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Title: The Psychology of Beauty
Author: Ethel D. Puffer
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This Project Gutenberg Etext prepared by Tony Adam
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The Psychology of Beauty
by Ethel D. Puffer
PREFACE
THE human being who thrills to the experience of beauty in
nature and in art does not forever rest with that experience
unquestioned. The day comes when he yearns to pierce the
secret of his emotion, to discover what it is, and why, that
has so stung him--to defend and to justify his transport to
himself and to others. He seeks a reason for the faith that
is in him. And so have arisen the speculative theories of
the nature of beauty, on the one hand, and the studies of
concrete beauty and our feelings about it, on the other.
Speculative theory has taken its own way, however, as a
part of philosophy, in relating the Beautiful to the other
great concepts of the True and the Good; building up an
architectonic of abstract ideas, far from the immediate
facts and problems of the enjoyment of beauty. There has
grown up, on the other hand, in the last years, a great
literature of special studies in the facts of aesthetic
production and enjoyment. Experiments with the aesthetic
elements; investigations into the physiological psychology
of aesthetic reactions; studies in the genesis and development
of art forms, have multiplied apace. But these are still
mere groups of facts for psychology; they have not been taken
up into a single authoritative principle. Psychology cannot
do justice to the imperative of beauty, by virtue of which,
when we say "this is beautiful," we have a right to imply
that the universe must agree with us. A synthesis of these
tendencies in the study of beauty is needed, in which the
results of modern psychology shall help to make intelligible
a philosophical theory of beauty. The chief purpose of this
book is to seek to effect such a union.
A way of defining Beauty which grounds it in general principles,
while allowing it to reach the concrete case, is set forth in
the essay on the Nature of Beauty. The following chapters aim
to expand, to test, and to confirm this central theory, by
showing, partly by the aid of the aforesaid special studies,
how it accounts for our pleasure in pictures, music, and
literature.
The whole field of beauty is thus brought under discussion;
and therefore, though it nowhere seeks to be exhaustive in
treatment, the book may fairly claim to be a more or less
consistent and complete aesthetic theory, and hence to
address itself to the student of aesthetics as well as to the
general reader. The chapter on the Nature of Beauty, indeed,
will doubtless be found by the latter somewhat technical, and
should be omitted by all who definitely object to professional
phraseology. The general conclusions of the book are
sufficiently stated in the less abstract papers.
Of the essays which compose the following volume, the first,
third, and last are reprinted, in more or less revised form,
from the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "International Monthly."
Although written as independent papers, it is thought that
they do not unduly repeat each other, but that they serve to
verify, in each of the several realms of beauty, the truth
of the central theory of the book.
The various influences which have served to shape a work of
this kind become evident in the reading; but I cannot refrain
from a word of thanks to the teachers whose inspiration and
encouragement first made it possible. I owe much gratitude
to Professor Mary A. Jordan and Professor H. Norman Gardiner
of Smith College, who in literature and in philosophy first
set me in the way of aesthetic interest and inquiry, and to
Professor Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University, whose
philosophical theories and scientific guidance have largely
influenced my thought.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE, April 24, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS.............................1
II. THE NATURE OF BEAUTY................................27
III. THE AESTHETIC REPOSE................................57
IV. THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART..............................89
A. THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM.....................91
B. SPACE COMPOSITION AMONG THE OLD MASTERS......128
V. THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC................................149
VI. THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE...........................203
VII. THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA............229
VIII. THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS................................263
I
CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY
I
CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS
IT is not so long ago that the field of literary criticism
was divided into two opposing camps. France being the only
country in the world where criticism is a serious matter,
the battle waged most fiercely there, and doubtless greatly
served to bring about the present general interest and
understanding of the theoretical questions at issue. The
combatants were, of course, the impressionistic and scientific
schools of criticism, and particularly enlightening were the
more or less recent controversies between MM. Anatole France
and Jules Lemaitre as representatives of the first, and M.
Brunetiere as the chief exponent of the second. They have
planted their standards; and we see that they stand for
tendencies in the critical activity of every nation. The
ideal of the impressionist is to bring a new piece of
literature into being in some exquisitely happy characterization,--
to create a lyric of criticism out of the unique pleasure of
an aesthetic hour. The stronghold of the scientist, on the
other hand, is the doctrine of literary evolution, and his
aim is to show the history of literature as the history of
a process, and the work of literature as a product; to explain
it from its preceding causes, and to detect thereby the general
laws of literary metamorphosis.
Such are the two great lines of modern criticism; their purposes
and ideals stand diametrically opposed. Of late, however, there
have not been wanting signs of a spirit of reconciliation, and
of a tendency to concede the value, each in its own sphere, of
different but complementary activities. Now and again the
lion and the lamb have lain down together; one might almost say,
on reading a delightful paper of Mr. Lewis E. Gates on
Impressionism and Appreciation,<1> that the lamb had assimilated
the lion. For the heir of all literary studies, according to
Professor Gates, is the appreciative critic; and he it is who
shall fulfill the true function of criticism. He is to
consider the work of art in its historical setting and its
psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the
development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent
illustration of aesthetic law." But, "in regarding the work
of art under all these aspects, his aim is, primarily, not to
explain, and not to judge or dogmatize, but to enjoy; to
realize the manifold charms the work of art has gathered unto
itself from all sources, and to interpret this charm imaginatively
to the men of his own day and generation."
<1> Atlantic Monthly, July, 1900.
Thus it would seem that if the report of his personal reactions
to a work of literary art is the intention of the impressionist,
and its explanation that of the scientist, the purpose of the
appreciative critic is fairly named as the illuminating and
interpreting reproduction of that work, from material furnished
by those other forms of critical activity. Must, then, the
method of appreciation, as combining and reconciling the two
opposed views, forthwith claim our adherence? To put to use
all the devices of science and all the treasures of scholarship
for the single end of imaginative interpretation, for the sake
of giving with the original melody all the harmonies of subtle
association and profound meaning the ages have added, is, indeed,
a great undertaking. But is it as valuable as it is vast? M.
Brunetiere has poured out his irony upon the critics who believe
that their own reactions upon literature are anything to us in
the presence of the works to which they have thrilled. May it
not also be asked of the interpreter if its function is a
necessary one? Do we require so much enlightenment, only to
enjoy? Appreciative criticism is a salt to give the dull
palate its full savor; but what literary epicure, what real
boo-lover, will acknowledge his own need of it? If the whole
aim of appreciative criticism is to reproduce in other
arrangement the contents, expressed and implied, and the
emotional value, original and derived, of a piece of literature,
the value of the end, at least to the intelligent reader, is
out of all proportion to the laboriousness of the means. Sing,
reading's a joy! For me, I read.
But a feeling of this kind is, after all, not a reason to be
urged against the method. The real weakness of appreciative
criticism lies elsewhere. It teaches us to enjoy; but are we
to enjoy everything? Since its only aim is to reveal the
"intricate implications" of a work of art; since it offers,
and professes to offer, no literary judgments,--having indeed
no explicit standard of literary value,--it must, at least
on its own theory, take its objects of appreciation ready-made,
so to speak, by popular acclaim. It possesses no criterion;
it likes whate'er it looks on; and it can never tell us what
we are not to like. That is unsatisfactory; and it is worse,--
it is self-destructive. For, not being able to reject,
appreciation cannot, in logic, choose the objects of its
attention. But a method which cannot limit on its own principles
the field within which it is to work is condemned from the
beginning; it bears a fallacy at its core. In order to make
criticism theoretically possible at all, the power to choose
and reject, and so the pronouncing of judgment, must be an
integral part of it.
To such a task the critic may lend himself without arousing
our antagonism. We have no pressing need to know the latent
possibilities of emotion for us in a book or a poem; but whether
it is excellent or the reverse, whether "we were right in being
moved by it," we are indeed willing to hear, for we desire to
justify the faith that is in us.
If, then, the office of the judge be an essential part of the
critical function, the appreciative critic, whatever his other
merits,--and we shall examine them later,--fails at least of
perfection. His scheme is not the ideal one; and we may turn
back, in our search for it, to a closer view of those which
his was to supersede. Impressionism, however, is at once out
of the running; it has always vigorously repudiated the notion
of the standard, and we know, therefore, that no more than
appreciation can it choose its material and stand alone. But
scientific criticism professes, at least, the true faith M.
Brunetiere holds that his own method is the only one by which
an impersonal and stable judgment can be rendered.
The doctrine of the evolution of literary species is more or
less explained in naming it. Literary species, M. Brunetiere
maintains, do exist. They develop and are transformed into
others in a way more or less analogous to the evolution of
natural types. It remains to see on what basis an objective
judgment can be given. Although M. Brunetiere seems to make
classification the disposal of a work in the hierarchy of
species, and judgment the disposal of it in relation to others
of its own species, he has never sharply distinguished between
them; so that we shall not be wrong in taking his three
principles of classification, scientific, moral, and aesthetic,
as three principles by which he estimates the excellence of a
work. His own examples, indeed, prove that to him a thing is
already judged in being classified. The work of art is judged,
then, by its relation to the type. Is this position tenable?
I hold that, on the contrary, it precludes the possibility of
a critical judgment; for the judgment of anything always means
judgment with reference to the end for which is exists. A bad
king is not the less a bad king for being a good father; and
if his kingship is his essential function, he must be judged
with reference to that alone. Now a piece of literature is,
with reference to its end, first of all a work of art. It
represents life and it enjoins morality, but it is only as a
work of art that it attains consideration; that, in the words
of M. Lemaitre, it "exists" for us at all. Its aim is beauty,
and beauty is its excuse for being.
The type belongs to natural history. The one principle at the
basis of scientific criticism is, as we have seen, the
conception of literary history as a process, and of the work
of art as a product. The work of art is, then, a moment in a
necessary succession, governed by laws of change and adaptation
like those of natural evolution. But how can the conception of
values enter here? Excellence can be attributed only to that
which attains an ideal end; and a necessary succession has no
end in itself. The "type," in this sense, is perfectly hollow.
To say that the modern chrysanthemum is better than that of
our forbears because it is more chrysanthemum-like is true only
if we make the latter form the arbitrary standard of the
chrysanthemum. If the horse of the Eocene age is inferior to
the horse of to-day, it is because, on M. Brunetiere's principle,
he is less horse-like. But who shall decide which is more like
a horse, the original or the latter development? No species
which is constituted by its own history can be said to have
an end in itself, and can, therefore, have an excellence to
which it shall attain. In short, good and bad can be applied
to the moments in a necessary evolution only by imputing a
fictitious superiority to the last term; and so one type cannot
logically be preferred to another. As for the individual
specimens, since the conception of the type does not admit the
principle of excellence, conformity thereto means nothing.
The work of art, on the other hand, as a thing of beauty, is
an attainment of an ideal, not a product, and, from this point
of view, is related not at all to the other terms of a succession,
its causes and its effects, but only to the abstract principles
of that beauty at which it aims. Strangely enough, the whole
principle of this contention has been admitted by M. Brunetiere
in a casual sentence, of which he does not appear to recognize
the full significance. "We acknowledge, of course," he says,
"that there is in criticism a certain difference from natural
history, since we cannot eliminate the subjective element if
the capacity works of art have of producing impressions on us
makes a part of their definition. It is not in order to be
eaten that the tree produces its fruit." But this is giving
away his whole position! As little as the conformity of the
fruit to its species has to do with our pleasure in eating it,
just so little has the conformity of a literary work to its
genre to do with the quality by virtue of which it is defined
as art.
The Greek temple is a product of Greek religion applied to
geographical conditions. To comprehend it as a type, we must
know that it was an adaptation of the open hilltop to the
purpose of the worship of images of the gods. But the most
penetrating study of the slow moulding of this type will never
reveal how and why just those proportions were chosen which
make the joy and the despair of all beholders. Early Italian
art was purely ecclesiastical in its origin. The exigencies
of adaptation to altars, convent walls, or cathedral domes
explain the choice of subjects, the composition, even perhaps
the color schemes (as of frescoes, for instance); and yet all
that makes a Giotto greater than a Pictor Ignotus is quite
unaccounted for by these considerations.
The quality of beauty is not evolved. All that comes under
the category of material and practical purpose, of idea or of
moral attitude, belongs to the succession, the evolution, the
type But the defining characters of the work of art are
independent of time. The temple, the fresco, and the symphony,
in the moment they become objects of the critical judgment,
become also qualities of beauty and transparent examples of
its laws.
If the true critical judgment, then, belongs to an order of
ideas of which natural science can take no cognizance, the
self-styled scientific criticism must show the strange paradox
of ignoring the very qualities by virtue of which a given work
has any value, or can come at all to be the object of aesthetic
judgment. In two words, the world of beauty and the world of
natural processes are incommensurable, and scientific criticism
of literary art is a logical impossibility.
But the citadel of scientific criticism has yet one more
stronghold. Granted that beauty, as an abstract quality, is
timeless; granted that, in the judgment of a piece of literary
art, the standard of value is the canon of beauty, not the
type; yet the old order changeth. Primitive and civilized man,
the Hottentot and the Laplander, the Oriental and the Slav,
have desired differing beauties. May it, then, still be said
that although a given embodiment of beauty is to be judged
with reference to the idea of beauty alone, yet the concrete
ideal of beauty must wear the manacles of space and time,--
that the metamorphoses of taste preclude the notion of an
objective beauty? And if this is true, are we not thrown
back again on questions of genesis and development, and a
study of the evolution, not of particular types of art, but
of general aesthetic feeling; and, in consequence, upon a
form of criticism which is scientific in the sense of being
based on succession, and not on absolute value?
It is indeed true that the very possibility of a criticism
which shall judge of aesthetic excellence must stand or fall
with this other question of a beauty in itself, as an objective
foundation for criticism. If there is an absolute beauty, it
must be possible to work out a system of principles which shall
embody its laws,--an aesthetic, in other words; and on the basis
of that aesthetic to deliver a well-founded critical judgment.
Is there, then, a beauty in itself? And if so, in what does
it consist?
We can approach such an aesthetic canon in two ways: from the
standpoint of philosophy, which develops the idea of beauty as
a factor in the system of our absolute values, side by side
with the ideas of truth and of morality, or from the standpoint
of empirical science. For our present purpose, we may confine
ourselves to the empirical facts of psychology and physiology.
When I feel the rhythm of poetry, or of perfect prose, which
is, of course, in its own way, no less rhythmical, every
sensation of sound sends through me a diffusive wave of nervous
energy. I am the rhythm because I imitate it in myself. I
march to noble music in all my veins, even though I may be
sitting decorously by my own hearthstone; and when I sweep with
my eyes the outlines of a great picture, the curve of a Greek
vase, the arches of a cathedral, every line is lived over again
in my own frame. And when rhythm and melody and forms and
colors give me pleasure, it is because the imitating impulses
and movements that have arisen in me are such as suit, help,
heighten my physical organization in general and in particular.
It may seem somewhat trivial to say that a curved line is
pleasing because the eye is so hung as to move best in it;
but we may take it as one instance of the numberless conditions
for healthy action which a beautiful form fulfills. A well-
composed picture calls up in the spectator just such a balanced
relation of impulses of attention and incipient movements as
suits an organism which is also balanced--bilateral--in its
own impulses to movement, and at the same time stable; and it
is the correspondence of the suggested impulses with the
natural movement that makes the composition good. Besides the
pleasure from the tone relations,--which doubtless can be
eventually reduced to something of the same kind,--it is the
balance of nervous and muscular tensions and relaxations, of
yearnings and satisfactions, which are the subjective side of
the beauty of a strain of music. The basis, in short, of any
aesthetic experience--poetry, music, painting, and the rest--
is beautiful through its harmony with the conditions offered
by our senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and through
the harmony of the suggestions and impulses it arouses with
the whole organism.
But the sensuous beauty of art does not exhaust the aesthetic
experience. What of the special emotions--the gayety or
triumph, the sadness or peace or agitation--that hang about
the work of art, and make, for many, the greater part of their
delight in it? Those among these special emotions which belong
to the subject-matter of a work--like our horror at the picture
of an execution--need not here be discussed. To understand the
rest we may venture for a moment into the realm of pure
psychology. We are told by psychology that emotion is dependent
on the organic excitations of any given idea. Thus fear at the
sight of a bear is only the reverberation in consciousness of
all nervous and vascular changes set up instinctively as a
preparation for flight. Think away our bodily feelings, and
we think away fear, too. And set up the bodily changes and the
feeling of them, and we have the emotion that belongs to them
even without the idea, as we may see in the unmotived panics
that sometimes accompany certain heart disturbances. The same
thing, on another level, is a familiar experience. A glass of
wine makes merriment, simply by bringing about those organic
states which are felt emotionally as cheerfulness. Now the
application of all this to aesthetics is clear. All these
tensions, relaxations,--bodily "imitations" of the form,--have
each the emotional tone which belongs to it. And so if the
music of a Strauss waltz makes us gay, and Handel's Largo
serious, it is not because we are reminded of the ballroom or
of the cathedral, but because the physical response to the
stimulus of the music is itself the basis of the emotion.
What makes the sense of peace in the atmosphere of the Low
Countries? Only the tendency, on following those level lines
of landscape, to assume ourselves the horizontal, and the
restfulness which belongs to that posture. If the crimson of
a picture by Bocklin, or the golden glow of a Giorgione, or
the fantastic gleam of a Rembrandt speaks to me like a human
voice, it is not because it expresses to me an idea, but
because it impresses that sensibility which is deeper than
ideas,--the region of the emotional response to color and to
light. What is the beauty of the "Ulalume," or "Kubla Khan,"
or "Ueber allen Gipfeln"? It is the way in which the form
in its exquisite fitness to our senses, and the emotion
belonging to that particular form as organic reverberation
therefrom, in its exquisite fitness to thought, create in us
a delight quite unaccounted for by the ideas which they
express. This is the essence of beauty,--the possession of
a quality which excites the human organism to functioning
harmonious with its own nature.
We can see in this definition the possibility of an aesthetic
which shall have objective validity because founded in the
eternal properties of human nature, while it yet allows us to
understand that in the limits within which, by education and
environment, the empirical man changes, his norms of beauty
must vary, too. Ideas can change in interest and in value,
but these energies lie much deeper than the idea, in the
original constitution of mankind. They belong to the
instinctive, involuntary part of our nature. They are
changeless, just as the "eternal man" is changeless; and as
the basis of aesthetic feeling they can be gathered into a
system of laws which shall be subject to no essential
metamorphosis. So long as we laugh when we are joyful, and
weep when we are sick and sorry; so long as we flush with
anger, or grow pale with fear, so long shall we thrill to a
golden sunset, the cadence of an air, or the gloomy spaces
of a cathedral.
The study of these forms of harmonious functioning of the
human organism has its roots, of course, in the science of
psychology, but comes, nevertheless, to a different flower,
because of the grafting on of the element of aesthetic value.
It is the study of the disinterested human pleasures, and,
although as yet scarcely well begun, capable of a most
detailed and definitive treatment.
This is not the character of those studies so casually alluded
to by the author of "Impressionism and Appreciation," when he
enjoins on the appreciative critic not to neglect the literature
of aesthetics: "The characteristics of his [the artist's]
temperament have been noted with the nicest loyalty; and
particularly the play of his special faculty, the imagination,
as this faculty through the use of sensations and images and
moods and ideas creates a work of art, has been followed out
with the utmost delicacy of observation." But these are not
properly studies in aesthetics at all. To find out what is
beautiful, and the reason for its being beautiful, is the
aesthetic task; to analyze the workings of the poet's mind,
as his conception grows and ramifies and brightens, is no part
of it, because such a study takes no account of the aesthetic
value of the process, but only of the process itself. The
same fallacy lurks here, indeed, as in the confusion of the
scientific critic between literary evolution and poetic
achievement, and the test of the fallacy is this single fact:
the psychological process in the development of a dramatic
idea, for instance, is, and quite properly should be, from
the point of view of such analysis, exactly the same for a
Shakespeare and for the Hoyt of our American farces.
The cause of the production of a work of art may indeed by
found by tracing back the stream of thought; but the cause
of its beauty is the desire and the sense of beauty in the
human heart. If a given combination of lines and colors is
beautiful, then the anticipation of the combination as
beautiful is what has brought about its incarnation. The
artist's attitude toward his vision of beauty, and the art
lover's toward that vision realized, are the same. The only
legitimate aesthetic analysis is, then, that of the relation
between the aesthetic object and the lover of beauty, and all
the studies in the psychology of invention--be it literary,
scientific, or practical invention--have no right to the
other name.
Aesthetics, then, is the science of beauty. It will be
developed as a system of laws expressing the relation between
the object and aesthetic pleasure in it; or as a system of
conditions to which the object, in order to be beautiful,
must conform. It is hard to say where the task of the
aesthetician ends, and that of the critic begins; and for
the present, at least, they must often be commingled. But
they are defined by their purposes: the end and aim of one
is a system of principles; of the other, the disposal of a
given work with reference to those principles; and when the
science of aesthetics shall have taken shape, criticism will
confine itself to the analysis of the work into its aesthetic
elements, to the explanation (by means of the laws already
formulated) of its especial power in the realm of beauty,
and to the judgment of its comparative aesthetic value.
The other forms of critical activity will then find their
true place as preliminaries or supplements to the essential
function of criticism. The study of historical conditions,
of authors' personal relations, of the literary "moment,"
will be means to show the work of art "as in itself it really
is." Shall we then say that the method of appreciation, being
an unusually exhaustive presentment of the object as in itself
it really is, is therefore an indispensable preparation for
the critical judgment? The modern appreciator, after the
model limned by Professor Gates, was to strive to get, as it
were, the aerial perspective of a masterpiece,--to present it
as it looks across the blue depths of the years. This is
without doubt a fascinating study; but it may be questioned
if it does not darken the more important issue. For it is
not the object as in itself it really is that we at last
behold, but the object disguised in new and strange trappings.
Such appreciation is to aesthetic criticism as the sentimental
to the naive poet in Schiller's famous antithesis. The virtue
of the sentimental genius is to complete by the elements which
it derives from itself an otherwise defective object. So the
aesthetic critic takes his natural need of beauty from the
object; the appreciative critic seeks a further beauty outside
of the object, in his own reflections and fancies about it.
But if we care greatly for the associations of literature, we
Are in danger of disregarding its quality. A vast deal of
pretty sentiment may hang about and all but transmute the most
prosaic object. A sedan chair, an old screen, a sundial,--to
quote only Austin Dobson,--need not be lovely in themselves to
serve as pegs to hang a poem on; and all the atmosphere of the
eighteenth century may be wafted from a jar of potpourri. Read
a lyric instead of a rose jar, and the rule holds as well. The
man of feeling cannot but find all Ranelagh and Vauxhall in
some icily regular effusion of the eighteenth century, and will
take a deeper retrospective thrill from an old playbill than
from the play itself. And since this is so,--since the interest
in the overtones, the added value given by time, the value for
us, is not necessarily related to the value as literature of the
fundamental note,--to make the study of the overtones an
essential part of criticism is to be guilty of the Pathetic
Fallacy; that is, the falsification of the object by the
intrusion of ourselves,--the typical sentimental crime.
It seems to me, indeed, that instead of courting a sense for
the aromatic in literature, the critic should rather guard
himself against its insidious approaches. Disporting himself
in such pleasures of the fancy, he finds it easy to believe,
and to make us believe, that a piece of literature gains in
intrinsic value from its power to stimulate his historical
sense. The modern appreciative critic, in short, is too likely
to be the dupe of his "sophisticated reverie,"--like an epicure
who should not taste the meat for the sauces. A master work,
once beautiful according to the great and general laws, never
becomes, properly speaking, either more or less so. If a piece
of art can take us with its own beauty, there is no point in
superimposing upon it shades of sentiment; if it cannot so
charm, all the rose-colored lights of this kind of appreciative
criticism are unavailing.
The "literary" treatment of art, as the "emotional" treatment of literature,--for that is what "appreciation" and "interpretation"
really are,--can completely justify itself only as the crowning
touch of a detailed aesthetic analysis of those "order of
impression distinct in kind" which are the primary elements in
our pleasure in the beautiful. It is the absence--and not only
the absence, but the ignoring of the possibility--of such
analysis which tempts one to rebel against such phrases as those
of Professor Gates: "the splendid and victorious womanhood of
Titian's Madonnas," "the gentle and terrestrial grace of
motherhood in those of Andrea del Sarto," the "sweetly ordered
comeliness of Van Dyck's." One is moved to ask if the only
difference between a Madonna of Titian and one of Andrea is a
difference of temper, and if the important matter for the
critic of art is the moral conception rather than the visible
beauty.
I cannot think of anything for which I would exchange the
enchanting volumes of Walter Pater, and yet even he is not the
ideal aesthetic critic whose duties he made clear. What he has
done is to give us the most exquisite and delicate of
interpretations. He has not failed to "disengage" the subtle
and peculiar pleasure that each picture, each poem or
personality, has in store for us; but of analysis and explanation
of this pleasure--of which he speaks in the Introduction to "The
Renaissance"--there is no more. In the first lines of his paper
on Botticelli, the author asks, "What is the peculiar sensation
which his work has the property of exciting in us?" And to
what does he finally come? "The peculiar character of Botticelli
is the result of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity
in its uncertain conditions...with his consciousness of the
shadow upon it of the great things from which it sinks." But
this is not aesthetic analysis! It is not even the record of
a "peculiar sensation," but a complex intellectual interpretation.
Where is the pleasure in the irrepressible outline, fascinating
in its falseness,--in the strange color, like the taste of
olives, of the Spring and the Pallas? So, also, his great
passage on the Mona Lisa, his "Winckelmann," even his "Giorgione"
itself, are merely wonderful delineations of the mood of
response to the creations of the art in question. Such
interpretation as we have from Pater is a priceless treasure,
but it is none the less the final cornice, and not the corner
stone of aesthetic criticism.
The tendency to interpretation without any basis in aesthetic
explanation is especially seen in the subject of our original
discussion,--literature. It is indeed remarkable how scanty
is the space given in contemporary criticism to the study of
an author's means to those results which we ourselves
experience. Does no one really care how it is done? Or are
they all in the secret, and interested only in the temperament
expressed or the aspect of life envisaged in a given work?
One would have thought that as the painter turned critic in
Fromentin at least to a certain extent sought out and dealt
with the hidden workings of his art, so the romancer or the
poet-critic might also have told off for us "the very pulse
of the machine." The last word has not been said on the
mysteries of the writer's art. We know, it may be, how the
links of Shakespeare's magic chain of words are forged, but
the same cannot be said of any other poet. We have studied
Dante's philosophy and his ideal of love; but have we found
out the secrets of his "inventive handling of rhythmical
language"? If Flaubert is univerally acknowledged to have
created a masterpiece in "Madame Bovary," should there not
be an interest for criticism in following out, chapter by
chapter, paragraph by paragraph, word by word, the meaning
of what it is to be a masterpiece? But such seems not to
be the case. Taine reconstructs the English temperament out
of Fielding and Dickens; Matthew Arnold, although he deals
more than others in first principles, never carries his
analysis beyond the widest generalizations, like the
requirement for "profound truth" and "high seriousness,"
for great poetry. And as we run the gamut of contemporary
criticism, we find ever preoccupation with the personality
of the writers and the ideas of their books. I recall only
one example--the critical essays of Henry James--where the
craftsman has dropped some hints on the ideals of the
literary art; and even that, if I maybe allowed the bull,
in his novels rather than in his essays, for in critical
theory he is the most ardent of impressionists. Whatever
the cause, we cannot but allow the dearth of knowledge of,
and interest in, the peculiar subject-matter of criticism,--
the elements of beauty in a work of literature.
But although the present body of criticism consists rather
of preliminaries and supplements to what should be its real
accomplishment, these should not therefore receive the less
regard. The impressionist has set himself a definite task,
and he has succeeded. If not the true critic, he is an
artist in his own right, and he has something to say to the
world. The scientific critic has taken all knowledge for his
province; and although we hold that it has rushed in upon and
swamped his distinctly critical function, so long as we may
call him by his other name of natural historian of literature,
we can only acknowledge his great achievements. For the
appreciative critic we have less sympathy as yet, but the
"development of the luxurious intricacy and the manifold
implications of our enjoyment" may fully crown the edifice of
aesthetic explanation and appraisal of the art of every age.
But all these, we feel, do not fulfill the essential function;
the Idea of Criticism is not here. What the idea of criticism
is we have tried to work out: a judgment of a work of art on
the basis of the laws of beauty. That such laws there are,
that they exist directly in the relation between the material
form and the suggested physical reactions, and that they are
practically changeless, even as the human instincts are
changeless, we have sought to show. And if there can be a
science of the beautiful, then an objective judgment on the
basis of the laws of the beautiful can be rendered. The true
end of criticism, therefore, is to tell us whence and why the
charm of a work of art: to disengage, to explain, to measure,
and to certify it. And this explanation of charm, and this
stamping it with the seal of approval, is possible by the help,
and only by the help, of the science of aesthetics,--a science
now only in its beginning, but greatly to be desired in its
full development.
How greatly to be desired we realize in divining that the
present dearth of constructive and destructive criticism, of
all, indeed, except interpretations and reports, is responsible
for the modern mountains of machine-made literature. Will not
the aesthetic critic be for us a new Hercules, to clear away
the ever growing heap of formless things in book covers? If
he will teach us only what great art means in literature; if
he will give us never so little discussion of the first
principles of beauty, and point the moral with some "selling
books," he will at least have turned the flood. There are
stories nowadays, but few novels, and plenty of spectacles,
but no plays; and how should we know the difference, never
having heard what a novel ought to be? But let the aesthetic
critic give us a firm foundation for criticism, a real
understanding of the conditions of literary art; let him teach
us to know a novel or a play when we see it, and we shall not
always mingle the wheat and the chaff.
II
THE NATURE OF BEAUTY
II
THE NATURE OF BEAUTY
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
III
THE AESTHETIC REPOSE
THE popular interest in scientific truth has always had its
hidden spring in a desire for the marvelous. The search for
the philosopher's stone has done as much for chemistry as the
legend of the elixir of life for exploration and geographical
discovery. From the excitements of these suggestions of the
occult, the world settled down into a reasonable understanding
of the facts of which they were but the enlarged and grotesque
shadows.
So it has been with physics and physiology, and so also,
preeminently, with the science of mental life. Mesmerism,
hypnotism, the facts of the alteration, the multiplicity, and
the annihilation of personality have each brought us their
moments of pleasurable terror, and passed thus into the field
of general interest. But science can accept no broken chains.
For all the thrill of mystery, we may not forget that the
hypnotic state is but highly strung attention,--at the last
turn of the screw,--and that the alternation of personality is
after all no more than the highest power of variability of
mood. In regard to the annihilation of the sense of personality,
it may be said that no connection with daily experience is at
first apparent. Scientists, as well as the world at large,
have been inclined to look on the loss of the sense of personality
as pathological; and yet it may be maintained that it is
nevertheless the typical form of those experiences we ourselves
regard as the most valuable.
The loss of personality! In that dread thought there lies, to
most of us, all the sting of death and the victory of the grave.
It seems, with such a fate in store, that immortality were
futile, and life itself a mockery. Yet the idea, when dwelt
upon, assumes an aspect of strange familiarity; it is an old
friend, after all. Can we deny that all our sweetest hours are
those of self-forgetfulness? The language of emotion, religious,
aesthetic, intellectually creative, testifies clearly to the
fading of the consciousness of self as feeling nears the white
heat. Not only in the speechless, stark immobility of the
pathological "case," but in all the stages of religious ecstasy,
aesthetic pleasure, and creative inspiration, is to be traced
what we know as the loss of the feeling of self. Bernard of
Clairvaux dwells on "that ecstasy of deification in which the
individual disappears in the eternal essence as the drop of
water in a cask of wine." Says Meister Eckhart, "Thou shalt
sink away from they selfhood, though shalt flow into His self-
possession, the very thought of Thine shall melt into His Mine;"
and St. Teresa, "The soul, in thus searching for its God,
feels with a very lively and very sweet pleasure that is is
fainting almost quiet away."
Still more striking is the language of aesthetic emotion.
Philosopher and poet have but one expression for the universal
experience. Says Keats in the "Ode to a Nightingale:"--
"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethewards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness."
And in Schopenhauer we read that he who contemplates the
beautiful "forgets even his individuality, his will, and only
continues to exist as the pure subject, the clear mirror of
the object."
But not only the religious enthusiast and the worshiper of
beauty "lose themselves" in ecstasy. The "fine frenzy" of the
thinker is typical. From Archimedes, whose life paid the
forfeit of his impersonal absorption; from Socrates, musing in
one spot from dawn to dawn, to Newton and Goethe, there is but
one form of the highest effort to penetrate and to create.
Emerson is right in saying of the genius, "His greatness
consists in the fullness in which an ecstatic state is realized
in him."
The temporary evaporation of the consciousness of one's own
Personality is then decidedly not a pathological experience.
It seems the condition, indeed, and recognized as such in
popular judgment, of the deepest feeling and the highest
achievement. Perhaps it is the very assumption of this condition
in our daily thoughts that has veiled the psychological problem
it presents. We opine, easily enough, that great deeds are done
in forgetfulness of self. But why should we forget ourselves
in doing great deeds? Why not as well feel in every act its
reverberation on the self,--the renewed assurance that it is
I who can? Why not, in each aesthetic thrill, awake anew to
the consciousness of myself as ruler in a realm of beauty? Why
not, in the rush of intellectual production, glory that "my
mind to me a kingdom is"? And yet the facts are otherwise:
in proportion to the intensity and value of the experience is
its approach to the objective, the impersonal, the ecstatic
state. Then how explain this anomaly? Why should religious,
aesthetic, and intellectual emotion be accompanied in varying
degrees by the loss of self-consciousness? Why should the
sense of personality play us so strange a trick as to vanish,
at the moment of seemingly greatest power, in the very shadow
of its own glory?
