking at something else.\n\nMeanwhile we may add to our set of formulae: difficulty in\nshape-perception makes contemplation disagreeable and impossible, and\nhence earns for aspects the adjective _ugly._ But facility in\nperception, like agreeableness of sensation by no means suffices for\nsatisfied contemplation, and hence for the use of the adjective\nBeautiful.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nSUBJECT AND OBJECT\n\nBUT before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception,\nnamely that of Empathic Interpretation, I require to forestall an\nobjection which my Reader has doubtless been making throughout\nmy last chapters; more particularly that in clearing away the ground\nof this objection I shall be able to lay the foundations of my further\nedifice of explanation. The objection is this: if the man on the hill\nwas aware of performing any, let alone all, of the various operations\ndescribed as constituting shape-perception, neither that man nor any\nother human being would be able to enjoy the shapes thus perceived.\n\nMy answer is:\n\nWhen did I say or imply that he was _aware_ of doing any of it? It is\nnot only possible, but extremely common, to perform processes\nwithout being aware of performing them. The man was not _aware,_\nfor instance, of making eye adjustments and eye movements, unless\nindeed his sight was out of order. Yet his eye movements could have\nbeen cinematographed, and his eye adjustments have been described\nminutely in a dozen treatises. He was no more aware of _doing_ any\nmeasuring or comparing than we are aware of _doing_ our digestion\nor circulation, except when we do them badly. But just as we are\naware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of\nbeing aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate\nperformance, so he was aware of his measuring and comparing,\ninasmuch as he was aware that the line A--B was longer than the\nline C--D, or that the point E was half an inch to the left of the point\nF. For so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called\nupon to make a choice between two possible proceedings, nor forced\nto do or suffer something difficult or distressing, in fact so long as\nwe are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our\nprocesses of attending, those processes are replaced in our\nawareness by the very facts--for instance the proportions and\nrelations of lines--resulting from their activity. That these results\nshould not resemble their cause, that mental elements (as they are\ncalled) should appear and disappear, and also combine into\nunaccountable compounds (Browning's \"not a third sound, but a\nstar\") according as we attend to them, is indeed the besetting\ndifficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it\nstudies. But it is so because it is one of Psychology's basic facts.\nAnd, so far as we are at present concerned, this difference between\nmental processes and their results is the fact upon which\npsychological aesthetics are based. And it is not in order to convert\nthe Man on the Hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception,\nnor even to explain why he was not aware of them, that I am\ninsisting upon this point. The principle I have been expounding, let\nus call it that of the _merging of the perceptive activities of the\nsubject in the qualities of the object of perception,_ explains another\nand quite as important mental process which was going on in that\nunsuspecting man.\n\nBut before proceeding to that I must make it clearer how that man\nstood in the matter of _awareness of himself._ He was, indeed,\naware of himself whenever, during his contemplation of that\nlandscape, the thought arose, \"well, I must be going away, and\nperhaps I shan't see this place again\"--or some infinitely abbreviated\nform, perhaps a mere sketched out gesture of turning away,\naccompanied by a slight feeling of _clinging,_ he couldn't for the\nlife of him say in what part of his body. He was at that moment\nacutely aware that he _did not want_ to do something which it was\noptional to do. Or, if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of\ngoing away, aware that he _wanted to come back,_ or at all events\nwanted to carry off as much as possible of what he had seen. In short\nhe was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing himself\naway, or, if some other person or mere habit, saved him this effort,\nhe was aware of himself making another effort to impress that\nlandscape on his memory, and aware of a future self making an\neffort to return to it. I call it _effort_; you may, if you prefer, call it\nwill; at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a\nverb to _cling to,_ (in the future tense) _return to,_ to _choose as\nagainst some other alternative_; as nominative of a verb briefly, _to\nlike_ or _love._ And the accusative of these verbs would be the\nlandscape. But unless the man's contemplation was thus shot with\nsimilar ideas of some action or choice of his own, he would express\nthe situation by saying \"this landscape _is_ awfully beautiful.\"\n\nThis IS. I want you to notice the formula, by which the landscape,\nceasing to be the accusative of the man's looking and thinking,\nbecomes the nominative of a verb _to be so-and-so._ That\ngrammatical transformation is the sign of what I have designated, in\nphilosophical language, _as the merging of the activities of the\nsubject in the object._ It takes place already in the domain of simple\nsensation whenever, instead of saying \"_I_ taste or _I_ smell\nsomething nice or nasty\" we say--\"_this thing_ tastes or smells nice\nor nasty.\" And I have now shown you how this tendency to put the\ncart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex\nand active processes called perception; turning \"I measure this\nline\"--\"I compare these two angles\" into \"this line _extends_ from A to\nB\"--\"these two angles _are equal_ to two right angles.\"\n\nBut before getting to the final inversion--\"this landscape _is_\nbeautiful\" instead of \"_I_ like this landscape\"--there is yet another,\nand far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the\nqualities of the object. This further putting of the cart before the\nhorse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what only the horse\ncan be doing!) falls under the head of what German psychologists\ncall _Einfuehlung,_ or \"Infeeling\"--which Prof. Titchener has\ntranslated _Empathy._ Now this new, and comparatively newly\ndiscovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which,\nleaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound\nsensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever\nsatisfaction we connect with the word Beautiful. And I have already\ngiven the Reader an example of such Empathy when I described the\nlandscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline\n\"_dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves_\";\nto which I might have added that there was also a plain which\n_extended,_ a valley which _wound along,_ paths which _climbed_\nand roads which _followed_ the _undulations_ of the land. But the\nbest example was when I said that opposite to the man there was a\ndistant mountain _rising_ against the sky.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nEMPATHY\n\n_THE mountain rises._ What do we mean when we employ this\nform of words? Some mountains, we are told, have originated in an\n_upheaval._ But even if this particular mountain did, we never saw\nit and geologists are still disputing about HOW and WHETHER. So\nthe _rising_ we are talking about is evidently not that probable or\nimprobable _upheaval._ On the other hand all geologists tell us that\nevery mountain is undergoing a steady _lowering_ through its\nparticles being weathered away and washed down; and our\nknowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain,\nso far from rising, is _descending._ Of course we all know that,\nobjects the Reader, and of course nobody imagines that the rock and\nthe earth of the mountain is rising, or that the mountain is getting up\nor growing taller! All we mean is that the mountain _looks_ as if it\nwere rising.\n\nThe mountain _looks!_ Surely here is a case of putting the cart\nbefore the horse. No; we cannot explain the mountain _rising_ by\nthe mountain _looking,_ for the only _looking_ in the business is\n_our_ looking _at_ the mountain. And if the Reader objects again\nthat these are all _figures of speech,_ I shall answer that _Empathy_\nis what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and\noccasionally employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain,\nwhen we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen\nexpresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. Very well; then,\n(says the Reader) we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely:\nwhen we look at the mountain _we somehow or other think of the\naction of rising._ Is that sufficiently literal and indisputable?\n\nSo literal and indisputable a statement of the case, I answer, that it\nexplains, when we come to examine it, why we have said that the\nmountain rises. For if the Reader remembers my chapter on\nshape-perception, he will have no difficulty in answering why we should\nhave a thought of rising when we look at the mountain, since we\ncannot look at the mountain, nor at a tree, a tower or anything of\nwhich we similarly say that it _rises,_ without lifting our glance,\nraising our eye and probably raising our head and neck, all of which\nraising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something\n_rising._ The rising of which we are aware is going on in us. But, as\nthe Reader will remember also, when we are engrossed by\nsomething outside ourselves, as we are engrossed in looking at the\nshape (for we can _look_ at only the shape, not the _substance)_ of\nthat mountain we cease thinking about ourselves, and cease thinking\nabout ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the\nmountain's shape. What becomes therefore of our awareness of\nraising or lifting or _rising?_ What can become of it (so long as it\ncontinues to be there!) except that it coalesces with the shape we are\nlooking at; in short that the _rising_ continuing to be thought, but no\nlonger to be thought of with reference to ourselves (since we aren't\nthinking of ourselves), is thought of in reference to what we _are_\nthinking about, namely the mountain, or rather the mountain's shape,\nwhich is, so to speak, responsible for any thought of rising, since it\nobliges us to lift, raise or rise ourselves in order to take stock of\nit. It is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done\nby our eye to the line of which we say that it _extends_ from A to B,\nwhen in reality the only _extending_ has been the extending of our\nglance. It is a case of what I have called the tendency to merge the\n_activities_ of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the\nperceived object. Indeed if I insisted so much upon this tendency of\nour mind, I did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the\nphenomenon of _Empathy,_ as we have just seen it exemplified in\nthe _mountain which rises._\n\nIf this is Empathy, says the Reader (relieved and reassured), am I to\nunderstand that Empathy is nothing beyond _attributing what goes\non in us when we look at a shape to the shape itself?_\n\nI am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple! If what we\nattributed to each single shape was only the precise action which we\nhappen to be accomplishing in the process of looking at it, Empathy\nwould indeed be a simple business, but it would also be a\ncomparatively poor one. No. The _rising_ of the mountain is an idea\nstarted by the awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes,\nhead or neck, and it is an idea containing the awareness of that\nlifting or raising. But it is far more than the idea merely of that\nlifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present\nmoment and in connexion with this particular mountain. That\npresent and particular raising and lifting is merely the nucleus to\nwhich gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of raising, or\n_rising._ which we have ever accomplished or seen accomplished,\n_raising_ or _rising_ not only of our eyes and head, but of every\nother part of our body, and of every part of every other body which\nwe ever perceived to be rising. And not merely the thought of past\n_rising_ but the thought also of future rising. All these risings, done\nby ourselves or watched in others, actually experienced or merely\nimagined, have long since united together in our mind, constituting a\nsort of composite photograph whence all differences are eliminated\nand wherein all similarities are fused and intensified: the general\nidea of _rising,_ not \"I rise, rose, will rise, it rises, has risen or will\nrise\" but merely _rising as_ such, _rising_ as it is expressed not in\nany particular tense or person of the verb _to rise,_ but in that verb's\ninfinitive. It is this universally applicable notion of rising, which is\nstarted in our mind by the awareness of the particular present acts of\nraising or rising involved in our looking at that mountain, and it is\nthis general idea of rising, _i.e._ of _upward movement,_ which gets\ntransferred to the mountain along with our own particular present\nactivity of raising some part of us, and which thickens and enriches\nand marks that poor little thought of a definite raising with the\ninterest, the emotional fullness gathered and stored up in its long\nmanifold existence. In other words: what we are transferring (owing\nto that tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving subject\nwith the qualities of the perceived object) from ourselves to the\nlooked at shape of the mountain, is not merely the thought of the\nrising which is really being done by us at that moment, but the\nthought and emotion, the _idea of rising as such_ which had been\naccumulating in our mind long before we ever came into the\npresence of that particular mountain. And it is this complex mental\nprocess, by which we (all unsuspectingly) invest that inert mountain,\nthat bodiless shape, with the stored up and averaged and essential\nmodes of our activity--it is this process whereby we make the\nmountain _raise itself,_ which constitutes what, accepting Prof.\nTitchener's translation[*] of the German word _Einfuehlung,_ I have\ncalled Empathy.\n\n[*] From _en_ and _pascho, epathon_.\n\nThe German word _Einfuehlung_ \"feeling into\"--derived from a\n_verb to feel oneself into something_ (\"sich in Etwas ein fuehlen\")\nwas in current use even before Lotze and Viscber applied it to\naesthetics, and some years before Lipps (1897) and Wundt (1903)\nadopted it into psychological terminology; and as it is now\nconsecrated, and no better occurs to me, I have had to adopt it,\nalthough the literal connotations of the German word have\nsurrounded its central meaning (as I have just defined it) with\nseveral mischievous misinterpretations. Against two of these I think\nit worth while to warn the Reader, especially as, while so doing, I\ncan, in showing what it is not, make it even clearer what Empathy\nreally is. The first of these two main misinterpretations is based\nupon the reflexive form of the German verb \"_sich einfuehlen_\" (to\nfeel _oneself_ into) and it defines, or rather does not define,\nEmpathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the\nego into the object or shape under observation; a notion\nincompatible with the fact that Empathy, being only another of those\nvarious mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the\nqualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already dealt,\ndepends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought\nof an ego; if we became aware that it is _we_ who are thinking the\nrising, we who are _feeling_ the rising, we should not think or feel\nthat the mountain did the rising. The other (and as we shall later see)\nmore justifiable misinterpretation of the word Empathy is based on\nits analogy with _sympathy,_ and turns it into a kind of sympathetic,\nor as it has been called, _inner, i.e._ merely _felt, mimicry_ of, for\ninstance, the mountain's _rising._ Such mimicry, not only _inner_\nand _felt,_ but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result\nfrom very lively _empathic_ imagination. But as it is the mimicking,\ninner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the _rising_ of\nthe mountain, take place only in our imagination, it presupposes\nsuch previous animation of the inanimate, and cannot therefore be\ntaken either as constituting or explaining Empathy itself.