Chapter II: The Nature of Beauty

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

The first was the method of aesthetics par excellence. It was indeed only through the desire of an eighteenth-century philosopher, Baumgarten, to round out his "architectonic" of metaphysics that the science received its name, as designating the theory of knowledge in the form of feeling, parallel to that of "clear," logical thought. Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, again, made use of the concept of the Beautiful as a kind of keystone or cornice for their respective philosophical edifices. Aesthetics, then, came into being as the philosophy of the Beautiful, and it may be asked why this philosophical aesthetics does not suffice--why beauty should need for its understanding also an aesthetics "von unten."

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

But it is clear that neither has empirical aesthetics said the last word concerning beauty. Criticism is still in a chaotic state that would be impossible if aesthetic theory were firmly grounded. This situation appears to me to be due to the inherent inadequacy and inconclusiveness of empirical aesthetics when it stands alone; the grounds of this inadequacy I shall seek to establish in the following.

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

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

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

Thus it is in psychology that empirical aesthetics finds its last resort. And indeed, our plain man might say, the aesthetic experience itself is inescapable and undeniable. You know that the sight or the hearing of this thing gives you a thrill of pleasure. You may not be able to defend the beauty of the object, but the fact of the experience you have. The psychologist, seeking to analyze the vivid and unmistakable Aesthetic experience, would therefore proceed somewhat as follows. He would select the salient characteristics of his mental state in presence of a given work of art. He would then study, by experiment and introspection, how the particular sense-stimulations of the work of art in question could become the psychological conditions of these salient characteristics. Thus, supposing the aesthetic experience to have been described as "the conscious happiness in which one is absorbed, and, as it were, immersed in the sense-object,"<1> the further special aim, in connection with a picture, for instance, would be to show how the sensations and associated ideas from color, line, composition, and all the other elements of a picture may, on general psychological principles, bring about this state of happy absorption. Such elements as can be shown to have a direct relation to the aesthetic experience are then counted as elements of the beauty of the aesthetic object, and such as are invariable in all art forms would belong to the general formula or concept of Beauty.

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

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

Yet this method, as it works out, does not exhaust the problem the solution of which was affirmed to be the aim of every aesthetics. The aesthetic experience is very complex, and the theoretical consequences of emphasizing this or that element very great. Thus, if it were held that the characteristics of the aesthetic experience could be given by the complete analysis of a single well-marked case,--say, our impressions before a Doric column, or the Cathedral of Chartres, or the Giorgione Venus,--it could be objected that for such a psychological experience the essential elements are hard to isolate. The cathedral is stone rather than staff; it is three hundred rather than fifty feet high. Our reaction upon these facts may or may not be essentials to the aesthetic moment, and we can know whether they are essentials only by comparison and exclusion. It might be said, therefore, that the analysis of a single, though typical, aesthetic experience is insufficient; a wide induction is necessary. Based on the experience of many people, in face of the same object? But to many there would be no aesthetic experience. On that of one person, over an extensive field of objects? How, then, determine the limits of this field? Half of the dispute of modern aesthetics is over the right to include in the material for this induction various kinds of enjoyment which are vivid, not directly utilitarian, but traditionally excluded from the field. Guyan, for instance, in a charming passage of his "Problemes de l'Esthetique Contemporaine," argues for the aesthetic quality of the moment when, exhausted by a long mountain tramp, he quaffed, among the slopes of the Pyrenees, a bowl of foaming milk. The same dispute appears, in more complicated form, in the conflicting dicta of the critics.

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

It seems to me that the secret of the difficulty lies in the nature of the situation, with which an empirical treatment must necessarily fail to deal. What we have called "the aesthetic experience" is really a positive toning of the general aesthetic attitude. This positive toning corresponds to aesthetic excellence in the object. But wherever the concept of excellence enters, there is always the implication of a standard, value, judgment. But where there is a standard there is always an implicit a priori,--a philosophical foundation.

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

Beauty is an excellence, a standard, a value. But value is in its nature teleological; is of the nature of purpose. Anything ha value because it fulfills an end, because it is good for something in the world. A thing is not beautiful because it has value,--other things have that,--it has value because it is beautiful, because it fulfills the end of Beauty. Thus the metaphysical definition of Beauty must set forth what this end of Beauty is,--what it serves in the universe.

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

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

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

Nor can we agree with Santayana's dictum<1> that philosophical aesthetics confuses the import of an experience with the explanation of its cause. It need not. The aesthetic experience is indeed caused by the beautiful object, but the beautiful object itself is caused by the possibility of the aesthetic experience,-- beauty as an end under the conditions of human perception. Thus the Nature of Beauty is related to its import, or meaning, or end, as means to that end; and therefore the import of an experience may well point out to us the constitution of the cause of that experience. A work of art, a piece of nature, is judged by its degree of attainment to that end; the explanation of its beauty--of its degree of attainment, that is--is found in the effect of its elements, according to psychological laws, on the aesthetic subject.