If now we put the most obvious question, and ask, in explanation
of its escapades, what the true nature of this personality is,
we shall find ourselves quite out of our reckoning on the vast
sea of metaphysics. To know what personality IS, "root and all,
and all in all," is to "know what God and man is." Fortunately,
our problem is much more simple. It is not the personality,
its reality, its meaning, that vanishes; no, nor even the
psychological system of dispositions. We remain, in such a
moment of ecstasy, as persons, what we were before. It is the
FEELING of personality that has faded; and to find out in what
this will-o'-the-wisp feeling of personality resides is a task
wholly within the powers of psychological analysis. Let no one
object that the depth and value of experience seem to disintegrate
under the psychologist's microscope. The place of the full-orbed
personality in a world of noble ends is not affected by the
possibility that the centre of its conscious crystallization may
be found in a single sensation.
The explanation, then, of this apparent inconsistency--the fading
away of self in the midst of certain most important experiences--
must lie in the nature of the feeling of personality. What is
that feeling? On what is it based? How can it be described?
The difficulties of introspection have led many to deny the
possibility of such self-fixation. The fleeting moment passes,
and we grasp only an idea or a feeling; the Ego has slipped away
like a drop of mercury under the fingers. Like the hero of the
German poet, who wanted his queue in front,
"Then round and round, and out and in,
All day that puzzled sage did spin;
In vain; it mattered not a pin;
The pigtail hung behind him,"
when I turn round upon myself to catch myself in the act of
thinking, I can never lay hold on anything but a sensation. I
may peel off, like the leaves of an artichoke, my social self,--
my possessions and positions, my friends, my relatives; my
active self,--my books and implements of work; my clothes; even
my flesh, and sit in my bones, like Sydney Smith,--the I in me
retreating ever to an inner citadel; but I must stop with the
feeling that something moves in there. That is not what my
self IS, but what the elusive sprite feels like when I have got
my finger on him. In daily experience, however, it is
unnecessary to proceed to such extremities. The self, at a
given moment of consciousness, is felt as one group of elements
which form a foreground. The second group is, we say, before
the attention, and is not at that moment felt as self; while
the first group is vague, undifferentiated, not attended to,
but felt. Any element in this background can detach itself
and come into the foreground of attention. I become conscious
at this moment, for instance, of the weight of my shoulders
as they rest on the back of my chair: that sensation, however,
belongs to my self no more than does the sensation of the
smoothness of the paper on which my hand rests. I know I am a
self, because I can pass, so to speak, between the foreground
and the background of my consciousness. It is the feeling of
transition that gives me the negative and positive of my
circuit; and this feeling of transition, hunted to its lair,
reveals itself as nothing more nor less than a motor sensation
felt in the sense organs which adapt themselves to the new
conditions. I look on that picture and on this, and know that
they are two, because the change in the adaptation of my sense
organs to their objects has been felt. I close my eyes and
think of near and far, and it is the change in the sensations
from my eye muscles that tells me I have passed between the
two; or, to express it otherwise, that it is in me the two
have succeeded each other. While the self in its widest sense,
therefore, is co-extensive with consciousness, the distinctive
feeling of self as opposed to the elements in consciousness
which represent the outer world is based on those bodily
sensations which are connected with the relations of objects.
My world--the foreground of my consciousness--would fall in on
me and crush me, if I could not hold it off by just this power
to feel it different from my background; and it is felt as
different through the motor sensations involved in the change
of my sense organs in passing from one to the other. The
condition of the feeling of transition, and hence of the
feeling of personality, is then the presence in consciousness
of at least two possible objects of attention; and the formal
consciousness of self might be schematized as a straight line
connecting two points, in which one point represents the
foreground, and the other the background, of consciousness.
If we now accept this view, and ask under what conditions the
sense of self may be lost, the answer is at once suggested.
It will happen when the "twoness" disappears, so that the line
connecting and separating the two objects in our scheme drops
out or is indefinitely decreased. When background or foreground
tends to disappear or to merge either into the other, or when
background or foreground makes an indissoluble unity or
unbreakable circle, the content of consciousness approaches
absolute unity. There is no "relating" to be done, no
"transition" to be made. The condition, then, for the feeling
of personality is no longer present, and there results a
feeling of complete unity with the object of attention; and if
this object of attention is itself without parts or differences,
there results an empty void, Nirvana.
Suppose that I gaze, motionless, at a single bright light until
all my bodily sensations have faded. Then one of the "points"
in our scheme has dropped out. In my mind there reigns but one
thought. The transition feeling goes, for there is nothing to
be "related." Now "it is one blaze, about me and within me;"
I am that light, and myself no longer. My consciousness is a
unit or a blank, as you please. If you say that I am self-
hypnotized, I may reply that I have simply ceased to feel
myself different from the content of my consciousness, because
that content has ceased to allow a transition between its terms.
This is, however, not the only possible form of the disappearance
of our "twoness," and the resulting loss of the self-feeling.
When the sequence of objects in consciousness is so rapid that
the feeling of transition, expressed in motor terms, drops below
the threshold of sensation, the feeling of self again fades.
Think, for instance, of the Bacchanal orgies. The votary of
Dionysus, dancing, shrieking, tearing at his hair and at his
garments, lost in the lightning change of his sensations all
power of relating them. His mind was ringed in a whirling
circle, every point of which merged into the next without
possibility of differentiation. And since he could feel no
transition periods, he could feel HIMSELF no longer; he was
one with the content of his consciousness, which consciousness
was no less a unit than our bright light aforesaid, just as a
circle is as truly a unit as a point. The priest of Dionysus
must have felt himself only a dancing, shouting thing, one
with the world without, "whirled round in earth's diurnal course
with rocks and stones and trees." And how perfectly the ancient
belief fits our psychophysical analysis! The Bacchic enthusiast
believed himself possessed with the very ecstasy of the spirit
of nature. His inspired madness was the presence of the god
who descended upon him,--the god of the vine, of spring; the
rising sap, the rushing stream, the bursting leaf, the rippling
song, all the life of flowing things, they were he! "Autika ga
pasa zoreusei," was the cry,--"soon the whole earth will dance
and sing!"
Yes, this breaking down of barriers, this melting of the
personality into its surroundings, this strange and sweet self-
abandonment must have its source in just the disappearance of
the sensation of adjustment, on which the feeling of personality
is based. But how can it be, we have to ask, that a principle
so barren of emotional significance should account for the
ecstasy of religious emotion, of aesthetic delight, of creative
inspiration? It is not, however, religion or beauty or genius
that is the object of our inquiry at this moment, but simply
the common element in the experience of each of these which
we know as the disappearance of self-feeling. How the
circumstances peculiar to religious worship, aesthetic appreciation,
and intellectual creation bring about the formal conditions of
the loss of personal feeling must be sought in a more detailed
analysis, and we shall then be able to trace the source of the
intensity of emotion in these experiences. What, then, first
of all, are the steps by which priest and poet and thinker have
passed into the exaltation of selfless emotion? Fortunately,
the passionate pilgrims of all three realms of deep experience
have been ever prodigal of their confessions. The religious
ecstasy, however, embodies the most complete case, and allows
the clearest insight into the nature of the experience; and will
therefore be dealt with at greatest length.
The typical religious enthusiast is the mystic. From Plotinus
to Buddha, from Meister Eckhart to Emerson, the same doctrine
has brought the same fruits of religious rapture. There is one
God, and in contemplation of Him the soul becomes of his
essence. Whether it is held, as by the Neoplatonists, that
Being and Knowledge are one, that the procedure of the world
out of God is a process of self-revelation, and the return of
things into God a process of higher and higher intuition, and
so the mystic experience an apprehension of the highest rather
than a form of worship; or whether it is expressed as by the
humble Beguine, Mechthild,--"My soul swims in the Being of God
as a fish in water,'--the kernel of the mystic's creed is the
same. In ecstatic contemplation of God, and, in the higher
states, in ecstatic union with Him, in sinking the individuality
in the divine Being, is the only true life. Not all, it is
true, who hold the doctrine have had the experience; not all can
say with Eckhart or with Madame Guyon, "I have seen God in my
own soul," or "I have become one with God." It is from the
narratives and the counsels of perfection of these, the chosen,
the initiate, who have passed beyond the veil, that light may
be thrown on the psychological conditions of mystic ecstasy.
The most illuminating account of her actual mystical experiences
is given by Madame Guyon, the first of the sect or school of the
Quietists. This gentle Frenchwoman had a gift for psychological
observation, and though her style is neither poetic nor
philosophical, I may be pardoned for quoting at some length her
naive and lucid revelations. The following passages, beginning
with an early religious experience, are taken almost at random
from the pages of her autobiography:--
"These sermons made such an impression on my mind, and absorbed
me so strongly in God, that I could not open my eyes nor hear
what was said." "To hear Thy name, O my God, could put me into
a profound prayer....I could not see any longer the saints nor
the Holy Virgin outside of God; but I saw them all in Him,
scarcely being able to distinguish them from Him....I could
not hear God nor our Lord Jesus Christ spoken of without being,
as it were, outside of myself [hors de moi]....Love seized me
so strongly that I remained absorbed, in a profound silence and
a peace that I cannot describe. I made ever new efforts, and
I passed my life in beginning my prayers without being able to
carry them through....I could ask nothing for myself nor for
another, nor wish anything but this divine will....I do not
believe that there could be in the world anything more simple
and more unified....It is a state of which one can say nothing
more, because it evades all expression,--a state in which the
creature is lost, engulfed. All is God, and the soul perceives
only God. It has to strive no more for perfection, for growth,
for approach to Him, for union. All is consummated in the unity,
but in a manner so free, so natural, so easy, that the soul
lives from the air which it breathes....The spirit is empty, no
more traversed by thoughts; nothing fills the void, which is no
longer painful, and the soul finds in itself an immense capacity
that nothing can either limit or destroy."
Can we fail to trace in these simple words the shadow of all
religious exaltation that is based on faith alone? Madame Guyon
is strung to a higher key than most of this dull and relaxed
world; but she has struck the eternal note of contemplative
worship. Such is the sense of union with the divine Spirit.
Such are the thoughts and even the words of Dante, Eckhart, St.
Teresa, the countless mystics of the Middle Age, and of the
followers of Buddhism in its various shades, from the Ganges to
the Charles. Two characteristics disengage themselves to view:
the insistence on the unity of God--IN whom alone the Holy
Virgin and the saints are seen--from a psychological point of
view only; and the mind's emptiness of thought in a state of
religious ecstasy. But without further analysis, we may ask,
as the disciples of the mystics have always done, how this
state of blissful union is to be reached. They have always
been minute in their prescriptions, and it is possible to
derive therefrom what may be called the technique of the mystic
procedure.
"The word mystic," to quote Walter Pater, "has been derived from
a Greek word which signifies to shut, as if one shut one's lips,
brooding on what cannot be uttered; but the Platonists themselves
derive it rather from the act of shutting the eyes, that one may
see the more, inwardly." Of such is the counsel of St. Luis de
Granada, "Imitate the sportsman who hoods the falcon that it be
made subservient to his rule;" and of another Spanish mystic,
Pedro de Alcantara: "In meditation, let the person rouse himself
from things temporal, and let him collect himself within himself
....Here let him hearken to the voice of God...as though there
were no other in the world save God and himself." St. Teresa
found happiness only in "shutting herself up within herself."
Vocal prayer could not satisfy her, and she adopted mental
prayer. The four stages of her experience--which she named
"recollectedness," "quietude" (listening rather than speaking),
"union" (blissful sleep with the faculties of the mind still),
"ecstasy or rapture"--are but progressive steps in the sealing
of the senses. The yoga of the Brahmins, which is the same as
the "union" of the Cabalists, is made to depend upon the same
conditions,--passivity, perseverance, solitude. The novice
must arrest his breathing, and may meditate on mystic symbols
alone, by way of reaching the formless, ineffable Buddha. But
it is useless to heap up evidence; the inference is sufficiently
clear.
The body is first brought into a state either of nervous
instability or irritability by ascetic practices, or of nervous
insensibility by the persistent withdrawal of all outer
disturbance; and the mind is fixed upon a single object,--the
one God, the God eternal, absolute, indivisible. Recalling our
former scheme for the conditions of the sense of personality,
we shall see that we have here the two poles of consciousness.
Then, as the tension is sharpened, what happens? Under the
artificial conditions of weakened nerves, of blank surroundings,
the self-background drops. The feeling of transition disappears
with the absence of related terms; and the remaining, the
positive pole of consciousness, is an undifferentiated Unity,
with which the person must feel himself one. The feeling of
personality is gone with that on which it rests, and its loss
is joined with an overwhelming sense of union with the One, the
Absolute, God!
The object of mystic contemplation is the One indivisible. But
we can also think the One as the unity of all differences, the
Circle of the Universe. Those natures also which, like Amiel's,
are "bedazzled with the Infinite" and thirst for "totality"
attain in their reveries to the same impersonal ecstasy. Amiel
writes of a "night on the sandy shore of the North Sea, stretched
at full length upon the beach, my eyes wandering over the Milky
Way. Will they ever return to me, those grandiose, immortal,
cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to carry the world in one's
breast, to touch the stars, to possess the Infinite!" The
reverie of Senancour, on the bank of the Lake of Bienne, quoted
by Matthew Arnold, reveals the same emotion: "Vast consciousness
of a nature everywhere greater than we are, and everywhere
impenetrable; all-embracing passion, ripened wisdom, delicious
self-abandonment." In the coincidence of outer circumstance--
the lake, the North Sea, night, the attitude of repose--may we
not trace a dissolution of the self-background, similar to that
of the mystic worshiper? And in the Infinite, no less than in
the One, must the soul sink and melt into union with it, because
within it there is no determination, no pause, and no change.
The contemplation of the One, however, is not the only type of
mystic ecstasy. That intoxication of emotion which seizes upon
the negro camp meeting of to-day, as it did upon the Delphic
priestesses two thousand years ago, seems at first glance to
have nothing in common psychologically with the blessed
nothingness of Gautama and Meister Eckhart. But the loss of
the feeling of personality and the sense of possession by a
divine spirit are the same. How, then, is this state reached?
By means, I believe, which recall the general formula for the
Disappearance of self-feeling. To repeat the monosyllable OM
(Brahm) ten thousand times; to circle interminably, chanting
the while, about a sacred ire; to listen to the monotonous
magic drum; to whirl the body about; to rock to and fro on the
knees, vociferating prayers, are methods which enable the
members of the respective sects in which they are practiced
either to enter, as they say, into the Eternal Being, or to
become informed with it through the negation of the self. The
sense of personality, at any rate, is more or less completely
lost, and the ecstasy takes a form more or less passionate,
according as the worshiper depends on the rapidity rather than
on the monotony of his excitations. Here, again, the self-
background drops, inasmuch as every rhythmical movement tends
to become automatic, and then unconscious. Thus what we are
wont to call the inspired madness of the Delphic priestesses
was less the expression of ecstasy than the means of its
excitation. Perpetual motion, as well as eternal rest, may
bring about the engulfment of the self in the object. The
most diverse types of religious emotions, IN SO FAR AS THEY
PRESENT VARIATIONS IN THE DEGREE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, are
thus seen to be reducible to the same psychological basis.
The circle, no less than the point, is the symbol of the One,
and the "devouring unity" that lays hold on consciousness
from the loss of the feeling of transition comes in the
unrest of enthusiasm no less than in the blissful nothing of
Nirvana.
At this point, I am sure, the reader will interpose a protest.
Is, then, the mystery of self-abandonment to the highest to
be shared with the meanest of fanatics? Are the rapture of
Dante and the trance of the Omphalopsychi sprung from the
same root? There is no occasion, however, for the revolt of
sentiment because we fail to emphasize here the important
differences in the emotional character and value of the states
in question. What interests us is only one aspect which they
have in common, the surrender of the sense of personality.
That is based on formal relations of the elements of
consciousness, and the explanation of its disappearance
applies as well to the whirling dervish as to the converts
of a revivalist preacher.
The mystic, then, need only shut his senses to the world, and
contemplate the One. Subject fuses with object, and he feels
himself melt into the Infinite. But each experience is not
the exclusive property of the religious enthusiast. The
worshiper of beauty has given evidence of the same feelings.
And yet, in his aesthetic rapture, the latter dwells with
deliberation on his delights, and while luxuriating in the
infinite labyrinths of beauty can scarcely be described as
musing on an undifferentiated Unity. So far, at least, it
does not appear that our formula applies to aesthetic feeling.
Aesthetic feeling arises in the contemplation of a beautiful
object. But what makes an object beautiful? To go still
further back, just what, psychologically, does contemplation
mean? To contemplate an object is to dwell on the idea or
image of it, and to dwell upon an idea means to carry it out
incipiently. We may go even further, and say it is the
carrying out by virtue of which we grasp the idea. How do
we think of a tall pine-tree? By sweeping our eyes up and
down its length, and out to the ends of its branches; and if
we are forbidden to use our eye muscles even infinitesimally,
then we cannot think of the visual image. In short, we
perceive an object in space by carrying out its motor
suggestions; more technically expressed, by virtue of a
complex of motor impulses aroused by it; more briefly, by
incipiently imitating it. Contemplation is inner imitation.
Now a beautiful object is first of all a unified object; why
this must be so has been considered in the preceding chapter.
In it all impulses of soul and sense are bound to react upon
one another, and to lead back to one another. And all the
elements, which in contemplation we reproduce in the form of
motor impulses, are bound to make a closed circle of these
suggested energies. The symmetrical picture calls out a set
of motor impulses which "balance,"--a system of energies
reacting on one centre; the sonnet takes us out on one wave
of rhythm and of thought, to bring us back on another to the
same point; the sonata does the same in melody. In the
"whirling circle" of the drama, not a word or an act that is
not indissolubly linked with before and after. Thus the unity
of a work of art makes of the system of suggested energies
which form the foreground of attention an impregnable, an
invulnerable circle.
Not only, however, are we held in equilibrium in the object
of attention; we cannot connect with it our self-background,
for the will cannot act on the object of aesthetic feeling.
We cannot eat the grapes of Apelles or embrace the Galatea of
Pygmalion; we cannot rescue Ophelia or enlighten Juliet; and
of impulse to interfere, to connect the scene with ourselves,
we have none. But this is a less important factor in the
situation. That the house is dark, the audience silent, and
all motor impulses outside of the aesthetic circle stifled, is,
too, only a superficial, and, so to speak, a negative condition.
The real ground of the possibility of a momentary self-
annihilation lies in the fact that all incitements to motor
impulse--except those which belong to the indissoluble ring
of the object itself--have been shut out by the perfection of
unity to which the aesthetic object (here the drama) has been
brought. The background fades; the foreground satisfies,
incites no movement; and with the disappearance of the
possibility of action which would connect the two, fades also
that which dwells in this feeling of transition,--the sense
of personality. The depth of aesthetic feeling lies not in
the worthy countryman who interrupts the play with cries for
justice on the villain, but in him who creates the drama again
with the poet, who lives over again in himself each of the
thrills of emotion passing before him, and loses himself in
their web. The object is a unity or our whirling circle of
impulses, as you like to phrase it. At any rate, out of that
unity the soul does not return upon itself; it remains one
with it in the truest sense.
The loss of the sense of personality is an integral part of
the aesthetic experience; and we have seen how it is a
necessary psychological effect of the unity of the object.
From another point of view it may be said that the unity of
the object is constituted just by the inhibition of all
tendency to movement through the balance or centrality of
impulses suggested by it. In other words, the balance of
impulses makes us feel the object a unity. And this balance
of impulses, this inhibition of movement, corresponding to
unity, is what we know as aesthetic repose. Thus the conditions
of aesthetic repose and of the loss of self-feeling are the
same. In fact, it might be said that, within this realm,
the two conceptions are identical. The true aesthetic repose
is just that perfect rest in the beautiful object which is
the essence of the loss of the sense of personality.
Subtler and rarer, again, than the raptures of mysticism and
of beauty worship is the ecstasy of intellectual production;
yet the "clean, clear joy of creation," as Kipling names it,
is not less to be grouped with those precious experiences in
which the self is sloughed away, and the soul at one with its
content. I speak, of course, of intellectual production in
full swing, in the momentum of success. The travail of soul
over apparently hopeless difficulties or in the working out
of indifferent details takes place not only in full self-
consciousness, but in self-disgust; there we can take Carlyle
to witness. But in the higher stages the fixation of truth
and the appreciation of beauty are accompanied by the same
extinction of the feeling of individuality. Of testimony we
have enough and to spare. I need not fill these pages with
confessions and anecdotes of the ecstatical state in which
all great deeds of art and science are done. The question is
rather to understand and explain it on the basis of the formal
scheme to which we have found the religious and the aesthetic
attitudes to conform.
Jean Paul says somewhere that, however laborious the completion
of a great work, its conception came as a whole,--in one flash.
We remember the dreams of Schiller in front of his red curtain
and the resulting musikalische Stimmung,--formless, undirected,
out of which his poem shaped itself; the half-somnambulic
state of Goethe and his frantic haste in fixation of the vision,
in which he dared not even stop to put his paper straight, but
wrote over the corners quite ruthlessly. Henner once said to
a painter who mourned that he had done nothing on his picture
for the Salon, though he saw it before him, "What! You see
your picture! Then it is done. You can paint it in an hour."
If all these traditions be true, they are significant; and
the necessary conditions of such composition seem to be highly
analogous to those of the aesthetic emotion. We have, first
of all, a lack of outward stimulation, and therefore possible
disappearance of the background. How much better have most
poets written in a garret than in a boudoir! Goethe's bare
little room in the garden house at Weimar testifies to the
severe conditions his genius found necessary. Tranquillity
of the background is the condition of self-absorption, or--
and this point seems to me worth emphasizing--a closed circle
of outer activities. I have never believed, for instance, in
the case of the old tale of Walter Scott and the button, that
it was the surprise of his loss that tied the tongue of the
future author's rival. The poor head scholar had simply made
for himself a transitionless experience with that twirling
button, and could then sink his consciousness in its object,--
at that moment the master's questions. It is with many of
us a familiar experience, that of not being able to think
unless in constant motion. Translated into our psychological
scheme, the efficiency of these movements would be explained
thus: Given the "whirling circles,"--the background of
continuous movement sensations, which finally dropped out of
consciousness, and the foreground of continuous thought,--the
first protected, so to speak, the second, since they were
mutually exclusive, and what broke the one destroyed the other.
But to return from this digression, a background fading into
nothingness, either as rest or as a closed circle of automatic
movements, is the first condition of the ecstasy of mental
production. The second is given in the character of its
object. The object of high intellectual creation is a unity,--
a perfect whole, revealed, as Jean Paul says, in a single
movement of genius. Within the enchanted circle of his
creation, the thinker is absorbed, because here too all his
impulses are turned to one end, in relation to which nothing
else exists.
I am aware that many will see a sharp distinction here between
the work of the creator or discoverer in science and the artist.
They may maintain, in Schopenhauer's phrase, that the aim and
end of science is just the connection of objects in the service
of the will of the individual, and hence transition between the
various terms is constant; while art, on the other hand, indeed
isolates its object, and so drops transitions. But I think
where we speak of "connection" thus, we mean the larger sweep
of law. If the thinker looks beyond his special problem at
all, it is, like Buddha, to "fix his eyes upon the chain of
causation." The scientist of imagination sees his work under
the form of eternity, as one link of that endless chain, one
atom in that vortex of almighty purposes, which science will
need all time to reveal. For him it is either one question,
closed within itself by its own answer, or it is the Infinite
Law of the Universe,--the point or the circle. From all points
of view, then, the object of creation in art or science is a
girdle of impulses from which the mind may not stray. The two
conditions of our formal scheme are given: a term which
disappears, and one which is a perfect whole. Transition
between background and foreground has dropped. Between the
objects of attention in the foreground it has no meaning,
because the foreground is an indissoluble unity. With that
object the self must feel itself one, since the distinctive
self-feeling has disappeared with the opportunity for transition.
We have thus swung around the circle of mystical, aesthetic,
and creative emotion, and we have found a single formula to
apply, and a single explanation to avail for the loss of
personality. The conditions of such experiences bring about
the disappearance of one term, and the impregnable unity of
the other. Without transition between two terms in consciousness,
two objects of attention, the loss of the feeling of personality
takes place according to natural psychological laws. It is no
longer a mystery that in intense experience the feeling of
personality dissolves.
One point, however, does remain still unexplained,--the bliss
of self-abandonment. Whence are the definiteness and intensity
of the religious and aesthetic emotions? The surrender of the
sense of personality, it seems, is based on purely formal
relations of the elements of consciousness, common to all three
groups of the analyzed emotions. Yet it is precisely with a
fading of self-feeling that intensity and definiteness deepen.
But how can different and emotionally significant feelings
arise from a single formal process? How can the worship of
God become ecstatic joy through the loss of personality? The
solution of this apparent paradox is demanded not only in
logic, but also by those who would wish to see the religious
trance distinguished also in its origin from those of baser
content.
But it is, after all, the formal nature of the phenomenon that
gives us light. If variation in the degree of self-feeling is
the common factor, and the disappearance of the transition-
feeling its cause, then the lowest member of the scale, in
which the loss of self-feeling takes place with mathematical
completeness, must be included. That is the hypnotic trance.
It is not necessary at this place to emphasize the fact that
our theory, if accepted, would constitute a theory and a
definition also of hypnotism. Of interest to our inquiry is
merely a characteristic mark of the hypnotic state,--its
tremendous suggestibility. Why is this? Our theory would
answer that all impulses are held in equilibrium, and that an
external suggestion has thus no rivals. Whatever the cause,
this last is at any rate the fact. All suggestions seem to
double in emotional value. Tell the hypnotic subject that
he is sailing up the Rhine, and the most vivid admiration is
in his aspect; he gazes in heart-felt devotion if it is a
pretty girl he is bid to look at; he quaffs a glass of water
with livelier delight than he would show for the draught of
Chateau Yquem of which he is led to think.
Now in religious and aesthetic experience there is brought
about the same equilibrium or unity of impulses, resulting
in analogous loss of self-feeling. But it is a most
interesting fact that the FORM of the contemplated object
is the cause of this arrest and repose. God, the circle of
the Infinite, the Eternal One, enter into play as "unity"
alone. What, then, of the content? After the analogy of
the extreme case, the content--that is, emotional value
and definite emotional tone--takes the place of the external
suggestion. Under just the conditions of the religious
trance, the element of reverence, of joyous sentiment, is
able suddenly to take on a more vivid aspect. It may not
be that the emotion itself is greater, but it now holds the
field. It may not be that it is more intense, but the
intensity of concentration which takes on its color makes
it seem so. The "rapture" is just the sense of being caught
up into union with the highest; the joy of the rapture is
the joy of every thought of God, here left free to brighten
into ecstasy; and its "revelation-value" is again the sense
of immediate union with a Being the intellectual concept of
whom is immensely vivified.
So may be analyzed the aesthetic ecstasy. The tension of
those mutually antagonistic impulses which make balance, and
so unity, and so the conditions for loss of sense of self,
clears the way for tasting the full savor of pleasure in
bright color, flowing line, exquisite tone-sequence, moving
thought. Many a commonplace experience, says M. Souriau,
suddenly takes on a charm when seen in the arrested aesthetic
vision. "Every one can have observed that an object in itself
agreeable to look on, like a bouquet of flowers, or the fresh
face of a young girl, takes on a sort of magic and supernatural
beauty if we regard it mechanically while listening to music."<1>
The intensity of concentration caused by the unity of form
fuses with this suggested vividness of feeling from content
and material, and the whole is felt as intensity of aesthetic
emotion. The Sistine Madonna would not strike so deep in
feeling were it less crystalline in its unity, less trance-like
in its repose, and so less enchanting in its suggestion.
<1> P. Souriau, _La Suggestion en l'Art._
So it is not only the man of achievement who sees but one thing
at a time. To enter intensely into any ideal experience means
to be blind to all others. One must lose one's own soul to
gain the world, and none who enter and return from the paradise
of selfless ecstasy will question that it is gained. It may
be that personality is a hindrance and a barrier, and that we
are only truly in harmony with the secret of our own existence
when we cease to set ourselves over against the world.
Nevertheless, the sense of individuality is a possession for
which the most of mankind would pay the price, if it must be
paid, even of eternal suffering. The delicious hour of fusion
with the universe is precious, so it seems to us now, just
because we can return from it to our own nest, and, close and
warm there, count up our happiness. The fragmentariness and
multiplicity of life are, then, the saving of the sense of
selfhood, and we must indeed
"Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled."
IV
THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART
IV
A. THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM
I
IN what consists the Beauty of Visual Form? The older writers
on what we now know as the science of art did not ask themselves
this question. Although we are accustomed to hear that order,
symmetry, unity in variety, was the Greek, and in particular
the Platonic, formula for beauty, we observe, on examining the
passages cited in evidence, that it is rather the moral quality
appertaining to these characteristics that determines them as
beautiful; symmetry is beautiful, because harmonious, and
inducing order and self-restraint. Aristotle's single
pronouncement in the sense of our question is the dictum: there
is no beauty without a certain magnitude. Lessing, in his
"Laocoon," really the first modern treatise in aesthetics,
discusses the excellences of painting and poetry, but deals
with visible beauty as if it were a fixed quality, understood
when referred to, like color. This is undoubtedly due to his
unconscious reference of beauty to the human form alone; a
reference which he would have denied, but which influences his
whole aesthetic theory. In speaking of a beautiful picture, for
instance, he would have meant first of all the representation
of beautiful persons in it, hardly at all that essential beauty
of the picture as painting, to which every inch of the canvas
is alike precious. It is clear to us now, however, that the
beauty of the human form is the most obscure of all possible
cases, complex in itself, and overlaid and involved as it is
with innumerable interests and motives of extra-aesthetic
character. Beauty in simple forms must be our first study;
and great credit is due to Hogarth for having propounded in
his "Analysis of Beauty" the simple question,--what makes the
quality of beauty to the eye?
But in visible beauty, the aesthetic value of pure form is
not the only element involved: or at least is must be
settled whether or not it is the only element involved. If
in a work of art, as we believe, what belongs to its excellence
belongs to its beauty, we may not applaud one painter, for
instance, for his marvelous color-schemes, another for his
expression of emotion, another for his delineation of
character, without acknowledging that expression of character
and emotion come within our concept of visible beauty. Franz
von Lenbach was once asked what he thought likely to be the
fate of his own work. "As for that," he replied, "I think I
may possibly have a chance of living; but ONLY if
Individualization or Characterization be deemed to constitute
a quality of permanent value in a picture. This, however, I
shall never know, for it can only be adjudged by posterity.
If that verdict should prove unfavorable, then my work, too,
will perish with the rest,--for it cannot compare on their
lines with the great masters of the past." That this is
indeed an issue is shown by the contrasting opinion of the
critic who exclaimed before a portrait, "Think away the
head and face, and you will have a wonderful effect of color!"
The analysis of visible beauty accordingly resolves itself
into the explanation of the beauty of form (including shape
and color) and the fixing in relation thereto of other
factors.
The most difficult part of our task is indeed behind us. We
have already defined Beauty in general: we have outlined
in a preceding essay the abstract aesthetic demands, and we
have now only to ask through what psychological means these
demands can be and are in fact met. In other words we have
to show that what we intensely feel as Beauty can and does
exemplify these principles, and through them is explained and
accounted for. Beauty has been defined as that combination
of qualities in the object which brings about a union of
stimulation and repose in the enjoyer. How must this be
interpreted with reference to the particular facts of visual
form?
The most immediate reference is naturally to the sense organ
itself; and the first question is therefore as to the
favorable stimulations of the eye. What, in general, does
the eye demand of its object?
II
The simplest element of visual experience is of course found
in light and color, the sensation of the eye as such. Yet
there is no branch of aesthetic which is so incomplete. We
know that the sensation of light or color, if not too weak
or too violent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the
glittering, shining object, so long as it is not painful,
is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer, polish,
testify to this taste, from the most primitive to the most
civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright,
nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing. The
single colors have been the object of comparatively little
study. Experiment seems to show that the colors containing
most brightness--white, red, and yellow--are preferred.
Baldwin, in his "dynamogenic" experiments,<1> based on "the
view that the infant's hand movements in reaching or
grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of
its sensory experiences," finds that the colors range
themselves in order of attractiveness, blue, white, red,
green, brown. Further corrections lay more emphasis upon
the white. Yellow was not included in the experiments.
Cohn's results, which show a relative dislike of yellow,
are contradicted by other observers, notably Major and
Baker,<2> and (unpublished) experiments of my own, including
the aesthetic preferences of seven or eight different sets
of students at Radcliffe and Wellesley colleges. Experiments
of this kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the
material, usually colored paper, varies considerably from
the spectral color, and differences in saturation, hue, and
brightness make great differences in the results, while the
feeling-tone of association, individual or racial, very
often intrudes. But other things being equal, the bright,
the clear, the saturated color is relatively more pleasing,
and white, red, and yellow seem especially preferred.
<1> _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, 1895,
pp. 39, 50, ff.