\n\nSuch as I have defined and exemplified it in our Rising Mountain,\nEmpathy is, together with mere Sensation, probably the chief factor\nof preference, that is of an alternative of satisfaction and\ndissatisfaction, in aesthetic contemplation, the muscular adjustments\nand the measuring, comparing and coordinating activities by which\nEmpathy is started, being indeed occasionally difficult and\ndistressing, but giving in themselves little more than a negative\nsatisfaction, at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense\nrelieved. But although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation\nof shapes, Empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental\nlife. It is, indeed, one of our simpler, though far from absolutely\nelementary, psychological processes, entering into what is called\nimagination, sympathy, and also into that inference from our own\ninner experience which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer\nworld, and given to the intermittent and heterogeneous sensations\nreceived from without the framework of our constant and highly\nunified inner experience, that is to say, of our own activities and\naims. Empathy can be traced in all of modes of speech and thought,\nparticularly in the universal attribution of _doing_ and _having_ and\n_tending_ where all we can really assert is successive and varied\n_being._ Science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic\nimplications of _Force_ and _Energy, Attraction_ and _Repulsion_;\nand philosophy has reduced _Cause_ and _Effect_ from implying\nintention and effort to meaning mere constant succession. But\nEmpathy still helps us to many valuable analogies; and it is possible\nthat without its constantly checked but constantly renewed action,\nhuman thought would be without logical cogency, as it certainly\nwould be without poetical charm. Indeed if Empathy is so recent a\ndiscovery, this may be due to its being part and parcel of our\nthinking; so that we are surprised to learn its existence, as Moliere's\ngood man was to hear that be talked prose.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE MOVEMENT OF LINES\n\nANY tendency to Empathy is perpetually being checked by the need\nfor practical thinking. We are made to think in the most summary\nfashion from one to another of those grouped possibilities, past,\npresent and future, which we call a Thing; and in such discursive\nthinking we not only leave far behind the _aspect,_ the shape, which\nhas started a given scheme of Empathy, a given _movement of\nlines,_ but we are often faced by facts which utterly contradict it.\nWhen, instead of looking at a particular _aspect_ of that mountain,\nwe set to climbing it ourselves, the mountain ceases to \"rise\"; it\nbecomes passive to the activity which our muscular sensations and\nour difficulty of breathing locate most unmistakably in ourselves.\nBesides which, in thus dealing with the mountain as a _thing,_ we\nare presented with a series of totally different aspects or shapes,\nsome of which suggest empathic activities totally different from that\nof rising. And the mountain in question, seen from one double its\nheight, will suggest the empathic activity of _spreading itself out._\nMoreover practical life hustles us into a succession of more and\nmore summary perceptions; we do not actually see more than is\nnecessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with\nand the adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is,\nas to what it is likely to become. And this which is true of seeing\nwith the bodily eye, is even more so of seeing, or rather _not_ seeing\nbut _recognising,_ with the eye of the spirit. The practical man on\nthe hill, and his scientific companion, (who is merely, so to speak, a\nman _unpractically_ concerned with practical causes and changes)\ndo not thoroughly see the shapes of the landscape before them; and\nstill less do they see the precise shape of the funiculars, tramways,\noffices, cheques, volcanoes, ice-caps and prehistoric inhabitants of\ntheir thoughts. There is not much chance of Empathy and Empathy's\npleasures and pains in their lightning-speed, touch-and-go visions!\n\nBut now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically\ncontemplative fellow-traveller. And, for simplicity's sake, let us\nimagine him contemplating more especially one shape in that\nlandscape, the shape of that distant mountain, the one whose\n\"rising\"--came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it. The\nmountain is so far off that its detail is entirely lost; all we can see is\na narrow and pointed cone, perhaps a little _toppling_ to one side, of\nuniform hyacinth blue _detaching_ itself from the clear evening sky,\ninto which, from the paler misty blue of the plain, it _rises,_ a mere\nbodiless shape. It _rises._ There is at present no doubt about its\n_rising._ It rises and keeps on rising, never stopping unless _we_\nstop looking at it. It rises and never _has_ risen. Its drama of two\nlines _striving_ (one with more suddenness of energy and purpose\nthan the other) to _arrive_ at a particular imaginary point in the sky,\n_arresting_ each other's _progress_ as they _meet_ in their\n_endeavour,_ this simplest empathic action of an irregular and by no\nmeans rectilinear triangle, goes on repeating itself, like the parabola\nof a steadily spirting fountain: for ever accomplishing itself anew\nand for ever accompanied by the same effect on the feelings of the\nbeholder.\n\nIt is this reiterative nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness,\ngives Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have\ntried to make clear to the Reader, is due not only to the movements\nwhich we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to\npresent movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and\nfacility and their accompanying intentions; it is due at least as much\nto our accumulated and averaged past experience of movements of\nthe same kind, also with _their_ cognate various modes of speed,\nintensity, facility, and _their_ accompanying intentions. And being\nthus residual averaged, and essential, this empathic movement, this\nmovement attributed to the lines of a shape, is not clogged and\ninhibited by whatever clogs and inhibits each separate concrete\nexperience of the kind; still less is it overshadowed in our awareness\nby the _result_ which we foresee as goal of our real active\nproceedings. For unless they involve bodily or mental strain, our\nreal and therefore transient movements do not affect us as pleasant\nor unpleasant, because our attention is always outrunning them to\nsome momentary goal; and the faint awareness of them is usually\nmixed up with other items, sensations and perceptions, of wholly\ndifferent characters. Thus, in themselves and apart from their aims,\nour bodily movements are never interesting except inasmuch as\nrequiring new and difficult adjustments, or again as producing\nperceptible repercussions in our circulatory, breathing and balancing\napparatus: a waltz, or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly\nexciting, thanks to its resultant organic perturbations and its\nconcomitants of overcome difficulty and danger, but even a dancing\ndervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the\nspecific interest of movement as movement. Yet every movement\nwhich we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of\nvital economy, a change in our balance of bodily and mental\nexpenditure and replenishment; and this, if brought to our awareness,\nis not only interesting, but interesting in the sense either of pleasure\nor displeasure, since it implies the more or less furtherance or\nhindrance of our life-processes. Now it is this complete awareness,\nthis brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes, in our various\nand variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as _energy_\nand _intention,_ it is this sense of the _values of movement_ which\nEmpathy, by its schematic simplicity and its reiteration, is able to\nreinstate. The contemplation, that is to say the _isolating and\nreiterating perception,_ of shapes and in so far of the qualities and\nrelations of movement which Empathy invests them with, therefore\nshields our dynamic sense from all competing interests, clears it\nfrom all varying and irrelevant concomitants, gives it, as Faust\nwould have done to the instant of happiness, a sufficient duration;\nand reinstating it in the centre of our consciousness, allows it to add\nthe utmost it can to our satisfaction or dissatisfaction.\n\nHence the mysterious importance, the attraction or repulsion,\npossessed by shapes, audible as well as visible, according to their\nempathic character; movement and energy, all that we feel as being\nlife, is furnished by them in its essence and allowed to fill our\nconsciousness. This fact explains also another phenomenon, which\nin its turn greatly adds to the power of that very Empathy of which it\nis a result. I am speaking once more of that phenomenon called\n_Inner Mimicry_ which certain observers, themselves highly subject\nto it, have indeed considered as Empathy's explanation, rather than\nits result. In the light of all I have said about the latter, it becomes\nintelligible that when empathic imagination (itself varying from\nindividual to individual) happens to be united to a high degree of\n(also individually very varying) muscular responsiveness, there may\nbe set up reactions, actual or incipient, _e.g._ alterations of bodily\nattitude or muscular tension which (unless indeed they withdraw\nattention from the contemplated object to our own body) will\nnecessarily add to the sum of activity empathically attributed to the\ncontemplated object. There are moreover individuals in whom such\n\"mimetic\" accompaniment consists (as is so frequently the case in\nlistening to music) in changes of the bodily balance, the breathing\nand heart-beats, in which cases additional doses of satisfaction or\ndissatisfaction result from the participation of bodily functions\nthemselves so provocative of comfort or discomfort. Now it is\nobvious that such mimetic accompaniments, and every other\nassociative repercussion into the seat of what our fathers correctly\ncalled \"animal spirits,\" would be impossible unless reiteration, the\nreiteration of repeated acts of attention, had allowed the various\nempathic significance, the various _dynamic values,_ of given\nshapes to sink so deeply into us, to become so habitual, that even a\nrapid glance (as when we perceive the upspringing lines of a\nmountain from the window of an express train) may suffice to evoke\ntheir familiar dynamic associations. Thus contemplation explains, so\nto speak, why contemplation may be so brief as to seem no\ncontemplation at all: past repetition has made present repetition\nunnecessary, and the empathic, the dynamic scheme of any\nparticular shape may go on working long after the eye is fixed on\nsomething else, or be started by what is scarcely a perception at all;\nwe feel joy at the mere foot-fall of some beloved person, but we do\nso because he is already beloved. Thus does the reiterative character\nessential to Empathy explain how our contemplative satisfaction in\nshapes, our pleasure in the variously combined _movements of\nlines,_ irradiates even the most practical, the apparently least\ncontemplative, moments and occupations of our existence.\n\nBut this is not all. This reiterative character of Empathy, this fact\nthat the mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or\nadding a single cubit to its stature, joined to the abstract (the\n_infinitive of the verb)_ nature of the suggested activity, together\naccount for art's high impersonality and its existing, in a manner,\n_sub specie aeternitatis._ The drama of lines and curves presented\nby the humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the\nstrange immortality of the youths and maidens on the _Grecian\nUrn,_ to whom Keats, as you remember, says:--\n\n\"Fond lover, never, never canst thou kiss,\nThough winning near the goal. Yet, do not grieve;\nShe cannot fade; though thou hast not thy bliss,\nFor ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.\"\n\nAnd thus, in considering the process of Aesthetic Empathy, we find\nourselves suddenly back at our original formula: Beautiful means\nsatisfactory in contemplation, and contemplation not of Things but\nof Shapes which are only Aspects of them.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE CHARACTER OF SHAPES\n\nIN my example of the Rising Mountain, I have been speaking as if\nEmpathy invested the shapes we look at with only one mode of\nactivity at a time. This, which I have assumed for the simplicity of\nexposition, is undoubtedly true in the case either of extremely\nsimple shapes requiring _few_ and homogeneous perceptive\nactivities. It is true also in the case of shapes of which familiarity (as\nexplained on p. 76) has made the actual perception very summary;\nfor instance when, walking quickly among trees, we notice only\nwhat I may call their dominant empathic gesture of _thrusting_ or\n_drooping_ their branches, because habit allows us to pick out the\nmost characteristic outlines. But, except in these and similar cases,\nthe _movement_ with which Empathy invests shapes is a great\ndeal more complex, indeed we should speak more correctly of\nmovements than of movement of lines. Thus the mountain rises, and\ndoes nothing but rise so long as we are taking stock only of the\nrelation of its top with the plain, referring its lines solely to real or\nimaginary horizontals. But if, instead of our glance making a single\nswish upwards, we look at the two sides of the mountain\nsuccessively and compare each with the other as well as with the\nplain, our impression (and our verbal description) will be that _one\nslope goes up while the other goes down._ When the empathic\nscheme of the mountain thus ceases to be mere _rising_ and\nbecomes _rising plus descending,_ the two _movements_ with\nwhich we have thus invested that shape will be felt as being\ninterdependent; one side _goes down_ because the other has _gone\nup,_ or the movement rises _in order to_ descend. And if we look at\na mountain chain we get a still more complex and co-ordinated\nempathic scheme, the peaks and valleys (as in my description of\nwhat the Man saw from his Hillside) appearing to us as a sequence\nof risings and sinkings with correlated intensities; a slope _springing\nup_ in proportion as the previously seen one _rushed down_; the\nmovements of the eye, slight and sketchy in themselves, awakening\nthe composite dynamic memory of all our experience of the impetus\ngained by switch-back descent. Moreover this sequence, being a\nsequence, will awaken expectation of repetition, hence sense of\nrythm; the long chain of peaks will seem to perform a dance, they\nwill furl and unfurl like waves. Thus as soon as we get a\ncombination of empathic _forces_ (for that is how they affect us)\nthese will henceforth be in definite relation to one another. But the\nrelation need not be that of mere give and take and rythmical\ncooperation. Lines meeting one another may conflict, check, deflect\none another; or again resist each other's effort as the steady\ndetermination of a circumference resists, opposes a \"Quos ego!\" to\nthe rushing impact of the spokes of a wheel-pattern. And, along with\nthe empathic suggestion of the mechanical forces experienced in\nourselves, will come the empathic suggestion of spiritual\ncharacteristics: the lines will have aims, intentions, desires, moods;\ntheir various little dramas of endeavour, victory, defeat or\npeacemaking, will, according to their dominant empathic suggestion,\nbe lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or brutal;\ninexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar\nor dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief\ndynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music. But\non the other hand there will remain innumerable emphatic\ncombinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal\nclassification because, as must be clearly understood, Empathy deals\nnot directly with mood and emotion, but with dynamic conditions\nwhich enter into moods and emotions and take their names from\nthem. Be this as it may, and definable or not in terms of human\nfeeling, these various and variously combined (into coordinate\nscenes and acts) dramas enacted by lines and curves and angles, take\nplace not in the marble or pigment embodying those contemplated\nshapes, but solely in ourselves, in what we call our memory,\nimagination and feeling. Ours are the energy, the effort, the victory\nor the peace and cooperation; and all the manifold modes of\nswiftness or gravity, arduousness or ease, with which their every\nminutest dynamic detail is fraught. And since we are their only real\nactors, these empathic dramas of lines are bound to affect us, either\nas corroborating or as thwarting our vital needs and habits; either as\nmaking our felt life easier or more difficult, that is to say as bringing\nus peace and joy, or depression and exasperation.