<1> The Sense of Beauty, 1898. Intro.

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

The first step must then be to win the philosophical definition of Beauty. It was Kant, says Hegel, who spoke the first rational word concerning Beauty. The study of his successors will reveal, I believe, that the aesthetic of the great system of idealism forms, on the whole, one identical doctrine. It is worth while to dwell somewhat on this point, because the traditional view of the relation of the aesthetic of Kant, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel is otherwise. Kant's starting-point was the discovery of the normative, "over-individual" nature of Beauty, which we have just found to be the secret of the contradictions of empirical aesthetics. Yet he came to it at the bidding of quite other motives.

Kant's aesthetics was meant to serve as the keystone of the arch between sense and reason. The discovery of all that is implicit in the experience of the senses had led him to deny the possibility of knowledge beyond the matter of this experience. Yet the reason has an inevitable tendency to press beyond this limit, to seek all-embracing, absolute unities,--to conceive an unconditioned totality. Thus the reason presents us with the ideas--beyond all possibility of knowledge--of the Soul, the World, and God. In the words of Kant, the Ideas of Reason lead the understanding to the consideration of Nature according to a principle of completeness, although it can never attain to this. Can there be a bridge across this abyss between sense and reason? then asks Kant; which bridge he believes himself to have found in the aesthetic faculty. For on inquiring what is involved in the judgment, "This is beautiful," he discovers that such a judgment is "universal" and "necessary," inasmuch as it implies that every normal spectator must acknowledge its validity, that it is "disinterested" because it rests on the "appearance of the object without demanding its actual existence," and that it is "immediate" or "free," as it acknowledges the object as beautiful without definite purpose, as of adaptation to use. But how does this judgment constitute the desired bond between sense and reason? Simply in that, though applied to an object of the senses, it has yet all the marks of the Idea of Reason,--it is universal, necessary, free, unconditioned; it is judged as if it were perfect, and so fulfills those demands of reason which elsewhere in the world of sense are unsatisfied.

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

Schiller has been given the credit of transcending Kant's "subjective" aesthetic through his emphasis on the significance of the beautiful object. It is not bound by a conception to which it must attain, so that it is perceived as if it were free. Nor do we desire the reality of it to use for ourselves or for others; so that we are free in relation to it. It, the object, is thus "the vindication of freedom in the world of phenomena," that world which is otherwise a binding necessity. But it would seem that this had been already taught by Kant himself, and that Schiller has but enlivened the subject by his two illuminating phrases, "aesthetic semblance" and the "play-impulse," to denote the real object of the aesthetic desire and the true nature of that desire; form instead of material existence, and a free attitude instead of serious purpose. Still, his insistence on Beauty as the realization of freedom may be said to have paved the way for Schelling's theory, in which the aesthetic reaches its maximum of importance.

The central thought of the Absolute Idealism of Schelling is the underlying identity of Nature and the Self. In Nature, from matter up to the organism, the objective factor predominates, or, in Schelling's phrase, the conscious self is determined by the unconscious. In morality, science, the subjective factor predominates, or the unconscious is determined by the conscious. But the work of art is a natural appearance and so unconscious, and is yet the product of a conscious activity. It gives, then, the equilibrium of the real and ideal factors,--just that repose of reconciliation or "indifference" which alone can show the Absolute. But-- and this is of immense importance for our theory--in order to explain the identity of subject and object, the Ego must have an intuition, through which, in one and the same appearance, it is in itself at once conscious and unconscious, and this condition is given in the aesthetic experience. The beautiful is thus the solution of the riddle of the universe, for it is the possibility of the explicit consciousness of the unity of Nature and the Self--or the Absolute.

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

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

This definition would seem to be as to the letter in accord with the general tendency as have already outlined. It might be said that it is but another phrasing of Schelling's thought of the Absolute as presented to the Ego in Beauty. But not so. For Schelling, the aesthetic is a schema or form,--that is, the form of balance, equilibrium, reconciliation of the rational ideal,--not a content. But Hegel's Beauty expresses the Idea by the way of information or association. That this is true any one of his traditional examples makes evident. Correggio's Madonna of the St. Sebastian is found by him inferior to the Sistine Madonna. Why? "In the first picture we have the dearest and loveliest of human relations consecrated by contrast with what is Divine. In the second picture we have the Divine relation itself, showing itself under the limitations of the human."<1> Dutch painting, he tells us, ought not to be despised; "for it is this fresh and wakeful freedom and vitality of mind in apprehension and presentation that forms the highest aspect of these pictures." And a commentator adds, "The spontaneous joy of the perfect life is figured to this lower sphere." His whole treatment of Art as a symbol confirms this view, as do all his criticisms. Art or Beauty shall reveal to our understanding the eternal Ideal.