<2> E. S. Baker, _Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series_,
No. 4; J. Cohn, _Philos. Studien_, vol. X; Major, _Amer. Jour.
of Psychol._, vol. vii.
Now, according to the Hering theory of color, white, red, and
yellow are the so-called "dissimilating" colors in the three
pairs, white-black, red-green, and yellow-blue, corresponding
to three hypothetical visual substances in the retina. These
substances, that is, in undergoing a kind of chemical
disintegration under the action of light-rays, are supposed to
give the sensations white, red, or yellow respectively, and in
renewing themselves again to give the sensations of black,
green, and blue. The dissimilating process seems to bring
about stronger reactions on the physiological side, as if it
were a more exciting process. Thus it is found<1> that as
measured by the increase in strength of the hand grip under
the stimulation of the respective colors, red has particularly
exciting qualities, but the other colors have an analogous
effect, lessening, however, with the descent from red to
violet. The pleasure in bright red, or yellow, for instance,
may thus well be the feeling-tone arising in the purely
physiological effect of the color. If red works like a trumpet
call, while blue calms and cools, and if red is preferred to
blue, it is because a sharp stimulation is so felt, and so
preferred.
<1> Ch. Fere, _Sensation et Mouvement_, 1887, p. 80.
The question of the demands of the eye in color combination is
still more complicated. It has been traditional to consider
the complementaries black-white, red-green, blue-yellow, and
the other pairs resulting from the mixtures of these as the
best combinations. The physiological explanation is of course
found in the relief and refreshment to the organs in successive
alternation of the processes of assimilation and dissimilation,
and objectively in the reinforcement, through this stronger
functioning of the retina, of the complementary colors
themselves. This tendency to mutual aid is shown in the
familiar experiment of fixating for some moments a colored
object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or
gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the
complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of
contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead
of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a
fatiguing repetition results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or
red and purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red-
process with most evil effect.
This contrast theory should, however, not be interpreted too
narrowly. There are pairs of so-called complementaries which
make a very crude, harsh, even painful impression. The theory
is happily supplemented by showing<1> that the ideal combination
involves all three contrast factors, hue, saturation, and
brightness. Contrast of saturation or brightness within the
same hue is also pleasant. For any two qualities of the color
circle, in fact, there can be found degrees of saturation and
brightness in which they will form an agreeable combination,
and this pleasing effect will be based on some form of contrast.
But the absolute and relative extension and the space-form of
the components have also a great influence on the pleasurableness
of combinations.
<1> A. Kirschmann, "Die psychol.-aesthet. Bedeutung des Licht
und Farbencontrastes," _Philos. Studien_, vol. vii.
Further rules can hardly be given; but the results of various
observers<1> seem to show that the best combinations lie, as
already said, among the complementaries, or among those pairs
nearer together in the color circle than complementaries, which
are "warmer." The reason for this last is that, in Chevreul's
phraseology, combinations of cold colors change each other's
peculiar hue the most, and of warm colors the least; because
the complementaries of these cold colors are "warm," i.e.
bright, and each, appearing on the field of the neighboring
cold color, seems to fade it out; while the complementaries
of the juxtaposed warm colors are not bright, and do not have
sufficient strength to affect their neighbors at all. With a
combination of blue and green for instance, a yellow shade
would appear in the green and a red in the blue. Such a
result fails to satisfy the demand, already touched on, for
purity and homogeneity of color,--that is, for unimpeded seeing
of color.
<1> Chevreul, _De la Loi du Contraste Simultane des Couleurs_.
E.S. Banker, op. Cit.
What significance have these abstract principles of beauty in
the combination of colors for representative art? In the
choice of objects with a definite local color, of course, these
laws will be found operative. A scheme of blues and yellows
is likely to be more effective than one of reds and violets.
If we analyze the masterpiece of coloring, we shall find that
what we at first supposed to be the wonderful single effects of
color is really the result of juxtapositions which bring out
each color to its highest power.
III
While all this may be true, however, the most important question
has not yet been asked. Is truth of color in representative art
the same thing as beauty of color? It might be said that the
whole procedure of the so-called Impressionist school, in fact
the whole trend of the modern treatment of color, took their
identity for granted. Yet we must discriminate. Truth of color
may be truth to the local color of the given objects, alone or
together; in this case we should have to say that beauty did or
did not exist in the picture, according as it did or did not
exist in the original combination. A red hat on a purple chair
would set one's teeth on edge, in model or picture. Secondly,
truth of color may be truth to the modifications of the
enveloping light, and in this case truth would make for beauty.
For the colors of any given scene are in general not colors
which the objects themselves, if isolated, would have, but the
colors which the eye itself is forced to see. The bluish
shadow of an object in bright sunlight (yellowish light) is only
an expression of the law that in the neighborhood of a colored
object we see its complementary color. If such an effect is
reproduced in a picture, it gives the same relief to the eye
which the original effect showed the need of. The eye fatigued
with yellow sees blue; so if the blue is really supplied in the
picture, it is not only true, but on the road to beauty, because
meting the eye's demand. The older methods of painting gave the
local color of an object, with an admixture of white for the
lights, and a warm dark for the shadows; the modern--which had
been touched on, indeed, sporadically, by Perugino and Vermeer,
for instance,--gives in the shadow the complementary color of
the object combined with that of the light falling upon it--all
conditions of favorable stimulation.
Further favorable stimulation of the eye is given in the method
of the Impressionists in treating "values," that is, comparative
relations of light and shade. The real tones of objects
including the sky, light, etc., can never be reproduced. The
older schools, conscious of this, were satisfied to paint in a
scale of correspondence, in which the relative values were
fairly kept. But even by that means, the great differences of
intensity could not be given, for the brightest spot of any
painting is never more than sixty-six times brighter than the
darkest, while the gray sky on a dull rainy day is four hundred
and twenty times brighter than a white painted cross-bar of a
window seen against the sky as background.<1> There were
various ways of combating this difficulty. Rembrandt, for
instance, as Kirschmann tells us, chose the sombre brown tone,
"not out of caprice or an inclination for mystic dreaming
(Fromentin), but because the yellow and orange side of the
color-manifold admits of the greatest number of intervals
between full saturation and the darkest shade." The precursors
of the Impressionists, on the other hand, succeeded in painting
absolute values, confining themselves to a very limited gamut;
for this reason the first landscapes of the school were all
gray-green, dull, cloudy. But Monet did not stop there. He
painted the ABSOLUTE VALUES of objects IN SHADE on a sunny day,
which of course demands the brightest possibilities of the
palette, and got the lighted objects themselves as nearly as
he could,--thus destroying the relative values, but getting an
extraordinary joyous and glowing effect; and one, too, of
unexpected verisimilitude, for it would seem that in a sunlit
scene we are really attentive to the shaded objects alone, and
what becomes of the others does not so much matter. This effect
was made still more possible by the so-called dissociation of
colors,--i.e. the juxtaposing of tints, the blending of which
by the eye gives the desired color, without the loss of
brightness which a mixing of pigments would involve. Thus by
putting touches of black and white side by side, for instance,
a gray results much brighter than could have been otherwise
reached by mixing; or blue and red spots are blended by the
eye to an extraordinarily vivid purple. Thus, by these
methods, using the truth of color in the sense of following
the nature of retinal functioning, Monet and his followers
raised the color scale many degrees in brightness. Now we
have seen that the eye loves light, warmth, strong color-effects,
related to each other in the way that the eye must see them.
Impressionism, as the name of the method just described, makes
it more possible than it had been before to meet the demands
of the eye for light and color, to recover "the innocence of
the eye," in Ruskin's phrase. Truth to the local color of
objects is relatively indifferent, unless that color is
beautiful in itself; truth to the reciprocal relations and
changes of hue is beauty, because it allows for the eye's own
adaptations of its surroundings in the interest of its own
functioning. Thus in this case, and to sum up, truth is
synonymous with beauty, in so far as beauty is constituted by
favorable stimulation of an organ. The further question, how
far this vivid treatment of light is of importance for the
realization of depth and distance, is not here entered on.
<1> Kirschmann, _Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series_ No.
4, p. 20.
IV
The moment we touch upon line-form we are already, in strictness,
beyond the elements. For with form enters the motor factor,
which cannot be separated from the motor innervations of the
whole body. It is possible, however, to abstract for the moment
from the form as a unit, and to consider here only what may be
called the quality of line. A line may be straight or broken,
and if curved, curving continuously or brokenly, etc. That
this quality of line is distinct from form may be shown by the
simple experiment of turning a spiral--a logarithmic spiral,
let us say--in different ways about its focus. The aesthetic
effect of the figure is absolutely different in the different
positions, and yet the feeling about the character of the line
itself seems to remain the same. In what sense, and for what
reasons, does this curved line satisfy the demands of the eye?
The discussion of this question precipitates us at once into
one of the burning controversies of aesthetics, which may
perhaps best be dealt with at this point.
An early answer to the question would have been, that the eye
is so hung in its muscles as to move most easily in curved
lines, and this easy action in following the curve is felt as
favorable stimulation. But recent experiment<1> has shown
that the eye in fact moves by most irregular, angular leaps
from point to point of the figure. The theory is therefore
remodeled by substituting for the movement sensations of the
eye, the tendencies corresponding to those early movements of
touching imitative of the form, by which we learned to know a
form for what it is, and the reproduction of feeling-tones
belonging to the character of such movement. The movements
of touching and feeling for a smooth continuous curved object
are themselves pleasant. This complex of psychical factors
makes a pleasurably stimulating experience. The greater the
tendency to complete reproduction of these movements, that is,
the stronger the "bodily resonance," the more vivid the pleasure.
Whether we (with Groos) designate this as sympathetic reproduction,
or (with Lipps) attribute to the figure the movements and the
feelings which resound in us after this fashion, or even (with
Witasek) insist on the purely ideal character of the reproduction,
seems to me not essential to the explanation of the pleasing
character of the experience, and hence of the beauty of the
object. Not THAT we sympathetically reproduce ("Miterleben"),
or "feel ourselves into" a form ("Einfuhlen"), but HOW we do so,
is the question.
<1> G.M. Stratton, _Philos. Studies_, xx.
All that Hogarth says of the beauty of the serpentine line, as
"leading the eye a kind of chase," is fully in harmony with this
view, if we add to the exploiting movements of the eyes those
other more important motor innervations of the body. But we
should still have to ask, WHAT kind of chase? Sharp, broken,
starting lines might be the basis of a much more vivid experience,
--but it would be aesthetically negative. "The complete sensuous
experience of the spatial" is not enough, unless that experience
is positively, that is, favorably toned. Clear or vivid seeing
made possible by the form of the object is not enough. Only as
FAVORABLY stimulating, that is, only as calling up ideal
reproductions, or physical imitations, of movements which in
themselves were suited to the functions of the organs involved,
can forms be found positively aesthetic, that is, beautiful.
Moreover, we have to note here, and to emphasize, that the
organs involved are more than the eye, as has already been made
plain. We cannot separate eye innvervations from bodily
innervations in general. And therefore "the demands of the eye"
can never alone decide the question of the beauty of visual
form. If it were not so, the favorable stimulation combined
with repose of the eye would alone make the conditions of
beauty. The "demands of the eye" must be interpreted as the
demands of the eye plus the demands of the motor system,--the
whole psychophysical personality, in short.
It is in these two principles,--"bodily resonance," and favorable
as opposed to energetic functioning,--and these alone, that we
have a complete refutation of the claim made by many artists
to-day, that the phrase "demands of the eye" embodies a complete
aesthetic theory. The sculptor Adolph Hildebrand, in his
"Problem of Form in the Plastic Art" first set it forth as the
task of the artist "to find a form which appears to have arisen
only from the demands of the eye;"<1> and this doctrine is
to-day so widely held, that it must here be considered at some
length.
<1> _Das Proablem der form in d. bildenden Kunst_, 1897.
It is the space-form, all that is seen, and not the object itself,
that is the object of vision. Now in viewing a plastic object
near at hand, the focus of the eye must be constantly changed
between the nearer and further points. In a more distant view,
on the other hand (Hildebrand's "Fernbild"), the contour is
denoted by differences of light and shadow, but it is nevertheless
perceived in a single act of accommodation. Moreover, being
distant, the muscles of accommodation are relaxed; the eye acts
at rest. The "Fernbild" thus gives the only unified picture of
the three-dimensional complex, and hence the only unity of space-
values. In the perception of this unity, the author holds,
consists the essential pleasure which the work of art gives us.
Hildebrand's treatment is difficult, and lends itself to varying
interpretations, which have laid stress now on unity as the
essential of art,<1> now on "the joy in the complete sensuous
experience of the spatial."<2> The latter seems in harmony with
the passage in which Hildebrand says "all pleasure in Form is
pleasure in our not being obliged to create this clearness for
ourselves, in its being created for us, nay, even forced upon
us, by the form itself."
<1> A. Riehl, _Vierteljahrschr. f. wissenensch. Philos._, xxi,
xxii.
<2> K. Groos, _Der Aesthetische Genuss_, 1902, p. 17.
But supposing the first interpretation correct: supposing
space-unity, conditioned by the unified and reposeful act of
seeing, to be the beauty we seek--it is at once clear that the
reduction of three dimensions to two does not constitute unity
even for the eye alone; how much less for the motor system of
the whole body, which we have seen must be involved. Hildebrand's
"demands of the eye" resolves itself into the stimulation plus
repose of the ciliary muscle,--the organ of accommodation. A
real unity even for the eye alone would have to include not
only space relations in the third dimension, but relations of
line and mass and color in the flat. As for the "complete
sensuous experience of the spatial" (which would seem to be
equivalent to Berenson's "tactile values"), the "clearness" of
Hildebrand's sentence above quoted, it is evident that
completeness of the experience does not necessarily involve
the positive or pleasurable toning of the experience. The
distinction is that between a beautiful and a completely
realistic picture.
A further extension or restatement of this theory, in a recent
article,<1> seems to me to express it in the most favorable
way. Beauty is again connected with the functioning of our
organs of perception (Auffassungorgane). "We wish to be put
into a fresh, lively, energetic and yet at the same time
effortless activity.... The pleasure in form is a pleasure
in this, that the conformation of the object makes possible
or rather compels a natural purposeful functioning of our
apprehending organs." But purposeful for what? For visual
form, evidently to the end of seeing clearly. The element of
repose, of unity, hinted at in the "effortless" of the first
sentence, disappears in the second. The organs of apprehension
are evidently limited to the eye alone. It is not the perfect
moment of stimulation and repose for the whole organism which
is aimed at, but the complete sensuous experience of the
spatial, again.
<1> Th. A. Meyer, "Das Formprinzip des Schouen," _Archiv. f.
Phil._, Bd. x.
Hildebrand, to return to the more famous theorist, was writing
primarily of sculpture, and would naturally confine himself to
consideration of the plastic, which is an additional reason
against making this interesting brochure, as some have done,
the foundation of an aesthetics. It is rather the foundation
of the sculptor's, perhaps even of the painter's technique,
with reference to plastic elements alone. What it contains
of universal significance, the demand for space-unity, based
on the state of the eye in a union of rest and action, ignores
all but one of the possible sources of rest and action for
the eye, that of accommodation, and all the allied activities
completely.
On the basis of the favorable stimulations of all these
activities taken together, must we judge as pleasing the so-
called quality of line. But it is clear that we cannot really
separate the question of quality of line from that of form,
figure, and arrangement in space. The motor innervations
enter with the first, and the moment we have form at all, we
have space-composition also. But space-composition means
unity, and unity is the objective quality which must be
translated, in our investigations, into aesthetic repose. It
is thus with the study of composition that we pass from the
study of the elements as favorably stimulating, to the study
of the beauty of visual form.
V
We may begin by asking what, as a matter of fact, has been the
arrangement of spaces to give aesthetic pleasure. The primitive
art of all nations shows that it has taken the direction of
symmetry about a vertical line. It might be said that this is
the result of non-aesthetic influences, such as convenience of
construction, technique, etc. <1>It is clear that much of the
symmetry appearing in primitive art is due (1) to the conditions
of construction, as in the form of dwellings, binding patterns,
weaving and textile patterns generally; (2) to convenience in
use, as in the shapes of spears, arrows, knives, two-handled
baskets or jars; (3) to the imitation of animal forms, as in
the shapes of pottery, etc. On the other hand, (1) a very
great deal of symmetrical ornament maintains itself AGAINST the
suggestions of the shape to which it is applied, as the
ornaments of baskets, pottery, and all rounded objects; and
(2) all distortion, disintegration, degradation of pattern-
motives, often so marked as all but to destroy their meaning,
is in the direction of geometrical symmetry. The early art of
all civilized nations shows the same characteristic. Now it
might be said that, as there exists an instinctive tendency to
imitate visual forms by motor impulses, the impulses suggested
by the symmetrical form are in harmony with the system of
energies of our bilateral organism, which is a system of double
motor innervations, and thus fulfill our demand for a set of
reactions corresponding to the organism as a whole. But we
should then expect that all space arrangements which deviate
from complete symmetry, and thus suggest motor impulses which
do not correspond to the natural bilateral type, would fail to
give aesthetic pleasure. Such, however, is not the case. Non-symmetrical arrangements of space are often extremely pleasing.
<1> The following is adapted from the author's _Studies in
Symmetry, Harvard Psych. Studies_, vol i, 1902.
This contradiction disappears if we are able to show that the
apparently non-symmetrical arrangement contains a hidden
symmetry, and that all the elements of that arrangement
contribute to bring about just that bilateral type of motor
impulses which is characteristic of geometrical symmetry.
A series of experiments was arranged, in which one of two
unequal lines of white on a black background being fixed in
an upright position a certain distance from the centre, the
other was shifted until the arrangement was felt to be pleasing.
It was found that when two lines of different sizes were opposed,
their relative positions corresponded to the relation of the
arms of a balance, that is, a small line far from the centre
was opposed by a large one near the centre. A line pointing
out from the centre fitted this formula if taken as "heavy,"
and pointing in, if taken as "light." Similarly, objects of
intrinsic interest and objects suggesting depth in the third
dimension were "heavy" in the same interpretation. All this,
however, did not go beyond the proof that all pleasing space-
arrangements can be described in terms of mechanical balance.
But what was this mechanical balance? A metaphor explains
nothing, and no one will maintain that the visual representation
of a long line weights more than a short one. Moreover, the
elements in the balance were so far heterogeneous. The
movement suggested by an idea had been treated as if equivalent
to the movement actually made by the eye in following a long
line; the intrinsic interest--that is, the ideal interest--of
an object insignificant in form was equated to the attractive
power of a perspective, which has, presumably, a merely
physiological effect on the visual mechanism.
I believe, however, that the justification of this apparent
heterogeneity, and the basis for explanation, is given in the
reduction of all elements to their lowest term,--as objects
for the expenditure of attention. A large object and an
"interesting" object are "heavy" for the same reason, because
they call out the attention. And expenditure of effort is
expenditure of attention; thus, if an object on the outskirts
of the field of vision requires a wide sweep of the eye to take
it in, it demands the expenditure of attention, and so is felt
as "heavy." But what is "the expenditure of attention" in
physiological terms? It is nothing more than the measure of
the motor impulses directed to the object of attention. And
whether the motor impulse appears as the tendency to follow
out the suggestions of motion in the object, all reduces to
the same physiological basis.
It may here be objected that our motor impulses are, nevertheless,
still heterogeneous, inasmuch as some are toward the object of
interest, and some along the line of movement. But it must be
said, first, that these are not felt in the body, but transferred
as values of weight to points in the picture,--it is the amount
and not the direction of excitement that is counted; and secondly,
that even if it were not so, the suggested movement along a line
is felt as "weight" at a particular point.
From this point of view the justification of the metaphor of
mechanical balance is quite clear. Given two lines, the most
pleasing arrangement makes the larger nearer the centre, and
the smaller far from it. This is balanced because the spontaneous
impulse of attention to the near, large line equals in amount
the involuntary expenditure to apprehend the small, farther one.
We may thus think of a space to be composed as a kind of target,
in which certain spots or territories count more or less, both
according to their distance from the centre and according to what
fills them. Every element of a picture, in whatever way it gains
power to excite motor impulses, is felt as expressing that power
in the flat pattern. A noble vista is understood and enjoyed as
a vista, but it is COUNTED in the motor equation, our "balance,"
as a spot of so much intrinsic value at such and such a distance
from the centre. The skillful artist will fill his target in the
way to give the maximum of motor impulses with the perfection of
balance between them.
It is thus in a kind of substitutional symmetry, or balance, that
we have the objective condition or counterpart of aesthetic
repose, or unity. From this point of view it is clearly seen in
what respect the unity of Hildebrand fails. He demands in the
statue, especially, but also in the picture, the flat surface as
a unity for the three dimensions. But it is only with the flat
space, won, if you will, by Hildebrand's method, that the problem
begins. Every point in the third dimension counts, as has been
said, in the flat. The Fernbild is the beginning of beauty, but
within the Fernbild favorable stimulation and repose must still
be sought. And repose or unity is given by symmetry, subjectively
the balance of attention, inasmuch as this balance is a tension
of antagonistic impulses, an equilibrium, and thus an inhibition
of movement.
From this point of view, we are in a position to refute Souriau's
interesting analysis<1> of form as the condition for the
appreciation of content. He says that form, in a picture for
instance, has its value in its power to produce (through its
fixation and concentration of the eye) a mild hypnosis, in which,
as is well known, all suggestions come to us with bewildering
vividness. This is, then, just the state in which the contents
of the picture can most vividly impress themselves. Form, then,
as the means to content, by giving the conditions for suggestion,
is Sourieau's account of it. In so far as form--in the sense
of unity--gives, through balance and equilibrium of impulses,
the arrest of the personality, it may indeed be compared with
hypnotism. But this arrest is not only a means, but an end in
itself; that aesthetic repose, which, as the unity of the
personality, is an essential element of the aesthetic emotion
as we have described it.
<1> _La Suggestion en l'Art_.
VI
There is no point of light or color, no contour, no line, no
depth, that does not contribute to the infinite complex which
gives the maximum of experience with the minimum of effort and
which we call beauty of form. But yet there is another way of
viewing the beautiful object, on which we touched in the
introduction to this chapter. So far, what we see is only
another name for HOW we see; and the way of seeing has proved
to contain enough to bring to stimulation and repose the
psychophysical mechanism. But now we must ask, what relation
has meaning to beauty? Is it an element, coordinate with others,
or something superposed? or is it an end in itself, the supreme
end? What relation to the beauty of form has that quality of
their works by virtue of which Rembrandt is called a dreamer,
and Rodin a poet in stone? What do we mean when we speak of
Sargent as a psychologist? Is it a virtue to be a poet in
stone? If it is, we must somehow include in our concept of
Beauty the element of expression, by showing how it serves the
infinite complex. Or is it not an aesthetic virtue, and Rodin
is great artist and poet combined, and not great artist because
poet, as some would say? What is the relation of the objective
content to beauty of form? In short, what place has the idea
in Beauty?
In the preceding the place of separate objects which have only
an ideal importance has been made clear. The gold-embroidered
gauntlet in a picture counts as a patch of light, a trend of
line, in a certain spot; but it counts more there, because it
is of interest for itself, and by thus counting more, the idea
has entered into the spatial balance,--the idea has become
itself form. Now it is the question whether all "idea," which
seems so heterogeneous in its relation to form, does not undergo
this transmutation. It is at least of interest to see whether
the facts can be so interpreted.
We have spoken of ideas a parts of an aesthetic whole. What of
the idea of the whole? Corot used to say he painted a dream,
and it is the dream of an autumn morning we see in his pictures.
Millet portrays the sad majesty and sweetness of the life near
the soil. How must we relate these facts to the views already
won?
It has often been said that the view which makes the element of
form for the eye alone, in the strictest sense, is erroneous,
because there is no form for the eye alone. The very process
of apprehending a line involves not only motor memories and
impulses, but numberless ideal associations, and these
associations constitute the line as truly as do the others. The
impression of the line involves expression, a meaning which we
cannot escape. The forms of things constitute a kind of dialect
of life,--and thus it is that the theory of Einfuhlung in its
deepest sense is grounded. The Doric column causes in us, no
doubt, motor impulses, but it means, and must mean, to us, the
expression of internal energy through those very impulses it
causes. "We ourselves are contracting our muscles, but we
feel as if the lines were pulling and piercing, bending and
lifting, pressing down and pushing up; in short, as soon as the
visual impression is really isolated, and all other ideas really
excluded, then the motor impulses do not awake actions which are
taken as actions of ourselves, but feelings of energy which are
taken as energies of the visual forms and lines."<1> So the
idea belonging to the object, and the psychophysical effect of
the object are only obverse and inverse of the same phenomenon.
And our pleasure in the form of the column is rather our
appreciation of energy than our feeling of favorable stimulation.
Admitting this reasoning, the meaning of a picture would be the
same as its beauty, it is said. The heroic art of J.-F. Millet,
for example, would be beautiful because it is the perfect
expression of the simplicity and suffering of labor.
<1> H. Munsterberg, _The Principles of Art Education_, p. 87.
Let us examine this apparently reasonable theory. It is true
that every visual element is understood as expression too. It
is not true, however, that expression and impression are parallel
and mutually corresponding beyond the elements. Suppose a
concourse of columns covered by a roof,--the Parthenon. Those
psychophysical changes induced by the sight now mutually check
and modify each other. Can we say that there is a "meaning,"
like the energy of the column, corresponding to that complex?
It is at least not energy itself. Ask the same as regards the
lines and masses of a picture by Corot. In the sense in which
we have taken "meaning," the only psychologically possible one,
our reactions could be interpreted only by some mood. If the
column means energy because it makes us tower, then the picture
must mean what it makes us do. That is, a combination of
feathery fronds and horizontal lines of water, bathed in a gray-
green silvery mist, can "mean" only a repose lightened by a
grave yet cheerful spirit. In short, this theory of
expressiveness cannot go beyond the mood or moral quality. In
the sense of INFORMATION, the theory of Einfuhlung contributes
nothing. Now, in this limited sense, we have indeed no reason
to contradict it, but simply to point out that it holds only
in this extremely limited sense. When we see broad sweeping
lines we interpret them by sympathetic reproduction as strength,
energy. When those sweeping lines are made part of a Titan's
frame, we get the same effect plus the associations which belong
to distinctively muscular energy. Those same lines might define
the sweep of a drapery, or the curve of an infant's limbs. Now
all that part of the meaning which belongs to the lines
themselves remains constant under whatever circumstances; and
it is quite true that a certain feeling-tone, a certain moral
quality, as it were, belongs, say, to Raphael's pictures, in
which this kind of outline is to be found. But as belonging to
a Titan, the additional elements of understanding are not due
to sympathetic reproduction. They are not parallel with the
motor suggestions; they are simply an associational addition,
due to our information about the power of men with muscles
like that. That there are secondary motor elements as a
reverberation of these ideal elements need not be denied. But
they are not directly due to the form. Now such part of our
response to a picture as is directly induced by the form, we
have a right to include in the aesthetic experience. It will,
however, in every work of art of even the least complexity,
be expressible only as a mood, very indefinite, often
indescribable. To make this "meaning," then, the essential
aim of a picture seems unreasonable.
It is evident that in experience we do not, as a matter of
fact, separate the mood which is due to sympathy from the
ideal content of the picture. Corot paint a summer dawn.
We cannot separate our pleasure in the sight from our pleasure
in the understanding; yet it is the visual complex that gives
us the mood, and the meaning of the scene is due to factors
of association. The "serene and happy dream," the "conviction
of a solemn and radiant Arcadia," are not "expression" in that
inevitable sense in which we agreed to take it, but the result
of a most extended upbuilding of ideal (that is, associational)
elements.
The "idea," then, as we have propounded it, is not, as was
thought possible, an integral and essential part, but an
addition to the visual form, and we have still to ask what is
its value. But in so far as it is an addition, its effect
may be in conflict with what we may call the feeling-tone
produced by sympathetic reproduction. In that case, one must
yield to the other. Now it is not probably that even the most
convinced adherents of the expression theory would hold that
if expression or beauty MUST go, expression should be kept.
They only say that expression IS beauty. But the moment it is
admitted that there is a beauty of form independent of the
ideal element, this theory can no longer stand. If there is
a conflict, the palm must be given to the direct, rather than
the indirect, factor. Indeed, when there is such a conflict,
the primacy must always be with the medium suited to the organ,
the sensuous factor. For if it were not so, and expression
WERE beauty, then that would have to be most beautiful which
was most expressive. And even if we disregard the extraordinary
conclusions to which this would lead,--the story pictures
preferred to those without a story, the photographic reproductions
preferred to the symphonies of color and form,--we should be
obliged to admit something still more incendiary. Expression
is always of an ideal content, is of something to express; and
it is unquestioned that in words, and in words alone, can we
get nearest to the inexpressible. Then literature, as being
the most expressive, would be the highest art, and we should be
confronted with a hierarchy of arts, from that down.
Now, in truth, the real lover of beauty knows that no one art
is superior to another. "Each in his separate star," they reign
alone. In order to be equal, they must depend on their material,
not on that common quality of imaginative thought which each has
in a differing degree, and all less than literature.
The idea, we conclude, is then indeed subordinate,--a by-product,
unless by chance it can enter into, melt into, the form. This
case we have clearest in the example, already referred to, of
the gold-embroidered gauntlet, or the jeweled chalice,--say the
Holy Grail in Abbey's pictures,--which counts more or less, in
the spatial balance, according to its intrinsic interest.
We have seen that through sympathetic reproduction a certain
mood is produced, which becomes a kind of emotional envelope
for the picture,--a favorable stimulation of the whole, a
raising of the whole harmony one tone, as it were. Now the
further ideal content of the picture may so closely belong to
this basis that it helps it along. Thus all that we know about
dawn--not only of a summer morning--helps us to see, and seeing
to rejoice, in Corot's silvery mist or Monet's iridescent
shimmers. All that we know and feel about the patient majesty
of labor in the fields, next the earth, helps us to get the
slow, large rhythm, the rich gloom of Millet's pictures. But
it is the rhythm and the gloom that are the beauty, and the
idea reinforces our consciousness thereof. The idea is a
sounding-board for the beauty, and so can be truly said to
enter into the form.
But there are still some lions in the path of our theory. The
greatest of modern sculptors is reputed to have reached his
present altitude by the passionate pursuance of Nature, and of
the expressions of Nature. And few can see Rodin's work
without being at once in the grip of the emotion or fact he
has chosen to depict. A great deal of contemporary criticism
on modern tendencies in art rests on the intention of
expression, and expression alone, attributed to him. It is
said of him: "The solicitude for ardent expression overmasters
every aesthetic consideration.... He is a poet with stone as
his instrument of expression. He makes it express emotions
that are never found save in music or in psychological and
lyric literature."<1>
<1> C. Mauclair, "The Decorative Sculpture of August Rodin,"
_International Monthly_, vol iii.
Now while the last is undoubtedly true, I believe that the
first is not only not true, but that it is proved to be so by
Rodin's own procedure and utterances, and that, if we understand
his case aright, it is for beauty alone that he lives. He has
related his search for the secret of Michael Angelo's design,
and how he found it in the rhythm of two planes rather than four,
the Greek composition. This system of tormented form is one way
of referring the body to the geometry of an imagined rectangular
block inclosing the whole.
<1>"The ordinary Greek composition of the body, he puts it,
depends on a rhythm of four lines, four volumes, four planes.
If the line of the shoulders and pectorals slopes from right
to left (the man resting on his right leg) the line across the
hips takes the reverse slope, and is followed by that of the
knees, while the line of the first echoes that of the shoulders.
Thus we get the rhythm ABBA, and the balancing volumes set up
a corresponding play of planes. Michael Angelo so turns the
body on itself that he reduces the four to two big planes, one
facing, the other swept round to the side of the block." That
is, he gets geometrical enveloping lines for his design. And,
in fact, there is no sculpture which is more wonderful in
design than Rodin's. I quote Mr. MacColl again. "It has been
said that the 'Bourgeois de Calais' is a group of single
figures, possessing no unity of design, or at best affording
only a single point of view. Those who say so have never
examined it with attention. The way in which these figures
move among themselves, as the spectator walks round, so as to
produce from every fresh angle sweeping commanding lines, each
of them thus playing a dozen parts at once, is surely one of
the most astounding feats of the genius of design. Nothing in
the history of art is exactly comparable with it."
<1> D. S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, 1902, p. 101.
In short, it is the design, for all his words, that Rodin cares
for. He calls it Nature, because he sees, and can see Nature
only that way. But as he said to some one who suggested that
there might be a danger in too close devotion to Nature, "Yes,
for a mediocre artist!" It is for the sake of the strange new
beauty, "the unedited poses," "the odd beautiful huddle<1> of
lines," in a stopping or squatting form, that all these wild
and subtle moments are portrayed. The limbs must be adjusted
or surprised in some pattern beyond their own. The ideas are
the occasion and the excuse for new outlines,--that is all.
<1> Said of Degas. MacColl.
This is all scarcely less true of Millet, whom we have known
above all as the painter who has shown the simple common lot
of labor as divine. But he, too, is artist for the sake of
beauty first. He sees two peasant women, one laden with grass,
the other with fagots. "From far off, they are superb, they
balance their shoulders under the weight of fatigue, the
twilight swallows their forms. It is beautiful, it is great
as a myster."<1>
<1> Sensier, _Vie et Oeuvre de J.-F. Millet_.