\n\nQuite apart therefore from the convenience or not of the adjustments\nrequisite for their ocular measurement, and apart even from the\nfacility or difficulty of comparing and coordinating these\nmeasurements, certain shapes and elements of shape are made\nwelcome to us, and other ones made unwelcome, by the sole\nworking of Empathy, which identifies the modes of being and\nmoving of lines with our own. For this reason meetings of lines\nwhich affect us as neither victory nor honourable submission nor\nwilling cooperation are felt to be ineffectual and foolish. Lines also\n(like those of insufficiently tapered Doric columns) which do not\n_rise with enough impetus_ because they do not seem _to start with\nsufficient pressure at the base;_ oblique lines (as in certain imitation\nGothic) which _lose their balance_ for lack of a countervailing\n_thrust_ against them, all these, and alas many hundreds of other\npossible combinations, are detestable to our feelings. And similarly\nwe are fussed and bored by the tentative lines, the uncoordinated\ndirections and impacts, of inferior, even if technically expert and\nrealistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm\nat first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but\nreveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as\nmovement, their utter empathic nullity. Indeed, if we analyse the\ncensure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of\nmaterial instability, or on wrong perspective or anatomical \"out of\ndrawing\" we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really\nthat of empathic un-satisfactoriness, which escapes verbal detection\nbut is revealed by the finger _following,_ as we say (and that is\nitself an instance of empathy) the movement, the development of,\nboring or fussing lines.\n\nEmpathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with\nregard to shape, but also those particular degrees of liking which are\nmatters of personal temperament and even of momentary mood\n(_cf_. p. 131). Thus Mantegna, with his preponderance of\nhorizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and\nreassuring, but repel another beholder (or the same in a different\nmood) as dull and lifeless; while the unstable equilibrium and\nsyncopated rythm of Botticelli may either fascinate or repel as\nmorbidly excited. And Leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced\ncircles will merely baffle (the \"enigmatic\" quality we hear so much\nof) the perfunctory beholder, while rewarding more adequate\nempathic imagination by allowing us to live, for a while, in the\nmodes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious\nenergy.\n\nIntensity and purposefulness and harmony. These are what everyday\nlife affords but rarely to our longings. And this is what, thanks to\nthis strange process of Empathy, a few inches of painted canvas, will\nsometimes allow us to realise completely and uninterruptedly. And\nit is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment, but mere\npsychological fact, to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles\nof a Byzantine floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation,\nthis is because the modes of being which we are obliged to invest\nthem with are such as we vainly seek, or experience only to lose, in\nour scattered or hustled existence.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nFROM THE SHAPE TO THE THING\n\nSUCH are the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, impersonal and\nunpractical, we can receive, or in reality, give ourselves, in the\ncontemplation of shape.\n\nBut life has little leisure for contemplation; it demands\n_recognition,_ inference and readiness for active adaptation. Or\nrather life forces us to deal with shapes mainly inasmuch as they\nindicate the actual or possible existence of other groups of qualities\nwhich may help or hurt us. Life hurries us into recognising\n_Things._\n\nNow the first peculiarity distinguishing _things_ from _shapes_ is\n_that they can occupy more or less cubic space:_ we can hit up\nagainst them, displace them or be displaced by them, and in such\nprocess of displacing or resisting displacement, we become aware of\ntwo other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes: they have\n_weight_ in varying degrees and _texture_ of various sorts.\nOtherwise expressed, things have _body,_ they exist in three\ndimensional space; while _shapes_ although they are often aspects\nof things (say statues or vases) having body and cubic existence,\nshapes _as_ shapes are two dimensional and bodiless.\n\nSo many of the critical applications of aesthetic, as well as of the\nhistorical problems of art-evolution are connected with this fact or\nrather the continued misunderstanding of it, that it is well to remind\nthe Reader of what general Psychology can teach us of the\nperception of the Third Dimension. A very slight knowledge of\ncubic existence, in the sense of _relief,_ is undoubtedly furnished as\nthe stereoscope furnishes it, by the inevitable slight divergence\nbetween the two eyes; an even more infinitesimal dose of such\nknowledge is claimed for the surfaces of each eye separately. But\nwhatever notions of three-dimensional space might have been\ndeveloped from such rudiments, the perception of cubic existence\nwhich we actually possess and employ, is undeniably based upon the\nincomparably more important data afforded by locomotion, under\nwhich term I include even the tiny pressure of a finger against a\nsurface, and the exploration of a hollow tooth by the tip of the\ntongue. The muscular adjustments made in such locomotion become\nassociated by repetition with the two-dimensional arrangements of\ncolour and light revealed by the eye, the two-dimensional being thus\nturned into the three-dimensional in our everyday experience. But\nthe mistakes we occasionally make, for instance taking a road seen\nfrom above for a church-tower projecting out of the plain, or the\nperspective of a mountain range for its cubic shape, occasionally\nreveal that we do not really _see_ three-dimensional objects, but\nmerely _infer_ them by connecting visual data with the result of\nlocomotor experience. The truth of this commonplace of psychology\ncan be tested by the experiment of making now one, now the other,\ncolour of a floor pattern seem convex or concave according as we\nthink of it as a light flower on a dark ground, or as a white cavity\nbanked in by a dark ridge. And when the philistine (who may be you\nor me!) exclaims against the \"out of drawing\" and false perspective\nof unfamiliar styles of painting, he is, nine times out of ten, merely\nexpressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as\n\"representing\" three-dimensional things; so far proving that we do\nnot decipher the cubic relations of a picture until we have guessed\nwhat that picture is supposed to stand for. And this is my reason for\nsaying that visible shapes, though they may be aspects of cubic\nobjects, have no body; and that the thought of their volume, their\nweight and their texture, is due to an interruption of our\ncontemplation of shape by an excursion among the recollections of\nqualities which shapes, _as_ shapes, cannot possess.\n\nAnd here I would forestall the Reader's objection that the feeling of\neffort and resistance, essential to all our empathic dealings with\ntwo-dimensional shapes, must, after all, be due to _weight,_ which we\nhave just described as a quality shapes cannot possess. My answer is\nthat Empathy has extracted and schematised effort and resistance by\nthe elimination of the thought of weight, as by the elimination of the\nawareness of our bodily tensions; and that it is just this elimination\nof all incompatible qualities which allows us to attribute activities to\nthose two-dimensional shapes, and to feel these activities, with a\nvividness undiminished by the thought of any other circumstances.\n\nWith cubic existence (and its correlative three-dimensional\nspace), with weight and texture we have therefore got from the\ncontemplated shape to a thought alien to that shape and its\ncontemplation. The thought, to which life and its needs and dangers\nhas given precedence over every other: What _Thing_ is behind this\nshape, what qualities must be inferred from this _aspect?_ After the\npossibility of occupying so much space, the most important quality\nwhich things can have for our hopes and fears, is _the possibility of\naltering their occupation of space;_ not our locomotion, but _theirs._\nI call it _locomotion_ rather than _movement,_ because we have\n_direct_ experience only of our own movements, and _infer_ similar\nmovement in other beings and objects because of their change of\nplace either across our motionless eye or across some other object\nwhose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged. I call it\n_locomotion_ also to accentuate its difference from the _movement_\nattributed to the shape of the Rising Mountain, movement _felt_ by\nus to be going on but not expected to result in any change of the\nmountain's space relations, which are precisely what would be\naltered by the mountain's _locomotion._\n\nThe _practical_ question about a shape is therefore: Does it warrant\nthe inference of a _thing_ able to change its position in\nthree-dimensional space? to advance or recede from us? And if so in\nwhat manner? Will it, like a loose stone, fall upon us? like flame, rise\ntowards us? like water, spread over us? Or will it change its place\nonly if _we_ supply the necessary _locomotion?_ Briefly: is the\nthing of which we see the shape inert or active? And if this shape\nbelongs to a thing possessing activity of its own, is its locomotion of\nthat slow regular kind we call the growth and spreading of plants?\nOr of the sudden, wilful kind we know in animals and men? What\ndoes this shape tell us of such more formidable locomotion? Are\nthese details of curve and colour to be interpreted into jointed limbs,\ncan the _thing_ fling out laterally, run after us, can it catch and\nswallow us? Or is it such that _we_ can do thus by it? Does this\nshape suggest the thing's possession of desires and purposes which\nwe can deal with? And if so, _why is it where it is?_ Whence does it\ncome? What is it going to do? What is it _thinking_ of (if it can\nthink)? How will it _feel_ towards us (if it can feel)? What would it\nsay (if it could speak)? What will be its future and what may have\nbeen its past? To sum all up: What does the presence of this shape\nlead us to think and do and feel?\n\nSuch are a few of the thoughts started by that shape and the\npossibility of its belonging to a thing. And even when, as we shall\nsometimes find, they continually return back to the shape and play\nround and round it in centrifugal and centripetal alternations, yet all\nthese thoughts are excursions, however brief, from the world of\ndefinite unchanging shapes into that of various and ever varying\nthings; interruptions, even if (as we shall later see) intensifying\ninterruptions, of that concentrated and coordinated contemplation of\nshapes, with which we have hitherto dealt. And these excursions,\nand a great many more, from the world of shapes into that of things,\nare what we shall deal with, when we come to Art, under the\nheading of _representation_ and _suggestion,_ or, as is usually said,\nof _subject_ and _expression_ as opposed to _form._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nFROM THE THING TO THE SHAPE\n\nTHE necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the\nShape to the Thing, from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and\npractical thinking. But, as the foregoing chapter itself suggests, the\nreal order of precedence, both for the individual and the race, is\ninevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest\nin things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in\nshapes.\n\nIndeed, considering the imperative need for an ever abbreviated and\noften automatic system of human reactions to sense data, it is by no\nmeans easy to understand (and the problem has therefore been\nutterly neglected) how mankind ever came to evolve any process as\nlengthy and complicated as that form-contemplation upon which all\naesthetic preference depends. I will hazard the suggestion that\nfamiliarity with shapes took its original evolutional utility, as well as\nits origin, from the dangers of over rapid and uncritical inference\nconcerning the qualities of things and man's proper reactions\ntowards them. It was necessary, no doubt, that the roughest\nsuggestion of a bear's growl and a bear's outline should send our\nearliest ancestors into their sheltering caves. But the occasional\ndiscovery that the bear was not a bear but some more harmless\nand edible animal must have brought about a comparison, a\ndiscrimination between the visible aspects of the two beasts, and a\nmental storage of their difference in shape, gait and colour.\nSimilarly the deluding resemblance between poisonous and\nnutritious fruits and roots, would result, as the resemblance between\nthe nurse's finger and nipple results with the infant, in attention to\nvisible details, until the acquisition of vivid mental images became\nthe chief item of the savage man's education, as it still is of the\nself-education of the modern child. This evolution of interest in visible\naspects would of course increase tenfold as soon as mankind took to\nmaking things whose usefulness (_i.e._ their still non-existent\nqualities) might be jeopardised by a mistake concerning their shape.\nFor long after _over_ and _under, straight_ and _oblique, right_ and\n_left,_ had become habitual perceptions in dealing with food and\nfuel, the effective aim of a stone, the satisfactory flight of an arrow,\nwould be discovered to depend upon more or less of what we call\nhorizontals and perpendiculars, curves and angles; and the stability\nof a fibrous tissue upon the intervals of crossing and recrossing, the\nrythmical or symmetrical arrangements revealed by the hand or eye.\nIn short, _making,_ being inevitably _shaping,_ would have\ndeveloped a more and more accurate perception and recollection of\nevery detail of shape. And not only would there arise a comparison\nbetween one shape and another shape, but between the shape\nactually under one's eyes and the shape no longer present, between\nthe shape as it really was and the shape as it ought to be. Thus in the\nvery course of practical making of things there would come to be\nlittle interludes, recognised as useful, first of more and more\ncareful looking and comparing, and then of real contemplation:\ncontemplation of the arrow-head you were chipping, of the mat\nyou were weaving, of the pot you were rubbing into shape;\ncontemplation also of the _other_ arrow-head or mat or pot existing\nonly in your wishes; of the shape you were trying to obtain with a\npremonitory emotion of the effect which its peculiarities would\nproduce when once made visible to your eye! For the man cutting\nthe arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with\nthe appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual\narrow-heads or mats of the same type, _would become aware of the\ndifferent effect which such shapes had on the person who looked at\nthem._ Some of these shapes would be so dull, increasing the\ntediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand;\nothers so alert, entertaining and likeable, as if they were helping in\nthe work; others, although equally compatible with utility, fussing or\ndistressing one, never doing what one expected their lines and\ncurves to do. To these suppositions I would add a few more\nsuggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of\nman's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of \"Things.\" The\nhandicraftsman, armourer, weaver, or potter, benefits by his own\nand his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more\nadapted for use and wear, and which way to set about producing it;\nhis technical skill becomes half automatic, so that his eye and mind,\nacting as mere overseers to his muscles, have plenty of time for\ncontemplation so long as everything goes right and no new moves\nhave to be made. And once the handicraftsman contemplates the\nshape as it issues from his fingers, his mind will be gripped by that\nliking or disliking expressed by the words \"beautiful\" and \"ugly.\"\nNeither is this all. The owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of\ntissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its\nusefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill\nor strength required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn\nfrom a slave into a comrade. It is furbished or mended, displayed to\nothers, boasted over, perhaps sung over as Alan Breck sang over his\nsword. The owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the\nowner!) caresses its shape; and its shape, all its well-known\nins-and-outs and ups-and-downs, haunts the memory, ready to start into\nvividness whenever similar objects come under comparison. Now\nwhat holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of\ncivilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and\neasily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use\noffers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention\nwhich are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this\nnormal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which\nexplains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects\nhave acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling that of things.