<1> Kedney's Hegel's _Aesthetics_, 1892, p. 158.

On comparing this with what we have won from Kant, Schiller, and Schelling, the divergence becomes apparent. I have tried to show that there is no essential difference between these three either in their general view of the aesthetic experience, or in the degree of objectivity of their doctrine of Beauty. They do not contradict one another. They merely emphasize now the unity, now the reconciliation of opposites, in the aesthetic experience. The experience of the beautiful constitutes a reconciliation of the warring elements of experience, in a world in which the demands of Reason seem to conflict with the logic of events, and the beautiful object is such that it constitutes the permanent possibility for this reconciliation.

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

Is there any way in which this is conceivable? We cannot completely express to sense Niagara Falls or the Jungfrau, for they are infinitely beyond the possibilities of imitation. Yet the particular contour of the Jungfrau is never mistaken in the smallest picture. In making a model of Niagara we should have to reproduce the relation between body of water, width of stream, and height of fall, and we might succeed in getting the peculiar effect of voluminousness which marks that wonder of Nature. The soaring of a lark is not like the pointing upward of a slender Gothic spire, yet there is a likeness in the attitudes with which we follow them. All these cases have certain form-qualities in common, by virtue of which they resemble each other. Now it is these very form-qualities which Kant is using when he takes the aesthetic judgment as representative of reason in the world of sense because it shows the qualities of the ideas of reason,--that is, unconditional totality or freedom. And we might, indeed, hope to "express the Idea to sense" if we could find for it a form-quality, or subjectively, in the phrase of Kant, a form of reflection.

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

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

But must every self-complete object give rise to the aesthetic experience? An object is absolutely self-complete only for the perceiving subject; it is so, in other words, only when it produces a self-complete experience for that subject. If reconciliation of the warring elements of the universe is the end of Beauty it must take place not for, but in, the human personality; it must not be understood, but immediately, completely experienced; it should be realized in the subject of the aesthetic experience, the lover of beauty. The beautiful object would be not that which should show in outline form, or remind of, this Unity of the World, but which should create for the subject the moment of self- completeness; which should inform the aesthetic subject with that unity and self-completeness which are the "forms of reflection" of the Infinite. The subject should be not a mirror of perfection, but a state of perfection. Only in this sense does the concept of reconciliation come to its full meaning. Not because I see freedom, but because I am free; not because I think of God, or the Infinite, or the one, but because I am for the moment complete, at the highest point of energy and unity, does the aesthetic experience constitute such a reconciliation.

Not because I behold the Infinite, but because I have, myself, a moment of perfection. Herein it is that our theory constitutes a complete contradiction to all "expression" or "significant" theories of the Beautiful, and does away with the necessity those theories are under of reading sermons into stones. The yellow primrose needs not to remind us of the harmony of the universe, or to have ulterior significance whatever, if it gives by its own direct simple stimulation a moment of Unity and Self- completeness. That immediate experience indeed contains in itself the "form of reflection" of the Absolute, and it is through this that we so often pass, in the enjoyment of Beauty, to the thought of the divine. But that thought is a corollary, a secondary effect, not an essential part of the aesthetic moment. There is a wonderful bit of unconscious aesthetics in the following passage from Senancour, touching the "secret of relation" we have just analyzed.

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

<1> Translation by Carleton Noyes: _The Enjoyment of Art_, 1903, p. 65.

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

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

The psychological organism is in a state of unity either when it is in a state of virtual congealment or emptiness, as in a trance or ecstasy; or when it is in a state of repose, without tendency to change. Secondly, the organism is self-complete when it is at the highest possible point of tone, of functional efficiency, of enhanced life. Then a combination of favorable stimulation and repose would characterize the aesthetic feeling.

But it may be said that stimulation and repose are contradictory concepts, and we must indeed admit that the absolute repose of the hypnotic trance is not aesthetic, because empty of stimulus. The only aesthetic repose is that in which stimulation resulting in impulse to movement or action is checked or compensated for by its antagonistic impulse; inhibition of action, or action returning upon itself, combined with heightening of tone. But this is TENSION, EQUILIBRIUM, or BALANCE OF FORCES, which is thus seen to be A GENERAL CONDITION OF ALL AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. The concept is familiar in pictorial composition and to some extent also in music and poetry, but here first appears as grounded in the very demand for the union of repose with activity.