The idea is, as I said, from this point of view, a means to
new beauty; and the stranger and subtler the idea, the more
original the forms. The more unrestrained the expression of
emotion in the figures, the more chance to surprise them in
some new lovely pattern. It is thus, I believe, that we may
interpret the seeming trend of modern sculpture, and so much,
indeed, of all modern art, to the "expressive beauty" path.
"The mediocre artist" will lose beauty in seeking expression,
the great artist will pursue his idea for the sake of the
new beauty it will yield.
Thus it seems that the stumbling blocks in the way of our
theory are not insurmountable after all. From every point
of view, it is seen to be possible to transmute the idea into
a helpmeet to the form. Visual beauty is first beauty to the
eye and to the frame, and the mind cherishes and enriches
this beauty with all its own stored treasures. The stimulation
and repose of the psychophysical organism alone can make one
thrill to visual form; but the thrill is deeper and more
satisfying if it engage the whole man, and be reinforced from
all sources.
VII
But we ought to note a borderland in which the concern is
professedly not with beauty, but with ideas of life. Aristotle's
lover of knowledge, who rejoiced to say of a picture "This is
that man," is the inspirer of drawing as opposed to the art of
visual form.
It is not beauty we seek from the Rembrandt and Durer of the
etchings and woodcuts, from Hogarth, Goya, Klinger, down to
Leech and Keene and Du Maurier; it is not beauty, but ideas,--
information, irony, satire, life-philosophy. Where there is
a conflict, beauty, as we have defined it, goes to the wall.
We may trace, perhaps, the ground of this in the highly increased
amount of symbolic, associative power given, and required, in
the black and white. Even to understand such a picture demands
such an enormous amount of unconscious mental supplementation
that it is natural to find the aesthetic centre of gravity in
that element.
The first conditions of the work, that is, determine its trend
and aim. The part played by imagination in our vision of an
etching is and must be so important, that it is, after all, the
imaginative part which outweighs the given. Nor do we desire the
given to infringe upon the ideal field. Thus do we understand
that for most drawings a background vague and formless is the
desideratum. "Such a tone is the foil for psychological
moments, as they are handled by Goya, for instance, with
barbarically magnificent nakedness. On a background which is
scarcely indicated, with few strokes, which barely suggest
space, he impales like a butterfly the human type, mostly in a
moment of folly or wickedness.... The least definition of
surrounding would blunt his (the artist's) keenness, and make
his vehemence absurd."<1>
<1> Max Klinger, _Malerei u. Zeichnung_, 1903, p. 42.
This theory of the aim of black and white is confirmed by the
fact that while a painting is composed for the size in which it
is painted, and becomes another picture if reproduced in another
measure, the size of drawings is relatively indifferent; reduced
or enlarged, the effect is approximately the same, because what
is given to the eye is such a small proportion of the whole
experience. The picture is only the cue for a complete structure
of ideas.
Here is a true case of Anders-Streben, that "partial alienation
from its own limitations, by which the arts are able, not indeed
to supply the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each
other new forces."<1> It is by its success as representation
that the art of the burin and needle--Griffelkunst, as Klinger
names it--ought first to be judged. This is not saying that it
may not also possess beauty of form to a high degree,--only that
this beauty of form is not its characteristic excellence.
<1> W. Pater, _The Renaissance: Essay on Giorgione_.
In what consists the beauty of visual form? If this question
could be answered in a sentence our whole discussion of the
abstract formula for beauty would have been unnecessary. But
since we know what the elements of visual form must do to bring
about the aesthetic experience, it has been the aim of the
preceding pages to show how those elements must be determined
and related. The eye, the psychophysical organism, must be
favorably stimulated; these, and such colors, combinations,
lines as we have described, are fitted to do it. It must be
brought to repose; these, and such relations between lines and
colors as we have set forth, are fitted to do it, for reasons
we have given. It is to the eye and all that waits upon it
that the first and the last appeal of fine art must be made;
and in so far as the emotion or the idea belonging to a
picture or a statue waits upon the eye, in so far does it
enter into the characteristic excellence, that is, the beauty
of visual form.
B. SPACE COMPOSITION AMONG THE OLD MASTERS
I
THE preceding pages have set forth the concrete facts of
visible beauty, and the explanation of our feelings about it.
It is also interesting, however, to see how these principles
are illustrated and confirmed in the masterpieces of art. A
statistical study, undertaken some years ago with the purpose
of dealing thus with the hypothesis of substitutional symmetry
in pictorial composition, has given abundance of material,
which I shall set forth, at otherwise disproportionate length,
as to a certain extent illustrative of the methods of such
study. It is clear that this is but one of many possible
investigations in which the preceding psychological theories
may be further illuminated. The text confines itself to
pictures; but the functions of the elements of visual form
are valid as well for all visual art destined to fill a bounded
area. The discussion will then be seen to be only ostensibly
limited in its reference. For picture might always be read
space arrangement within a frame.
In the original experimental study of space arrangements, the
results of which were given at length on page 111, the elements
of form in a picture were reduced to SIZE or MASS, DEPTH in the
third dimension, DIRECTION, and INTEREST. Direction was further
analyzed into direction of MOTION or ATTENTION (of persons or
objects in the picture), an ideal element, that is; and direction
of LINE. For the statistical study, a given picture was then
divided in half by an imaginary vertical line, and the elements
appearing on each side of this line were set off against each
other to see how far they lent themselves to description by
substitutional symmetry. Thus: in B. van der Helst's "Portrait
of Paul Potter," the head of the subject is entirely to left
of the central line, as also his full face and frontward glance.
His easel is right, his body turned sharply to right, and both
hands, one holding palette and brushes, are stretched down to
right. Thus the greater mass is to the left, and the general
direction of line is to the right; elements of interest in the
head, left; in implements, right. This may be schematized in
the equation (Lt.)M.+I.=(Rt.)I.+L.
Pieter de Hooch, "The Card-Players," in Buckingham Palace,
portrays a group completely on the right of the central line,
all facing in to the table between them. Directly behind them
is a high light window, screened, and high on the wall to the
extreme right are a picture and hanging cloaks. All goes to
emphasize the height, mass, and interest of the right side.
On the left, which is otherwise empty, is a door half the
height of the window, giving on a brightly lighted courtyard,
from which is entering a woman, also in light clothing. The
light streams in diagonally across the floor. Thus, with all
the "weight" on the right, the effect of this deep vista on
the left and of its brightness is to give a complete balance,
while the suggestion of line from doorway and light makes,
together with the central figure, a roughly outlined V, which
serves to bind together all the elements. Equation, (Lt.)V.+I.
=(Rt.)M.+I.
The thousand pictures on which the study was based<1> were
classified for convenience into groups,--Religious, Portrait,
Genre, and Landscape. It was found on analysis that the
functions of the elements came out clearly, somewhat as follows.
<1> One thousand reproductions of old masters from F. Bruckmann's
_Classischer Bilderschatz_, Munich, omitting frescoes and
pictures of which less than the whole was given.
Of the religious pictures, only the "Madonnas Enthroned" and
other altar-pieces are considered at this point as presenting a
simple type, in which it is easy to show the variations from
symmetry. In all these pictures the balance comes in between
the interest in the Infant Christ, sometimes together with
direction of attention to him, on one side, and other elements
on the other. When the first side is especially "heavy" the
number of opposing elements increases, and especially takes
the form of vista and line, which have been experimentally
found to be powerful in attracting attention. Where there are
no surrounding worshipers, we notice remarkable frequency in
the use of vista and line, and, in general, balance is brought
about through the disposition of form rather than of interests.
The reason for this would appear to be that the lack of
accessories in the persons of saints, worshipers, etc., and
the consequent increase in the size of Madonna and Child in
the picture, heightens the effect of any given outline, and so
makes the variations from symmetry greater. This being the
case, the compensations would be stronger; and as we have
learned that vista and line are of this character, we see why
they are needed.
The portrait class is an especially interesting object for
study, inasmuch as while its general type is very simple and
constant, for this very reason the slightest variations are
sharply felt, and have their very strongest characteristic
effect. The general type of the portrait composition is, of
course, the triangle with the head at the apex, and this point
is also generally in the central line; nevertheless, great
richness of effect is brought about by emphasizing variations.
For instance, the body and head are, in the great majority of
cases, turned in the same way, giving the strongest possible
emphasis to the direction of attention,--especially powerful,
of course, where all the interest is in the personality. But
it is to be observed that the very strongest suggestion of
direction is given by the direction of the glance; and in no
case, when most of the other elements are directed in one way,
does the glance fail to come backward. With the head on one
side of the central line, of course the greatest interest is
removed to one side, and the element of direction is brought
in to balance. Again, with this decrease in symmetry, we see
a significant increase in the use of the especially effective
elements, vista and line. In fact, the use of the small deep
vista is almost confined to the class with heads not in the
middle. The direction of the glance also plays an important
part. Very often the direction of movement alone is not
sufficient to balance the powerful M.+I. of the other side,
and the eye has to be attracted by a definite object of interest.
This is usually the hand, with or without an implement,--like
the palette, etc., of our first examples,--or a jewel, vase,
or bit of embroidery. This is very characteristic of the
portraits of Rembrandt and Van Dyck.
In general, it may be said that (1) portraits with the head in
the centre of the frame show a balance between the direction
of suggested movement on one side, and mass or direction of
attention, or both together, on the other; while (2) portraits
with the head not in the centre show a balance between mass
and interest on one side, and direction of attention, or of
line, or vista, or combinations of these, on the other.
Still more unsymmetrical in their framework than portraits, in
fact the most unfettered type of all, are the genre pictures.
As these are pictures with a human interest, and full of action
and particular points of interest, it was to be expected that
interest would be the element most frequently appearing. In
compositions showing great variations from geometrical symmetry,
it was also to be expected that vista and line, elements which
have been noted comparatively seldom up to this point, should
suddenly appear strongly; for, as being the most strikingly
"heavy" of the elements, they serve to compensate for other
variations combined.
The landscape is another type of unfettered composition. It
was of course to be expected that in pictures without action
there should be little suggestion of attention or of direction
of movement. But the most remarkable point is the presence
of vista in practically every example. It is, of course,
natural that somewhere in almost every picture there should
be a break to show the horizon line, for the sake of variety,
if for nothing else; but what is significant is the part played
by this break in the balancing of the picture. In about two
thirds of the examples the vista is inclosed by lines, or
masses, and when near the centre, as being at the same time the
"heaviest" part of the picture, it serves as a fulcrum or centre
to bind the parts--always harder to bring together than in the
other types of pictures--into a close unity. The most frequent
form of this arrangement is a diagonal, which just saves itself
by turning up at its far end. Thus the mass, and hence usually
the special interest of the picture, is on the one side, on
the other the vista and the sloping line of the diagonal. In
very few cases is the vista behind an attractive or noticeable
part of the picture, the fact showing that it acts in opposition
to the latter, leading the eye away from it, and thus serving at
once the variety and richness of the picture, and its unity. A
complete diagonal would have line and vista both working at the
extreme outer edge of the picture, and thus too strongly,--
unless, indeed, balanced by very striking elements near the
outer edge.
This function of the vista as a unifying element is of interest
in connection with the theory of Hildebrand,<1> that the landscape
should have a narrow foreground and wide background, since that
is most in conformity with our experience. He adduces Titian's
"Sacred and Profane Love" as an example. But of the general
principle it may be said that not the reproduction of nature,
but the production of beauty, is the aim of composition, and that
this aim is best reached by focusing the eye by a narrow background,
i.e. vista. No matter how much it wanders, it returns to that
central spot and is held there, keeping hold on all the other
elements. Of Hildebrand's example it may be said that the
pyramidal composition, with the dark and tall tree in the centre,
effectually accomplishes the binding together of the two figures,
so that a vista is not needed. A wide background without that
tree would leave them rather disjointed.
<1> Op cit., p. 55.
In general, it may be said that balance in landscape is effected
between mass and interest on one side and vista and line on the
other; and that union is given especially by the use of vista.
II
The experimental treatment of the isolated elements detected
the particular function of each in distributing attention in
the field of view. But while all are possibly operative in a
given picture, some are given, as we have seen, much more
importance than others, and in pictures of different types
different elements predominate. In those classes with a
general symmetrical framework, such as the altar and Madonna
pieces, the elements of interest and direction of attention
determine the balance, for they appear as variations in a
symmetry which has already, so to speak, disposed of mass and
line. They give what action there is, and where they are very
strongly operative, they are opposed by salient lines and deep
vistas, which act more strongly on the attention than does mass.
Interest keeps its predominance throughout the types, except in
the portraits, where the head is usually in the central line.
But even among the portraits it has a respectable representation,
as jewels, embroideries, beautiful hands, etc., count largely
too in composition.
The direction of attention is most operative among the portraits.
Since these pictures represent no action, it must be given by
those elements which move and distribute the attention; in
accordance with which principle we find line also unusually
influential. As remarked above, altar-pieces and Madonna pictures,
also largely without action, depend largely for it on the direction
of attention.
The vista, as said above, rivets and confines the attention. We
can, therefore, understand how it is that in the genre pictures it
appears very numerous. The active character of these pictures
naturally requires to be modified, and the vista introduces a
powerful balancing element, which is yet quiet; or, it might be
said, inasmuch as energy is certainly expended in plunging down
the third dimension, the vista introduces an element of action
of counterbalancing character. In the landscape it introduces
the principal element of variety. It is always to be found in
those parts of the picture which are opposed to other powerful
elements, and the "heavier" the other side, the deeper the vista.
Also in pictures with two groups it serves as a kind of fulcrum,
or unifying element, inasmuch as it rivets the attention between
the two detached sides.
The direction of suggestion by means of the indication of a line,
quite naturally is more frequent in the Madonna picture and
portrait classes. Both these types are of large simple outline,
so that line would be expected to tell. In a decided majority
of cases, combined with vista--the shape being more or less a
diagonal slope--it is clear that it acts as a kind of bond
between the two sides, carrying the attention without a break
from one to the other.
The element of mass requires less comment. It appears in
greatest number in those pictures which have little action, i.e. portraits and landscapes, and which are not yet symmetrical,--
in which last case mass is, of course, already balanced. In
fact, it must of necessity exert a certain influence in every
unsymmetrical picture, and so its percentage, even for genre
pictures, is large.
Thus we may regard the elements as both attracting attention to
a certain spot and dispersing it over a field. Those types
which are of a static character (landscapes, altar-pieces)
abound in elements which disperse the attention; those which
are of a dynamic character (genre picture), in those which make
it stable. The ideal composition seems to combine the dynamic
and static elements,--to animate, in short, the whole field of
view, but in a generally bilateral fashion. The elements, in
substitutional symmetry, are then simply means of introducing
variety and action. As a dance in which there are complicated
steps gives the actor and beholder a varied and thus vivified
"balance," and is thus more beautiful than the simple walk, so
a picture composed in substitutional symmetry is more rich in
its suggestions of motor impulse, and thus more beautiful, than
an example of geometrical symmetry.
III
The particular functions of the elements which are substituted
for geometrical symmetry have been made clear; their presence
lends variety and richness to the balance of motor impulses.
But this quality of repose, or unity, given by balance, is also
enriched by a unity for intuition,--a large outline in which all
the elements are held together. Now this way of holding together
varies; and I believe that it bears a very close relation to the
subject and purpose of the picture.
Examples of these types of composition may best be found by
analyzing a few well-known pictures. We may begin with the class
first studied, the Altar-piece, choosing a picture by Botticelli,
in the Florence Academy. Under an arch is draped a canopy held
up by angels; under this, again, sits the Madonna with the Child
on her lap, on a throne, at the foot of which, on each side,
stand three saints. The outline of the whole is markedly
pyramidal; in fact, there are, broadly speaking, three pyramids,
--of the arch, the canopy, and the grouping. A second, much
less symmetrical example of this type, is given by another
Botticelli in the Academy,--"Spring." Here the central female
figure, topped by the floating Cupid, is slightly raised above
the others, which, however, bend slightly inward, so that a
triangle, or pyramid with very obtuse angle at the apex, is
suggested; and the whole, which at first glance seems a little
scattered, is at once felt, when this is grasped, as closely
bound together.
Closely allied to this is the type of the Holbein "Madonna of
Burgomaster Meyer," in the Grand Ducal Castle, Darmstadt. It
is true that the same pyramid is given by the head of the
Madonna against the shell-like background, and her spreading
cloak which envelops the kneeling donors. But still more
salient is the diamond form given by the descending rows of
these worshiping figures, especially against the dark background
of the Madonna's dress. A second example, without the pyramid
backing, is found in Rubens's "Rape of the Daughters of
Leucippus," in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich. Here the diamond
shape formed by the horses and struggling figures is most
remarkable,--an effect of lightness which will be discussed
later in interpreting the types.
A third type, the diagonal, is given in an "Evening Landscape"
by Cuyp, in the Buckingham Palace, London. High trees and
cliffs, horsemen and others, occupy one side, and the mountains
in the background, the ground and the clouds, all slope
gradually down to the other side.
It is a natural transition from this type to the V-shape of the
landscapes by Aart van der Neer, "Dutch Villages," in the London
National Gallery and in the Rudolphinum at Prague, respectively.
Here are trees and houses on each side, gradually sloping to
the centre to show an open sky and deep vista. Other examples,
of course, show the opening not exactly in the centre.
In the "Concert" by Giorgione, in the Pitti Gallery, Florence,
is seen the less frequent type of the square. The three
figures turned toward each other with heads on the same level
make almost a square space-shape, although it might be said
that the central player gives a pyramidal foundation. This
last may also be said of Verrocchio's "Tobias and the
Archangels" in the Florence Academy, for the square, or other
rectangle, is again lengthened by the pyramidal shape of the
two central figures. The unrelieved square, it may here be
interpolated, is not often found except in somewhat primitive
examples. Still less often observed is the oval type of
"Samson's Wedding Feast," Rembrandt, in the Royal Gallery,
Dresden. Here one might, by pressing the interpretation, see
an obtuse-angled double-pyramid with the figure of Delilah for
an apex, but a few very irregular pictures seem to fall best
under the given classification.
Last of all, it must be remarked that the great majority of
pictures show a combination of two or even three types; but
these are usually subordinated to one dominant type. Such,
for instance, is the case with many portraits, which are
markedly pyramidal, with the double-pyramid suggested by the
position of the arms, and the inverted pyramid, or V, in the
landscape background. The diagonal sometimes just passes over
into the V-shape, or into the pyramid; or the square is
combined with both.
What types are characteristic of the different kinds of pictures?
In order to answer this question we must ask first, What are the
different kinds of pictures? One answer, at least, is at once
suggested to the student on a comparison of the pictures with
their groupings according to subjects. All those which represent
the Madonna enthroned, with all variations, with or without
saints, shepherds, or Holy Family, are very quiet in their action;
that is, it is not really an action at all which they represent,
but an attitude,--the attitude of contemplation. This is no
less true of the pictures we may call "Adorations," in which,
indeed, the contemplative attitude is still more marked. On the
other hand, such pictures as the "Descents," the "Annunciations,"
and very many of the miscellaneous religious, allegorical, and
genre pictures, portray a definite action or event. Now the
pyramid type is characteristic of the "contemplative" pictures
in a much higher degree. A class which might be supposed to
suggest the same treatment in composition is that of the portraits,
--absolute lack of action being the rule. And we find, indeed,
that no single type is represented within it except the pyramid
and double-pyramid, with eighty-six per cent. of the former.
Thus it is evident that for the type of picture which expresses
the highest degree of quietude, contemplation, concentration,
the pyramid is the characteristic type of composition. Among
the so-called "active" pictures, the diagonal and V-shaped types
are most numerous.
The landscape picture presents a somewhat different problem. It
cannot be described as either "active" or "passive," inasmuch as
it does not express either an attitude or an event. There is no
definite idea to be set forth, no point of concentration, as
with the altar-pieces and the portraits, for instance; and yet
a unity is demanded. An examination of the proportions of the
types shows at once the characteristic type to be here also the
diagonal and V-shaped.
It is now necessary to ask what must be the interpretation of
the use of these types of composition. Must we consider the
pyramid the expression of passivity, the diagonal or V-shape, of
activity? But the greatly predominating use of the second for
landscapes would remain unexplained, for at least nothing can
be more reposeful than the latter. It may aid the solution of
the problem to remember that the composition taken as a whole
has to meet the demand for unity, at the same time that it
allows free play to the natural expression of the subject. The
altar-piece has to bring about a concentration of attention to
express or induce a feeling of reverence. This is evidently
accomplished by the suggestion of the converging lines to the
fixation of the high point in the picture,--the small area
occupied by the Madonna and Child,--and by the subordination
of the free play of other elements. The contrast between the
broad base and the apex gives a feeling of solidity, of repose;
and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to
rest the eyes above the centre of the picture directly induces
the associated mood of reverence or worship. Thus the
pyramidal form serves two ends; primarily that of giving unity,
and secondarily, by the peculiarity of its shape, that of
inducing the feeling-tone appropriate to the subject of the
picture.
Applying this principle to the so-called "active" pictures, we
see that the natural movement of attention between the different
"actors" in the picture must be allowed for, while yet unity is
secured. And it is clear that the diagonal type is just fitted
for this. The attention sweeps down from the high side to the
low, from which it returns through some backward suggestion of
lines or interest in the objects of the high side. Action and
reaction--movement and return of attention--is inevitable under
the conditions of this type; and this it is which allows the
free play,--which, indeed, CONSTITUTES and expresses the activity
belonging to the subject, just as the fixation of the pyramid
constitutes the quietude of the religious picture. Thus it is
that the diagonal composition is particularly suited to portray
scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the
spectator, because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep
from side to side of the picture, recalled by the mass and
interest of the side from which it moves. The swing of the
pendulum is here widest, so to speak, and all the feeling-tones
which belong to wide, free movement are called into play. If,
at the same time, the element of the deep vista is introduced,
we have the extreme of concentration combined with the extreme
of movement; and the result is a picture in the "grand style"
--comparable to high tragedy--in which all the feeling-tones
which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet in the
same reciprocal relation, tuned to the highest pitch. Such a
picture is the "Finding of the Ring," Paris Bordone, in the
Venice Academy. All the mass and the interest and the suggestion
of the downward lines and of the magnificent perspective toward
the left, and the effect of the whole space composition is of
superb largeness of life and feeling. Compare Titian's
"Presentation of the Virgin," also the two great compositions
by Veronese, "Martyrdom of St. Mark," etc., in the Doge's Palace,
Venice, and "Esther before Ahaseurus," in the Uffizi, Florence.
In these last two, the mass, direction of interest, movement,
and attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend
diagonally to the right, where a vista is also suggested,--the
diagonal making a V just at the end. Here, too, the effect is
of magnificence and vigor.
If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal
to action, what ca be said of landscape? It is without action,
it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that
WILL not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape
uncomposed is negative, and it demands unity. Its type of
composition, then, must give it something positive besides
unity. It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain
them both from a space composition which shall combine unity
with a tendency to movement. And this is given by the diagonal
and V-shaped type. This type merely allows free play to the
natural tendency of the "active" picture; but it constrains the
neutral, inanimate landscape. The shape itself imparts motion
to the picture: the sweep of line, the concentration of the
vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two
masses, act, as it were, externally to the suggestion of the
object itself. There is always enough quiet in a landscape,--
the overwhelming suggestion of the horizontal suffices for
that; it is movement that is needed for richness of effect, and,
as I have shown, no type imparts the feeling of movement so
strongly as the diagonal and V-shaped type of composition.
Landscapes need energy to produce "stimulation," not repression,
and so the diagonal type is proportionately more numerous.
The rigid square is found only at an early stage in the
development of composition. Moreover, all the examples are
"story" pictures, for the most part scenes from the lives of
the saints, etc. Many of them are double-centre,--square, that
is, with a slight break in the middle, the grouping purely
logical, to bring out the relations of the characters. Thus,
in the "Dream of Saint Martin," Simone Martini, a fresco at
Assisi, the saint lies straight across the picture with his
head in one corner. Behind him on one side stand the Christ
and angels, grouped closely together, their heads on the same
level. These are all, of course, in one sense symmetrical,--
in the weight of interest, at least,--but they are completely
amorphous from an aesthetic point of view. The forms, that is,
do not count at all,--only the meanings. The story is told by
a clear separation of the parts, and as, in most stories, there
are two principal actors, it merely happens that they fall into
the two sides of the picture. On the other hand, a rigid
geometrical symmetry is also characteristic of early composition,
and these two facts seem to contradict each other. But it is
to be noted, first, that the rigid geometrical symmetry belongs
only to the "Madonna Enthroned," and general "Adoration" pieces;
and secondly, that this very rigidity of symmetry in details
can coexist with variations which destroy balance. Thus, in a
"Madonna Enthroned" of Giotto, where absolute symmetry in detail
is kept, the Child sits far out on the right knee of the Madonna.
It would seem that the symmetry of these early pictures was not
dictated by a conscious demand for symmetrical arrangement, or
rather for real balance, else such failures would hardly occur.
The presence of geometrical symmetry is more easily explained
as the product, in large part, of technical conditions: of the
fact that these pictures were painted as altar-pieces to fill
a space definitely symmetrical in character--often, indeed,
with architectural elements intruding into it. We may even
connect the Madonna pictures with the temple images of the
classic period, to explain why it was natural to paint the
object of worship seated exactly facing the worshiper. Thus
we may separate the two classes of pictures, the one giving an
object of worship, and thus taking naturally, as has been said,
the pyramidal, symmetrical shape, and being moulded to symmetry
by all other suggestions of technique; the other aiming at
nothing except logical clearness. This antithesis of the
symbol and the story has a most interesting parallel in the two
great classes of primitive art--the one symbolic, merely suggestive,
shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the
slavishly symmetrical; the other descriptive, "story-telling," and
without a trace of space composition. On neither side is there
evidence of direct aesthetic feeling. Only in the course of
artistic development do we find the rigid, yet often unbalanced,
symmetry relaxing into a free substitutional symmetry, and the
formless narrative crystallizing into a really unified and
balanced space-form. The two antitheses approach each other in
the "balance" of the masterpieces of civilized art--in which, for
the first time, a real feeling for space composition makes itself
felt.
V
THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC
V
THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC
I
THERE is a story, in Max Muller's amusing reminiscences, of
how Mendelssohn and David once played, in his hearing, Beethoven's
later sonatas for piano and violin, and of how they shrugged
their shoulders, and opined the old man had not been quite
himself when he wrote them. In the history of music it seems
to be a rule almost without exceptions, that the works of genius
are greeted with contumely. The same is no doubt true, though
to a much less degree, of other arts, but in music it seems that
the critics proposed also excellent reasons for their vehemence.
And it is instructive to observe that the objections, and the
reasons for the objections, recur, after the original object of
wrath has passed into acceptance, nay, into dominance of the
musical world. One may also descry one basic controversy running
through all these utterances, even when not explicitly set forth.
It was made a reproach to Beethoven, as it has been made a
reproach to Richard Strauss, that he sacrificed the beauty of
form to expression; and it was rejoined, perhaps less in the old
time than now, that expression was itself the end and meaning of
music. Now the works of genius, as we have seen, after all take
care of themselves. But it is of greatest significance for the
theory of music, as of all art, that in the circle of the years,
the same contrasting views, grown to ever sharper opposition,
still greet the appearance of new work. It was with Wagner, as
all the world knows, that the question came first to complete
formulation. His invention of the music-drama rested on his
famous theory of music as the heightened medium of expression,
glorified speech, which accordingly demands freedom to follow
all the varying nuances of feeling and emotion. Music has
always been called the language of the emotions, but Wagner
based his views not only on the popular notion, but on the
metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer; in particular, on the
view that music is the objectification of the will. Herbert
Spencer followed with the thesis that music has its essential
source in the cadences of emotional speech. In opposition
primarily to Wagner, the so-called formalists were represented
by Hanslick, who wrote his well-known "The Beautiful in Music"
to show that though music ha a limited capacity of expression,
its aim is formal or logical perfection alone. The expressionist
school could not contradict the undoubted fact that chords and
intervals which are harmonious show certain definite physical
and mathematical relationships, that, in other words, our
musical preferences appear to be closely related to, if not
determined by, these relationships. Thus each school seemed
to be backed by science. The emotional-speech theory has been
held in a vague way, indeed, by most of those theorists whose
natural conservatism would have drawn them in the other
direction, and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at
mediation, first made by Ambros,<1> and now met in almost all
musical literature. Music may be, and is, expressive, it is
said, so long as each detail allows itself to be entirely
derived from and justified by the mere formal element. The
"centre of gravity" lies in the formal relations.
<1> _The Boundaries of Music and Poetry._
To this, after all, Hanslick himself might subscribe. Other
writers seek to balance form and expression, insisting on
"the dual nature of music," while resting ultimately on the
emotional-speech theory. "The most universal composers,
recognizing the interdependence of the two elements, produce
the highest type of pure music, music in which beauty is based
upon expression, and expression transfigured by beauty."<1>
<1> D.G. Mason, _From Grieg to Brahms_, 1902, p. 30.
This usual type of reconciliation, however, is a perfectly
mechanical binding together of two possibly conflicting
aesthetic demands. The question is of the essential nature
of music, not whether music may be, but whether it must be,
expressive; not whether is has expressive power, but whether
it is, in its essence, expression,--a question which is only
obscured by insisting on the interdependence of the two
elements. If music has its essential source in the cadences
of speech, then it must develop and must be judged accordingly.
Herbert Spencer is perfectly logical in saying "It may be
shown that music is but an idealization of the natural
language of emotion, and that, consequently, music must be
good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this
natural language."<1> But what, then, of music which,
according to Ambros, is justified by its formal relations?
Is music good because it is very expressive, and bad because
it is too little expressive? or is its goodness and badness
independent of its expressiveness? Such a question is not
to be answered by recognizing two kinds of goodness. Only
by an attempt to decide the fundamental nature of the musical
experience, and an adjustment of the other factors in strict
subordination to it, can the general principle be settled.
<1> _On Educaiton_, p. 41.
The excuse for this artificial yoking together of two opposing
principles is apparent when it is seen that form and expression
are taken as addressing themselves to two different mental
faculties. It seems to be the view of most musical theorists
that the experience of musical form is a perception, while the
experience of musical expression, disregarding for the moment
the suggestion of facts and ideas, is an emotion. Thus Mr.
Mason: "In music we are capable of learning, and knowledge
of the principles of musical effect can help us to learn, that
the balance and proportion and symmetry of the whole is far
more essential than any poignancy, however great, in the parts.
He best appreciates music...who understands it intellectually
as well as feels it emotionally;"<1> and again, "We feel in
the music of Haydn its lack of emotional depth, and its lack
of intellectual subtlety."
<1> Op. Cit., p. 6.
It is just this contrast and parallelism of structure as
balance, proportion, symmetry, addressed to the mind, with
expression as emotional content, that a true view of the
aesthetic experience would lead us to challenge. If there
is one thing that our study of the general nature of aesthetic
experience has shown, it is that aesthetic emotion is unique--
neither a perception nor an intellectual grasp of relations,
nor an emotion within the accepted rubric--joy, desire,
triumph, etc. Whether or not music is an exception to this
principle, remains to be seen; but the presumption is at
least in favor of a direct, immediate, unique emotion aroused
by the true beauty of music, whatever that may prove to be.
With a great literature in the form of special studies, we
must yet, on the whole, admit that we possess no general
formula in the philosophy or psychology of music which covers
the whole ground. Schopenhauer has said that music is the
objectification of the will--not a copy or a picture of it,
but the will itself; a doctrine which however illuminating
when it is modified in various ways is obviously no explanation
of our experience. Hanslick has but shown what music is not;
Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, "The Power of Sound," is
completely agnostic in its conclusion that music is a unique,
indefinable, indescribable phenomenon, which possesses, indeed,
certain analogues with other physical and psychical facts, but
is coextensive with none. Spencer's theory of music as
glorified speech is not only in a yet unexplained conflict
with many facts, but has never been formulated so that it could
apply to concrete cases. The same is true of Wagner's "music
as the utterance of feeling."
But there is a body of scientific facts respecting the elements
of music, in which we may well seek for clues. As facts alone
they are of no value. They must be explained as completely as
possible; and it is probable that if we are able to reach the
ultimate nature and origin of these elements of music they
will prove significant, and a way will be opened to a theory
of the whole musical experience. The need of such intensive
understanding must excuse the more or less technical discussions
in the following pages, without which no firm foundation for a
theory of music could be attained.
II
The two great factors of music are rhythm and tone-sensation,
of which rhythm appears to be the more fundamental.
Rhythm is defined in general as a repeating series of time
intervals. Events which occur in such a series are said to
have rhythm. In aesthetics, it is the periodic recurrence of
stress, emphasis, or accent in the movements of dancing, the
sounds of music, the language of poetry. Subjectively it is
the quality of stimulation due to a succession of impressions
(tactual and auditory are most favorable) which vary regularly
in objective intensity. We desire to understand the nature,
and the source of the pleasing quality, of this phenomenon.
It is only by a complete psychological description, however,
even a physiological explanation, that we can hope to fathom
the tremendous significance of rhythm in music and poetry.