\n\nI therefore commend to the Reader the now somewhat unfashionable\nhypothesis of Semper and his school, according to which the first\npreference for beauty of shape must be sought for in those arts\nlike stone and metal work, pottery and weaving, which give\nopportunities for repetition, reduplication, hence rythm and\nsymmetry, and whose material and technique produce what are\ncalled geometric patterns, meaning such as exist in two dimensions\nand do not imitate the shapes of real objects. This theory has been\ndiscredited by the discovery that very primitive and savage mankind\npossessed a kind of art of totally different nature, and which analogy\nwith that of children suggests as earlier than that of pattern: the art\nwhich the ingenious hypothesis of Mr Henry Balfour derives from\nrecognition of accidental resemblances between the shapes and\nstains of wood or stone and such creatures and objects as happen to\nbe uppermost in the mind of the observer, who cuts or paints\nwhatever may be needed to complete the likeness and enable others\nto perceive the suggestion. Whether or not this was its origin, there\nseems to have existed in earliest times such an art of a strictly\nrepresentative kind, serving (like the spontaneous art of children) to\nevoke the idea of whatever was interesting to the craftsman and his\nclients, and doubtless practically to have some desirable magic\neffect upon the realities of things. But (to return to the hypothesis of\nthe aesthetic primacy of geometric and non-representative art) it is\ncertain that although such early representations occasionally attain\nmarvellous life-likeness and anatomical correctness, yet they do not\nat first show any corresponding care for symmetrical and rythmical\narrangement. The bisons and wild boars, for instance, of the\nAltamira cave frescoes, do indeed display vigour and beauty in the\nlines constituting them, proving that successful dealing with shape,\neven if appealing only to practical interest, inevitably calls forth the\nempathic imagination of the more gifted artists; but these\nmarvellously drawn figures are all huddled together or scattered as\nout of a rag-bag; and, what is still more significant, they lack that\ninsistence on the feet which not only suggests ground beneath them\nbut, in so doing, furnishes a horizontal by which to start, measure\nand take the bearings of all other lines. These astonishing\npalaeolithic artists (and indeed the very earliest Egyptian and Greek\nones) seem to have thought only of the living models and their\npresent and future movements, and to have cared as little for lines\nand angles as the modern children whose drawings have been\ninstructively compared with theirs by Levinstein and others. I\ntherefore venture to suggest that such aesthetically essential\nattention to direction and composition must have been applied to\nrepresentative art when its realistic figures were gradually\nincorporated into the patterns of the weaver and the potter. Such\n\"stylisation\" is still described by art historians as a \"degeneration\"\ndue to unintelligent repetition; but it was on the contrary the\nintegrating process by which the representative element was\nsubjected to such aesthetic preferences as had been established in\nthe manufacture of objects whose usefulness or whose production\ninvolved accurate measurement and equilibrium as in the case of\npottery or weapons, or rythmical reduplication as in that of textiles.\n\nBe this question as it may (and the increasing study of the origin and\nevolution of human faculties will some day settle it!) we already\nknow enough to affirm that while in the very earliest art the\nshape-element and the element of representation are usually separate, the\ntwo get gradually combined as civilisation advances, and the shapes\noriginally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions (hence as\nmagical equivalents) or things, and employed for religious,\nrecording, or self-expressive purposes, become subjected to\nselection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable\nperceptive and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to\nagreeable ones. Nay the whole subsequent history of painting and\nsculpture could be formulated as the perpetual starting up of new\nrepresentative interests, new interests in _things,_ their spatial\nexistence, locomotion, anatomy, their reaction to light, and also their\npsychological and dramatic possibilities; and the subordination of\nthese ever-changing interests in things to the unchanging habit of\narranging visible shapes so as to diminish opportunities for the\ncontemplative dissatisfaction and increase opportunities for the\ncontemplative satisfaction to which we attach the respective names\nof \"ugly\" and \"beautiful.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nTHE AIMS OF ART\n\nWE have thus at last got to Art, which the Reader may have\nexpected to be dealt with at the outset of a primer on the Beautiful.\n\nWhy this could not be the case, will be more and more apparent in\nmy remaining chapters. And, in order to make those coming\nchapters easier to grasp, I may as well forestall and tabulate the\nviews they embody upon the relation between the Beautiful and Art.\nThese generalisations are as follows:\n\nAlthough it is historically probable that the habit of avoiding\nugliness and seeking beauty of shape may have been originally\nestablished by utilitarian attention to the non-imitative\n(\"geometrical\") shapes of weaving, pottery and implement-making,\nand transferred from these crafts to the shapes intended to represent\nor imitate natural objects, yet the distinction between _Beautiful_\nand _Ugly_ does not belong either solely or necessarily to what we\ncall _Art._ Therefore the satisfaction of the shape-perceptive or\naesthetic preferences must not be confused with any of the many and\nvarious other aims and activities to which art is due and by which it\nis carried on. Conversely: although in its more developed phases,\nand after the attainment of technical facility, art has been\ndifferentiated from other human employment by its foreseeing the\npossibility of shape-contemplation and therefore submitting itself to\nwhat I have elsewhere called the _aesthetic imperative,_ yet art has\ninvariably started from some desire other than that of affording\nsatisfactory shape-contemplation, with the one exception of cases\nwhere it has been used to keep or reproduce opportunities of such\nshape contemplation already accidentally afforded by natural shapes,\nsay, those of flowers or animals or landscapes, or even occasionally\nof human beings, which had already been enjoyed as beautiful. All\nart therefore, except that of children, savages, ignoramuses and\nextreme innovators, invariably avoids ugly shapes and seeks for\nbeautiful ones; _but art does this while pursuing all manner of\ndifferent aims._ These non-aesthetic aims of art may be roughly\ndivided into (A) the making of useful objects ranging from clothes\nto weapons and from a pitcher to a temple; (B) the registering or\ntransmitting of facts and their visualising, as in portraits, historical\npictures or literature, and book illustration; and (C) the awakening,\nintensifying or maintaining of definite emotional states, as especially\nby music and literature, but also by painting and architecture when\nemployed as \"aids to devotion.\" And these large classes may again\nbe subdivided and connected, if the Reader has a mind to, into\nutilitarian, social, ritual, sentimental, scientific and other aims, some\nof them not countenanced or not avowed by contemporary morality.\n\nHow the aesthetic imperative, i.e. the necessities of satisfactory\nshape-contemplation, qualifies and deflects the pursuit of such\nnon-aesthetic aims of art can be shown by comparing, for instance, the\nmere audible devices for conveying conventional meaning and\nproducing and keeping up emotional conditions, viz. the hootings\nand screechings of modern industrialism no less than the ritual\nnoises of savages, with the arrangements of well constituted pitch,\nrythm, tonality and harmony in which military, religious or dance\nmusic has disguised its non-aesthetic functions of conveying signals\nor acting on the nerves. Whatever is unnecessary for either of these\nmotives (or any others) for making a noise, can be put to the account\nof the desire to avoid ugliness and enjoy beauty. But the workings of\nthe aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the Art of the\nvisual-representative group, and especially in painting, which allows us to\nfollow the interplay of the desire to be told (or tell) _facts about\nthings_ with the desire to _contemplate shapes,_ and to contemplate\nthem (otherwise we should _not_ contemplate!) with sensuous,\nintellectual and empathic satisfaction.\n\nThis brings us back to the Third Dimension, of which the possession\nis, as have we seen, the chief difference between _Things,_ which\ncan alter their aspect in the course of their own and our actions, and\n_Shapes,_ which can only be contemplated by our bodily and mental\neye, and neither altered nor thought of as altered without more or\nless jeopardising their identity.\n\nI daresay the Reader may not have been satisfied with the reference\nto the locomotor nature of cubic perception as sufficient justification\nof my thus connecting cubic existence with Things rather than with\nShapes, and my implying that aesthetic preference, due to the\nsensory, intellectual and empathic factors of perception, is\napplicable only to the two other dimensions. And the Reader's\nincredulity and surprise will have been all the greater, because\nrecent art-criticism has sedulously inculcated that the suggestion of\ncubic existence is the chief function of pictorial genius, and the\nrealisation of such cubic existence the highest delight which pictures\ncan afford to their worthy beholder. This particular notion, entirely\nopposed to the facts of visual perception and visual empathy, will\nrepay discussion, inasmuch as it accidentally affords an easy\nentrance into a subject which has hitherto presented inextricable\nconfusion, namely the relations of _Form_ and _Subject,_ or, as I\nhave accustomed the Reader to consider them, the _contemplated\nShape_ and the _thought-of Thing._\n\nLet us therefore examine why art-criticism should lay so great a\nstress on the suggestion and the acceptance of that suggestion, of\nthree-dimensional existence in paintings. _In paintings._ For this\nalleged aesthetic desideratum ceases to be a criterion of merit when\nwe come to sculpture, about which critics are more and more\npersistently teaching (and with a degree of reason) that one of the\ngreatest merits of the artist, and of the greatest desiderata of the\nbeholder, is precisely the reduction of real cubic existence by\navoiding all projection beyond a unified level, that is to say by\nmaking a solid block of stone look as if it were a representation on a\nflat surface. This contradiction explains the origin of the theory\ngiving supreme pictorial importance to the Third Dimension. For art\ncriticism though at length (thanks especially to the sculptor\nHildebrand) busying itself also with plastic art, has grown up mainly\nin connexion with painting. Now in painting the greatest scientific\nproblem, and technical difficulty, has been the suggestion of\nthree-dimensional existences by pigments applied to a two-dimensional\nsurface; and this problem has naturally been most successfully\nhandled by the artists possessing most energy and imagination, and\nequally naturally shirked or bungled or treated parrot-wise by the\nartists of less energy and imagination. And, as energy and\nimagination also show themselves in finer perception, more vivid\nempathy and more complex dealings with shapes which are only\ntwo-dimensional, it has come about that the efficient and original\nsolutions of the cubic problem have coincided, _ceteris paribus,_\nwith the production of pictures whose two-dimensional qualities\nhave called forth the adjective _beautiful,_ and _beautiful_ in the\nmost intense and complicated manner. Hence successful treatment\nof cubic suggestion has become an habitual (and threatens to\nbecome a rule-of-thumb) criterion of pictorial merit; the more so\nthat qualities of two-dimensional shape, being intrinsic and specific,\nare difficult to run to ground and describe; whereas the quality of\nthree-dimensional suggestion is ascertainable by mere comparison\nbetween the shapes in the picture and the shapes afforded by real\nthings when seen in the same perspective and lighting. Most people\ncan judge whether an apple in a picture \"looks as if\" it were solid,\nround, heavy and likely to roll off a sideboard in the same picture;\nand some people may even, when the picture has no other claims on\ntheir interest, experience incipient muscular contractions such as\nwould eventually interfere with a real apple rolling off a real\nsideboard. Apples and sideboards offer themselves to the meanest\nexperience and can be dealt with adequately in everyday language,\nwhereas the precise curves and angles, the precise relations of\ndirections and impacts, of parts to whole, which together make up\nthe identity of a two-dimensional shape, are indeed perceived and\nfelt by the attentive beholder, but not habitually analysed or set forth\nin words. Moreover the creation of two-dimensional shapes\nsatisfying to contemplation depends upon two very different factors:\non traditional experience with regard to the more general\narrangements of lines, and on individual energy and sensitiveness,\ni.e. on genius in carrying out, and ringing changes on, such\ntraditional arrangements. And the possession of tradition or genius,\nalthough no doubt the most important advantage of an artist,\nhappens not to be one to which he can apply himself as to a problem.\nOn the other hand a problem to be solved is eternally being pressed\nupon every artist; pressed on him by his clients, by the fashion of his\ntime and also by his own self inasmuch as he is a man interested not\nonly in _shapes_ but in _things._ And thus we are back at the fact\nthat the problem given to the painter to solve by means of lines and\ncolours on a flat surface, is the problem of telling us something new\nor something important about _things:_ what things are made of,\nhow they will react to our doings, how they move, what they feel\nand think; and above all, I repeat it, what amount of space they\noccupy with reference to the space similarly occupied, in present or\nfuture, by other things including ourselves.\n\nOur enquiry into the excessive importance attributed by critics to\npictorial suggestion of cubic existence has thus led us back to the\nconclusion contained in previous chapters, namely that beauty\ndepending negatively on ease of visual perception, and positively\nupon emphatic corroboration of our dynamic habits, is a quality of\n_aspects,_ independent of cubic existence and every other possible\nquality of _things_; except in so far as the thought of\nthree-dimensional, and other, qualities of things may interfere with the\nfreedom and readiness of mind requisite for such highly active and\nsensitive processes as those of empathic form interpretation. But the\nfollowing chapter will, I trust, make it clear that such interference of\nthe _Thought about Things_ with the _Contemplation of Shapes_ is\nessential to the rythm of our mental life, and therefore a chief factor\nin all artistic production and appreciation.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nATTENTION TO SHAPES\n\nTO explain how art in general, and any art in particular, succeeds in\nreconciling these contradictory demands, I must remind the Reader\nof what I said (p. 93) about the satisfactory or unsatisfactory\npossibilities of shapes having begun to be noticed in the moments of\nslackened attention to the processes of manufacturing the objects\nembodying those shapes, and in the intervals between practical\nemployment of these more or less _shapely_ objects. And I must ask\nhim to connect with these remarks a previous passage (p. 44)\nconcerning the intermittent nature of normal acts of attention, and\ntheir alternation as constituting _on-and-off beats._ The deduction\nfrom these two converging statements is that, contrary to the a-priori\ntheories making aesthetic contemplation an exception, a kind of\nbank holiday, to daily life, it is in reality one-half of daily life's\nnatural and healthy rythm. That the real state of affairs, as revealed\nby psychological experiment and observation, should have escaped\nthe notice of so many aestheticians, is probably due to their theories\nstarting from artistic production rather than from aesthetic\nappreciation, without which art would after all probably never have\ncome into existence.