Moreover, this requirement, which we have derived from the logical concepts of unity and totality, as translated into psychological terms, receives confirmation from the nature of organic life. It was the perfect moment that we sought, and we found it in the immediate experience of unity and self-completeness; and unity for a living being CAN only be equilibrium. Now it appears that an authoritative definition of the general nature of an organism makes it "so built, whether on mechanical principles or not, that every deviation from the equilibrium point sets up a tendency to return to it."<1> Equilibrium, in greater or less excursions from the centre, is thus the ultimate nature of organic life. The perfect equilibrium, that is, equilibrium with heightened tone, will then give the perfect moment.

<1> L.T. Hobhouse, _Mind in Evolution_.

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

A further important question, as to the fitting psychological designation of the aesthetic state, is now suggested. Some authorities speak of the aesthetic attitude or activity, describing it as "sympathetic imitation" or "absorption;" others of the aesthetic pleasure. But, according to our definition of the aesthetic experience as a combination of favorable stimulation with repose, this state, as involving "a distinctive feeling-tone and a characteristic trend of activity aroused by a certain situation,"<1> can be no other than an emotion. This view is confirmed by introspection; we speak of aesthetic activity and aesthetic pleasure, but we are conscious of a complete arrest, and sometimes of a very distinct divergence from pure pleasure. The experience is unique, it seems to defy description, to be intense, vivid, and yet--like itself alone. Any attempt to disengage special, already known emotions, even at the play or in hearing music, is often in vain, in just those moments when our excitement is most intense. But the hypothesis of a unique emotion, parallel to those of joy, fear, etc., and with a psychological basis as outlined, would account for these facts. The positive toning of the experience--what we call aesthetic pleasure--is due not only to the favorable stimulation, but also to the fact that the very antagonism of impulses which constitutes repose heightens tone while it inhibits action. Thus the conditions of both factors of aesthetic emotion tend to induct pleasure.

<1> Baldwin's _Dict. Of Phil. And Psychol._ Art. "Emotion."

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

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

The theories of Kulpe and Santayana, while they definitely mark out the ground, seem to me in need of addition. "Absorption in the object in respect to its bare quality and conformation" does not, of course, give the needed information, for objective beauty, of the character of this conformation or form. But yet, it might be said that the content of beauty might conceivably be deduced from the psychological conditions of absorption. In the same way, Santayana's "Beauty as objectified pleasure," or pleasure as the quality of a thing, is neither a determination of objective beauty nor a sufficient description of the psychological state. Yet analysis of those qualities in the thing that cause us to make our pleasure a quality of it would supplement the definition sufficiently and completely in the sense of our own formula. Why do we regard pleasure as the quality of a thing? Because there is something in the thing that makes us spread, as it were, our pleasure upon it. This is that which fixates us, arrests us, upon it,--which can be only the elements that make for repose.

Guyau, however, comes nearest to our point of view. "The beautiful is a perception or an action which stimulates life within us under its three forms simultaneously (i.e., sensibility, intelligence, and will) and produces pleasure by the swift consciousness of this general stimulation."<1> It is from this general stimulation that Guyau explains the aesthetic effect of his famous drink of milk among mountain scenes. But such general stimulation might accompany successful action of any kind, and thus the moral and the aesthetic would fall together. That M. Guyau is so successful in his analysis is due rather to the fact that just this diffused stimulation is likely to come from such exercise as is characterized by the mutual checking of antagonistic impulses producing an equilibrium. The diffusion of stimulation would be our formula for the aesthetic state only if interpreted as stimulation arresting action.

<1> _Problemes de l'Esthetique Contemporaine_ 1902, p. 77.

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

Let us consider once more the concept of equilibrium. Inhibition of action through antagonistic impulses, or action returning upon itself, we have defined it; and the line cannot be drawn sharply between these types. The visual analogue for equilibrium may be either symmetrical figure or circle; the excursion from the centre may be either the swing of the pendulum or the sweep of the planet. The RETURN is the essential. Now it is a commonplace of criticism--though the significance of the dictum has never been sufficiently seen--that the great drama, novel, or symphony does return upon itself. The excursion is merely longer, of a different order of impulses from that of the picture. The last note is the only possible answer to the first; it contains the first. The last scene has meaning only as the satisfaction of the first. The measure of the perfection of a work of temporal art is thus its IMPLICIT character. The end is contained in the beginning--that is the meaning of "inevitableness."

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

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

III THE AESTHETIC REPOSE