Those treatments which expose its development in the dance and
song really beg the question; they assume the very fact for
which we have to find the ground, namely, the natural impulse
to rhythm. Even those theories which explain it as a helpful
social phenomenon, as regulating work, etc., fail to account
for its peculiar psychological character--that compelling,
intimate force, the "Zwang" of which Nietszche speaks, which
we all feel, and which makes it helpful. This compelling
quality of rhythm would lead us to look behind the sociological
influences, for the explanation in some fundamental condition
of consciousness, some "demand" of the organism. For this
reason we must find superficial the views which connect rhythm
with the symmetry of the body as making rhythmical gesture
necessary; or more particularly with the conditions of work,
which, if it is skilled and well carried out, proceeds in
equal recurring periods, like the swinging of a hammer or an
axe. But it appears that primitive effort is not carried on
in this way, and proceeds, not from regularity to rhythm, but
rather, through, by means of rhythm, which is made a help, to
regularity. Again, it is said that work can be well carried
out by a large number of people, only in unison, only by
simultaneous action, and that rhythm is a condition of this.
The work in the cotton fields, the work of sailors, etc.
requires something to give notice of the moment for beginning
action. Rhythm would then have arisen as a social function.
Against this it may be said that signals of this kind might
assist common action without recurring at regular intervals,
while periodicity is the fundamental quality of rhythm. Thus
this theory would explain a natural tendency by its effect.
Looking then, in accordance with the principle stated above,
for deeper conditions, we find rhythm explained in connection
with such rhythmical events as the heart beat and pulse, the
double rhythm of the breath; but these are, for the most part,
unfelt; and moreover, they would hardly explain the predominance
of rhythms quite other than the physiological ones. Another
theory, closely allied, connects rhythm with the conditions
of activity in general, but attaches itself rather to the
effect of rhythm than to its cause. Thus we are reminded of
the "heightened sense of expansion, or life, connected with
the augmentation of muscular movements induced by the more
extensive nervous discharges following rhythmic stimulation."<1>
But why should it be just rhythmic stimulation that produces
this effect? We are finally thrown back on physiology for the
answer that in rhythmical stimulation there are involved
recurrent activities of organs refreshed by immediately
preceding periods of repose. Here again, however, we must ask,
why on this hypothesis the periods themselves must be exactly
equal. For within the periods the greatest variety obtains.
One measure of a single note may be succeeded by another
containing eight; within the periods, that is, the minor
moments of activity and repose are quite unequal.
<1> H.R. Marshall, _Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics._
Last of all, we must note the view of rhythm as a phenomenon
of expectation (Wundt). But while we can undoubtedly describe
rhythm in terms of expectation and its satisfaction, rhythm is
rhythm just through its difference from other kinds of expectation.
All these explanations seem either merely to describe the facts
we seek to explain, or to fail to notice the peculiar intimate
nature of the rhythmical experience. But if it could be shown
not only that in all stimulation there must be involved an
alternation of activity and repose, but also that an equality
of such periods was highly favorable to the organism, we should
have the conditions for a physiological theory of rhythm. Now
the important psychological facts of so-called subjective
rhythmizing seem to supply just this need.
It has been shown<1> that we can neither receive objectively
equal sense-stimuli, nor produce regular movements, without
injecting into these a rhythmical element. A series of objectively
equal sound-stimuli--the ticking of a clock, for instance--is
heard in groups, within each of which one element is of greater
intensity. A series of movements are never objectively equal,
but grouped in the same way. Now this subjective rhythm, sensory
and motor, is explained as follows from the general physiological
basis of attention.
<1> T.L. Bolton, _Amer. Jour. Of Psychol._, vol. vi. The classical
historical study of theories of rhythm remains that of Meumann,
_Phil. Studien_, vol. x.
Attention itself is ultimately a motor phenomenon. Thus: the
sensory aspect of attention is vividness, and vividness is
explained physiologically as a brain-state of readiness for motor
discharge;<1> in the case of a visual stimulus, for instance, a
state of readiness to carry out movements of adjustment to the
object; in short, the motor path is open. Now attention, or
vividness, is found to fluctuate periodically, so that in a
series of objectively equal stimuli, certain ones, regularly
recurring, would be more vividly sensed. This is exemplified
in the well-known facts of the fluctuation of the threshold of
sensation, of the so-called retinal rivalry, and of the subjective
rhythmizing of auditory stimuli, already mentioned. There is a
natural rhythm of vividness. Here, therefore, in the very
conditions of consciousness itself, we have the conditions of
rhythm too. The case of subjective motor rhythm would be still
clearer, since vividness is only the psychical side of readiness
for motor discharge; in other words, increased readiness for
motor discharge occurs periodically, giving motor rhythm.
<1> Munsterberg, _Grundzuge d. Psychologie_, 1902,. P. 525.
It has been said<1> that this periodicity of the brain-wave
cannot furnish the necessary condition for rhythm, inasmuch as
it is itself a constant, and could at most be applied to a series
which was adapted to its own time. But this objection does not
fit the facts. The "brain-wave," or "vividness," or attention
period, is not a constant, but attaches itself to the contents
of consciousness. In other words, it does not function without
material. It is itself conditioned by its occasion. In the
case of a regularly repeated stimulus, it is simply adjusted
to what is there, and out of the series chooses, as it were,
one at regular periods.<2>
<1> J.B. Miner, "Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms," _Psychol.
Rev., Mon. Suppl._, No. 21.
<2> Facts, too technical for reproduction here, quoted by R.H.
Stetson (_Harvard Psychol. Studies_, vol. i, 1902) from Cleghorn's
and Hofbauer's experiments seem to be in harmony with this view.
Closely connected with these facts, perhaps only a somewhat
different aspect of them, is the phenomenon of motor mechanization.
Any movement repeated tends to become a circular reaction, as it
is called; that is, the end of one repetition serves as a cue
for the beginning of the next. Now, in regularly recurring
stimuli, giving rise, as will be later shown, to motor reactions,
which are differentiated through the natural periodicity of the
attention (physiologically the tendency to motor discharge), we
have the best condition for this mechanization. In other words,
a rhythmical grouping once set up naturally tends to persist.
The organism prepares itself for shocks at definite times, and
shocks coming at those times are pleasant because they fulfill
a need. Moreover, every further stimulus reinforces the original
activity; so that rhythmical grouping tends not only to persist,
but to grow more distinct,--as, indeed, all the facts of
introspection show.
All this, however, is true of the repetition of objectively
equal stimuli. It shows how an impulse to rhythm would arise
and persist subjectively, but does not of itself explain the
pleasure in the experience of objective rhythm. It may be said
in general, however, that changes which would occur naturally
in an objectively undifferentiated content give direct pleasure
when they are artificially introduced,--when, that is, the
natural disposition is satisfied. This we have seen to be true
in the of color contrast; and it is perhaps even more valid in
the realm of motor activity. Whatever in sense stimulation
gives the condition for, helps, furthers, enhances the natural
function, is felt both as pleasing and as furthering the particular
activity in question. Now, the objective stress in rhythm is but
emphasis on a stress that would be in any case to some degree
subjectively supplied. Rhythm in music, abstracting from all
other pleasure-giving factors, is then pleasurable because it
is in every sense a favorable stimulation.
In accordance with the principle that complete explanation of
psychical facts is possible only through the physiological
substrate, we have so far kept rather to that field in dealing
with the foundations of our pleasure in rhythm. But further
description of the rhythmical experience is most natural in
psychological terms. There seems, indeed, on principle no
ground for the current antithesis, so much emphasized of late,
of "psychical" and "motor" theories of rhythm. Attention and
expectation are not "psychical" as opposed to "motor." Granting,
as no doubt most psychologists would grant, that attention is
the psychical analogue of the physiological tendency to motor
discharge, then a motor automatism of which one is fully
conscious could be described as expectation and its satisfaction.
Indeed, the impossibility of a sharp distinction between ideas
of movement and movement sensations confirms this view. When
expectation has reference to an experience with a movement
element in it, the expectation itself contains movement
sensations of the kind in question.<1> To say, then, that
rhythm is expectation based on the natural functioning of the
attention period, is simply to clothe our physiological
explanation in terms of psychological description. The usual
motor theory is merely one which neglects the primary disposition
to rhythm through attention variations, in favor of the
sensations of muscular tension (kinaesthetic sensations) which
arise IN rhythm, but do not cause it. To say that the impression
of rhythm arises only in kinaesthetic sensations begs the
question in the way previously noted. Undoubtedly, the period
once established, the rhythmic group is held together, felt as
a unit, by means of the coordinated movement sensations; but
the main problem, the possibility of this first establishment,
is not solved by such a motor theory. In other words, the
attention theory is the real motor theory.
<1> C.M. Hitchcock, "The Psychol. Of Expectation," _Psychol.
Rev., Mon. Suppl._, No. 20.
Expectation is the "set" of the attention. Automatism is the
set of the motor centres. Now as attention is parallel to the
condition of the motor centres, we are able to equate expectation
and automatic movement. Rhythm is literally embodied expectation,
fulfilled. It is therefore easily to be understood that whatever
other emotions connect themselves with satisfied expectation are
at their ideal poignance in the case of rhythm.
It is from this point of view that we must understand the
helpfulness of rhythm in work. That all definite stimulus, and
especially sound stimulus, rhythmical or not, sets up a diffusive
wave of energy, increasing blood circulation, dynamogenic
phenomena, etc., is another matter, which has later to be
discussed. But the essential is that this additional stimulus
is rhythmical, and therefore a reinforcement of the nervous
activity, and therefore a lightening and favorable condition of
work itself. So it is, too, that we can understand the tremendous
influence of rhythm just among primitive peoples, and those of a
low degree of culture. Work is hard for savages, not because
bodily effort is hard, but because the necessary concentration
of attention is for them almost impossible; and the more, that
in work they are unskilled, and without good tools, so that
generally every movement has to be especially attended to. Now
rhythm in work is especially directed to lighten that effort which
they feel as hardest; it rests, renews, and frees the attention.
Rhythm is helpful not primarily because it enables many to work
together by making effort simultaneous, but rhythm rests and
encourages the individual, and working together is most naturally
carried out in rhythm.
To this explanation all the other facts of life-enhancement, etc.,
can be attached. Rhythm is undoubtedly favorable stimulation.
Can it be brought under the full aesthetic formula of favorable
stimulation with repose? A rhythm once established has both
retrospective and prospective reference. It looks before and
after, it binds together the first and the last moments of
activity, and can therefore truly be said to return upon itself,
so as to give a sense of equilibrium and repose.
But when we turn from the fundamental facts of simple rhythm
to the phenomena of art we find straightway many other problems.
It is safe to say that no single phrase of music or line of
poetry is without variation; more, that a rhythm without variation
would be highly disagreeable. How must we understand these
facts? It is impossible within the natural limitations of this
chapter to do more than glance at a few of them.
First of all, then, the most striking thing about the rhythmical
experience is that the period, or group, is felt as a unit.
"Of the number and relation of individual beats constituting a
rhythmical sequence there is no awareness whatever on the part
of the aesthetic subject....Even the quality of the organic
units may lapse from distinct consciousness, and only a feeling
of the form of the whole sequence remains."<1> Yet the slightest
deviation from its form is remarked. Secondly, every variation
creates not only a change in its own unit, but a wave of
disturbance all along the line. Also, every variation from
the type indicates a point of accentual stress; the syncopated
measure, for instance, is always strongly accented. All these
facts would seem to be connected with the view of the importance
of movement sensations in building up the group feeling. The
end of each rhythm period gives the cue for the beginning of
the next, and the muscle tensions are coordinated within each
group; so that each group is really continuous, and would
naturally be "felt" as one,--but being automatic, would not be
perceived in its separate elements. On the other hand, it is
just automatic reaction, a deviation from which is felt most
strongly. The syncopated measure has to maintain itself
against pressure, as it were, and thus by making its presence
in consciousness felt more strongly, it emphasizes the
fundamental rhythm form.
<1> R. MacDougall, "The Structure of Simple Rhythm Forms,"
_Harv. Psychol. Studies_, vol. i, p. 332.
This is well shown in the following passage from a technical
treatise on expression in the playing of music. "The efforts
which feeling makes to hold to...the shape of the first rhythm,
the force which it is necessary to use to make it lose its
desires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are
naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a crescendo
or greater intensity of sound, by an acceleration in movement."<1>
If a purely technical expression may be pardoned here, it could
be said that the motor image,<2> that is, the coordinated
muscular tensions which make the group feeling of the fundamental
rhythm, is always latent, and becomes conscious whenever anything
conflicts with it. Thus it is that we can understand the
tremendous rhythmical consciousness in that music which seems
most to contradict the fundamental rhythm, as in negro melodies,
and rag-time generally; and in general, the livening effect of
variation. The motor tension, the "set" becomes felt the
moment there is objective interference--just as we feel the
rhythm of our going downstairs only when we fail to get the
sensation we expect.
<1> M. Lussy, _Traite de l'Expression Musicale_, Paris, 1874, p. 7.
<2> _Gestaltsqualitat_, literally form-quality.
This principle of the motor image is of tremendous significance,
as we shall see, for the whole theory of music. Let it be
sufficient to note here that expression, in the form of
Gestaltsqualitat, or motor image, is, as a principle, sufficient
for the explanation of the most important factors in the experience
of rhythm.
III
But we have dwelt too long on the general characteristics.
Although our examples have been drawn mostly from the field of
music, the preceding principles apply to all kinds of rhythm,
tactual and visual as well as auditory. It is time to show why
the rhythm out of all comparison the strongest, most compelling,
most full of emotional quality, is the rhythm of music.
It has long been known that there is especially close connection
between sounds and motor innervations. All sorts of sensorial
stimuli produce reflex contractions, but the auditory, apparently,
to a much higher degree. Animals are excited to all sorts of
outbreaks by noise; children are less alarmed by visual than by
auditory impressions. The fact that we dance to sound rather
than to the waving of a baton, or rhythmical flashes of light
for instance--the fact that this second proposition is felt at
once to be absurd, shows how intimately the two are bound
together. The irresistible effects of dance, martial music,
etc., are trite commonplaces; and I shall therefore not heap
up instances which can be supplied by every reader from his
own experience. Now all this is not hard to understand,
biologically. The eye mediated the information of what was
far enough away to be fled from, or prepared for; the ear what
was likely to be nearer, unseen, and so more ominous. As more
ominous, it would have to be responded to in action more
quickly. So that if any sense was to be in especially close
connection with the motor centres, it would naturally be
hearing.
The development of the auditory functions points to the same
close connection of sound and movement. Sounds affect us as
tone, and as impulse. The primitive sensation was one of
impulse alone, mediated by the "shake-organs." These shake-
organs at first only gave information about the attitude and
movements of the body, and were connected with motor centres
so as to be able to reestablish equilibrium by means of
reflexes. The original "shake-organ" developed into the
organs of hearing and of equilibrium (that is, the cochlea
and the semicircular canals respectively), but these were
still side by side in the inner ear, and the close connection
with the motor centres was not lost. Anatomically, the
auditory nerve not only goes to those parts of the brain
whence the motor innervation emanates, and to the reflex
centres in the cerebellum, but passes close by the vagus or
pneumogastric nerve, which rules the heart and the vasomotor
functions. We have then multiplied reasons for the singular
effect of sound on motor reactions, and on the other organic
functions which have so much to do with feeling and emotion.
Every sound-stimulus is then much more than sound-sensation.
It causes reflex contractions in the whole muscular system;
it sets up some sort of cardiac and vascular excitation.
This reaction is in general in the direction of increased
amplitude of respiration, but diminution of the pulse,
depending on a peripheral vaso-constriction. Moreover, this
vasomotor reaction is given in a melody or piece of music,
not by its continuity, but for every one of the variations
of rhythm, key, or intensity,--which is of interest in the
light of what has been said of the latent motor image. The
obstacle in syncopated rhythm is physiologically translated
as vaso-constriction. In general, music induces cardiac
acceleration.
All this is of value in showing how completely the attention-
motor theory of rhythm applies to the rhythm of sounds. Since
sound is much more than sound, but sound-sensation, movement,
and visceral change together, we can see that the rhythmical
experience of music is, even more literally and completely
than at first appeared, an EMBODIED expectation. No sensorial
rhythm could be so completely induced in the psychological
organism as the sound-rhythm. In listening to music, we see
how it is that we ourselves, body and soul, seem to be IN the
rhythm. We make it, and we wait to make it. The satisfaction
of our expectation is like the satisfaction of a bodily desire
or need; no, not like it, it IS that. The conditions and
causes of rhythm and our pleasure in it are more deeply seated
than language, custom, even instinct; they are in the most
fundamental functions of life. This element of music, at least,
seems not to have arisen as a "natural language."
IV
The facts of the relations of tones, the elements, that is,
of melody and harmony, are as follows. We cannot avoid the
observation that certain tones "go together," as the phrase
is, while others do not. This peculiar impression of belonging
together is known as consonance, or harmony. The intervals of
the octave, the fifth, the third, for instance, that is, C-C',
C-G, C-E, in the diatonic scale, are harmonious; while the
interval of the second, C-D, is said to be dissonant.
Consonance, however, is not identical with pleasingness, for
different combinations are sometimes pleasing, sometimes
displeasing. In the history of music we know that the octave
was to the Greeks the most pleasing combination, to medieval
musicians the fifth, while to us, the third, which was once
a forbidden chord, is perhaps most delightful. Yet we should
never doubt that the octave is the most consonant, the fifth
and the third the lesser consonant of combinations. We see,
thus, that consonance, whatever its nature, is independent
of history; and we must seek for its explanation in the nature
of the auditory process.
Various theories have been proposed. That of Helmholtz has
held the field so long that, although weighty objections have
been raised to it, it must still be treated with respect. In
introducing it a short review of the familiar facts of the
physics and physiology of hearing may not be out of place.
The vibration rates per second of the vibrating bodies, strings,
steel rods, etc., which produce those musical tones which are
consonant, are in definite and small mathematical ratios to
each other. Thus the rates of C-C' are as 1:2; of C-G, C-E,
as 2:3, 4:5. In general, the simpler the fraction, the
greater the consonance.
But no sonorous body vibrates in one single rate; a taut
string vibrates as a whole, which gives its fundamental tone,
but also in halves, in fourths, etc., each giving out a
weaker partial tone, in harmony with the fundamental. And
according to the different ways in which a sonorous body
divides, that is, according to the different combination of
partial tones peculiar to it, is its especial quality of tone,
or timbre. The whole complex of fundamental and partial tones
is what we popularly speak of as a tone,--more technically a
clang. These physical agitations or vibrations are transmitted
to the air. Omitting the account of the anatomical path by
which they reach the inner ear, we find them at last setting
up vibrations in a many-fibred membrane, the basilar membrane,
which is in direct connection with the ends of the auditory
nerve. It is supposed that to every possible rate of
vibration, that is, every possible tone, or partial tone, there
corresponds a fibre of the basilar membrane fitted by its
length to vibrate synchronously with the original wave-elements.
The complex wave is thus analyzed into its constituents. Now
when two tones, which we will for clearness suppose to be
simple, unaccompanied by partial tones, sounding together,
have vibration rates in simple ratios to each other, the air-
waves set in motion do not interfere with each other, but
combine into a complex but homogeneous wave. If they have
to each other a complicated ratio, such as 500:504, the air-
waves will not only not coalesce, but four times in the second
the through of one wave will meet the crest of the other, thus
making the algebraic sum zero, and producing the sensation of
a momentary stoppage of the sound. When these stoppages, or
beats, as they are called, are too numerous to be heard
separately, as in the interval, say, 500:547, the effect is
of a disagreeable roughness of tone, and this we call discord.
In other words, any tones which do not produce beats are
harmonious, or harmony is the absence of discord. In the
words of Helmholtz,<1> consonance is a continuous, dissonance
an intermittent, tone-sensation.
<1> _Lehre v.d. Tonempfindungen_, p. 370, in 4th edition.
Aside from the fact that consonance, as a psychological fact,
seems positive, while this determination is negative, two very
important facts can be set up in opposition. As a result of
experimental investigation, we know that the impression of
consonance can accompany the intermittent or rough sound-
sensations we know as beating tones; and, conversely, tones
can be dissonant when the possibility of beats is removed.
Briefly, it is possible to make beats without dissonance,
and dissonance without beats.
The other explanation makes consonance due to the identity
of partial tones. When two tones have one or more partial
tones in common they are said to be related; the amount
of identity gives the degree of relationship. Physiologically,
one or more basilar membrane fibres are excited by both, and
this fact gives the positive feeling of relationship or
consonance. Of course the obvious objection to this view
is that the two tones should be felt as differently consonant
when struck on instruments which give different partial tones,
such as organ and piano, while in fact they are not so felt.
But it is not after all essential to the aesthetics of music
that the physiological basis of harmony should be fully
understood. The point is that certain tones do indeed seem to
be "preordained to congruity," preordained either in their
physical constitution or their physiological relations, and not
to have achieved congruity by use or custom. Consonance is an
immediate and fundamental impression,--psychologically an
ultimate fact. That it is ultimate is emphasized by Stumpf<1>
in his theory of Fusion. Consonance is fusion, that is, unitary
impression. Fusion is not identical with inability to distinguish
two tones from each other in a chord, although this may be used
as a measure of fusion. Consonance is the feeling of unity, and
fusion is the mutual relation of tones which gives that feeling.
<1> _Beitrage zur Akustik u. Musikwissenschaft_, Heft I,
Konsonanz u. Dissonanz, 1898.
The striking fact of modern music is the principle of tonality.
Tonality is said to be present in a piece of music when every
element in it is referred to, gets its significance from its
relation to, a fundamental tone, the tonic. The tonic is the
beginning and lowest note in the scale in question, and all
notes and chords are understood according to their place in
that scale. But the conception of the scale of course does not
cover the ground, it merely furnishes the point of departure,--
the essential is in the reference of every element to the
fundamental tone. The tonic is the centre of gravity of a
melody.
The feeling of tonality grew up as follows. Every one was
referred to a fundamental, whether or not it made with it an
harmonious interval. The fundamental was imaged TOGETHER WITH
every other note, and when a group of such references often
appeared together, the feelings bound up with the single
reference (interval-feelings) fused into a single feeling,--
the tonality-feeling. When this point is once reached, it is
clear that every tone is heard not as itself alone, but in its
relations; it is not that we judge of tonality, it is a direct
impression, based on a psychological principle that we have
already touched on in the theory of rhythm. The tonality-
feeling is a feeling of form, or motor image, just as the
shape of objects is a motor image. We do not now need to go
through all possible experiences in relation to these objects,
we POSSESS their form in a system of motor images, which are
themselves only motor cues for coordinated movements. So
every tone is felt as something at a certain distance from,
with a certain relation to, another tone which is dimly
imagined. In following a melody, the notes are able to belong
together for us by virtue of the background of the tone to
which they are related, and in terms of which they are heard.
The tonality is indeed literally a "funded content,"--that is,
a funded capital of relation.
These are the general facts of tonality. But what is its
meaning for the nature of music? Why should all notes be
referred to one? Is this, too, an ultimate psychological fact?
In answer there may be pointed out the original basic quality
of certain tones, and the desire we have to return to them.
Of two successive tones, it is always the one which is, in the
ratio of their vibration rates, a power of two, with which we
wish to end.<1> When neither of two successive tones contains
a power of two, we have no preference as to the ending. Thus
denoting any tone by 1, it is always to 1 or 2, or 2n that we
wish to return, from any other possible tone; while 3 and 5, 5
and 7, leave us indifferent as to their succession. In general,
when two tones are related, as 2n:3, 5, 7, 9, 15--in which 2n
denotes every power of two, including 2o=1, with the progression
from the first to the second, there is bound up a tendency to
return to the first. Thus the fundamental fact of melodic
sequence may be said to be the primacy of 2 in vibration rates.
But 2n, in a scale containing 3, 5, etc., is always what we
know as the tonic. The tonic, then, gives a sense of
equilibrium, of rest, of finality, while to end on another tone
gives a feeling of restlessness or striving.
Now tone-relationship alone, it is clear, would not of itself
involve this immediate impulse to end a sequence of notes on
one rather than on another. Nor is tonality, in the all-
pervasive sense in which we understand it, a characteristic of
ancient, or of mediaeval music, while the tendency to end on a
certain tone, which we should to-day call the tonic, was always
felt. Thus, since complete tonality was developed late in the
history of music, while the closing on the tonic was certainly
prior to it, the finality of the tonic would seem to be the
primary fact, out of which the other has been developed.
We speak to-day, for instance, of dissonant chords, which call
for a resolution--and are inclined to interpret them as
dissonant just because they do so call. But the desire for
resolution is historically much later than the distinction
between consonance and dissonance.... "What we call resolution
is not change from dissonant to consonant IN GENERAL, but the
transition of definite tones of a dissonant interval into
DEFINITE TONES of a consonant."<1> The dissonance comes from
the device of getting variety, in polyphonic music, by letting
some parts lag behind, and the discords which arose while they
were catching up were resolved in the final coming together;
but the STEPS were all PREDETERMINED.<2> Resolution was
inevitably implied by the very principle on which the device
is founded. That is, the understanding of a chord as something
TO BE RESOLVED, is indeed part of the feeling of tonality; but
the ending on the tonic was that out of which this resolution-
feeling grew.
<1> Stumpf, op. Cit., p. 33.
<2> Grove, _Dict. Of Music and Musicians_. Art. "Resolution."
Must we, then, say that the finality of the tonic is a unique, inexplicable phenomenon? giving up the nature of melody as a
problem if not insoluble, at least unsolved?
The feeling of finality in the return to 2n is explained by
Lipps and his followers, from the fact that the two-division
is most natural, and so tones of 2n vibrations would have the
character of rest and equilibrium. This explanation might hold
if we were ever conscious of the two-division as such, in tones
--which we are not; so that it would seem to depend on the
restful character of a perception which by hypothesis is never
present to the mind at all.
The experience is, on the contrary, immediate,--an impression,
not a perception; and this immediacy points to the one ultimate
fact in musical feeling we have so far discovered. The whole
development of the scale, and the complex feeling of tonality,
is an expression of the desire for consonance. Every change
and correction in the scale has gone to make every note more
consonant with its neighbors. And naturally the tonic is the
tone with which all other tones have the most unity. Now this
"return" phenomenon is a simpler case of the desire for the
feeling of unity. The tonic is the epitome of all the most
perfect feelings of consonance or unity which are possible in
any particular sequence of tones, and is therefore the goal
or resting-place after an excursion. The undoubted feeling
of equilibrium or repose which we have in ending on the tonic
is thus explained. Not that consonance itself, the feeling of
unity, is explained. But at any rate consonance is the root
of the "return," and of its development into complete tonality.
The history of music is then the explicit development of
acoustic laws implicit in every stage of musical feeling. That
feeling covers an ever wider field. When Mr. Hadow says that
the terms concord and discord are wholly relative to the ear
of the listener,<1> and that the distinction between them is
not to be explained on any mathematical basis, or by any a
priori law of acoustics,--that it is not because a minor
second is ugly that we dislike it, for it will be a concord
some day,--he is only partly right. The minor second may be
a "concord," that is, we may like it, some day; but that will
be because w have extended our feeling of tonality to include
the minor second. When that day comes the minor second will
be so closely linked with other fully consonant combinations
that we shall hear it in terms of them, just as to-day we
hear the chord of the dominant seventh in terms of its
resolution. But the basis will not be convention or custom,
except in so far as custom is the unfolding of natural law.
The course of music, like that of every other art, is away
from arbitrary--though simple--convention, to a complexity
which satisfies the natural demands of the organism. The
"natural persuasion" of the ear is omnipotent.
<1> W.H. Hadow, _Studies in Modern Music_, 1893.
V
It has been said that the feeling of tonality is a motor image
or "form-quality" and that the image of the tonic persists
throughout every sequence of tones in a melody. Now these are
not only felt as having a certain relation to the tonic; that
relation is an active one. It was said that we had a positive
desire to end on a certain tone, and that a tendency to pass
to that tone was bound up with the hearing of another tone.
The degree of this tendency is determined by their relation.
The key, the tonality, is determined by the consensus of
intervals which have been felt as more or less consonant.
Then steps in this scale which come near to the great salient
points--that is, the points of greatest consonance, which is
unity, which is rest--are felt as suggesting them. This is
the reason why a semitone progression is felt as so compelling.
In taking the scale upward, C to C', that element in the tone-
Space already clearly foreshadowed by the previous tones is C';
B is so near that it is almost C'--it seems to cry aloud to be
completed by C'. Then the tendency to move from B to C' is
especially strong. In the same way a chromatic note suggests
most strongly the salient point in the scheme to which it is
nearest--and "tends" to it as to a point of comparative rest.
The difference between the major and minor scales may be found
in the lesser definiteness<1> with which the tendency to
progression, in the latter, is felt--"a condition of hovering,
a kind of ambiguity, of doubt, to which side the movement
shall proceed." We may then understand a melody as ever tending
with various degrees of urgency, of strain, to its centre of
gravity, the tonic.
<1> F. Weinmann, _Zeitschr. f. Psychol._, Bd. 35, p. 360.
It is from this point of view that we can see the cogency of
Gurney's remark, that when music seems to be yearning for
unutterable things, it is really yearning only for the next
note. "In this step from the state of rest into movement and
return, the coming again to rest; on what circuitous ways,
with what reluctances and hesitations; whether quick and
decisively or gradually and unnoticed--therein consists the
nature of melody."<1>
<1> Weinmann, op. cit.
Or in Gurney's more eloquent description, "The melody may begin
by pressing its way through a sweetly yielding resistance to a
gradually foreseen climax; whence again fresh expectation is
bred, perhaps for another excursion, as it were, round the same
centre but with a bolder and freer sweep,...to a point where
again the motive is suspended on another temporary goal; till
after a certain number of such involutions and evolutions, and
of delicately poised leanings and reluctances and yieldings,
the forces so accurately measured just suffice to bring it home,
and the sense of potential and coming integration which has
underlain all our provisional adjustments of expectation is
triumphantly justified."<1>
<1> Op. cit., p. 165.
This should not be taken as a more or less poetical account
under the metaphor of motion. These "leanings" are literal
in the sense that one note does imply another as its natural
complement and satisfaction and we seek to reach or make it.
The striving is an intrinsic element, not a by-product for our
understanding.
There is another point to note. The "sense of potential and
coming integration" is a strong factor of melody. If it cannot
be said that the first note implies the last, it is at least
true that from point to point the next step is dimly foreseen,
and this effect is cumulative. If melody is an ever-hindered
striving for the goal, at least the hindrances themselves are
stations on the way, each one as overcome adding to the final
momentum with which the goal is reached. It is like an
accumulation of evidence, a constellation of associations. AB
foretells C; but ABCDEF rushes yet more strongly upon G. So
it is that the irresistibleness, the "unalterable rightness"
of a piece of music increases from beginning to end.
The significance of this essential internal necessity of
progression cannot be overestimated. The unalterable rightness
of music is founded on natural acoustic laws, and this
"rightness" is fundamental. A melody is not right because it
is beautiful, it is beautiful because it is right. The natural
tendencies point out different paths to the goal; and thus
different ways of being beautiful; but the nature of the
relation between point and point, the nature of the progression,
that is, the nature of melody, is the same.
Up to this point we have consistently abstracted from the
element of rhythm in melody. Strictly speaking, however, it
is impossible to do so. The individuality of a melody is
absolutely dependent on its rhythm, that is, on the relative
time-value of its tones. Gurney has devoted some amusing pages
to showing the trivial, dragging, lustreless tunes that result
from ever so slight a change in the rhythm of noble themes, or
even in the distribution of rhythmical elements within the bar.
The reason for this is evident. The nature of melody in the
sense of sequence consists in the varied answers to the demands
of the ear as felt at each successive point. Now it is clear
that such "answer" can be emphasized, given indifferently, held
in suspense, in short, subjected to all kinds of variation as
well by the rhythmical form into which it is cast, as by the
different choice of possibilities for the tone itself. The
rhythm helps out the melody not only by adding to it an
independently pleasing element, but, and this is indeed the
essential, by reinforcing the intrinsic relations of the notes
themselves. Thus it is in the highest degree true that in
melody and rhythm we do not have content and form, but that,
strictly speaking, the melody is tone-sequence in rhythm.
The intimate bondage of tone-sequence and rhythm is grounded
in the identity of their inner nature; both are varieties of
the objective conditions of embodied expectation. It is not
of the essence of music to satisfy explicit and conscious
expectation--to satisfy the understanding. It meets on the
contrary a subconscious, automatic need which becomes conscious
only in the moment of its contenting. Every moment of progress
in a beautiful melody is hailed like an instinctive action
performed for the first time. Rhythm is the ideal satisfaction
of attention in general with all its bodily concomitants and
expressions. Tone-sequence is the satisfaction of attention
directed to auditory demands. But the form-quality of rhythm,
the form-quality of tonality, is an all but subconscious
possession. Together, reinforcing each other in melody, they
furnish the ideal arrangement of the most poignant of sense-
stimulations.
VI
It is strange that those who would accept the general facts of
musical logic as outlined above do not perceive that they have
thereby cut away the ground from under the feet of the "natural
language" argument. If the principle of choice in the progress
of a melody is tone-relationship, the principle of choice cannot
also be the cadences of the speaking voice. That musical
intervals often RECALL the speaking voice is another matter, as
we have said, and to this it may be added that they much more
often do not. The question here is only of the primacy of the
principle. Thus it would seem that the facts of musical structure
constitute in themselves a refutation of the view we have disputed.