\n\nThe production of the simplest work of art cannot indeed be thought\nof as one of the alternations of everyday attention, because it is a\nlong, complex and repeatedly resumed process, a whole piece of life,\nincluding in itself hundreds and thousands of alternations of _doing_\nand _looking,_ of discursive thinking of aims and ways and means\nand of contemplation of aesthetic results. For even the humblest\nartist has to think of whatever objects or processes his work aims at\nrepresenting, conveying or facilitating; and to think also of the\nobjects, marble, wood, paints, voices, and of the processes, drawing,\ncutting, harmonic combining, by which he attempts to compass one\nof the above-mentioned results. The artist is not only an aesthetically\nappreciative person; he is, in his own way, a man of science and a\nman of practical devices, an expert, a craftsman and an engineer. To\nproduce a work of art is not an interlude in his life, but his life's\nmain business; and he therefore stands apart, as every busy specialist\nmust, from the business of other specialists, of those ministering to\nmankind's scientific and practical interests.\n\nBut while it takes days, months, sometimes years to produce a work\nof art, it may require (the process has been submitted to exact\nmeasurement by the stop-watch) not minutes but seconds, to take\nstock of that work of art in such manner as to carry away its every\ndetail of shape, and to continue dealing with it in memory. The\nunsuspected part played by memory explains why aesthetic\ncontemplation can be and normally is, an intermittent function\nalternating with practical doing and thinking. It is in memory,\nthough memory dealing with what we call the present, that we\ngather up parts into wholes and turn consecutive measurements into\nsimultaneous relations; and it is probably in memory that we deal\nempathically with shapes, investing their already perceived\ndirections and relations with the remembered qualities of our own\nactivities, aims and moods. And similarly it is thanks to memory that\nthe brief and intermittent acts of aesthetic appreciation are combined\ninto a network of contemplation which intermeshes with our other\nthoughts and doings, and yet remains different from them, as the\nrestorative functions of life remain different from life's expenditure,\nalthough interwoven with them. Every Reader with any habit of\nself-observation knows how poignant an impression of beauty may be\ngot, as through the window of an express train, in the intermittence\nof practical business or abstract thinking, nay even in what I have\ncalled the _off-beat_ of deepest personal emotion, the very stress of\nthe practical, intellectual or personal instant (for the great\nhappenings of life are measured in seconds!) apparently driving in\nby contrast, or conveying on its excitement, that irrelevant aesthetic\ncontents of the _off-beat_ of attention. And while the practical or\nintellectual interest changes, while the personal emotion subsides,\nthat aesthetic impression remains; remains or recurs, united, through\nevery intermittence, by the feeling of identity, that identity which,\nlike _the rising of the mountain,_ is due to the reiterative nature of\nshape-contemplation: the fragments of melody may be interrupted in\nour memory by all manner of other thoughts, but they will recur and\ncoalesce, and recurring and coalescing, bring with them the\nparticular mood which their rythms and intervals have awakened in\nus and awaken once more.\n\nThat diagrammatic Man on the Hill in reality _thought away_ from\nthe landscape quite as much as his practical and scientific\ncompanions; what he did, and they did not, was to think _back_ to it;\nand think back to it always with the same references of lines and\nangles, the same relations of directions and impacts, of parts and\nwholes. And perhaps the restorative, the healing quality of aesthetic\ncontemplation is due, in large part, to the fact that, in the perpetual\nflux of action and thought, it represents reiteration and therefore\nstability.\n\nBe that as it may, the intermittent but recurrent character of shape\ncontemplation, the fact that it is inconceivably brief and amazingly\nrepetitive, that it has the essential quality of identity because of\nreiteration, all this explains also two chief points of our subject. First:\nhow an aesthetic impression, intentionally or accidentally conveyed\nin the course of wholly different interests, can become a constant\naccompaniment to the shifting preoccupations of existence, like the\nremembered songs which sing themselves silently in our mind and\nthe remembered landscapes becoming an intangible background to\nour ever-varying thoughts. And, secondly, it explains how art can\nfulfil the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things\nwhile satisfying the imperious unchanging demands of the\ncontemplated preference for beautiful aspects. And thus we return to\nmy starting-point in dealing with art: that art is conditioned by the\ndesire for beauty while pursuing entirely different aims, and\nexecuting any one of a variety of wholly independent non-aesthetic\ntasks.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nINFORMATION ABOUT THINGS\n\nAMONG the facts which Painting is set to tell us about things, the\nmost important, after cubic existence, is Locomotion. Indeed in the\ndevelopment of the race as well as in that of the individual, pictorial\nattention to locomotion seems to precede attention to cubic existence.\nFor when the palaeolithic, or the Egyptian draughtsman, or even the\nSixth Century Greek, unites profile legs and head with a full-face\nchest; and when the modern child supplements the insufficiently\nprojecting full-face nose by a profile nose tacked on where we\nexpect the ear, we are apt to think that these mistakes are due to\nindifference to the cubic nature of things. The reverse is, however,\nthe case. The primitive draughtsman and the child are recording\nimpressions received in the course of the locomotion either of the\nthing looked at or of the spectator. When they unite whatever\nconsecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest\nto copy, they are in the clutches of their cubic experience, and what\nthey are indifferent about, perhaps unconscious of, is the\n_two-dimensional_ appearance which a body presents when its parts are\nseen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view. The\nprogress of painting is always from representing the Consecutive to\nrepresenting the Simultaneous; perspective, foreshortening, and later,\nlight and shade, being the scientific and technical means towards\nthis end.\n\nUpon our knowledge of the precise stage of such pictorial\ndevelopment depends our correct recognition of what things, and\nparticularly what spatial relations and locomotion, of things, the\npainter is intended to represent. Thus when a Byzantine\ndraughtsman puts his figures in what look to us as superposed tiers,\nhe is merely trying to convey their existence behind one another on\na common level. And what we take for the elaborate contortions of\nathletes and Athenas on Sixth Century vases turns out to be nothing\nbut an archaic representation of ordinary walking and running.\n\nThe suggestion of locomotion depends furthermore on anatomy.\nWhat the figures of a painting are intended to be doing, what they\nare intended to have just done and to be going to do, in fact all\nquestions about their action and business, are answered by reference\nto their bodily structure and its real or supposed possibilities. The\nsame applies to expression of mood.\n\nThe impassiveness of archaic Apollos is more likely to be due to\nanatomical difficulties in displacing arms and legs, than to lack of\nemotion on the part of artists who were, after all, contemporaries\neither of Sappho or Pindar. And it is more probable that the\nsculptors of Aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of\nlips and cheeks than that, having Homer by heart, they imagined his\nheroes to die silently and with a smirk.\n\nI have entered into this question of perspective and anatomy, and\ngiven the above examples, because they will bring home to the\nreader one of the chief principles deduced from our previous\nexamination into the psychology of our subject, namely that _all\nthinking about things is thinking away from the Shapes suggesting\nthose things, since it involves knowledge which the Shapes in\nthemselves do not afford._ And I have insisted particularly upon the\ndependence of representations of locomotion upon knowledge of\nthree-dimensional existence, because, before proceeding to the\nrelations of Subject and Form in painting, I want to impress once\nmore upon the reader the distinction between the _locomotion of\nthings_ (locomotion active or passive) and what, in my example of\nthe _mountain which rises,_ I have called the _empathic movement\nof lines._ Such _movement of lines_ we have seen to be a scheme of\nactivity suggested by our own activity in taking stock of a\ntwo-dimensional-shape; an _idea,_ or _feeling_ of activity which we,\nbeing normally unaware of its origin in ourselves, project into the\nshape which has suggested it, precisely as we project our sensation\nof _red_ from our own eye and mind into the object which has\ndeflected the rays of light in such a way as to give us that _red_\nsensation. Such _empathic,_ attributed, movements of lines are\ntherefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception\nhas called them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being\nqualities of the shapes, they inevitably change with every alteration\nwhich a shape undergoes, every shape, actively perceived, having its\nown special _movement of lines;_ and every _movement of lines,_\nor _combination of movements of lines_ existing in proportion as\nwe go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a\nquality. The case is absolutely reversed when we perceive or think\nof, the _locomotion of things._ The thought of a thing's locomotion,\nwhether locomotion done by itself or inflicted by something else,\nnecessitates our thinking away from the particular shape before us to\nanother shape more or less different. In other words locomotion\nnecessarily alters what we are looking at or thinking of. If we think\nof Michel Angelo's seated Moses as getting up, we think _away_\nfrom the approximately pyramidal shape of the statue to the\nelongated oblong of a standing figure. If we think of the horse of\nMarcus Aurelius as taking the next step, we think of a straightened\nleg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended in the air.\nAnd if we think of the Myronian Discobolus as letting go his quoit\nand \"recovering,\" we think of the matchless spiral composition as\nunwinding and straightening itself into a shape as different as that of\na tree is different from that of a shell.\n\nThe pictorial representation of locomotion affords therefore the\nextreme example of the difference between discursive thinking\nabout things and contemplation of shape. Bearing this example in\nmind we cannot fail to understand that, just as the thought of\n_locomotion_ is opposed to the thought of _movement of lines,_ so,\nin more or less degree, the thought of the objects and actions\nrepresented by a picture or statue, is likely to divert the mind from\nthe pictorial and plastic shapes which do the representing. And we\ncan also understand that the problem unconsciously dealt with by all\nart (though by no means consciously by every artist) is to execute\nthe order of suggesting interesting facts about things in a manner\nsuch as to satisfy at the same time the aesthetic demand for shapes\nwhich shall be satisfactory to contemplate. Unless this demand for\nsensorially, intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be\ncomplied with a work of art may be interesting as a diagram, a\nrecord or an illustration, but once the facts have been conveyed and\nassimilated with the rest of our knowledge, there will remain a shape\nwhich we shall never want to lay eyes upon. I cannot repeat too\noften that the differentiating characteristic of art is that it gives its\nworks a value for contemplation independent of their value for\nfact-transmission, their value as nerve-and-emotion-excitant and of their\nvalue for immediate, for practical, utility. This aesthetic value,\ndepending upon the unchanging processes of perception and\nempathy, asserts itself in answer to every act of contemplative\nattention, and is as enduring and intrinsic as the other values are apt\nto be momentary and relative. A Greek vase with its bottom\nknocked out and with a scarce intelligible incident of obsolete\nmythology portrayed upon it, has claims upon our feelings which the\nmost useful modern mechanism ceases to have even in the intervals\nof its use, and which the newspaper, crammed full of the most\nimportant tidings, loses as soon as we have taken in its contents.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nTHE CO-OPERATION OF THINGS AND SHAPES\n\nDURING the Middle Ages and up to recent times the chief task of\npainting has been, ostensibly, the telling and re-telling of the same\nScripture stories; and, incidentally, the telling them with the addition\nof constantly new items of information about _things:_ their volume,\nposition, structure, locomotion, light and shade and interactions of\ntexture and atmosphere; to which items must be added others of\npsychological or (pseudo)-historical kind, how it all came about, in\nwhat surroundings and dresses, and accompanied by what feelings.\nThis task, official and unofficial, is in no way different from those\nfulfilled by the man of science and the practical man, both of whom\nare perpetually dealing with additional items of information. But\nmark the difference in the artist's way of accomplishing this task: a\nscientific fact is embodied in the progressive mass of knowledge,\nassimilated, corrected; a practical fact is taken in consideration, built\nupon; but the treatise, the newspaper or letter, once it has conveyed\nthese facts, is forgotten or discarded. The work of art on the contrary\nis remembered and cherished; or at all events it is made with the\nintention of being remembered and cherished. In other words and as\nI shall never tire of repeating, the differentiating characteristic of art\nis that it makes _you think back to the shape_ once that shape has\nconveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention\nor exciting your emotions. And the first and foremost problem, for\ninstance of painting, is that of preventing the beholder's eye from\nbeing carried, by lines of perspective, outside the frame and even\npersistently out of the centre of the picture; the sculptor (and this is\nthe real reason of the sculptor Hildebrand's rules for plastic\ncomposition) obeying a similar necessity of keeping the beholder's\neye upon the main masses of his statue, instead of diverting it, by\nprojections at different distances, like the sticking out arms and\nhands of Roman figures. So much for the eye of the body: the\nbeholder's curiosity must similarly not be carried outside the work of\nart by, for instance, an incomplete figure (legs without a body!) or\nan unfinished gesture, this being, it seems to roe, the only real\nreason against the representation of extremely rapid action and\ntransitory positions. But when the task of conveying information\nimplies that the beholder's thoughts be deliberately led from what is\nrepresented to what is not, then this centrifugal action is dealt with\nso as to produce a centripetal one back to the work of art: the painter\nsuggests questions of _how_ and _why_ which get their answers in\nsome item obliging you to take fresh stock of the picture. What Is\nthe meaning of the angels and evidently supernatural horseman in\nthe foreground of Raphael's _Heliodorus?_ Your mind flies to the\npraying High Priest in the central recess of the temple, and in going\nbackwards and forwards between him, the main group and the\nscattered astonished bystanders, you are effectually enclosed within\nthe arches of that marvellous composition, and induced to explore\nevery detail of its lovely and noble constituent shapes.