To say that music arose in "heightened speech" is irrelevant; for
the occasion of an aesthetic phenomenon is never its cause. It
might as well be said that music arose in economic conditions,--
as indeed Grosse, in his "Anfange der Kunst," conclusively shows,
without attempting to make this social occasion intrude into the
nature of the phenomenon. Primitive decorative art arose in the
imitation of the totemic or clan symbols, mostly animal forms;
but we have seen that the aesthetic quality of the decoration is
due to the demands of the eye, and appears fully only in the
comparative degradation of the representative form. In exactly
the same way might we consider the "degradation" of speech
cadences into real music,--supposing this were really the origin
of music. As a matter of fact, however, the best authorities
seem to be agreed that the primitive "dance-song" was rather a
monotonous, meaningless chant, and that the original pitch-
elements were mechanically supplied by the first musical
instruments; these being at first merely for noise, and becoming
truly vibrating, sonorous bodies because they were more easily
struck if they were hard or taut. The musical tones which these
hard vibrating bodies gave out were the first determinations of
pitch, and of the elements of the scale, which correspond to the
natural partial vibrations of such bodies. "The human voice,"
Wallaschek<1> tells us, "equally admits of any pentatonic or
heptatonic intervals, and very likely we should never have got
regular scales if we had depended upon the ear and voice only.
The first unique cause to settle the type of a regular scale is
the instrument." To this material we have to apply only that
"natural persuasion of the ear" which we have already explained,
to account for the full development of music.
<1> _Primitive Music_, 1893, p. 156.
The beauty of music, in so far as beauty is identical with
pleasantness, consists in its satisfaction of the demands of
the ear, and of the whole psychophysical organism as connected
with the ear. It is now time to return to a thread dropped at
the beginning. It was said that a common way of settling the
musical experience was to make musical beauty the object of
perception, and musical expression the object, or source, of
emotion. This view seems to attach itself to all shades of
theory. Hanslick always contrasts intellectual activity as
attaching to the form, and emotion as attaching to the sensuous
material (that is, the physical effects of motion, loud or
soft sound, tempo, etc.). He speaks of the aesthetic criterion
of INTELLIGENT gratification. "The truly musical listener" has
"his attention absorbed by the particular form and character of
the composition," "the unique position which the INTELLECTUAL
ELEMENT in music occupies in relation to FORMS and SUBSTANCE
(subject)." M. Dauriac in the same way separates the emotion
of music<1> as a product of nervous excitations, from the
appreciation of it as beautiful. "It is probably that the
pleasure caused by rhythm and color prevails with a pretty
large number, with the greatest number, over the pleasure in
the musical form, pleasure too exclusively PSYCHOLOGICAL for
one to be content with it alone....The musical sense implies
the intelligence....The theory...applies to a great number of
sonorous sensations, and not at all to any musical perceptions."
Mr. W.H. Hadow<2> tells us that it is the duty of the musician
not to flatter the sense with an empty compliment of sound,
but to reach through sensation to the mental faculties within.
And again we read "the art of the composer is in a sense the
discovery and exposition of the INTELLIGIBLE relations in the
multifarious material at his command."<3>
<1> "Le Plaisir et l'Emotion Musicale," _Rev. Philos._, Tome
42, No. 7.
<2> Op. cit., p. 47.
<3> Grove's _Dict._ Art. "Relationship."
Now it is not hard to see how this antithesis has come about.
But that the work of a master is always capable of logical
analysis does not prove that our apprehension of it is a
logical act. And the preceding discussion has wholly failed
to make its point, if it is not now clear that the musical
experience is an impression and not a judgment; that the feeling
of tonality is not a judgment of tonality, and that though the
aesthetic enjoyment of music extends only to those limits within
which the feeling of tonality is active, that feeling is more
likely than not to be quite unintelligible to the listener.
Indeed, if it were not so, we should have to restrict, by
hypothesis, the enjoyment of music to those able to give a
technical report of what they hear,--which is notoriously at
odds with the facts. That psychologist is quite right who
holds<1> that psychology, in laying down a principle explaining
the actual effect of a musical piece, is not justified in
confining itself to skilled musicians and taking no notice of
more than nine tenths of those who listen to the piece. But on
the understanding that the tonality-feeling acts subconsciously,
that our satisfaction with the progression of notes is unexplained
by the laws of acoustics and association, we are enabled to bring
within the circle of those who have the musical experience even
those nine tenths whose intellects are not actively participant.
<1> Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele_, ii, p. 323.
The fact is that musical form, in the sense of structure, balance,
symmetry, and proportion in the arrangement of phrases, and in
the contrasting of harmonies and keys, is different from the
musical form which is felt intimately, intrinsically, as the
desired, the demanded progress from one note to another. Structure
is indeed perceived, understood, enjoyed as an orderly unified
arrangement. Form is felt as an immediate joy. Structure it is
which many critics have in mind when they speak of form, and it
is the confusion between the two which makes such an antithesis
of musical beauty and sensuous material possible. The real
musical beauty, it is clear, is in the melodic idea; in the
sequence of tones which are indissolubly one, which are felt
together, one of which cannot exist without the other. Musical
beauty is in the intrinsic musical form. And yet here, too, we
must admit, that, in the last analysis, structure and form need
not be different. The perfect structure will be such a unity
that it, too, will be FELT as one--not only "the orderly
distribution of harmonies and keys in such a manner that the
mind can realize the concatenation as a complete and distinct
work of art." The ideal musical consciousness would have an
ideally great range; it would not only realize the concatenation,
but it would take it in as one takes in a single phrase, a simple
tune, retaining it from first not to last. The ordinary musical
consciousness has merely a much shorter breath. It can "feel"
an air, a movement; it cannot "feel" a symphony, it can only
perceive the relation of keys and harmonies therein. With
repeated hearing, study, experience, this span of beauty may be
indefinitely extended--in the individual, as in the race. But
no one will deny that the direct experience of beauty, the
single aesthetic thrill, is measured exactly by the length of
this span. It is only genius--hearer or composer--who can
operate "a longue haleine."
So it is that we must understand the development in musical
form from the cut and dried sonata form to the wayward yet
infinitely greater beauty of Beethoven; and thence to the
"free forms" of modern music. "Infinite melody" is a
contradiction in terms, because when the first term cannot
be present in consciousness with the last there is nothing to
control and direct the progression; and our musical memory is
limited. Yet we can conceive, theoretically, the possibility
of an indefinite widening of the memory.
It was on some such grounds as these that Poe laid down his
famous "Poetic Principle,"--that a long poem does not exist;
that "a long poem" is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
He says, indeed, that because "elevating excitement," the end
of a poem, is "through a psychical necessity" transient,
therefore no poem should be longer than the natural term of
such excitement. It is clearly possible to substitute for
"elevating excitement," immediate musical feeling of the
individual. What is the meaning of "feeling," "impression,"
here? It is the power of entering into a Gestaltsqualitat--
a motor group, a scheme in which every element is the
mechanical cue to the following. Beauty ceases for the hearer
where this carrying power, the "funded capital" of tone-
linkings ceases. In just the same way, if rhythm were a
perception rather than an impression, we ought to be able to
apprehend a rhythm of which the unit periods were hours. Yet
we may so bridge over the moments of beauty in experience that
we are enabled, without stretching to a breaking-point, to
speak of a symphony or an opera as a single beautiful work of
art.
VII
But what of the difficulties which such a theory must meet?
The most obvious one is the short life of musical works. If
musical beauty is founded in natural laws, why does music so
quickly grow old? The answer is that music is a phenomenon
of expectation as founded on these natural laws. It is the
tendency of one note to progress to another which is the basis
of the vividness of our experience. We expect, indeed, what
belongs objectively to the development of a melody, but only
that particular variety of progression to which we have become
accustomed. So it is that music which presents only the old,
simple progressions gives the greatest sense of ease, but the
least sense of effort--the ideal motion not being hindered on
its way. Intensity, vividness, would be felt where the
progression is less obvious, but felt as "fitting in" when it
is once made; and where it is not obvious at all--where the
link is not felt, a sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness
arises. So it is with music which we know by heart. It is
not that we know each note, and so expect it, but that it is
felt as necessarily issuing out of the preceding. A piece of
poor music, really heterogeneous and unconnected, might be
thoroughly familiar, and yet never, in this sense, felt as
SATISFYING expectation. In the same way, music in which the
progressions were germane to the existing tonality-feeling,
while still not absolutely obvious, would not be less quickening
to the musical sense, even if learned by heart. It is clear
that there is an external and an internal expectation--one,
imposed by memory, for the particular piece; the other constituted
partly by intrinsic internal relations, partly by the degree to
which these internal relations have been exploited. That is,
the possibility of musical expectation, and pleasure in its
satisfaction, is conditioned by the possession of a tonality-
feeling which covers the constituents of the piece of music, but
which has not become absolutely mechanical in its action. Just
as rhythm needs an obstacle to make the structure felt, so
melody needs some variation from the obvious set of relations
already won and possessed. If that possession is too complete,
the melody becomes as stale and uninteresting as would a 3-4
rhythm without a change or a break.
The test of genius in music, of the width and depth of mastery,
is to be able to become familiar without ceasing to be strange.
On the other hand, if in music to be great is always to be
misunderstood, it is no less true, here as elsewhere, that to
be misunderstood is not always to be great. And music may be
merely strange, and pass into oblivion, without ever having
passed that stage of surprised and delighted acceptance which
is the test of its truth to fundamental laws.
But how shall music advance? How shall it set out to win new
relations? It is at least conceivable that it takes the method
of another art which we have just studied. To get new beauties,
it does not say,--Go to, I will add to the beauties I already
have! It makes new occasions, and by way of these finds the
impulse it seeks. Renoir paints the baigneuse of Montmartre,
and finds "the odd, beautiful huddle of lines" in so doing;
Rodin portrays ever new subtleties of situation and mood, and
by way of these comes most naturally to "the unedited poses."
So a musician, we may imagine, comes to new and strange
utterances by way of a new and strange motion or cry that he
imitates. Out of the various bents and impulses that these
give him he chooses the ones that chance to be beautiful. And
in time these new beauties have become worn away like the trite
metaphors that are now no longer metaphors, but part of the
"funded capital." That was a ridiculous device of Schumann's,
who found a motif for one of his loveliest things by using the
letters of his temporary fair one's name--A B E G G; but it
may not be so utterly unlike the procedure by which music grows.
VIII
But what provision must be made for the emotions of music? It
cannot be that the majority of musicians, who are strangely
enough the very ones to insist that music is merely the
language of emotion, are utterly and essentially wrong. Nor
has it been attempted to prove them so. The beauty of music,
we have sought to show, grows and flowers out of tone-relations
alone, consists in tone-sequences alone. But it has not been
said that music did not arouse emotion, nor that it might not
on occasion even express it.
It is in fact now rather a commonplace in musical theory, to
show the emotional means which music has at its command; and
I shall therefore be very brief in my reference to them. They
may be shortly classed as expressive by association and by
direct induction. Expressive by association are passages of
direct imitation: the tolling of bells, the clash of arms, the
roar of wind, the hum of spinning wheels, even to the bleating
of sheep and the whirr of windmills; the cadence of the voice
in pleading, laughter, love; from such imitations we are
REMINDED of a fact or an emotion. More intimate is the
expression by induction; emotion is aroused by activities
which themselves form part of the emotions in question. Thus
the differences in tempo, reproduced in nervous response, call
up the gayety, sadness, hesitation, firmness, haste, growing
excitement, etc., of which whole experiences these movement
types form a part.
These emotions, as has often been shown, are absolutely
general and indefinite in their character, and are, on the
whole, even in their intensity, no measure of the beauty of
the music which arouses them. Indeed, we can get intense
emotion from sound which is entirely unmusical. So, too,
loudness, softness, crescendo, diminuendo, volume, piercingness,
have their emotional accompaniments. It is to Hanslick that
we owe the general summing up of these possibilities of
expression as "the dynamic figures of occurrences." How
this dynamic skeleton is filled out through association, or
that special form of association which we know as direct
induction, is not hard to understand on psychological grounds.
It is not necessary to repeat here the reasons for the literally
"moving" appeal of sound-stimulations, which have been already
detailed under the subject of rhythm.
Yet there still remains a residue of emotion not entirely
accounted for. It has been said that these, the emotions
expressed, or aroused, are more or less independent of the
intrinsic musical beauty. But it cannot be denied that there
is an intense emotion which grows with the measure of the
beauty of a piece of music, and which music lovers are yet
loth to identify with the so-called general aesthetic emotion,
or with the "satisfaction of expectation," different varieties
of which, in fusion, we have tried to show as the basis of the
musical experience. The aesthetic emotion from a picture is
not like this, they say, and a mere satisfaction of expectation
is unutterably tame. This is unique, aesthetic, individual!
I believe that the clue to this objection in the natural impulse
of mankind to confuse the intensity of an experience with a
difference in kind. But first of all, there must be added to
our list of definite emotions from music, those which attach
themselves to the internal relations of the notes. Gurney has
said that when we feel ourselves yearning for the next
unutterable, we are really yearning for the next note. That
is the secret! Each one of those tendencies, demands, leanings,
strivings, returns, as between tone and tone in a melody, is
necessarily accompanied by the feeling-tone which belongs to
such an attitude. And it is to be noted that all the more
poignant emotions we get from music are always stated in terms
of urgency, of strain, of effort. That is because these
emotions, and these alone, are inescapable in music since they
are founded on the intrinsic relations of the notes themselves.
It is just for this reason, too, that music, just in proportion
to its beauty, is felt, as some one says, like vinegar on a
wound, by those in grief or anxiety.
"I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes."
It is the yearning that is felt most strongly, the more vividly
are the real musical relations of the notes brought out.
Music expresses and causes tension, strain, yearning, through
its inner, its "absolute" nature. But it does more; it satisfies
these yearnings. It not only creates an expectation to satisfy
it, but the expectation itself is of a poignant, emotional,
personal character. What is the emotion that is aroused by such
a satisfaction?
The answer to this question takes us back again to that old
picturesque theory of Schopenhauer--that music is the
objectification of the will. Schopenhauer meant this in a
metaphysical, and to us an inadmissible sense; but I believe
that the psychological analysis of the musical experience which
we have just completed shows that there is another sense in
which it is absolutely true.
The best psychological theory of the experience of volition
makes it the imaging of a movement or action, followed by
feelings of strain, and then of the movement carried out.
The anticipation is the essential. Without anticipation, as
in the reflex, winking, the action appears involuntary.
Without the feeling of effort or strain, as in simply raising
the empty hand, the self-feeling is weaker. When all these
three elements, IMAGE, EFFORT, SUCCESS, are present most
vividly, the feeling is of triumphant volition. Now my thesis
is--the thesis toward which every though of the preceding has
pointed--that the fundamental facts of the musical experience
are supremely fitted to bring about the illusion and the
exaltation of the triumphant will.
The image, dimly foreshadowed, is given in the half-consciousness
of each note as it appears, and in that sense of coming
integration already recognized. The proof is the shock and
disappointment when the wrong note is sounded; if we had not
some anticipation of the right, the wrong one would not shock.
The strain we have in the effort of the organism to reach the
note, the tendency to which is implicit in the preceding. The
success is given in the coming of the note itself.
All this is no less true of rhythm--but there the expectation
is more mechanical, less conscious, as has been fully shown.
The more beautiful, that is, the more inevitably, irresistibly
right the music, the more powerful the influence to this illusion
of the triumphant will. The exaltation of musical emotion is
thus the direct measure of the perfection of the relations--the
beauty of the music. This, then, is the only intimate, immediate,
intrinsic emotion of music--the illusion of the triumphant will!
One word more on the interpretation of music in general aesthetic
terms. All that has been said goes to show that music possesses
to the very highest degree the power of stimulation. Can we
attribute to it repose in any other sense than that of satisfying
a desire that it arouses? We can do so in pointing out that
music ever returns upon itself--that its motion is cyclic. Music
is the art of auditory implications; but more than this, its
last note returns to its first. It is as truly a unity as if
it were static. We may say that the beauty of a picture is only
entered into when the eye has roved over the whole canvas, and
holds all the elements indirectly while it is fixated upon one
point. In exactly the same way music is not beauty unless it
is ALL there; at every point a fusion of the heard tone with
the once heard tones in the order of their hearing. The melody,
as a set of implications, is as ESSENTIALLY timeless as the
picture. By melody too, then, is given the perfect moment, the
moment of unity and completeness, of stimulation and repose.
The aesthetic emotion for music is then the favorable stimulation
of the sense of hearing and those other senses that are bound up
with it, together with the repose of perfect unity. It has a
richer color, a more intense exaltation in the illusion of the
triumphant will, which is indeed the peculiar moment for the
self in action.
VI
THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE
VI
THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE
I
THAT in the practice and pleasure of art for art's sake there
lurks an unworthy element, is a superstition that recurs in
every generation of critics. A most accomplished and modern
disciple of the gay science but yesterday made it a reproach
to the greatest living English novelist, that he, too, was
all for beauty, all for art, and had no great informing
purpose. "Art for art's sake" is clearly, to this critic's
mind, compatible with the lack of something all desirable for
novels. Yet if there is indeed a characteristic excellence
of the novel, if there is something the lack of which in a
novel is rightly deplored, then the real art for art's sake
is bound to include this characteristic excellence. If an
informing purpose is needed, no true artist can dispense
with it. Otherwise art for art's sake is a contradiction
in terms.
The critic I have quoted merely voices the lingering Puritan
distrust of beauty as an end in itself, and so repudiates
the conception of beauty as containing all the excellences
of a work of art. He thinks of beauty as cut up into small
snips and shreds of momentary sensations; as the sweet sound
of melodious words and cadences; or as something abstract,
pattern-like, imposed from without,--a Procrustes-bed of
symmetry and proportion; or as a view of life Circe-like,
insidious, a golden languor, made of "the selfish serenities
of wild-wood and dream-palace." All these, apart or
together, are thought of as the "beauty," at which the
artist "for art's sake" aims, and to that is opposed the
nobler informing purpose. But the truer view of beauty
makes it simply the epitome of all which a work of art ought
to be, and thus the only end and aim of every work of art.
The beauty of literature receives into itself all the
precepts of literature: there is no "ought" beyond it.
And art for art's sake is but art conscious of its aim, the
production of that all-embracing beauty.
What, then, is the beauty of literature? How may we know
its characteristic excellences? It is strange how, in all
serious discussion, to the confounding of some current ideas
of criticism, we are thrown back, inevitably, on this concept
of excellence! The most ardent of impressionists wakes up
sooner or later to the idea that he has been talking values
all his life. The excellences of literature! They must
lie within the general formula for beauty, yet they must be
conditioned by the possibilities of the special medium of
literature. The general formula, abstract and metaphysical
as it must be, may not be applied directly; for abstract
thought will fit only that art which can convey it; hence
the struggle of theorists with painting, music, and
architecture, and the failure of Hegel, for instance, to
show how beauty as "the expression of the Idea" resides in
these arts. But if the general formula is always translated
relatively to the sense-medium through which beauty must
reach the human being, it may be preserved, while yet
affirming all the special demands of the particular art.
Beauty is a constant function of the varying medium. The
end of Beauty is always the same, the perfect moment of
unity and self-completeness, of repose in excitement. But
this end is attained by different means furnished by
different media: through vision and its accompanying
activities; through hearing and its accompanying activities;
and for literature, through hearing in the special sense
of communication by word. It is the nature of this medium
that we must further discover.
II
Now the word is nothing in itself; it is not sound primarily,
but thought. The word is but a sign, a negligible quantity
in human intercourse--a counter in which the coins are ideas
and emotions--merely legal tender, of no value save in
exchange. What we really experience in the sound of a
sentence, in the sight of a printed page, is a complex
sequence of visual and other images, ideas, emotions, feelings,
logical relations, swept along in the stream of consciousness,
--differing, indeed, in certain ways from daily experience,
but yet primarily of the web of life itself. The words in
their nuances, march, tempo, melody add certain elements to
this flood--hasten, retard, undulate, or calm it; but it is
the THOUGHT, the understood experience, that is the stuff of
literature.
Words are first of all meanings, and meanings are to be
understood and lived through. We can hardly even speak of
the meaning of a word, but rather of what it is, directly,
in the mental state that is called up by it. Every definition
of a word is but a feeble and distant approximation of the
unique flash of experience belonging to that word. It is not
the sound sensation nor the visual image evoked by the word
which counts, but the whole of the mental experience, to
which the word is but an occasion and a cue. Therefore, since
literature is the art of words, it is the stream of thought
itself that we must consider as the material of literature.
In short, literature is the dialect of life--as Stevenson
said; it is by literature that the business of life is
carried on. Some one, however, may here demur: visual signs,
too, are the dialect of life. We understand by what we see,
and we live by what we understand. The curve of a line, the
crescendo of a note, serve also for wordless messages. Why
are not, then, painting and music the vehicles of experience,
and to be judged first as evocation of life, and only
afterward as sight and hearing? This conceded, we are thrown
back on that view of art as "the fixed quantity of imaginative
thought supplemented by certain technical qualities,--of
color in painting, of sound in music, of rhythmical words in
poetry," from which is has been the one aim of the preceding
arguments of this book to free us.
The holders of this view, however, ignore the history and
significance of language. Our sight and hearing are given
to us prior to our understanding or use of them. In a way,
we submit to them--they are always with us. We dwell in
them through passive states, through seasons of indifference;
moreover when we see to understand, we do not SEE, and when
we hear to understand we do not hear. Only shreds of
sensation, caught up in our flight from one action to another,
serve as signals for the meanings which concern us. In
proportion as action is prompt and effective, does the cue
as such tend to disappear, until, in all matters of skill,
piano-playing, fencing, billiard-playing, the sight or sound
which serves as cue drops almost together out of consciousness.
So far as it is vehicle of information, it is no longer sight
or sound as such--interest has devoured it. But language
came into being to supplement the lacks of sight and sound.
It was created by ourselves, to embody all active outreaching
mental experience, and it comes into particular existence to
meet an insistent emergency--a literally crying need. In
short, it is CONSTITUTED by meanings--its essence is
communication. Sight and sound have a relatively independent
existence, and may hence claim a realm of art that is largely
independent of meanings. Not so the art of words, which can
be but the art of meanings, of human experience alone.
And yet again, were the evocation of life the means and
material of all art, that art in which the level of imaginative
thought was low, the range of human experience narrow, would
take a low place in the scale. What, then, of music and
architecture? Inferior arts, they could not challenge
comparison with the poignant, profound, all-embracing art of
literature. But this is patently not the fact. There is no
hierarchy of the arts. We may not rank St. Paul's Cathedral
below "Paradise Lost." Yet is the material of all experience
is the material of all art, they must not only be compared,
but "Paradise Lost" must be admitted incomparably the
greater. No--we may not admit that all the arts alike deal
with the material of expression. The excellence of music
and architecture, whatever it may be, cannot depend on this
material. Yet by hypothesis it must be through the use of
its material that the end of beauty is reached by every art.
A picture has lines and masses and colors, wherewith to play
with the faculty of vision, to weave a spell for the whole man.
Beauty is the power to enchant him through the eye and all
that waits upon it, into a moment of perfection. Literature
has "all thoughts, all passions, all delights"--the treasury
of life--to play with, to weave a spell for the whole man.
Beauty in literature is the power to enchant him, through
the mind and heart, across the dialect of life, into a moment
of perfection.
III
The art of letters, then, is the art whose material is life
itself. Such, indeed, is the implication of the approval
theories of style. Words, phrases, sentences, chapters, are
excellent in so far as they are identical with thought in
all its shades of feeling. "Economy of attention," Spencer's
familiar phrase for the philosophy of style, his explanation
of even the most ornate and extravagant forms, is but another
name for this desired lucidity of the medium. Pater, himself,
an artist in the overlaying of phrases, has the same teaching.
"All the laws of good writing aim at a similar unity or
identity of the mind in all the processes by which the word is
associated to its import. The term is right, and has its
essential beauty, when it becomes, in a manner, what it
signifies, as with the names of simple sensations."<1> He
quotes therewith De Maupassant on Flaubert: "Among all the
expressions in the world, all forms and turns of expression,
there is but ONE--one form, one mode--to express what I want
to say." And adds, "The one word for the one thing, the one
thought, amid the multitude of words, terms, that might just
do: the problem of style was there!--the unique word, phrase,
sentence, paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely proper to the
single mental presentation or vision within."...
<1> _Appreciations: An Essay on Style._
Thought in words is the matter of literature; and words exist
but for thought, and get their excellence as thought; yet, as
Flaubert says, the idea only exists by virtue of the form.
The form, or the word, IS the idea; that is, it carries along
with it the fringe of suggestion which crystallizes the floating
possibility in the stream of thought. A glance at the history
of language shows how this must have been so. Words in their
first formation were doubtless constituted by their imitative
power. As Taine has said,<1> at the first they arose in contact
with the objects; they imitated them by the grimaces of mouth
and nose which accompanied their sound, by the roughness,
smoothness, length, or shortness of this sound, by the rattle
or whistle of the throat, by the inflation or contraction of
the chest.
<1> H. Taine, _La Fontaine et ses Fables_, p. 288.
This primitive imitative power of the word survives in the
so-called onomatapoetic words, which aim simply at reproducing
the sounds of nature. A second order of imitation arises through
the associations of sensations. The different sensations,
auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, motor, and organic have
common qualities, which they share with other more complex
experiences; of form, as force or feebleness; of feeling, as
harshness, sweetness, and so on. It is, indeed, another case
of the form-qualities to which we recurred so often in the
chapter on music. Clear and smooth vowels will give the
impression of volatility and delicacy; open, broad ones of
elevation or extension (airy, flee; large, far). The consonants
which are hard to pronounce will give the impression of effort,
of shock, of violence, of difficulty, of heaviness,--"the round
squat turret, black as the fool's heart;" those which are easy
of pronunciation express ease, smoothness, fluidity, calm,
lightness, (facile, suave, roulade);--"lucent syrops, tinct with
cinnamon," a line like honey on the tongue, of which physical
organ, indeed, one becomes, with the word "tinct," definitely
conscious.
In fact, the main point to notice in the enumeration of the
expressive qualities of sounds, is that it is the movement in
utterance which characterizes them. That movement tends to
reproduce itself in the hearer, and carries with it its feeling-
tone of ease or difficulty, explosiveness or sweetness long
drawn out. It is thus by a kind of sympathetic induction rather
than by external imitation that these words of the second type
become expressive.
Finally, the two moments may be combined, as in such a word as
"roaring," which is directly imitative of a sound, and by the
muscular activity it calls into play suggests the extended
energy of the action itself.
The stage in which the word becomes a mere colorless, algebraic
sign of object or process never occurs, practically, for in any
case it has accumulated in its history and vicissitudes a fringe
of suggestiveness, as a ship accumulates barnacles. "Words carry
with them all the meanings they have worn," says Walter Raleigh
in his "Essay on Style." "A slight technical implication, a
faint tinge of archaism in the common turn of speech that you
employ, and in a moment you have shaken off the mob that scours
the rutted highway, and are addressing a select audience of
ticket-holders with closed doors." Manifold may be the
implications and suggestions of even a single letter. Thus a
charming anonymous essay on the word "Grey." "Gray is a quiet
color for daylight things, but there is a touch of difference,
of romance, even, about things that are grey. Gray is a color
for fur, and Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a gray
day, and a gentlewoman's hair; and horses must be gray....Now
grey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in
them and much wickedness. Gray eyes would be as tender and
yielding and true as blue ones; a coquette must have eyes of
grey."
Words do not have meanings, they ARE meanings through their
power of direct suggestion and induction. They may become
what they signify. Nor is this power confined to words alone;
on its possession by the phrase, sentence, or verse rests the
whole theory of style. The short, sharp staccato, the bellowing
turbulent, the swimming melodious circling sentence ARE truly
what they mean, in their form as in the objective sense of
their words. The sound-values of rhythm and pace have been in
other chapters fully dwelt upon; the expressive power of breaks
and variations is worth noting also. Of the irresistible
significance of rhythm, even against content, we have an
example amusingly commented on by Mr. G.K. Chesterton in his
"Twelve Types." "He (Byron) may arraign existence on the most
deadly charges, he may condemn it with the most desolating
verdict, but he cannot alter the fact that on some walk in a
spring morning when all the limbs are swinging and all the
blood alive in the body, the lips may be caught repeating:
'Oh, there's not a joy the world can give like that it takes
away,
When the glow of early youth declines in beauty's dull
decay.'
That automatic recitation is the answer to the whole pessimism
of Byron."
IV
Such, then, are some of the means by which language becomes
identical with thought, and most truly the dialect of life.
The genius will have ways, to which these briefly outlined
ones will seem crude and obvious, but they will be none the
less of the same nature. Shall we then conclude that the
beauty of literature is here? that, in the words of Pater,
from the essay I have quoted, "In that perfect justice (of
the unique word)...omnipresent in good work, in function at
every point, from single epithets to the rhythm of a whole
book, lay the specific, indispensable, very intellectual
beauty of literature, the possibility of which constitutes
it a fine art."
In its last analysis, such a conception of literature amounts
to the unimpeded intercourse of mind with mind. Literature
would be a language which dispenses with gesture, facial
expression, tone of voice; which is, in its halts, accelerations
and retardations, emphases and concessions, the apotheosis
of conversation. But this clearness,--in the sublime sense,
including the ornate and the subtle,--this luminous lucidity,--
is it not quite indeterminate? Clearness is said of a medium.
WHAT is it that shines through?
Were this clearness the beauty we are seeking, whatever in
the world that wanted to get itself said, would, if it were
perfectly said, become a final achievement of literature. All
that the plain man looks for, we must think rightly, in poetry
and prose, might be absent, and yet we should have to
acknowledge its excellence. Let us then consider this quality
by which the words become what they signify as the specific
beauty rather of style than of literature; the mere refining
of the gold from which the work of art has yet to be made.
Language is the dialect of life; and the most perfect language
can be no more than the most perfect truth of intercourse. It
must then be through the treatment of life, or the sense of
life itself, that we are somehow to attain the perfect moment
of beauty.
The sense of life! In what meaning are these words to be
taken? Not the completest sense of all, because the essence
of life is in personal responsibility to a situation, and this
is exactly what in our experience of literature disappears.
First of all, then, before asking how the moment of beauty is
to be attained, we must see how it is psychologically possible
to have a sense of life that is yet purged of the will to live.
All experience of life is a complication of ideas, emotions,
and attitudes or impulses to action in varying proportions.
The sentiment of reality is constituted by our tendency to
interfere, to "take a hand." Sometimes the stage of our
consciousness is so fully occupied by the images of others
that our own reaction is less vivid. Finally, all conditions
and possibilities of reaction may be so minimized that the
only attitude possible is our acceptance or rejection of a
world in which such things can be. What does it "matter" to
me whether or not "the old, unhappy, far-off things" really
happened? The worlds of the Borgias, of Don Juan, and of the
Russian war stand on the same level of reality. Aucassin and
Nicolette are as near to me as Abelard and Heloise. For in
relation to these persons my impulse is NIL. I submit to
them, I cannot change or help them; and because I have no
impulse to interfere, they are not vividly real to me. And,
in general, in so far as I am led to contemplate or to dwell
on anything in idea, in so far does my personal attitude tend
to parallel this impersonal one toward real persons temporally
or geographically out of reach.
Now in literature all conditions tend to the enormous
preponderance of the ideal element in experience. My mind
in reading is completely filled with ideas of the appearance,
ways, manners, and situation of the people concerned. I leave
them a clear field. My emotions are enlisted only as the
inevitable fringe of association belonging to vivid ideas--
the ideas of their emotions. So far as all the possibilities
of understanding are fulfilled for me, so far as I am in
possession of all the conditions, so far do I "realize" the
characters, but realize them as ideas tinged with feeling.
Here there will be asseverations to the contrary. What! feel
no real emotion over Little Nell, or Colonel Newcome? no
emotion in that great scene of passion and despair, the parting
of Richard Feverel and Lucy,--a scene which none can read save
with tight throat and burning eyes! Even so. It is not real
emotion. You have the vivid ideas, so vivid that a fringe of
emotional association accompanies them, as you might shudder
remembering a bad dream. But the real emotion arises only
from the real impulse, the real responsibility.
The sense of life that literature gives might be described as
life in its aspect as idea. That this fact is the cause of
the peace and painlessness of literature--since it is by his
actions, as Aristotle says, that man is happy or the reverse--
need not concern us here. For the beauty of literature, and
our joy in it, lie not primarily in its lack of power to hurt
us. The point is that literature gives none the less truly a
sense of life because it happens to be one extreme aspect of
life. The literary way is only one of the ways in which life
can be met.
To give the sense of life perfectly--to create the illusion
of life--is this, then, the beauty of literature? But we are
seeking for the perfect moment of stimulation and repose. Why
should the perfect illusion of life give this, any more than
life itself does? So the "vision" of a picture might be
intensely clear, and yet the picture itself unbeautiful. Such
a complete "sense of life," such clear "vision," would show
the artist's mastery of technique, but not his power to create
beauty. In the art of literature, as in the art of painting,
the normal function is but the first condition, the state of
perfection is the end at which to aim.
It is just this distinction that we can properly make between
the characteristic or typical in the sense of differentiated,
and the great or excellent in literature. In the theory of
some writers, perfect fidelity to the type is the only
originality. To paint the Russian peasant or the French
bourgeois as he is, to catch the exact shade of exquisite
soullessness in Oriental loves, to reproduce the Berserker
rage or the dull horror of battle, is indeed to give the
perfect sense of life. But the perfect, or the complete,
sense of life is not the moment of perfect life.
Yet to this assertion two answers might be made. The authors
of "Bel-Ami," or "Madame Chrysantheme," or "The Triumph of
Death," might claim to be saved by their form. The march of
events, the rounding climax, the crystal-clear unity of the
finished work, they might say, gives the indispensable union,
for the perfect moment of stimulation and repose. No syllable
in the slow unfolding of exquisite cadences but is supremely
placed from the first page to the last. As note calls to
note, so thought calls to thought, and feeling to feeling,
and the last word is an answer to the first of the inevitable
procession. A writer's donnee, they would say, is his own.
The reader may only bed--Make me something fine after your
own fashion!
And they would have to be acknowledged partly in the right.
In that inevitable unity of form there is indeed a necessary
element of the perfect moment; but it is not a perfect unity.
For the matter of their art should be, in the last analysis,
life itself; and the unity of life itself, the one basic
unity of all, they have missed. It is a hollow sphere they
present, and nothing solid. Henry James has spent the whole
of a remarkable essay on D'Annunzio's creations in determining
the meaning of "the fact that their total beauty somehow
extraordinarily fails to march with their beauty of parts,
and that something is all the while at work undermining that
bulwark against ugliness which it is their obvious theory of
their own office to throw up." The secret is, he avers, that
the themes, the "anecdotes," could find their extension and
consummation only in the rest of life. Shut out, as they are,
from the rest of life, shut out from all fruition and
assimilation, and so from all hope of dignity, they lose
absolutely their power to sway us.
It might be simpler to say that these works lack the first
beauty which literature as the dialect of life can have--they
lack the repose of centrality; they have no identity with the
meaning of life as a whole. It could not be said of them, as
Bagehot said of Shakespeare: "He puts things together, he
refers things to a principle; rather, they group themselves
in his intelligence insensibly around a principle;...a cool
oneness, a poised personality, pervades him." But in these
men there is no cool oneness, no reasonable soul, and so they
miss the central unity of life, which can give unity to
literature. Even the apparent structural unity fails when
looked at closely; the actions of the characters are seen to
be mechanical--their meaning is not inevitable.
The second answer to our assertion that the "sense of life" is
not the beauty of literature might call attention to the fact
that SENSE of life may be taken as understanding of life. A
complete sense of life must include the conditions of life, and
the conditions of life involve this very "energetic identity"
on which we have insisted. And this contention we must admit.
So long as the sense of life is taken as the illusion of life,
our words hold good. But if to that is added understanding of
life, the door is open to the profoundest excellences of
literature. Henry James has glimpsed this truth in saying that
no good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.
Stevenson has gone further. "But the truth is when books are
conceived under a great stress, with a soul of ninefold power,
nine time heated and electrified by effort, the conditions
of our being seized with such an ample grasp, that even should
the main design be trivial or base, some truth and beauty
cannot fail to be expressed."
V
The conditions of our being! If we accept, affirm, profoundly
rest in what is presented to us, we have the first condition of
that repose which is the essence of the aesthetic experience.
And from this highest demand can be viewed the hierarchy of the
lesser perfections which go to make up the "perfect moment" of
literature. Instead of reaching this point by successive
eliminations, we might indeed have reached it in one stride.
The perfect moment across the dialect of life, the moment of
perfect life, must be in truth that in which we touch the
confines of our being, look upon our world, all in all, as
revealed in some great moment, and see that it is good--that
we grasp it, possess it, that it is akin to us, that it is
identical with our deepest wills. The work that grasps the
conditions of our being gives ourselves back to us completed.
In the conditions of our being in a less profound sense may
be found the further means to the perfect moment. Thus the
progress of events, the development of feelings, must be in
harmony with our natural processes. The development, the
rise, complication, expectation, gratification, the suspense,
climax, and drop of the great novel, correspond to the natural
functioning of our mental processes. It is an experience that
we seek, multiplied, perfected, expanded--the life moment of
a man greater than we. This, too, is the ultimate meaning of
the demands of style. Lucidity, indeed, there must be,--
identity with the thought; but besides the value of the thought
in its approximation to the conditions of our being, we seek
the vividness of that thought,--the perfect moment of
apprehension, as well as of experience. It is the beauty of
style to be lucid; but the beauty of lucidity is to reinforce
the springs of thought.
Even to the minor elements of style, the tone-coloring, the
rhythm, the melody,--the essence of beauty, that is, of the
perfect moment, is given by the perfecting of the experience.
The beauty of liquids is their ease and happiness of utterance.
The beauty of rhythm is its aiding and compelling power, on
utterance and thought. There is a sensuous pleasure in a
great style; we love to mouth it, for it is made to mouth.
As Flaubert says somewhat brutally, "Je ne said qu'une phrase
est bonne qu'apres l'avoir fait passer par mon gueuloir."
In the end it might be said that literature gives us the
moment of perfection, and is thus possessed of beauty, when
it reveals ourselves to ourselves in a better world of
experience; in the conditions of our moral being, in the
conditions of our utterance and our breathing;--all these,
concentric circles, in which the centre of repose is given
by the underlying identity of ourselves with this world.
Because it goes to the roots of experience, and seeks to give
the conditions of our being as they really are, literature
may be truly called a criticism of life. Yet the end of
literature is not the criticism of life; rather the
appreciation of life--the full savour of life in its entirety.
The final definition of literature is the art of experience.
VI
But then literature would give only the perfect moments of
existence, would ignore the tragedies, ironies, pettiness of
life! Such an interpretation is a quite mistaken one. As
the great painting uses the vivid reproduction of an ugly
face, a squalid hovel, to create a beautiful picture, beautiful
because all the conditions of seeing are made to contribute to
our being made whole in seeing; so great literature can attain
through any given set of facts to the deeper harmony of life,
can touch the one poised, unconquerable soul, and can reinforce
the moment of self-completeness by every parallel device of
stimulation and concentration. And because it is most often
in the tragedies that the conditions of our being are laid
bare, and the strings which reverberate to the emotions most
easily played upon, it is likely that the greatest books of all
will be the tragedies themselves. The art of experience needs
contrasts no less than does the visual or auditory art.
This beauty of literature, because it is a hierarchy of beauties
more and less essential, exists in all varieties and in all
shades. If the old comparison and contrast of idealism and
realism is referred to here, it is because that ancient
controversy seems not even yet entirely outworn. If realism
means close observation of facts and neglect of ideas, and
idealism, neglect of prosaic facts and devotion to ideas, then
we must admit that realism and idealism are the names of two
defective types. Strictly speaking, whatever goes deep enough
to the truth of things, gets nearer reality, is realism; yet
to get nearer reality is to attain true ideas, and that is
idealism too. The great work of literature is realistic
because it does not lose sight of the ideal. Our popular use
of idealistic refers, indeed, to the world seen through rose-
colored glasses; but for that possible variety of literary
effort it is better to use the word Romance. Romance is the
world of our youthful dreams of things, not as they do happen,
but as, without any special deeper meaning, we should wish them
to happen. That is the world of the gold-haired maiden, "the
lover with the red-roan steed of steeds," the purse of
Fortunatus, the treasure-trove, the villain confronted with
his guilt. "Never the time and the place and the loved one
all together!" But in Romance they come together. The total
depravity of inanimate things has become the stars in their
courses fighting for us. Stevenson calls it the poetry of
circumstance--for the dreams of youth are properly healthy
and material. The salvage from the wreck in "Robinson Crusoe,"
he tells us, satisfies the mind like things to eat. Romance
gives us the perfect moment of the material and human--with
the divine left out.
It has sometimes been made a reproach to critics--more often,
I fear, by those who hold, like myself, that beauty and
excellence in art are identical--that they discourse too little
of form in literature, and too much of content. But all our
taking thought will have been vain, if it is not now patent
that the first beauty of literature is, and must be, its
identity with the central flame of life,--the primal conditions
of our being. Thus it is that the critic is justified in
asking first of all, How does this man look on life? Has he
revealed a new--or better--the eternal old meaning? The
Weltanschauung is the critic's first consideration, and after
that he may properly take up that secondary grasp of the
conditions of our being in mental processes, revealed in the
structure, march of incidents, suspense, and climaxes, and the
beauty or idiosyncracy of style. It is then literally false
that it does not matter what a man says, but only how he says
it. What he says is all that matters, for it will not be great
thought without some greatness in the saying. Art for art's
sake in literature is then art for life's sake, and the
"informing purpose," in so far as that means the vision of our
deepest selves, is its first condition.
And because the Beauty of Literature is constituted by its
quality as life itself, we may defer detailed consideration
of the species and varieties of literature. Prose and poetry,
drama and novel, have each their own special excellences
springing from the respective situations they had, and have,
to meet. Yet these but add elements to the one great power
they all must have as literature,--the power to give the
perfect experience of life in its fullness and vividness, and
in its identity with the central meanings of existence,--unity
and self-completeness together,--in a form which offers to our
mental functions the perfect moment of stimulation and repose.
VII
THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA
VII
THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA
I
THAT psychologist who, writing on the problems of dramatic
art, called his brochure "The Dispute over Tragedy," gave
the right name to a singular situation. Of all the riddles
of aesthetic experi8ence, none has been so early propounded,
so indefatigably attempted, so variously and unsatisfactorily
solved, as this. What is dramatic? What constitutes a
tragedy? How can we take pleasure in painful experiences?
These questions are like Banquo's ghost, and will not down.
The ingenious Bernays has said that it was all the fault of
Aristotle. The last phrase of the famous definition in the
"Poetics," which should relate the nature, end, and aim of
tragedy, is left, in his works as we have them, probably
through the suppression or loss of context, without elucidating
commentary. And the writers on tragedy have ever since so
striven to guess his meaning, and to make their answers square
with contemporary drama, that they have given comparatively
slight attention to the immediate, unbiased investigation of
the phenomenon itself. Aristotle's definition is as follows:<1>
"Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious,
complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished
with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being
found in separate parts of the play: in the form of action,
not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper
purgation of these emotions." In what follows, he takes up
and explains this definition, phrase by phrase, until the very
last. What is meant by the Purgation (Katharsis) through pity
and fear? It is at least what tragedy "effects," and is thus
evidently the function of tragedy. But a thing is determined,
constructed, judged, according to its function; the function
is, so to speak, its genetic formula. With a clear view of
that, the rest of the definition could conceivably have been
constructed without further explanation; without it, the key
to the whole fails. "Purgation of these emotions;" did it
mean purification of the emotions, or purgation of the soul
FROM the emotions? And what emotions? Pity and fear, or
"these and suchlike," thus including all emotions that tragedy
could bring to expression?
<1> S.H. Butcher, _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_,
1895.
Our knowledge of the severely moral bent of the explicit art
criticism of the Greeks has inclined many to accept the first
interpretation; and modern interests impel in the same direction.
It is natural to think of the generally elevating and softening
effects of great art as a kind of moral clarifying, and the
question how this should be effected just by pity and fear was
not pressed. So Lessing in the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" takes
Katharsis as the conversion of the emotions in general into
virtuous dispositions.
Before we ask ourselves seriously how far this represents our
experience of the drama, we must question its fidelity to the
thought of Aristotle; and that question seems to have received
a final answer in the exhaustive discussion of Bernays.<1>
Without going into his arguments, suffice it to say that
Aristotle, scientist and physician's son as he was, had in
mind in using this striking metaphor of the Katharsis of the
emotions, a perfectly definite procedure, familiar in the
treatment, by exciting music, of persons overcome by the ecstasy
or "enthusiasm" characteristic of certain religious rites.
Bernays quotes Milton's preface to "Samson Agonistes:" "Tragedy
is said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions;
that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind
of delight, stirred by reading or seeing those passions well
imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make
good his assertion; for so in physic, things of melancholic
hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against
sour, salt to remove salt humours," adding "the homoeopathic
comparison shows how near he was to the correct notion."
Bernays concludes that by Katharsis is denoted the "alleviating discharge" of the emotions themselves. In other words, pity
and fear are bad, and it is a good thing to get rid of them
in a harmless way, as it is better to be vaccinated than to
have small pox.
<1> _Zwei adhandlungen uber d. Aristotelische Theories d.
Drama_, 1880.
Now this alleviating discharge is pleasurable (meth hedones),
and the pleasure seems, from allied passages, to arise not in
the accomplished relief from oppression, but in the process
itself. This becomes intelligible from the point of view of
Aristotle's definition of pleasure as an ecstatic condition of
the soul. For every emotion contains, according to Aristotle,
be it ever so painful, an ecstatic degree would effect, at the
same time with an alleviating discharge, a pleasure also. Pity
and fear are aroused to be allayed, and to give pleasure in the
arousing and the relief.
Such, approximately, is Aristotle's view of the Tragic Emotion,
or Katharsis. Is it also our own? To clear the field for this
inquiry, it will be well first of all to insist on a distinction
which is mostly discounted in significance because taken for
granted. We speak o Aristotle's Katharsis as the Tragic Emotion,
forgetting that to-day Tragedy and the Tragic are no longer
identical. Aristotle conceives himself to be dealing with the
peculiar emotion aroused by a certain dramatic form, the name
of which ha nothing to do with its content. For Tragedy is
literally goat-song, perhaps from the goat-skins worn by the
first performers of tragedy disguised as satyrs. Since then
we have borrowed the name of that dramatic form to apply to
events which have the same type or issue as in that form. In
popular speech to-day the word tragic attaches itself rather
to the catastrophe than to the struggle, and therefore, I cannot
but think, modern discussion of "the tragic" is wrong in
attempting to combine the Aristotelian and the modern shades
of meaning, and to embody them both in a single definition.
Aristotle is dealing with the whole effect of the dramatic
representation of what we should call a tragic occurrence. It
is really the theory of the dramatic experience and not of the
tragic, in our sense, which occupies him. Therefore, as I say,
we must not assume, with many modern critics, than an analysis
of the tragic in experience will solve the problem of the
Katharsis. Our "tragic event," it is true, is of the kind
which dramatically treated helped to bring about this peculiar
effect. But the question of Aristotle and our problem of
Katharsis is the problem of the emotion aroused by the Tragic
Drama. What, then, is the nature of dramatic emotion?
II
The analogy of Aristotle's conception of the emotion of
tragedy with certain modern views is evident. To feel pain
is to live intensely, it is said; to be absorbed in great,
even though overwhelming, events is to make us realize our
own pulsing life. The criticism to be made on this theory
is, however, no less simple: it consists merely in denying
the fact. It does not give us pleasure to have painful
emotions or to see other people's sorrows, in spite of the
remains of the "gorille feroce" in us, to which Taine and
M. Faguet attribute this imputed pleasure. And if we feel
pleasure, excitement, elevation in the representation of
the tragic, it must be due to some other element in the
experience than the mere self-realization involved in
suffering. It is indeed our first impulse to say that the
painful quality vanishes when the exciting events are known
to be unreal; pity and fear are painful because too intense,
and in the drama are just sufficiently moderated. The
rejoinder is easy, that pity and fear are never anything,
but painful down to the vanishing point. The slight pity
for a child's bruised finger is not more pleasurable because
less keen; while our feeling, whatever it is, for Ophelia
or Gretchen, becomes more pleasurable in proportion to its
intensity.
It is clear that the matter is not so simple as Aristotle's
psychology would make it. Pity and fear do not in themselves
produce pleasure, relief, and repose. These emotions as
aroused by tragedy are either not what we know as pity and
fear in real life, or the manner of their undergoing brings
in an entirely new element, on which Aristotle has not
touched. In some way or other the pity and fear of tragedy
are not like the pity and fear of real life, and in this
distinction lies the whole mystery of the dramatic Katharsis.
But there is an extension of Aristotle's theory, lineally
descended from that of Lessing, which professes to elucidate
this difference and must be taken account of, inasmuch as it
represents the modern popular view. Professor Butcher, in
his edition of the "Poetics," concludes, on the basis of a
reference in the "Politics" implying that the Katharsis of
enthusiasm is not identical with the Katharsis of pity and
fear, that the word is to be taken less literally, as an
expulsion of the morbid elements in the emotions,--and these
he takes to be the selfish elements which cling to them in
real life. Thus "the spectator, who is brought face to face
with grander sufferings than his own, experiences a
sympathetic ecstasy, a listing out of himself. It is
precisely in this transport of feeling, which carries a man
outside his individual self, that the distinctive tragic
pleasure resides. Pity and fear are purged of the impure
element which clings to them in life. In the glow of tragic
excitement these feelings are so transformed that the net
result is a noble emotional satisfaction."
In spite of our feeling that the literal and naive reading
of the analogy was probably after all nearer Aristotle's
meaning, we may accept the words of Professor Butcher as its
modern formulation. They sound, indeed, all but a truism:
yet they are seen on examination to glide lightly over some
psychological difficulties. Firstly, the step is a long
one from the pity and fear felt by the Greek toward or about
the actors, to a sharing of their emotion. The one is a
definite external relation, limited to two emotions; the
other, the "sympathetic ecstasy," opens the door to all
conceivable emotions, and needs at least to be justified.
But, secondly, even suppose the step taken; suppose the
"sympathetic imitation" conceded as a fact: the objections
to Aristotle's interpretation are equally applicable to
this. Why should this "transport of sympathetic feeling"
not take the form of a transport of pain? Why should the
net result be "a noble emotional satisfaction?" If pity
and fear remain pity and fear, whether selfish or unselfish,
it doth not yet appear why they are emotionally satisfactory.
The "so transformed" of the passage quoted assumes the point
at issue and begs the question. That is, if this transformation
of feeling does indeed take place, there is at least nothing
in the nature of the situation, as yet explained, to account
for it. But explanation there must be. To this, the lost
passage on the Katharsis must have been devoted; this, every
thorough-going study of the theory of the drama must make
an indispensable preliminary. What there is in the nature
of tragic art capable of transforming painful to pleasurable
emotion must be made clear. Before we can accept Professor
Butcher's view of the function of Tragedy, its possibility
as a psychological experience must be demonstrated. For the
immediately pleasurable aesthetic effect of Tragedy, a certain
kind of pity and fear, operating in a special way, are required.
It must be thus only in the peculiar character of the emotions
aroused that the distinctive nature of the tragic experience
consists. What is this peculiar character?
III
A necessary step to the explanation of our pleasure in
supposedly painful emotions is to make clear how we can feel
any emotion at all in watching what we know to be unreal, and
to show how this emotion is sympathetic, that is, imitative,
rather than of an objective reference. In brief, why do we
feel WITH, rather than toward or about, the actors?
The answer to this question requires a reference to the current
theory of emotion. According to modern psychologists, emotion
is constituted by the instinctive response to a situation; it
is the feeling accompanying very complicated physical reactions,
which have their roots in actions once useful in the history
of mankind. Thus the familiar "expression" of anger, the
flushed face, dilated nostril, clenched fist, are remains or
marks of reactions serviceable in mortal combat. But these,
the "coarser" bodily changes proper to anger, are accompanied
by numberless organic reactions, the "feel" of all of which
together is an indispensable element of the emotion of anger.
The point to be noted in all this is that these reactions are
ACTIONS, called up by something with which we literally HAVE
TO DO.
A person involved in real experience does not reproduce the
emotions about him, for in real life he must respond to the
situation, take an attitude of help, consolation, warning;
and the character of these reactions determines for him an
emotion of his own. Even though he really do nothing, the
multitudinous minor impulses to action going to make up his
attitude appreciably interfere with the reproduction of the
reactions of the object of his interest. In an exactly
opposite way the artificial conditions of the spectator at a
play, which reinforce the vivid reproduction of ideas, and
check action, stifle those emotions directed toward the players,
the objective emotions of which we have spoken. The spectator
is completely cut off from all possibilities of influence on
events. Between his world and that across the footlights an
inexpressible gulf is fixed. He cannot take an "attitude,"
he can have nothing to do in this galere. Since he may not
act, even those beginnings of action which make the basis of
emotion are inhibited in him. The spectator at a play experiences
much more clearly and sharply than the sympathetic observer;
only the proportions of his mental contents are different.
This, I say, accounts for the absence of the real pity and
fear, which were supposed to be directed toward the persons
in the play. But so far as yet appears there is every reason
to expect the sympathetic reproduction of the emotions of the
persons themselves.
Let us briefly recall the situation. The house is darkened
and quiet; all lines converge to the stage, which is brightly
lighted, and heightened in visual effect by every device known
to art. The onlooker's mind is emptied of its content; all
feeling of self is pushed down to its very lowest level. He
has before him a situation which he understands through sight
and hearing, and in which he follows the action not only by
comprehension, but by instinctive imitation. This is the great
vehicle of suggestion. We cannot see tears rise without moisture
in our own eyes; we reproduce a yawn even against our will; the
sudden or the regular movement of a companion we are forced to
follow, at least incipiently. Now the expression which we
imitate brings up in us to a certain extent the whole complex
of ideas and feeling-tones belonging to that expression.
Moreover, the more closely we attend to it, the more explicitly
do we imitate it, by an evident psychological principle. Thus
in the artificially contrived situation of the spectator at a
play, he is forced, not only to understand intellectually, but
also to FOLLOW, quite literally, the emotional movements of
the actors. The process of understanding, raised to the highest
pitch, involves by its very nature also reproduction of what is
understood. The complex of the ideas and associations of the
persons of the play is ideally reproduced. Are not the organic
reactions belonging to these set up too?--not directly, in
response to a situation in which the spectator may act, but
directly, by reproduction of the mental contents of one who
may act, the person of the drama. The final answer to this
question contains, to my mind, the whole kernel of the dramatic
mystery, and the starting-point for an aesthetic theory of
tragedy.
IV
Every play contains at least two actors. The suggestion of
states of mind does not come from the hero alone, but is given
by two persons, or groups of persons, at once. These persons
are, normally, in conflict. Othello menaces, Desdemona shrinks;
Nora asserts her right, Hilmar his claim; L'Aiglon vaunts his
inherited personality, Metternich--holds the candle to the
mirror! But what of the spectator? He cannot at once shrink
and menace, assert and deny, as the conditions of sympathetic
reproduction would seem to demand. Real emotion implies a
definite set of reactions of the nature of movements; and two
opposed movements cannot take place at the same time. Ideas,
however, can dwell together in amity. The spectator has a
vivid picture of Othello and Desdemona together; but his
reactions have neutralized each other, and his emotions, lacking
their organic conditions, are in abeyance.
This is the typical dramatic moment, for it is the one which
is alone characteristic of the drama. Only in the simultaneous
realization of two opposing forces is the full mutual checking
of emotional impulses possible, and it is only in this
simultaneous realization that the drama differs from all other
forms of art. When the two antagonistic purposes are actually
presented to the onlooker in the same moment of time, then alone
can be felt the vividness of realization, the tension of conflict,
the balance of emotion, the "alleviation" of the true Katharsis!
But what is this? No emotion after all, when the very traditional
test of our enjoyment of a play is the amount of feeling it
arouses!--when hearts beat, hands clench, tears flow! Emotion
there is, it may not be denied; but not the sympathetic emotions
of the traditional theory.
What emotion? The mutual checking of impulses in a balance, a
tension, a conflict which is yet a bond; and this it is which
is the clue to the excitement or exaltation which in the dramatic
experience usurps the place of definite feeling. We have met
this phenomenon before. Aesthetic emotion in general, we have
heard, consists just in the union of a kind of stimulation or
enhanced life, with repose; a heightening of the vital energies
unaccompanied by any tendency to movement,--in short, that
gathering of forces which we connect with action, and which is
felt the more because action is checked. Just such a repose
through equilibrium of impulses is given by the dramatic conflict.
Introspection makes assurance doubly sure. The tense exaltation
of the typical aesthetic experience, undirected, unlimited, pure
of personal or particular reference, is reproduced in this
nameless ecstasy of the tragic drama. The mysterious Katharsis,
the emotion of tragedy, is, then, a special type of the unique
aesthetic emotion.
And it is the singular peculiar characteristic of the drama--
the face to face confrontation of forces--which furnishes these
conditions. As we might have foreseen, the peculiar Katharsis,
or pleasurable disappearance or alleviation of emotion in
tragedy, is based on just those elements in which the drama
differs from other forms of art. Confrontation, and not action,
as the dramatic principle, is the important deduction from our
theory;--is, indeed, but the objective aspect of it.
The view of confrontation as the dramatic principle is confirmed
by dramatic literature. We emphasize in our study of Greek plays
their simplicity of plot, their absence of intrigue, their
sculptural, bas-relief quality. The Greek drama makes of a poem
a crisis, says M. Faguet. A tragedy is a well-composed group,
a fine contrast, a beautiful effect of imposing symmetry--as
in the "Antigone," "on one side civil law in all its blind
rigor, on the other moral law in all its splendor." The only
element in common with the modern type is found in the conflict
of wills. Could such a play as the "Suppliants" of Euripedes
find any aesthetic justification, save that it has the one
dramatic essential--confrontation, balance of emotions? The
very scenes of short speeches, of objurgation or sententious
repartee, which cannot but have for us an element of the
grotesque, must have been as pleasing as they were to the Greek
audience, from the fact that they brought to sharpest vision
the confrontation of the two antagonists. The mediaeval drama,
which has become popularly known in "Everyman," is nothing but
a succession of duels, material or spiritual. It is indeed the
two profiles confronting one another, our sympathy balanced,
and suspended, as it were, between them, which characterize our
recollections of this whole great field. The modern critics and
comparers of English and French drama are fond of contrasting
the full, rich, even prodigal characterization, rhetorical and
lyrical beauty of the Shakespearean drama with the cold, clear,
logical, but resistless movement of the French. Yet the contrast
is not quite that between characterization and form; the essential
form is common to both. In the first place, Elizabethan drama
was platform drama--that is, by the testimony of contemporaries,
little concerned with anything but the succession of more or less
unconnected scenes between two or three persons. And we see
clearly that the great dramatic power of "Hamlet," for instance,
must lie, not in the movement of a wavering purpose, but in the
separate scenes of his struggle, each one wonderfully rich, vivid,
balanced, but almost a unit in itself. On the theory that the
true dramatic form is logical progress, dramatic--as contrasted
with literary--power would have to be denied to "Hamlet." The
aesthetic meaning of "Lear" is not in the terrible retribution
of pride and self-will, but in the cruel confrontation of father
and daughters.
This is no less true of the first great French plays. It is
certainly not the resistless movement of the intrigue which
makes the "Misanthrope," "Tartufe," the "Precieuses Ridicules,"
masterpieces of comedy as well as of literature. Their dramatic
value lies in their piquancy of confrontation. The tug-of-war
between Alceste and Celimene, between Rodrigue and Chimene in
"Le Cid," is what we think of as dramatic; and it is this same
element which is found as well in the complicated and overflowing
English plays. And in modern French drama, for all its "logic,"
the dominating factor is the "scene a faire,"--what I have called
the scene of confrontation. The notoriously successful scene in
the English drama of to-day, the duel of Sophy and Lord Quex--
tolerably empty of real feeling or significance though it is--
becomes successful merely through the consummate handling of
the face-to-face element. Only by admitting this aesthetic
moment of arrest can we allow dramatic value to such a play as
"Les Affaires sont les Affaires"--a truly static drama. The
hero of this is, in the words of a reviewer, "essentially the
same force in magnitude and direction from the rise to the fall
of the curtain. It does not move; it is we who are taken around
it so that we may see its various facets. It is not moulded by
the successive incidents of the play, but only disclosed by
them; sibi constat." Yet we cannot deny to the play dramatic
power; and the reason for this is, as I believe, because it
does, after all, possess the dramatic essential--not action, but
tension.
V
It will be demanded, however, what place there is then for a
temporal factor, if the typical dramatic experience depends upon
the great scene? It cannot be denied that the drama is a work
of art developed in time, like music and poetry. It comes to a
climax and a resolution; it evolves its harmonies like the
symphony, in irrevocable order. We cannot afford to neglect,
in such an aesthetic analysis, what is an undoubted element in
dramatic effect, the so-called inevitable march of events. In
answer to this objection we may hold that the temporal factor
is a corollary of the primary demand for confrontation. It is
necessary that the confrontation or conflict should be vividly
imagined, with all possible associative reinforcements--that
it should be brought up to the turn of the screw, as it were.
For this, then, motivation is absolutely necessary. An attitude
is only clearly "realized" when it is made to seem inevitable.
It takes complete possession of our minds only when it inhibits
all other possibilities. At any given scene, the power of a
part to reproduce itself in us is measured by the convincing
quality given it by motivation, and for this there must be a
full body of associations to draw on, to round out and complete
understanding. The villain of the play is, for instance, less
completely "suggested" to us, because our associations are
supposedly less rich for such characters; as a beggar hypnotized
and made to feel himself a king has meagre mental equipment for
the part. Now, this inner possession can come about only
through the compelling force of a long course of preparation.
In providing such an accumulation of impulses, none was greater
than the younger Dumas--and none had to be greater! To make
his audience accept--that is, identify itself with--the action
of the hero in "Denise," or the mother's decision in "Les Idees
de Mms. Aubray," so subversive of general social feeling, and
thereby to experience fully the great dramatic moment in each
play, there had to go the effect of innumerable small impulses.
And to realize some situations is even beyond the scope of a
play's development. It is an acute remark of Mr. G.K.
Chesterton's, that many plays nowadays turn on problems of
marriage: which subject is one for slow years of adjustment,
patience, adaptation, endeavor; while the drama requires quick
decisions, bouleversements, etc., and would do wisely to
confine itself to fields in which such bouleversements can be
made credible. At any rate, motivation is desirable for the
dramatic confrontation, and time--the working-out--is an
essential condition of motivation. To make the dramatic
conflict ever sharper and deeper, until it either melts into
harmony, or ceases through the destruction of one element, is
the whole duty of the development, and makes it necessary.
That development is temporal, is, dramatically, only a device
for damming the flood that it may break at last with greater
force.
This, too, is an answer to the objection that if confrontation
is the dramatic essential, bare opposition, because the clearest
confrontation, would be the greatest drama, and the "Suppliants"
of Euripedes be indeed an example of it. Bare opposition is
never real confrontation in our sense, for that must be an
arrest, a mutual antagonism of all impulses of soul and sense.
It must possess the whole man. It needs to take in "all
thoughts, all passions, all delights," to be complete, and the
measure of its completeness is the measure of its aesthetic
value.
In the same way, the demand for profound truth and significance
in the drama is clearly to be reached from the purely dramatic
need. Inner "possession," the condition for our dramatic
tension, depends not alone on the cumulation of suggestions--
suggestion in its, so to speak, quantitative aspect. The
attitude of a character must be necessary in itself: that is,
it must be true to the great and general laws of life. If it
is fundamentally false, even with the longest and completest
preparation, it rings hollow. We cannot completely enter
into it. Thus we see that the one central requirement, the
dramatic germ, leads to the most far-reaching demands for
logic, sanity, and morality in the ideas of a play.
This should not be interpreted as exhausting the aesthetic
value of logic and morality in the drama. The drama is a
species of literature: and these qualities, apart from the
fact that they are necessary to the full dramatic moment,
have also an aesthetic effect proper to themselves. Thus
the development ha the beauty which lies in a necessary
progress; but this beauty is common to the epic, the novel,
and the symphony, while the unity given by the confrontation
and tension of simultaneous forces belongs to the drama alone.
It is therefore development as serving the dramatic end that
I have deduced.
Yet we may well recall here the other aspect of the experience.
Analogous to the pleasure in rhythm and in music, in which the
awaited beat or tone slips, as it were, into a place already
prepared for it, with the satisfaction of harmonious nervous
adjustment, is the pleasure in an inevitable and irrevocable
progress. For it is not felt as inevitable unless the whole
crystallization of the situation makes such, and only such,
an action or thought necessary at a certain point in the
structure, makes it to a certain extent anticipated, and so
recognized with acclaim on its appearance. We will an event
in anticipating and accepting it; and we realize it as it
comes. Nothing more is to be found in the psychological
analysis of the will itself--theoretically, the two states
are nearly identical. Thus this continual anticipation and
"coming true" takes on the feeling-tone of all volition; and
so in music, as I have shown at length, and in drama, and to
a degree in all forms of literature, we have the illusion of
the triumphant will. This is the secret of that creative joy
felt by the spectator at a drama, which has been so often
noted. It is this illusion of the triumphant will, too, which
enters largely into our acceptance of the tragic end. Much
has been said, in the "dispute over tragedy," of the so-called
"Resignation" of the tragic hero, and of the audience in relation
to his fate. But I believe that these writers are wrong in
connecting this resignation primarily with a moral attitude.
What is foreseen as perfectly inevitable, is sufficiently
"accepted" in the psychological sense--that is, vividly imagined
and awaited,--to contribute to this illusion of volition. Hence
arise, for the catastrophe of drama, that exaltation and stern
joy which are indissolubly connected with the experience of
will in real life.
VI
We have spoken of the dramatic, and have desired to show that
its peculiar aesthetic experience arises out of the tension or
balance of emotion in the confrontation of opposing forces. If
this is a fruitful theory, it should throw light on the
distinction between the different forms of the drama, and on
the principal issues of that "Dispute over Tragedy" which is
always with us.
The possible results of a meeting of two forces are these.
Both forces, or one force, may be destroyed; or, short of
destruction, the two may melt into harmony, or one may give
way before the other. I think it may be said that these
alternatives represent the distinctions of Tragedy and Comedy.