\n\nThe methods employed thus to keep the beholder's attention inside\nthe work of art while suggesting things beyond it, naturally vary\nwith the exact nature of the non-aesthetic task which has been set to\nthe artist; and with the artist's individual endowment and even more\nwith the traditional artistic formulae of his country and time:\nRaphael's devices in _Heliodorus_ could not have been compassed\nby Giotto; and, on the other hand, would have been rejected as\n\"academic\" by Manet. But whatever the methods employed, and\nhowever obviously they reveal that satisfactory form-contemplation\nis the one and invariable _condition_ as distinguished from the\ninnumerable varying _aims,_ of all works of art, the Reader will find\nthem discussed not as methods for securing attention to the shape,\nbut as methods of employing that shape for some non-aesthetic\npurpose; whether that purpose be inducing you to drink out of a cup\nby making its shape convenient or suggestive; or inducing you to\nbuy a particular commodity by branding its name and virtues on\nyour mind; or fixing your thoughts on the Madonna's sorrows; or\nawaking your sympathy for Isolde's love tragedy. And yet it is\nevident that the artist who shaped the cup or designed the poster\nwould be horribly disappointed if you thought only of drinking or of\nshopping and never gave another look to the cup or the poster; and\nthat Perugino or Wagner would have died of despair if his\nsuggestion of the Madonna's sorrows or of Isolde's love-agonies had\nbeen so efficacious as to prevent anybody from looking twice at the\nfresco or listening to the end of the opera. This inversion of the\nquestion is worth inquiring into, because, like the analogous paradox\nabout the pictorial \"realisation\" of cubic existence, it affords an\nillustration of some of the psychological intricacies of the relation\nbetween Art and the Beautiful. This is how I propose to explain it.\n\nThe task to which an artist is set varies from one work to another,\nwhile the shapes employed for the purpose are, as already said,\nlimited by his powers and especially by the precise moment in\nartistic evolution. The artist therefore thinks of his available shapes\nas something given, as _means,_ and the subject he is ordered to\nrepresent (or the emotion he is commissioned to elicit) as the\nall-important _aim._ Thus he thinks of himself (and makes the critic\nthink of him) not as preventing the represented subject or expressed\nemotion from withdrawing the beholder from the artistic shapes, but,\non the contrary, as employing these artistic shapes for the sole\npurpose of that representation or emotional expression. And this\nmost explicable inversion of the real state of affairs ends by making\nthe beholder believe that what _he_ cares for in a masterpiece is not\nthe beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have, but the\nefficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which\ncould be just as efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest\ndaub or the wretchedest barrel organ! This inevitable, and I believe,\nsalutary illusion of the artist, is further in creased by the fact that\nwhile the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and\ndiminishing opportunities for ugliness, the actual beauty of the\nshapes he is creating arises from the depths of his unreasoned,\ntraditional and organised consciousness, from activities which might\nbe called automatic if they were not accompanied by a critical\nfeeling that what is produced thus spontaneously and inevitably is\neither turning out as it must and should, or, contrariwise, insists\nupon turning out exactly as it _should not._ The particular system of\ncurves and angles, of directions and impacts of lines, the particular\n\"whole-and-part\" scheme of, let us say, Michelangelo, is due to his\nmodes of aesthetic perceiving, feeling, living, added to those of all\nthe other artists whose peculiarities have been averaged in what we\ncall the school whence Michelangelo issued. He can no more depart\nfrom these shapes than he can paint Rembrandt's Pilgrims of\nEmmaus without Rembrandt's science of light and shade and\nRembrandt's oil-and-canvas technique. There is no alternative, hence\nno choice, hence no feeling of a problem to resolve, in this question\nof shapes to employ. But there are dozens of alternatives and of acts\nof choice, there is a whole series of problems when Michelangelo\nsets to employing these inevitable shapes to telling the Parting of the\nLight from the Darkness, or the Creation of Adam on the Vault of\nthe Sixtine, and to surrounding the stories from Genesis with\nProphets and Sibyls and Ancestors of Christ. Is the ceiling to remain\na unity, or be broken up into irrelevant compositions? Here comes in,\nalongside of his almost automatic genius for shapes, the man's\nsuperhuman constructive ingenuity. See how he divides that ceiling\nin such a way that the frames of the separate compositions combine\ninto a huge structure of painted rafters and brackets, nay the\nProphets and Sibyls, the Ancestors and Ancestresses themselves,\nand the naked antique genii, turn into architectural members,\nholding that imaginary roof together, securing its seeming stability,\nincreasing, by their gesture its upspring and its weightiness, and at\nthe same time determining the tracks along which the eye is forced\nto travel. Backwards and forwards the eye is driven by that living\narchitecture, round and round in its search now for completion of\nvisible pattern, now for symbolic and narrative meaning. And ever\nback to the tale of the Creation, so that the remote historic incidents\nof the Ancestors, the tremendous and tremendously present lyric\nexcitement and despair of the prophetic men and women, the pagan\nsuggestion of the athletic genii, all unite like the simultaneous and\nconsecutive harmonies of a titanic symphony, round the recurrent\nand dominant phrases of those central stories of how the universe\nand man were made, so that the beholder has the emotion of hearing\nnot one part of the Old Testament, but the whole of it. But\nmeanwhile, and similarly interchanging and multiplying their\nimaginative and emotional appeal, the thought of those most\nmemorable of all written stories unites with the perception and\nempathy of those marvellous systems of living lines and curves and\nangles, throbbing with their immortal impacts and speeds and\ndirections in a great coordinated movement that always begins and\nnever ends, until it seems to the beholder as if those painted shapes\nwere themselves the crowning work of some eighth day of Creation,\ngathering up in reposeful visible synthesis the whole of Creation's\nineffable energy and harmony and splendour.\n\nThis example of Michelangelo's ceiling shows how, thanks to the\nrythmical nature of perception, art fulfils the mission of making us\nthink from Shapes to Things and from Things back to Shapes. And it\nallows us to see the workings of that psychological law, already\nmanifest in the elementary relations of line to line and dot to dot, by\nwhich whatever can be thought and felt in continuous alternation\ntends to be turned into a whole by such reiteration of common\nactivities. And this means that Art adds to its processes of selection\nand exclusion a process of _inclusion,_ safeguarding aesthetic\ncontemplation by drawing whatever is not wholly refractory into\nthat contemplation's orbit. This turning of non-aesthetic interests\nfrom possible competitors and invaders into co-operating allies is an\nincomparable multiplying factor of aesthetic satisfaction, enlarging\nthe sphere of aesthetic emotion and increasing that emotion's volume\nand stability by inclusion of just those elements which would have\ncompeted to diminish them. The typical instance of such a possible\ncompetitor turned into an ally, is that of the cubic element, which I\nhave described (p. 85) as the first and most constant intruder from\nthe thought of _Things_ into the contemplation of _Shapes._ For the\nintroduction into a picture of a suggested third dimension is what\nprevents our _thinking away from_ a merely two-dimensional aspect\nby supplying subsidiary imaginary aspects susceptible of being\nco-ordinated to it. So perspective and modelling in light and shade\nsatisfy our habit of locomotion by allowing us, as the phrase is, _to\ngo into_ a picture; and _going into,_ we remain there and establish\non its imaginary planes schemes of horizontals and verticals besides\nthose already existing on the real two-dimensional surface. This\naddition of shapes due to perspective increases the already existing\ndramas of empathy, instead of interrupting them by our looking\naway from the picture, which we should infallibly do if our\nexploring and so to speak _cubic-locomotor_ tendencies were not\nthus employed inside the picture's limits.\n\nThis alliance of aesthetic contemplation with our interest in cubic\nexistence and our constant thought of locomotion, does more\nhowever than merely safeguard and multiply our chances of\nempathic activity. It also increases the sensory discrimination, and\nhence pleasureableness, of colour, inasmuch as colour becomes,\nconsidered as light and shade and _values,_ a suggestion of\nthree-dimensional _Things_ instead of merely a constituent of\ntwo-dimensional _Shapes._ Moreover, one easily tires of \"following\"\nverticals and horizontals and their intermediate directions; while\nempathic imagination, with its dynamic feelings and frequent\nsemi-mimetic accompaniments, requires sufficient intervals of repose;\nand such repose, such alternation of different mental functions,\nisprecisely afforded by thinking in terms of cubic existence.\nArt-critics have often pointed out what may be called the thinness, the\nlack of _staying power,_ of pictures deficient in the cubic element;\nthey ought also to have drawn attention to the fatiguing, the almost\nhallucinatory excitement, resulting from uninterrupted attention to\ntwo-dimensional pattern and architectural outlines, which were,\nindeed, intended to be incidentally looked at in the course of taking\nstock of the cubic qualities of furniture and buildings.\n\nAnd since the limits of this volume have restricted me to painting as\na type of aesthetic contemplation, I must ask the Reader to accept on\nmy authority and if possible verify for himself, the fact that what I\nhave been saying applies, _mutatis mutandis,_ to the other arts. As\nwe have already noticed, something analogous to a third dimension\nexists also in music; and even, as I have elsewhere shown,[*] in\nliterature. The harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our\ntendency to think of other notes and particularly of other allied\ntonalities; while as to literature, the whole handling of words, indeed\nthe whole of logical thinking, is but a cubic working backwards and\nforwards between _what_ and _how,_ a co-ordinating of items and\nthemes, keeping the mind enclosed in one scheme of ideas by\nforestalling answers to the questions which would otherwise divert\nthe attention. And if the realisation of the third dimension has come\nto be mistaken for the chief factor of aesthetic satisfaction, this error\nis due not merely to the already noticed coincidence between cubic\nimagination and artistic genius, but even more to the fact that cubic\nimagination is the type of the various multiplying factors by which\nthe empathic, that is to say the essentially aesthetic, activity, can\nincrease its sphere of operations, its staying power and its intensity.\n\n[*] _The Handling of Words,_ English Review, 1911-12.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nAESTHETIC RESPONSIVENESS\n\nOUR examination has thus proceeded from aesthetic contemplation\nto the work of Art, which seeks to secure and satisfy it while\nfurthering some of life's various other claims. We must now go back\nto aesthetic contemplation and find out how the beholder meets\nthese efforts made to secure and satisfy his contemplative attention.\nFor the Reader will by this time have grasped that art can do nothing\nwithout the collaboration of the beholder or listener; and that this\ncollaboration, so far from consisting in the passive \"being impressed\nby beauty\" which unscientific aestheticians imagined as analogous\nto \"being impressed by sensuous qualities,\" by hot or cold or sweet\nor sour, is in reality a combination of higher activities, second in\ncomplexity and intensity only to that of the artist himself.\n\nWe have seen in the immediately preceding chapter that the most\ndeliberate, though not the essential, part of the artist's business is to\nprovide against any possible disturbance of the beholder's\nresponsive activity, and of course also to increase by every means\nthat output of responsive activity. But the sources of it are in the\nbeholder, and beyond the control of the most ingenious artistic\ndevices and the most violent artistic appeals. There is indeed no\nbetter proof of the active nature of aesthetic appreciation than the\nfact that such appreciation is so often not forthcoming. Even mere\nsensations, those impressions of single qualities to which we are\nmost unresistingly passive, are not pleasurable without a favourable\nreaction of the body's chemistry: the same taste or smell will be\nattractive or repulsive according as we have recently eaten. And\nhowever indomitably colour- and sound-sensations force themselves\nupon us, our submission to them will not be accompanied by even\nthe most \"passive\" pleasure if we are bodily or mentally out of sorts.\nHow much more frequent must be lack of receptiveness when,\ninstead of dealing with _sensations_ whose intensity depends after\nall two thirds upon the strength of the outer stimulation, we deal\nwith _perceptions_ which include the bodily and mental activities of\nexploring a shape and establishing among its constituent sensations\nrelationships both to each other and to ourselves; activities without\nwhich there would be for the beholder no shape at all, but\nmere ragbag chaos!--And in calculating the likelihood of a\nperceptive empathic response we must remember that such active\nshape-perception, however instantaneous as compared with the cumbrous\nprocesses of locomotion, nevertheless requires a perfectly\nmeasurable time, and requires therefore that its constituent processes\nbe held in memory for comparison and coordination, quite as much\nas the similar processes by which we take stock of the relations of\nsequence of sounds. All this mental activity, less explicit but not less\nintense or complex than that of logically \"following\" an argument, is\ntherefore such that we are by no means always able or willing to\nfurnish it. Not able, because the need for practical decisions hurries\nus into that rapid inference from a minimum of perception to a\nminimum of associated experience which we call \"recognising\nthings,\" and thus out of the presence of the perfunctorily dealt with\nshapes. Not willing, because our nervous condition may be unable\nfor the strain of shape perception; and our emotional bias (what we\ncall our _interest)_ may be favourable to some incompatible kind of\nactivity. Until quite recently (and despite Fechner's famous\nintroductory experiments) aesthetics have been little more than a\nbranch of metaphysical speculation, and it is only nowadays that the\nbare fact of aesthetic responsiveness is beginning to be studied. So\nfar as I have myself succeeded in doing so, I think I can assure the\nReader that if he will note down, day by day, the amount of pleasure\nhe has been able to take in works of art, he will soon recognise the\nexistence of aesthetic responsiveness and its highly variable nature.\nShould the same Reader develop an interest in such (often\nhumiliating) examination into his own aesthetic experience, he will\ndiscover varieties of it which will illustrate some of the chief\nprinciples contained in this little book. His diary will report days\nwhen aesthetic appreciation has begun with the instant of entering a\ncollection of pictures or statues, indeed sometimes pre-existed as he\nwent through the streets noticing the unwonted charm of familiar\nobjects; other days when enjoyment has come only after an effort of\nattention; others when, to paraphrase Coleridge, _he saw, not felt,\nhow beautiful things are;_ and finally, through other varieties of\naesthetic experience, days upon which only shortcomings and\nabsurdities have laid hold of his attention. In the course of such\naesthetical self-examination and confession, the Reader might also\nbecome acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never\nsufficiently repeated distinction between _contemplating Shapes and\nthinking about Things_; or, in ordinary aesthetic terminology\nbetween _form_ and _subject._ For there are days when pictures or\nstatues will indeed afford pleasurable interest, but interest in the\nthings _represented,_ not in the _shapes;_ a picture appealing even\nforcibly to our dramatic or religious or romantic side; or\ncontrariwise, to our scientific one. There are days when he may be\ndeeply moved by a Guido Reni martyrdom, or absorbed in the\n\"Marriage a la Mode\"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as\nin Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of\nsitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of\nwater and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion,\nthe same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an\ninn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure,\nthere may be days when the diarist will be quite delighted with a\nhideous picture, because it affords some chronological clue, or new\npoint of comparison. \"This _dates_ such or such a style\"--\"_Plein\nAir_ already attempted by a Giottesque! Degas forestalled by a Cave\nDweller!\" etc. etc. And finally days when the Diarist is haunted by\nthe thought of what the represented person will do next: \"Would\nMichelangelo's Jeremiah knock his head if he got up?\"--\"How will\nthe Discobolus recover when he has let go the quoit?\"--or haunted\nby thoughts even more frivolous (though not any less aesthetically\nirrelevant!) like \"How wonderfully like Mrs So and So!\" \"The living\nimage of Major Blank!\"--\"How I detest auburn people with\nsealing-wax lips!\" _ad lib._\n\nSuch different _thinkings away from the shapes_ are often traceable\nto previous orientation of the thoughts or to special states of body\nand feelings. But explicable or not in the particular case, these\nvarieties of one's own aesthetic responsiveness will persuade the\nReader who has verified their existence, that contemplative\nsatisfaction in shapes and its specific emotion cannot be given by the\ngreatest artist or the finest tradition, unless the beholder meets their\nefforts more than half way.\n\nThe spontaneous collaboration of the beholder is especially\nindispensable for Aesthetic Empathy. As we have seen, empathic\nmodes of movement and energy and intention are attributed to\nshapes and to shape elements, in consequence of the modes of\nmovement and energy involved in mere shape perception; but shape\nperception does not necessarily call forth empathic imagination. And\nthe larger or smaller dynamic dramas of effort, resistance,\nreconciliation, cooperation which constitute the most poignant\ninterest of a pictorial or plastic composition, are inhibited by bodily\nor mental states of a contrary character. We cease to _feel_\n(although we may continue, like Coleridge, to _see_) that the lines\nof a mountain or a statue _are rising,_ if we ourselves happen to feel\nas if our feet were of lead and our joints turning to water. The\ncoordinated interplay of empathic movement which makes certain\nmediaeval floor patterns, and also Leonardo's compositions, into\nwhirling harmonies as of a planetary system, cannot take place in\nour imagination on days of restlessness and lack of concentration.\nNay it may happen that arrangements of lines which would flutter\nand flurry us on days of quiet appreciativeness, will become in every\nsense \"sympathetic\" on days when we ourselves feel fluttered and\nflurried. But lack of responsiveness may be due to other causes. As\nthere are combinations of lines which take longer to perceive\nbecause their elements or their coordinating principles are\nunfamiliar, so, and even more so, are there empathic schemes (or\ndramas) which baffle dynamic imagination when accustomed to\nsomething else and when it therefore meets the new demand with an\nunsuitable empathic response. Empathy is, even more than mere\nperception, a question of our activities and therefore of our habits;\nand the aesthetic sensitiveness of a time and country (say the\nFlorentine fourteenth century) with a habit of round arch and\nhorizontals like that of Pisan architecture, could never take with\nenthusiasm to the pointed ogeeval ellipse, the oblique directions and\nunstable equilibrium, the drama of touch and go strain and resistance,\nof French Gothic; whence a constant readmission of the round\narched shapes into the imported style, and a speedy return to the\nfamiliar empathic schemes in the architecture of the early\nRenaissance. On the other hand the persistence of Gothic detail in\nNorthern architecture of the sixteenth and occasionally the\nseventeenth century, shows how insipid the round arch and straight\nentablature must have felt to people accustomed to the empathy of\nGothic shapes. Nothing is so routinist as imagination and emotion;\nand empathy, which partakes of both, is therefore more dependent\non familiarity than is the perception by which it is started: Spohr,\nand the other professional contemporaries of Beethoven, probably\nheard and technically understood all the peculiarities of his last\nquartets; but they liked them none the better.\n\nOn the other hand continued repetition notoriously begets\nindifference. We cease to look at a shape which we \"know by heart\"\nand we cease to interpret in terms of our own activities and\nintentions when curiosity and expectation no longer let loose our\ndynamic imagination. Hence while utter unfamiliarity baffles\naesthetic responsiveness, excessive familiarity prevents its starting\nat all. Indeed both perceptive clearness and empathic intensity reach\ntheir climax in the case of shapes which afford the excitement of\ntracking familiarity in novelty, the stimulation of acute comparison,\nthe emotional ups and downs of expectation and partial recognition,\nor of recognition when unexpected, the latter having, as we know\nwhen we notice that a stranger has the trick of speech or gesture of\nan acquaintance, a very penetrating emotional warmth. Such\ndiscovery of the novel in the familiar, and of the familiar in the new,\nwill he frequent in proportion to the definiteness and complexity of\nthe shapes, and in proportion also to the sensitiveness and steadiness\nof the beholder's attention; while on the contrary \"obvious\" qualities\nof shape and superficial attention both tend to exhaust interest and\ndemand change. This exhaustion of interest and consequent demand\nfor change unites with the changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on\nart, together producing innovation. And the more superficial the\naesthetic attention given by the beholders, the quicker will style\nsucceed style, and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by\nexaggeration or left in the lurch before their maturity; a state of\naffairs especially noticeable in our own day.\n\nThe above is a series of illustrations of the fact that aesthetic\npleasure depends as much on the activities of the beholder as on\nthose of the artist. Unfamiliarity or over-familiarity explain a large\npart of the aesthetic non-responsiveness summed up in the saying\n_that there is no disputing of tastes._ And even within the circle of\nhabitual responsiveness to some particular style, or master, there are,\nas we have just seen, days and hours when an individual beholder's\nperception and empathic imagination do not act in such manner as to\nafford the usual pleasure. But these occasional, even frequent, lapses\nmust not diminish our belief either in the power of art or in the\ndeeply organised and inevitable nature of aesthetic preference as a\nwhole. What the knowledge of such fluctuations ought to bring\nhome is that beauty of shape is most spontaneously and completely\nappreciated when the attention, instead of being called upon, as in\ngalleries and concerts, for the mere purpose of aesthetic enjoyment,\nis on the contrary, directed to the artistic or \"natural\" beauty of\nshapes, in consequence of some other already existing interest. No\none except an art-critic sees a new picture or statue without first\nasking \"What does it represent?\"; shape-perception and aesthetic\nempathy arising incidentally in the examination which this question\nleads to. The truth is that even the art-critic is oftenest brought into\nenforced contemplation of the artistic shape by some other question\nwhich arises from his particular bias: By whom? of what precise\ndate? Even such technical questions as \"where and when restored or\nrepainted?\" will elicit the necessary output of attention. It is possible\nand legitimate to be interested in a work of art for a dozen reasons\nbesides aesthetic appreciation; each of these interests has its own\nsentimental, scientific, dramatic or even moneymaking emotion; and\nthere is no loss for art, but rather a gain, if we fall back upon one of\nthem when the specific aesthetic response is slow or not\nforthcoming. Art has other aims besides aesthetic satisfaction; and\naesthetic satisfaction will not come any the quicker for turning our\nbacks upon these non-aesthetic aims. The very worst attitude\ntowards art is that of the holiday-maker who comes into its presence\nwith no ulterior interest or business, and nothing but the hope of an\naesthetic emotion which is most often denied him. Indeed such\nseeking of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake would lead to even\nmore of the blank despondency characteristic of so many gallery\ngoers, were it not for another peculiarity of aesthetic responsiveness,\nwhich is responsible for very puzzling effects. This saving grace of\nthe tourist, and (as we shall see) this pitfall of the art-expert, is what\nI propose to call the _Transferability of Aesthetic Emotion._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nTHE STORAGE AND TRANSFER OF EMOTION\n\nIN dealing with familiarity as a multiplying factor of aesthetic\nappreciation, I have laid stress on its effect in facilitating the\nperception and the empathic interpretation of shapes. But repetition\ndirectly affects the emotion which may result from these processes;\nand when any emotion has become habitual, it tends to be stored in\nwhat we call memory, and to be called forth not merely by the\nprocesses in which it originated, but also independently of the whole\nof them, or in answer to some common or equivalent factor. We are\nso accustomed to this psychological fact that we do not usually seem\nto recognise its existence. It is the explanation of the power of words,\nwhich, apart from any images they awaken, are often irresistibly\nevocative of emotion. And among other emotions words can evoke\nthe one due to the easy perception and to the life-corroborating\nempathic interpretation of shapes. The word _Beautiful,_ and its\nvarious quasi synonyms, are among the most emotionally suggestive\nin our vocabulary, carrying perhaps a vague but potent remembrance\nof our own bodily reaction to the emotion of admiration; nay even\neliciting an incipient rehearsal of the half-parted lips and slightly\nthrown-back head, the drawn-in breath and wide-opened eyes, with\nwhich we are wont to meet opportunities of aesthetic satisfaction. Be\nthis last as it may, it is certain that the emotion connected with the\nword _Beautiful_ can be evoked by that word alone, and without an\naccompanying act of visual or auditive perception. Indeed beautiful\nshapes would lose much of their importance in our life, if they did\nnot leave behind them such emotional traces, capable of revival\nunder emotionally appropriate, though outwardly very dissimilar,\ncircumstances; and thereby enormously increasing some of our\nsafest, perhaps because our most purely subjective, happiness.\nInstead therefore of despising the raptures which the presence of a\nVenus of Milo or a Sixtine Madonna can inspire in people\nmanifestly incapable of appreciating a masterpiece, and sometimes\nbarely glancing at it, we critical persons ought to recognise in this\nfunny, but consoling, phenomenon an additional proof of the power\nof Beauty, whose specific emotion can thus be evoked by a mere\nname and so transferred from some past experience of aesthetic\nadmiration to a. present occasion which would otherwise be mere\nvoid and disappointment.\n\nPutting aside these kind of cases, the transfer (usually accomplished\nby a word) of the aesthetic emotion, or at least of a willingness for\naesthetic emotion, is probably one of the explanations of the spread\nof aesthetic interest from one art to another, as it is the explanation\nof some phases of aesthetic development in the individual. The\npresent writer can vouch for the case of at least one real child in\nwhom the possibility of aesthetic emotion, and subsequently of\naesthetic appreciation, was extended from music and natural scenery\nto pictures and statues, by the application of the word _Beautiful_ to\neach of these different categories. And something analogous\nprobably helped on the primaeval recognition that the empathic\npleasures hitherto attached to geometrical shapes might be got from\nrealistic shapes, say of bisons and reindeer, which had hitherto been\nadmired for their lifelikeness and skill, but not yet subjected to any\naesthetic discrimination (_cf_. p. 96). Similarly, in our own times,\nthe delight in natural scenery is being furthered by the development\nof landscape painting, rather than furthering it. Nay I venture to\nsuggest that it was the habit of the aesthetic emotion such as\nmediaeval men received from the proportions, directions, and\ncoordination of lines in their cathedrals of stone or brick which set\ntheir musicians to build up, like Browning's _Abt Vogler,_ the soul's\nfirst balanced and coordinated dwellings made of sounds.\n\nBe this last as it may, it is desirable that the Reader should accept,\nand possibly verify for himself, the psychological fact of the\n_storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion._ Besides, the points\nalready mentioned, it helps to explain several of the cruxes and\nparadoxes of aesthetics. First and foremost that dictum _De\nGustibus non est disputandum_ which some philosophers and even\naestheticians develop into an explicit denial of all intrinsic\nshape-preferences, and an assertion that _beautiful_ and _ugly_ are merely\nother names for _fashionable_ and _unfashionable, original_ and\n_unoriginal,_ or _suitable_ and _unsuitable._ As I have already\npointed out, differences of taste are started by the perceptive and\nempathic habits, schematically various, of given times and places,\nand also by those, especially the empathic habits, connected with\nindividual nervous condition: people accustomed to the round arch\nfinding the Gothic one unstable and eccentric; and, on the other\nhand, a person taking keen pleasure in the sudden and lurching lines\nof Lotto finding those of Titian tame and humdrum. But such\nintrinsically existing preferences and incompatibility are quite\nenormously increased by an emotional bias for or against a\nparticular kind of art; by which I mean a bias not due to that art's\npeculiarities, but preventing our coming in real contact with them.\n\nAesthetic perception and especially aesthetic empathy, like other\nintellectual and emotional activities, are at the mercy of a hostile\nmental attitude, just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of\nthe limbs. I do not hesitate to say that we are perpetually refusing to\nlook at certain kinds of art because, for one reason or another, we\nare emotionally prepossessed against them. On the other hand, once\nthe favourable emotional condition is supplied to us, often by means\nof words, our perceptive and empathic activities follow with twice\nthe ease they would if the business had begun with them. It is quite\nprobable that a good deal of the enhancement of aesthetic\nappreciation by fashion or sympathy should be put to the account,\nnot merely of gregarious imitativeness, but of the knowledge that a\nfavourable or unfavourable feeling is \"in the air.\" The emotion\nprecedes the appreciation, and both are genuine.\n\nA more personally humiliating aesthetic experience may be\nsimilarly explained. Unless we are very unobservant or very\nself-deluded, we are all familiar with the sudden checking (often almost\nphysically painful) of our aesthetic emotion by the hostile criticism\nof a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert: \"Dreadfully\nold-fashioned,\" \"_Archi-connu,_\"\"second-rate school work,\"\n\"completely painted over,\" \"utterly hashed in the performance\" (of a\npiece of music), \"mere prettiness\"--etc. etc. How often has not a\nsentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment;\nand transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality\n(even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry,\neuphony or pleasant colour!) into shrivelled cavillers at everything\nsave brand-new formulae and tip-top genius! Indeed, while teaching\na few privileged persons to taste the special \"quality\" which\nBotticelli has and Botticelli's pupils have not, and thus occasionally\nintensifying aesthetic enjoyment by distinguishing whatever\ndifferentiates the finer artistic products from the commoner, modern\nart-criticism has probably wasted much honest but shamefaced\ncapacity for appreciating the qualities common, because\nindispensable, to, all good art. It is therefore not without a certain\nretributive malignity that I end these examples of the storage and\ntransfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent bias to artistic\nappreciation, with that of the Nemesis dogging the steps of the\nconnoisseur. We have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase,\nof a wonderful masterpiece on the authority of some famous\nexpert; and of the masterpiece proving to be a mere school\nimitation, and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. The\nforegoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion,\njoined with what we have learned about shape-perception and\nempathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity\nto a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly\nowned up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess\nenough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could\nnever suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable emotional\nattitude and the absence of obvious _extrinsic_ (technical or\nhistorical) reasons for scepticism, these elements of resemblance\nmust awaken the vague idea, especially the empathic scheme, of the\nparticular master's work, and his name--shall we say Leonardo's?