When two aims are absolutely irreconcilable, and when the forces
tending to them are important,--that is, powerful,--there must
be somewhere destruction, and we have tragedy. When they are
reconcilable, if they are important, we have serious comedy;
when not important, or not envisaged as important, we have
light comedy. Thus Tragedy and Comedy are closely related,--
more closely than we are prone to think. In the words of the
late Professor Everett, in "Poetry, Comedy, and Duty:" "The
tragic is, like the comic, simply the incongruous. The great
Tragedy of Nature, which is called the Struggle for Existence,
results simply from a greater or less incongruousness between
any form of life and its surroundings....The comic is found
in an incongruous relation considered merely as to its FORM,
while the tragic is found in an incongruous relation taken as
to its reality." For this word incongruity I would substitute
collision or conflict. When there is no way out, we have
Tragedy; when there is a way out, we have Comedy. And when
things are taken superficially enough, there always is a way
out, for we can at least always agree to disagree. In any case,
the end of the conflict is a period, repose, unity. This seems
to be borne out by immediate introspection. The feelings with
which we come from a great tragedy or a great comedy are indeed
almost identical. The excitement, tension, sunk into repose,
are common to both; the satisfaction with a good ending is
strangely paralleled by our resignation to a bad one,--
significant of our real indifference to the fact, so long as
the Aesthetic Unity is reached.
In George Meredith's wonderful little essay on the Comic Spirit,
this view is rather remarkably confirmed. He has defined
Comedy as the contrast of the middle way, the way of common
sense, with our human vagaries, "Comme un point fixe fait
remarquer l'emportement des autres." Comedy, he says, teaches
the world to understand what ails it...."Comedy is the fountain
of sound sense," and again, "the use of the true comedy is to
awaken thoughtful laughter." "Men's future upon earth does
not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present
does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown,
affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic,
fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or
hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into
vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly,
plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their
professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws
binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they
offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or
moved with conceit, individually or in the bulk--the Spirit
overhead will look humorously malign and cast an oblique light
on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is
the Comic Spirit." The Comic Spirit is the just common sense,
the subconscious wisdom of the ages. There IS a golden mean,
the Comic Spirit shows it to us in the light of our flashing
laughter at the deviation therefrom. And because there is,
even the unreconciled--reconcilable--difference or conflict
is not serious. That is why true Comedy seems to find its
best field in a developed social life. The incongruities of
human nature hurt is they are pressed too deep, because they
are irreconcilable; they too quickly edge the tragic gulf.
But the incongruities of the conventional life do not hurt
when pressed. To change our metaphor, adjustment to the
middle way is here so easily credible and possible, that it
is the very hunting-ground for the Comic Spirit.
The reputed masterpiece of Moliere shows us Alceste and Celimene
in the end still at odds. But light-heartedness and sincerity
are not to common sense incompatible, and thus we are rightly
led up to the impasse by paths of laughter. Wherever the
middle way is divined, there is the possible entrance of the
Spirit of Comedy. It is certainly a detriment to the purely
Tragic effect of Pinero's greatest play, that the middle way,
the possibility of reconciliation, is shadowed forth in the
last word,--the cry of the stepdaughter of the Second Mrs.
Tanqueray, "If I had only been more merciful!" Dumas fils
would never have allowed that. He would have written his play
around that thought, and made it indeed a reconciling drama--
or he would have suppressed the cry. The end of Romeo and
Juliet--date I confess it?--has always hovered for me close
to that border which is not sublime. For the hapless lovers
missed all for want of a little common sense. There was naught
inevitable in their plight. I see the Comic Spirit leaning
across to stay the hand of the impetuous Romeo. Why not take
a moment's sober thought? she murmurs.
Tragedy ensues when there is no way out. It is not that ruin
or death for those in whom these forces are embodied is of the
essence of the situation; only that in the complete destruction
of a force or purpose when it has been embodied in a strong
desperate character, the death of that character is usually
involved. There is no solution but to cut the knot. The
tragic has been defined as "that quality of experience whereby,
in and through some serious collision, followed by fatal
catastrophe or inner ruin, something valuable in personality
becomes manifest, either as sublime or admirable in the hero,
or as triumph of an idea." But "Lear," "Macbeth," "Hamlet,"
"Oedipus King," "Othello," exist to contravene this view. No,
the tragic (in its first sense, in the sense derived from the
dramatic form from which it is named) is in the collision
itself; it is the profound and, to our vision, the irreconcilable
antagonism of different elements in life. And in life we
accept it because we must; we transcend it because, as moral
beings, we may. The sublime in actual tragic experience is the
reaction of the unconquerable Soul. In tragic literature
another appears. We are helped in transcending the essential
contradictions of life presented to us, because the conditions
of literature in "preparing" an event create for us the illusion
of volition, the acceptance of fate. And in the tragic drama,
to all these elements of the complex experience, there is added
the exaltation of the aesthetic "arrest," the tension of
confrontations.
The question of the "highest" or "most tragic" form of tragedy
seems to have been settled by general agreement. It has been
held that the tragic of the justified opposing force is the
more full of meaning and importance, for the reason that more
interesting and complex feelings are called into play on each
side than in the case of the unjustified opposing force. But
the definition of the tragic drama we have won seems further
to illuminate our undoubted preference for this type. We
demand aesthetically all that will make the confrontation,
the dramatic tension, more clearly felt; and we cannot realize
fully a side which should be unjustified. In such a play as
Maeterlinck's "Aglavaine and Selysette" there is no movement,
and even the conflict is subterranean; yet, as all the
characters are in their way noble, and in their way justified,
we find it among the most poignant of his plays. Nay, more,
in any situation the more nearly the conflict is shown to be
absolutely inevitable, arising out of the very nature of life
as we know it,--completely justified, or at least FELT as
inevitable on both sides,--the more are we shaken by the
distinctive tragic emotion. The conflict of duties to one's
self and to the world is the sharpest of tragedies. Luther,
as Freytag well shows, is a really tragic figure from the
moment when we conceive of the inner connection of his
intolerance with all that is good and great in his nature.
As the expression of such a conflict of impulses good in
themselves, "Magda" is a great tragedy than the "Joy of
Living;" "Ghosts" than "Hedda Gabler;" the story of "Francesca
Da Rimini" (I do not mean D'Annunzio's play) than "La Citta
Morta."
What, then, shall be said of the so-called tragic "Guilt," in
which the hero rushes on impiously to his doom? It is clear
that this question is closely related to the much-debated
"Greatness" of the tragic hero. If there is guilt, there must
be also greatness, to impress that side of the canvas on our
vision. It is, indeed, almost a quantitative problem.
Strength, energy, depth of passion, breadth of vision, power
and place, ravish our attention and our unconscious imitation.
What is lacking in extensity of associative reproduction must
be added in intensity. And, in fact, we find that it is the
giants who bear the tragic "Schuld." Hamlet is not guilty;
rather "one like ourselves," in Aristotle's phrase, and
therefore he need not be great. I agree with Volkelt's view
that even the traditional tremendous will of the tragic hero
may be dispensed with. No doubt it is most often strength
of will which brings out the original conflict. But that
conflict once given, as it is given, for example, in "Hamlet,"
the main point is to increase the weight of each side, which
can indeed be done by other elements of greatness. On the
other hand, I disagree with Volkelt's reason for thus
exempting will, which is, that the contrast feeling of "how
great a fall was there" may be given by other qualities in
the hero than that of will. As I have urged, it is not the
catastrophe which is of the tragic essence, and therefore
not for the sake of the catastrophe that we should marshal
our elements. The climax of tragedy and of our feeling is
in the deadlock of forces, and whatever is not absolutely
essential thereto may be done without.
VII
The phenomenon of our aesthetic reaction on the so-called
painful experiences of the drama has then been discussed at
length and accounted for. There is an undoubted emotional
experience of great intensity; and yet that emotion turns
out to be not the emotion IN the drama, but rather the
emotion FROM the drama,--a unique independent emotion of
tension, otherwise a form of the characteristic aesthetic
emotion with which we have been before engaged. The playwright
who scornfully rejects the spectator supposed to be aesthetic,
ideally contemplative and emotionally indifferent, is
vindicated. There must be a vivid emotional effect, but it
is the spectator's very own, and not a copy of the hero's
emotion, because it is the product of the essential form of
the drama itself, the confrontation of forces.
Secondly, that confrontation of forces has revealed itself
as indeed essential. This is not the time-honored view of
tragedy as collision, which has been arrived at simply by
observing that great tragic dramas are mostly collisions,
making the drama a picture thereof, but not explaining why
it must be such. I have tried, on the contrary, to show that confrontation is a necessary product of the bare form of
dramatic representation,--two people face to face. But if
this bare form or scheme of confrontation is understood and
interpreted as profoundly as possible, then all the other characteristics of the tragic drama are seen to flow from it;
and thus for the first time to be really explained by being
accounted for. The tragic drama not only is, but must be,
collision, because confrontation, understood as richly as
possible, must be collision. It must be "inevitable," and
it must have movement, because only so is the confrontation
reinforced.
In brief, others have said that the drama, or tragedy, is
conflict, the perfect opposition of two forces. We should
rather say that the drama is first of all picture, living
representation of colloquy; as such, it is balance,
confrontation; and confrontation to its ideal degree of
intensity is conflict. No drama can dispense with picture;
and so no drama is free from the obligation to add unto itself
these other qualities also. The acting play is the play of
confrontations.
VIII
THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS
VIII
THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS
I
THE Idea of Beauty has been greatly widened since the age of
Plato. Then, it was only in order, proportion, unity in
variety, that beauty was admitted to consist; to-day we hold
that the moderns have caught a profounder beauty, the beauty
of meanings, and we make it matter for rejoicing that nothing
is too small, too strange, or too ugly to enter, through its
power of suggestion, the realm of the aesthetically valuable;
and that the definition of beauty should have been extended
to include, under the name of Romantic, Symbolic, Expressive,
or Ideal Beauty, all of the elements of aesthetic experience,
all that emotionally stirs us in representation. But while
this view is a natural development, it is not of necessity
unassailable; and it is open to question whether the addition
of an independent element of expression to the older definition
of beauty can be justified by its consequences for art.
Such an inquiry, however, cannot stop with the relation of the
deeper meanings of modern art to the conception of beauty. It
must go further and find out what elements, the sensuous form
or the ideas that are bound up with it, in a work of art, of
the classical as well as of the idealistic type, really
constitute its aesthetic value. What is it that makes the
beauty of the "Venus of Milo"? Is it the pose and the modeling,
or the idea of the eternal feminine that it expresses to us?
What is it that makes the beauty of St. Mark's or of Giotto's
tower? the relation of the lines and masses or the sacred
significance of the edifices they go to form? What is it that
makes the beauty of the Ninth Symphony? the perfection of the
melodic sequence, or the Hymn of Joy, the message from the
Infinite which they are meant to utter?
The antithesis between these two points of view is, of course,
not the same as that other antithesis between "art for art's
sake" and art in the light of its moral meanings and effects.
What we now call romantic or expressive art can certainly be
made the more fruitful in moral suggestions; but this fact
bears not at all on the question of what belongs fundamentally
to the nature of beauty. We know, moreover, that on this
matter the camps of the formalists and the romanticists are
divided. The Greeks, the lovers of formal beauty, were so
alive to the moral effects of art that their theories were in
danger of being quite overwhelmed by this view. On the other
hand, the lovers of ideas in art, the natural enemies, as one
would have thought, of art for art's sake, have been most often
impatient of any consideration of its moral elements or effects.
This second question, then, of art as pleasure or as moral
influence can be once for all excluded from the discussion. So
far as yet appears, the issue is between form and expression.
There is, perhaps, some point of common agreement from which
to survey and distinguish more exactly these two diverging
tendencies. Such a coign of vantage is offered by the nature
of the aesthetic attitude,--for since Kant there has been among
aestheticians no essential difference of opinion on this point.
The aesthetic attitude, all agree, is disinterested. We care
for the image or appearance of the object, for the way its
form affects us, and not for the actual existence of the object
itself. If I delight aesthetically in a cluster of grapes, I
do not want to eat them, but only to enjoy their image, and my
feeling of pleasure, as aesthetic, would not be changed if
before me were only a mirage, an hallucination, or a picture.
It is just the pleasure in perception that appeals to me,--
therein both schools agree,--and the only matter at issue is
the question of what this disinterested pleasure of perception
includes. Is that pleasure bound up with the mechanisms of
perception itself, or does it come from the end of the process
and the ease with which it is reached,--from the IDEA, in the
contemplation of which we delight?
One school asserts that the real pleasure in perception comes
only from form. The given object is beautiful, through its
original qualities of line, color, or sound, which strike the
special senses in a way that is pleasing to them; and through
its combinations of these qualities, which affect the whole
human organism in a directly pleasurable way. What is outside
of the given object of art--is meant, suggested, or recalled
by it--belongs, it is said, to absolutely unaesthetic processes,
as is shown by the fact that many things, which we are the first
to acknowledge as ugly, are the exciting cause of great thoughts
and delightful associations. The opposed school maintains that
the meanings of a work of art are all that it exists for. The
presentation of an idea, by whatever sensuous means, so only
that they be transparent, and the joy of the soul in contemplating
this idea, must be the object and the end of art. The later
idealists admit value to the form only in so far a it may
express, convey, symbolize, or suggest the content, whether as
pure idea, or as a shadowing forth of the Divine World-Meaning.
These theories are certainly intelligible; but the results of
applying them with logical consistency are rather terrifying.
Andrew Lang says somewhere that the logical consequence of the
formal theory of art in all its nakedness would make Tennyson
the youth, Swinburne, and Edgar Poe the greatest poets of the
world, and those delicious effusions of Edward Lear, "The
Jumblies" and "On the Coast of Coromandel," masterpieces. Yet
if we allow the idealists to pass sentence, what shall become
of our treasures in "Kubla Khan," or "Ueber allen Gipfeln," or
"La Nuit de Decembre"? The results of such a judgment day
would be even more appalling to the true lover of poetry.
Moreover, if the idea, the end of art, need not reside in the
object itself, but may arise therefrom by subtle suggestion,
the complications of poetry or painting are unnecessary. A
geometric figure may remind us of the constitution of the
world of space, a sundial, of the transitoriness of human
existence, and with a "chorus-ending from Euripedes," the whole
sweep of the cosmic meanings is upon us. In the words of Fra
Lippo Lippi:--
"Why, for this,
What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or what's best,
A bell to chime the hours with, does as well."
II
In spite of this, however, a place for ideas must clearly be
found in our definition of beauty; and yet it must be so
limited and bound to the beautiful form that corollaries such
as we have just drawn will be impossible. An interesting
attempt to reconcile these two points of view--to establish
an organic relation between form and idea--is found in "The
Sense of Beauty" by Professor George Santayana. The central
point of this writer's theory is his definition of beauty as
the objectification of pleasure. Aesthetic experience, he
says, is based partly on form, partly on expression, but the
pleasure felt is always projected into the object, and is
felt as a quality of it. All kinds of external associations
may connect themselves with the work of art, but so long as
they remain external, and keep, so to speak, their values
for themselves, they cannot be said to add beauty to the
object. But when they are present only in their effect,--
a diffused feeling of pleasure,--that diffused feeling is
attributed directly to the object, is felt as if it inheres
therein, and so the object becomes more beautiful, for beauty
is objectified pleasure. Professor Santayana designates form
as beauty in the first term, and expression as beauty in the
second term. Beauty in the first term can exist alone,--not
so beauty in the second term. It must have a little beauty
of the first term to graft itself upon. "A map, for instance,
is not usually thought of as an aesthetic object, and yet,
let the tints of it be a little subtle, let the lines be a
little delicate, and the masses of land and sea somewhat
balanced, and we really have a beautiful thing, the charm of
which consists almost entirely in its meaning.
Now here, it seems to me, is a weak point in Professor
Santanaya's armor. If such wonderful elements of beauty can
be projected into a fairly colorless object by virtue of its
fringe of suggestiveness, why should not beauty of the second
term be felt in objects without that little bit of intrinsic
worth of form? Is not such indeed the fact? What else is
the meaning of the story of "Beauty and the Beast"? The squat
and hideous Indian idol, the scarabaeus, the bit of Aztec
pottery, become attractive and desired for themselves by virtue
of their halo of pleasure from dim associations. And all these
values are felt as completely OBJECTIFIED, and so fulfill the
requirements for "beauty in the second term." That small
amount of intrinsic beauty on which to graft the beauty of the
second term is, therefore, not a necessary condition, so that
we are left, on Professor Santayana's theory, with the strange
paradox of so-called beautiful objects which are, nevertheless,
confessedly ugly.
What, then, is the flaw in this definition? While we concede
the objectification of pleasure in all these cases, we cannot,
it would seem, admit a corresponding change from non-aesthetic
to aesthetic feelings. The personal attitude towards an object,
based on sentiments objectified in it, and the aesthetic
attitude are two different things. The truth is, that all this
objectified tone-feeling is directly dependent on the original
real existence of the object that calls it up, and on our
practical personal relation to it, and is thus, by universal
agreement, definitely non-aesthetic. I enjoy the cast of the
great Venus very nearly as much as the original,--but who cares
for casts of the Aztec gods, or of the prehistoric carvings of
the reindeer period? Who wants an imitation scarabaeus? To
have the real thing, to see it, to touch it, to know that it
has had real experiences that would fill me with wonder and with
awe, "to love it for the danger it has passed,"--to feel that
I myself am through it actually linked with its mysterious
history,--that is the value it has for me; not a pleasure of
perception at all, but a very definite, practical interest in
my own personality. If the pleasure lay only in disinterested
perception, any representation of the object ought to have the
same value.
What, then, the author of "The Sense of Beauty" calls "the
beauty of the second term,"--the power to suggest feeling
through the medium of associated ideas,--we may deny to impart
any aesthetic character whatever. Professor Santayana has,
indeed, mediated between the formalists and the idealists;
but his theory would lead us to attributions of beauty from
which common sense revolts; and we have seen the secret of its
deficiency to lie in the confusion of the personal with the
aesthetic attitude. If now we amend his definition, "Beauty
is objectified pleasure," to "Beauty is objectified aesthetic
pleasure," we are advanced no further.
III
The problem stands, then: how to provide for the presence of
ideas in the work of art, and the definite emotions aroused by
it, either by bringing them somehow into the definition of beauty
in itself, or by showing how their presence is related to the
full aesthetic experience. But, first of all, we have to ask
how the aesthetic pleasure even in formal beauty is constituted,
and to what extent expression belongs to the beauty of pure
form. Form is impressive, or directly beautiful, through its
harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of
sight and hearing, and through the harmony of its combinations
of suggestions and impulses with the entire organism. I enjoy
a well-composed picture like Titian's "Sacred and Profane Love,"
because the good composition means such a balanced relation of
impulses of attention, of incipient movements, as harmonizes
with such an organism as mine, tending to move toward both
sides, and yet unified and stable; and because the combination
of colors is at once stimulating and soothing to my eyes. So
much for IMPRESSION, beauty of the first term. But it is not
only that harmonious state of my visual and motor functions
that I get out of the form of a picture. No, I have, besides
all this pleasure, a real exhilaration or emotion, a definite
mood of repose or gayety or triumph, without any fringe of
association, which yet certainly contributes to my feeling of
the beauty of the experience, and so of the work of art. How
did it come out of the form?
Well, this very harmonious excitation of the organism has
brought with it just such an organic reverberation as, the
current theory of emotion asserts, must be at the bottom of
all our emotional states. A certain sequence of nervous shocks
and of vasomotor changes, certain stimulations and relations
and contractions of the internal organs have been set up as the
"diffusive wave" from the sense-stimulations, and a particular
emotional tinge is the result. That is a direct impression,
but an expression too. Take the same case on a much lower
level. A glass of wine makes me cheerful, not because it
arouses cheerful ideas directly, but because the organic changes
it sets up are such as belong to the MOTIVATED expression of
joy, and have the same effect. A deep, slow movement played by
an orchestra can affect me in two ways. It may be that I have
usually connected that sort of music with religious experiences,
and all the profound and inspiring feelings belonging thereto;
and so I transfer those feelings to the music and give it those
adjectives. Or the slowness of the rhythmic pulse that is set
up in me, the largeness, the volume, the depth of sound, all
bring about in me the kind of nervous state that belongs to a
reposeful and yet deeply moved feeling. The second experience
is expression through impression, through the inward changes
that the form itself sets up. The first is expression through
the medium of something external,--an idea which brings with it
a feeling,--something that does not belong to the music itself,
but to my own individual experiences.
This distinction between internal and external expressiveness
is perfectly clear for music, and also for architecture. In
painting, too, it can easily be traced. We know the effect
that is produced by broken lines, by upward moving ones,--like
the "always aspiring" of the Gothic cathedral. The low-lying,
wide expanses of some of the old Dutch landscapists give us
repose, not because they remind us of the peaceful happiness
of the land, but because we cannot melt ourselves into all
those horizontal lines without that restful feeling which
accompanies such relaxation; and our emotion is read into the
picture as AESTHETIC pleasure, because it came out of the
abstract forms,--the PAINTING in the picture.
The beauty of form is thus seen to be inseparably allied with
a certain degree of emotional expressiveness in a way that
does not distract, like the association of ideas, from the
pure aesthetic experience. This quality of expressiveness
should not, however, become a part of the definition of beauty,
so that it should be said that the greater the emotional
expressiveness, the more beautiful the object. For if that
were true, such music, for instance, as all acknowledge quite
mediocre, would be felt as most beautiful by those who find in
it a strong and definite emotion; and a Strauss waltz, which
makes us more merry than one by Mendelssohn, should be in so
far more beautiful. This, of course, we are not ready to
concede; and it seems, therefore, most logical to regard the
special emotional effects of formal beauty rather as a corollary
to, than as a part of, the essential aesthetic mood. But if we
give the name emotion to that perfectly vague but unmistakable
excitement with which we respond to purely formal beauty,--that
indescribable exaltation with which we listen to "absolute"
music,--then we must say that that emotion is but another name
for aesthetic pleasure. Objectively, we have formal beauty;
subjectively, on the physiological side, a harmonious action
of the organism, and on the mental side the undefined exaltation
which is known as aesthetic pleasure.
IV
Up to this point, however, we have considered only the relation
between purely formal beauty and the various shades of emotional
response to it; now we may turn to the original question which
we set ourselves, how to provide, in our definition of beauty,
for the presence of ideas in the work of art. No one will deny
that the full aesthetic experience cannot be dismissed with the
treatment of formal beauty; and, although Professor Santayana's
"beauty in the second term" may be rejected as a pure individual,
arbitrary, interested, and hence unaesthetic element, the
explicit content of a work of art cannot be ignored. The
suggested ideas aroused by an old rose garden may be no addition
to its beauty, but the same cannot be said of the great ideas
contained directly in Shakespeare's poetry. Yet great ideas
alone do not make great art, else we must count Aristotle and
Spinoza and Kant great poets too. Must we then be satisfied to
rest in the dualism of those who maintain that great creations
of art are the expression of great truths under the laws of
poetic form? Is the aesthetic expression indeed the recognition
of truth plus the feeling of beauty of form, or is it a fusion
of these into a third undivided pulse of aesthetic emotion? Is
there no way of overcoming, for those arts which do express
ideas, this dualism of form and content in our theory of the
beautiful?
Let us analyze a little more closely this notion of the content.
Music and architecture cannot properly be said to have any
content, although they have a meaning according to their uses,
like a funeral dirge and a hymn of joy, a prison and a temple.
But this meaning is extraneous. It is given by the work itself
only in so far as the form induces the emotion which belongs to
the idea,--as the dirge, sadness; the temple, awe. The idea of
burial or of worship is nowhere to be found in the work of art.
In the hierarchy of arts, paining and sculpture show the first
trace of a content. This content, however, is at once seen to
be susceptible of farther analysis. The "Sistine Madonna"
pictures a mother and child worshiped, which may be called the
subject,--but this does not exhaust the content. The real
meaning of the picture, to which may be given the name of THEME,
is the divine element in maternal love. The subjects of
Donatello's "John the Baptist" and "Saint George," of Michael
Angelo's "David" and "Moses," can be described only as men of
Different types in different attitudes; their themes, however,
are moral ideas, expressing the moral significance of each
personality. The subject of "The Angelus" is given in its
name; its theme is humble piety. From the infinite number of
possible examples one more will suffice,--the well-known "War"
by Franz Stuck, in the Neue Pinacothek,--the subject a youth,
under a lurid sky, trampling under his horse's feet the bodies
of the slain. The theme is again a moral idea,--the horrors of
war.
If we now ask whether we can attribute beauty to the ideas of
painting and sculpture, a negative answer is at once suggested.
It is manifestly impossible to establish an order of aesthetic
excellence between these subjects. The idea of peasants telling
their beads is more beautiful than the idea of a ruthless
destroyer only in so far as it is morally higher; and this
distinction, therefore, has reference to the theme and not to
the subject. How far, however, moral and aesthetic excellence
are coincident is a question for which we are not yet ready.
At this point we care only to point out that the mere idea of
a picture is neither aesthetic nor the reverse.
But, it may be objected, is not our first thought in stopping
before a picture like the "War," "What a wonderful idea"? It
is the idea and not the form which strikes us, it may be said,
even though we may be quite unimpressed by the value of its
moral significance. Nevertheless, this view of our own mental
processes may be held to the illusory. What really strikes us
is the UNITY of the conception. The lurid sky, the dark, livid
faces of the dead--the whole color scheme, in short, is so
contrived as to impress directly, as previously explained,
without the medium of an idea, with that particular tinge of
emotional tone which ought to be also the accompaniment of the
idea of the horrors of war. The emotion is thus the enveloping
unity which binds the subject and theme and the pictorial form
together. In this sense, when we say, "What a wonderful idea!"
we really mean, what a wonderful fitness of form to idea,--
which is the same as saying, what a wonderful form, or more
technically, what a wonderful unity. That part of the effect
of beauty in a picture which is due to the idea is thus the
fundamental but merely abstract element of unity, contributing
to the complex aesthetic state only the simplest condition.
The case of literature presents an entirely new problem, for
the material of literature is itself, first of all, idea.
Literature deals with words, and words exist only by virtue of
their meanings. Even the sound of words is of importance
primarily for the additional meanings which it suggests, as the
word liquid first means a fluid substance, and then by its
sound suggests ease and smoothness, and only last of all is
noted as melodious. Thus since meanings, ideas, are the
material of literature, we can speak of the beauty of ideas
in literature only by an artificial sundering of elements that
are properly in fusion. Yet as we may speak of a motive or
musical idea and its working out, although strictly the idea
involves its own working out, so we may conceive of the central
thought of a literary work, and of its development. But the
relation here is not of content and form, like the content and
form of a picture; rather that of concentrated and diluted
form. So, too, as in music, we may distinguish form and
structure. Structure is offered to the intellect--it clears
and vivifies understanding; it is not felt, it is perceived.
Anything which is made up of parts--beginning, middle, and end,
climax and resolution--possesses structure. But form in the
intimate sense is the intrinsic, inevitable relation of cause
and effect; in this sense, it is seen to be truly content also.
In literature, as to structure, it is the relation of parts:
as to form, it is the succession of events, the movement,
combination and resolution of separate ideas and emotions,
which give us aesthetic pleasure or the reverse. As action
must follow excitement, or despair satiety, so the relation
of parts, the order of presentation, must be adapted to mutual
reinforcement. Thus the porter's scene in "Macbeth" is related
to the neighboring scenes, as De Quincey has shown in his famous
essay. And just as in music the feeling of "rightness" ensues
when the awaited note slips into place, so the feeling of
"rightness" comes when the inevitable consequences follow the
premise of a plot.
The particular separate ideas of such a development partake of
beauty, then, in so far as they minister to the movement of the
whole, just as the separate lines in a swaying, swirling robe
of one of Botticelli's women minister to the whole conception.
The catastrophe, in other words, must be as inevitably related
to the sequence of ideas as the final chords of a symphony to
the sequence of notes. The attitude of mind with which we
welcome it is the same, whether on the plane of the responses
of the psychological organism or of the ideal understanding.
V
But before finally relegating the idea to its place in the
aesthetic scheme, we must ask whether the specific emotional
content can claim independent aesthetic value; for we can
scarcely ignore the fact that almost all naive response to
literature, and indeed to all forms of art, is, or is believed
to be, specifically emotional. Maupassant, in his introduction
to "Pierre et Jean," distinguishes thus between the demand of
the critic--"Make me something fine according to your temperament,"
--and the cry of the public--"Move me, terrify me, make we weep!"
And yet to the assertion of common sense that the desire of the
naive enjoyer of art is definite emotional excitement, we may
venture to oppose a negative. The average person who weeps at
the theatre, or over a novel, would no doubt repudiate the
suggestion that it is not primarily the emotion of terror, or
pity, that he feels. But a closer interpretation shows that
it is almost impossible to disengage, in such an experience, the
particular emotions. What is felt is rather pleasurable excitement,
pleasure raised to the pitch of exaltation, with a fringe of
emotional association. The notion of specific emotions is
illusory in the same sense that our notion of pleasure from
specific emotions in listening to music is illusory. The ordinary
descriptions of music are all couched in emotional or even
ideational terms,--from the musical adventures of "Charles
Auchester" down,--and yet we know, as Gurney says, that when, in
listening to music, we think we are yearning after the unutterable,
we are really yearning after the next note; and when we think it
is the yearning that gives us pleasure, it is really the triumphant
acceptance of the melodic rightness of that next note. So the
much-discussed Katharsis, or emotion of Tragedy, is not the
experience of emotions and pleasure in that experience, but
rather pleasure in the experience of ideas, tinged with emotion,
which belong to each other with precisely that musical rightness.
Katharsis is indeed not the mark of Tragedy alone, although in
Tragedy it has a very great relative intensity; it is ultimately
only a designation for the specific aesthetic pleasure, to which
I can give no better name than the oft-repeated one of triumphant
acquiescence in the rightness of relations. We think we feel a
situation directly, but what we really feel is pleasure in the
rightness of the manner of the event, and in the moment of perfect
experience it gives us. Such specific emotion as may be detected
in any aesthetic experience is, then, covered by the definition
of beauty only in so far as it has become form rather than content,
--is valuable only in its relations rather than in itself. The
experience of pity or fear, even though generalized, unselfish,
etc.,--after the various formulas of the expounders of dramatic
emotion,--does not impart aesthetic character of itself; it
becomes aesthetic only if it appears at such a point in the
tragedy, linked in such a way to the developing plot, that it
belongs to the unified and reciprocally harmonious circle of
experiences.
VI
But we have up to this time consistently neglected the central
idea of the work of art, and its claim to be included in the
aesthetic formula. We have defined beauty as that which brings
about a state of harmonious completeness, of repose in activity,
in the psychophysical and psychological realms. This harmonious
repose can exist only with a disinterested attitude toward the
objects which have brought this state about. Whether the Melian
Venus or "Hamlet" or "Lohengrin" live, we care not; only that
if they live, it shall be SO. In this sense, our attitude is
interested, our will is active, but only toward the existence
of the form. But with the introduction of the central theme, we
cease to be disinterested,--our hypothetical is changed to an
affirmative. The moral idea we must accept or reject, for it
bears a direct relation to our personality. We will, or do not
will, that, in the real world in which we ourselves have to live
and struggle, certain forces shall be operative,--that there
shall be the beauty of health, as in the "Discobolus;" material
love which is divine, as in the "Sistine Madonna;" that war shall
be horrible; that sloth unstriven against shall triumph over
love, as in "The Statue and the Bust;" that defiance of the
social organism shall involve self-destruction, as in "Anna
Karenina." The person or the combination of events expressing
this idea we do not seek in our personal experience, but we do
demand for our own a world in which this idea rules. Thus it
must be admitted that there is, strictly speaking, at the core
of every aesthetic response to a work of art containing an idea,
a non-aesthetic element, an element of personal and interested
judgment.
On the other hand, this affirmation or acceptance of a moral idea
implies the quietude of the will; just that state of harmony, of
repose, which we have found to be the mark of the aesthetic on
the lower planes of being. In so far, then, as we accept the
moral idea which a work of art presents, in so far that idea has
the power of bringing us to the state of harmony, and in so far
it is beautiful. And vice versa, works of art which leave us in
a state of moral rebellion are unbeautiful, not because they are
immoral, but because they are disturbing to the moral sense.
Literature which ignores the fundamental moral principle of the
freedom of the will, like the works of Flaubert, Maupassant, much
of Zola, Loti, and Thomas Hardy, fails of beauty, inasmuch as it
fails of the perfect reposeful harmony of human nature in its
entirety.
Thus a thoroughgoing analysis of the nature of the aesthetic
experience in its simplest and most sensuous form has given us
a principle,--the principle of unity in harmonious functioning,--
which has enabled us to follow the track of beauty into the more
complex realms of ideas and of moral attitudes, and to discover
that there also the law of internal relation and of fitness for
imitative response holds for all embodiments of beauty. That
harmonious, imitative response, the psychophysical state known
on its feeling side as aesthetic pleasure, we have seen to be,
first, a kind of physiological equilibrium, a "coexistence of
opposing impulses which heightens the sense of being while it
prevents action," like the impulses to movement corresponding
to geometrical symmetry; secondly, a psychological equilibrium,
in which the flow of ideas and impulses is a circle rounding
upon itself, all associations, emotions, expectations indissolubly
linked with the central thought and leading back only to it, and
proceeding in an irrevocable order, which it yet adapted to the
possibilities of human experience; and thirdly, a quietude of
the will, in the acceptance of the given moral attitude for the
whole scheme of life. Thus is given, in the fusion of these
three orders of mental life, the perfect moment of unity and
self-completeness.
End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Psychology of Beauty, by Ethel D. Puffer