--will\nrise to the lips. But _Leonardo_ is a name to conjure with, and\nin this case to destroy the conjurer himself: the word _Leonardo_\nimplies an emotion, distilled from a number of highly prized and\npurposely repeated experiences, kept to gather strength in respectful\nisolation, and further heightened by a thrill of initiate veneration\nwhenever it is mentioned. This _Leonardo-emotion,_ once set on\nfoot, checks all unworthy doubts, sweeps out of consciousness all\nthoughts of inferior work (_inferiority_ and _Leonardo_ being\nemotionally incompatible!), respectfully holds the candle while the\nelements common to the imitation and the masterpiece are gone over\nand over, and the differentiating elements exclusively belonging to\nLeonardo evoked in the expert's memory, until at last the objective\nwork of art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces\nwhich impart to it their emotionally communicable virtue. And\nwhen the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule, the\nPhilistine shrewdly decides that a sham Leonardo is just as good as a\ngenuine one, that these are all matters of fashion, and that there is\nreally no disputing of tastes!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nAESTHETIC IRRADIATION AND PURIFICATION\n\nTHE storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another\nfact, with which indeed I began this little book: namely that the\nword _Beautiful_ has been extended from whatever is satisfactory in\nour contemplation of shapes, to a great number of cases where there\ncan be no question of shapes at all, as in speaking of a \"beautiful\ncharacter\" and a \"fine moral attitude\"; or else, as in the case of a\n\"beautiful bit of machinery,\" a \"fine scientific demonstration\" or a\n\"splendid surgical operation\" where the shapes involved are not at\nall such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such cases the\nword _Beautiful_ has been brought over with the emotion of\nsatisfied contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the\nminds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect,\nround the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise\n_shapely_ thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of\nhalf-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic\nexperience, and evoked by that word _Beautiful_ whose application\nthey partially justify. Nor is this all. Recent psychology teaches that,\nodd as it at first appears, our more or less definite images, auditive\nas well as visual, and whether actually perceived or merely\nremembered, are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's\ncontents, coming and going and weaving themselves on to a\nconstant woof of our own activities and feelings. It is precisely such\nactivities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply\nthe words _Beautiful_ and _Ugly._ Thus everything which has come\nin connexion with occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation,\nwill meet with somewhat of the same reception as that shape-contemplation\noriginally elicited. And even the merest items of information which\nthe painter conveys concerning the visible universe; the merest\ndetail of human character conveyed by the poet; nay even the\nmere nervous intoxication furnished by the musician, will all be\nirradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been conveyed\nin, and will therefore be felt as beautiful.\n\nMoreover, as the \"beautiful character\" and \"splendid operation\" have\ntaught us, rare and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a\n\"platonic\" way. And even objects of bodily desire, so long as that\ndesire is not acute and pressing, may give rise to merely\ncontemplative longings. All this, added to what has previously been\nsaid, sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which\nare irradiated by the word _Beautiful_ and the emotion originally\narising from the satisfied contemplation of mere shapes.\n\nAnd that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so\nlife-corroborating and so strangely impersonal, and that its special\nemotion should be so susceptible of radiation and transfer, is\nsufficient explanation of the elevating and purifying influence which,\never since Plato, philosophers have usually ascribed to the Beautiful.\nOther moralists however have not failed to point out that art has,\noccasionally and even frequently, effects of the very opposite kind.\nThe ever-recurrent discussion of this seeming contradiction is,\nhowever, made an end of, once we recognise that art has many aims\nbesides its distinguishing one of increasing our contemplation of the\nbeautiful. Indeed some of art's many non-aesthetic aims may\nthemselves be foreign to elevation and purification, or even, as for\ninstance the lewd or brutal subjects of some painting and poetry, and\nthe nervous intoxication of certain music, exert a debasing or\nenervating influence. But, as the whole of this book has tried to\nestablish, the contemplation of beautiful shapes involves perceptive\nprocesses in themselves mentally invigorating and refining, and a\nplay of empathic feelings which realise the greatest desiderata of\nspiritual life, viz. intensity, purposefulness and harmony; and such\nperceptive and empathic activities cannot fail to raise the present\nlevel of existence and to leave behind them a higher standard for\nfuture experience. This exclusively elevating effect of beautiful\nshape as such, is of course proportioned to the attention it receives\nand the exclusion of other, and possibly baser, interests connected\nwith the work of art. On the other hand the purifying effects of\nbeautiful shapes depend upon the attention oscillating to and fro\nbetween them and those other interests, e.g. _subject_ in the\n_representative_ arts, _fitness_ in the _applied_ ones, and\n_expression_ in music; all of which non-aesthetic interests benefit\n(enhanced if noble, redeemed if base) by irradiation of the nobler\nfeelings wherewith they are thus associated. For we must not forget\nthat where opposed groups of feeling are elicited, whichever\nhappens to be more active and complex will neutralise its opponent.\nThus, while an even higher intensity and complexity of aesthetic\nfeelings is obtained when the \"subject\" of a picture, the use of a\nbuilding or a chattel, or the expression of a piece of music, is in\nitself noble; and a Degas ballet girl can never have the dignity of a\nPhidian goddess, nor a gambling _casino_ that of a cathedral, nor\nthe music to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' _German Requiem,_\nyet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the\nattention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic\nsuggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine\nallegory embodied in Correggio's _Danae,_ or else we reinterpret\nthat sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the\nEarth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a\ncommon observation that while _unmusical_ Bayreuth-goers often\nattribute demoralising effects to some of Wagner's music, the\ngenuinely musical listeners are unaware, and usually incredulous, of\nany such evil possibilities.\n\nThis question of the purifying power of the Beautiful has brought us\nback to our starting-point. It illustrates the distinction between\n_contemplating an aspect_ and _thinking about things,_ and this\ndistinction's corollary that shape as such is yon-side of _real_ and\n_unreal,_ taking on the character of reality and unreality only\ninasmuch as it is thought of in connexion with a _thing._ As regards\nthe possibility of being _good_ or _evil,_ it is evident from all the\nforegoing that _shape as shape,_ and without the suggestion of\nthings, can be evil only in the sense of being ugly, ugliness\ndiminishing its own drawbacks by being, _ipso facto,_ difficult to\ndwell upon, inasmuch as it goes against the grain of our perceptive\nand empathic activities. The contemplation of beautiful shape is, on\nthe other hand, favoured by its pleasurableness, and such\ncontemplation of beautiful shape lifts our perceptive and empathic\nactivities, that is to say a large part of our intellectual and emotional\nlife, on to a level which can only be spiritually, organically, and in\nso far, morally beneficial.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nCONCLUSION (EVOLUTIONAL)\n\nSOME of my Readers, not satisfied by the answer implicit in the last\nchapter and indeed in the whole of this little book, may ask a final\nquestion concerning our subject. Not: What is the use of Art? since,\nas we have seen, Art has many and various uses both to the\nindividual and to the community, each of which uses is independent\nof the attainment of Beauty.\n\nThe remaining question concerns the usefulness of the very demand\nfor Beauty, of that _Aesthetic Imperative_ by which the other uses\nof art are more or less qualified or dominated. In what way, the\nReader may ask, has sensitiveness to Beauty contributed to the\nsurvival of mankind, that it should not only have been preserved and\nestablished by evolutional selection, but invested with the\ntremendous power of the pleasure and pain alternative?\n\nThe late William James, as some readers may remember, placed\nmusical pleasure between sentimental love and sea-sickness as\nphenomena unaccountable by any value for human survival, in fact\nmasteries, if not paradoxes, of evolution.\n\nThe riddle, though not necessarily the mystery, does not consist in\nthe survival of the aesthetic instinct of which the musical one is a\nmere sub-category, but in the origin and selectional establishment of\nits elementary constituents, say for instance space-perception and\nempathy, both of which exist equally outside that instinct which is a\nmere compound of them and other primary tendencies. For given\nspace-perception and empathy and their capacity of being felt as\nsatisfactory or unsatisfactory, the aesthetic imperative is not only\nintelligible but inevitable. Instead therefore of asking: Why is there a\npreference for what we call Beauty? we should have to ask: why has\nperception, feeling, logic, imagination, come to be just what it is?\nIndeed why are our sense-organs, our bodily structure and chemical\ncomposition, what they are; and why do they exist at all in\ncontradistinction to the ways of being of other living or other\ninanimate things? So long as these elementary facts continue\nshrouded in darkness or taken for granted, the genesis and\nevolutional reason of the particular compound which we call\naesthetic preference must remain only one degree less mysterious\nthan the genesis and evolutional reason of its psychological\ncomponents.\n\nMeanwhile all we can venture to say is that as satisfaction derived\nfrom shapes we call _beautiful,_ undoubtedly involves intense,\ncomplex, and reiterative mental activities, as it has an undeniable\npower for happiness and hence for spiritual refreshment, and\nas it moreover tends to inhibit most of the instincts whose\nsuperabundance can jeopardise individual and social existence, the\ncapacity for such aesthetic satisfaction, once arisen, would be\nfostered in virtue of a mass of evolutional advantages which are as\ncomplex and difficult to analyse, but also as deep-seated and\nundeniable, as itself.\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nI.      _Lipps._ Raumaesthetik, Leipzig, 1897.\n         \"       Aesthetik, vol. I. part ii., Leipzig, 1906.\nII.     _Karl Groos._ Aesthetik, Giessen, 1892.\n         \"       Der Aesthetische Genuss, Giessen, 1902.\nIII.    _Wundt._ Physiologische Psychologie (5th Edition, 1903), vol.\nIII. pg. 107 to 209. But the whole volume is full of indirect\nsuggestion on aesthetics.\nIV.     _Muensterberg._ The Principles of Art Education, New York,\n1905. (Statement of Lipps' theory in physiological terms.)\nV.      _Kuelpe._ Der gegenwaertige Stand der experimentellen\nAesthetik, 1907.\nVI.     _Vernon Lee and Anstruther-Thomson._ Beauty and Ugliness,\n1912 (contains abundant quotations from most of the above works\nand other sources).\nVII.    _Ribot._ Le Role latent des Images Motrices. Revue\nPhilosophique, March 1912.\nVIII.   _Witasek._ Psychologie der Raumwahrnehmung des Auges\n(1910). These two last named are only indirectly connected with\nvisual aesthetics.\n\nFor art-evolutional questions consult:\nIX.     _Haddon._ Evolution in Art, 1895.\nX.      _Yrjoe Hirn._ Origins of Art, Macmillan, 1900.\nXI.     _Levinstein._ Kinderzeichnungen, Leipzig, 1905.\nXII.    _Loewy._ Nature in early Greek Art (translation), Duckworth,\n1907.\nXIII.   _Delia Seta._ Religione e Arte Figurata, Rome, 1912.\nXIV.    _Spearing._ The Childhood of Art, 1913.\nXV.     _Jane Harrison._ Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\nAesthetic:\n     aridity, 136-7;\n     imperative, 99-100;\n     irradiation, 147-52;\n     purification, 149-52;\n     responsiveness, active nature of, 128-36;\n     habit and familiarity affecting, 134-6\nAltamira cave frescoes, 95\nArt:\n     differential characteristic of, 116-18;\n     non-aesthetic aims of, 99-100, 137-8; utility of, 153-5\nAspect:\n     aesthetics concerned with, 15, 21, 105;\n     shape the determining feature of, 26-8\nAttention, a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32\n\nBalfour, H., 95\nBeautiful:\n     aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective, 147-8;\n     attitude implied by use of adjective, 2-7, 18-19;\n     empathy the chief factor of preference, 67-8;\n     implies desire for reiterated perception, 53-4\nBotticelli, 83\nBrahms' _German Requiem,_ 150\nBrowning's _Abt Vogler,_ 141\n\nColeridge's _Ode to Dejection,_ 131\nColour, passive reception of, 23-4, 29\nContemplative satisfaction marking aesthetic attitude, 8-15\nCorreggio's _Danae,_ 151\nCubic Existence:\n     perception of, 85;\n     pictorial suggestion of, importance attached to, discussed, 101-5\n\n_Discobolus,_ 115\n\nEinfuehlung, 59;\n     misinterpretations of, 66-7\nEmotion, storage and transfer of, 139-46\nEmpathy, 61-69;\n     complexity of movements of lines, 78-83;\n     movements of lines, 70-77;\n     second element of shape-perception, 59-60\nExtension existing in perception, 35-8\n\nFechner, 130\n\nHildebrand, 102, 118\n\nInner Mimicry, 74-5\n\nJames, W., 153\n\nKeats' _Grecian Urn,_ 77\n\nLevinstein, 96\nLipps, 66\nLocomotion of Things, distinction between, and empathic\nmovement of lines, 111-16\nLotze, 66\n\nMantegna, 82\nMemory:\n     a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32;\n     in perception, 40-1\nMichel Angelo, 114, 122\nMovement of Lines, distinction between, and locomotion of Things,\n111-16; _see also_ Empathy\n\nObject of Perception, subject's activities merged in, 57, 58\n\nPerception:\n     active process involved in, 29-34, 128-9;\n     distinguished from sensation, 32;\n     subject and object of, 55-60\n\nRaphael's _Heliodorus,_ 119\nRelaxation an element of form-perception, 42\nRembrandt, 122\nRythm, 42-5\n\nSemper, hypothesis regarding shape-preference, 94\nSensations:\n     distinguished from perceptions, 32;\n     perception of relation between, 29-30\nShape:\n     character of, 78-83;\n     contemplation of, its intermittent but recurrent character, 106-10;\n     determines contemplation of an aspect, 26-8;\n     elements of, 35-47;\n     Empathy an element of perception of, 59;\n     facility and difficulty of grasping, 48-54;\n     a perception, 29-34;\n     practical causes regarding evolution of, 90-4;\n     preference, its evolution, 94-7;\n     and Things, their co-operation, 117-27;\n     thinking away from, to Things, 131-2, 84-9\nSound, passive reception of, 23-4, 29\nSubject of perception, extent of awareness of self, 57-9\nSymmetry, 42-3\n\nTension, an element of form-perception, 42\nThings and Shapes, their cooperation, 117-27;\n     thoughts about, entering into shape-contemplation, 84-9\nThird Dimension, locomotor nature of knowledge of, 85-6, 101\nTitchener, 59\n\nVinci, Leonardo da, 83, 145-6\nVischer, 66\n\nWatts, G. F., 46\nWhole and Parts, perception of relation of, 48-54\nWilde's _Salome,_ 150\nWundt, 42, 66","title":"The Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":33638}