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+Project Gutenberg's The Principles Of Aesthetics, by Dewitt H. Parker
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+Title: The Principles Of Aesthetics
+
+Author: Dewitt H. Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6366]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 2, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Scott Pfenninger, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS
+
+BY
+
+DEWITT H. PARKER
+
+PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+This book has grown out of lectures to students at the University of
+Michigan and embodies my effort to express to them the nature and
+meaning of art. In writing it, I have sought to maintain scientific
+accuracy, yet at the same time to preserve freedom of style and
+something of the inspiration of the subject. While intended primarily
+for students, the book will appeal generally, I hope, to people who
+are interested in the intelligent appreciation of art.
+
+My obligations are extensive,--most directly to those whom I have cited
+in foot-notes to the text, but also to others whose influence is too
+indirect or pervasive to make citation profitable, or too obvious to
+make it necessary. For the broader philosophy of art, my debt is
+heaviest, I believe, to the artists and philosophers during the period
+from Herder to Hegel, who gave to the study its greatest development,
+and, among contemporaries, to Croce and Lipps. In addition, I have
+drawn freely upon the more special investigations of recent times, but
+with the caution desirable in view of the very tentative character of
+some of the results. To Mrs. Robert M. Wenley I wish to express my
+thanks for her very careful and helpful reading of the page proof.
+
+The appended bibliography is, of course, not intended to be in any
+sense adequate, but is offered merely as a guide to further reading;
+a complete bibliography would itself demand almost a volume.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER    I. Introduction: Purpose and Method
+
+CHAPTER   II. The Definition of Art
+
+CHAPTER  III. The Intrinsic Value of Art
+
+CHAPTER   IV. The Analysis of the Aesthetic Experience: The Elements of
+                the Experience
+
+CHAPTER    V. The Analysis of the Aesthetic Experience: The Structure of
+                the Experience
+
+CHAPTER   VI. The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics, and Its Solution
+through
+                the Tragic, Pathetic, and Comic
+
+CHAPTER  VII. The Standard of Taste
+
+CHAPTER VIII. The Aesthetics of Music
+
+CHAPTER   IX. The Aesthetics of Poetry
+
+CHAPTER    X. Prose Literature
+
+CHAPTER   XI. The Dominion of Art over Nature: Painting
+
+CHAPTER  XII. The Dominion of Art over Nature: Sculpture
+
+CHAPTER XIII. Beauty in the Industrial Arts: Architecture
+
+CHAPTER  XIV. The Function of Art: Art and Morality
+
+CHAPTER   XV. The Function of Art: Art and Religion
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION: PURPOSE AND METHOD
+
+Although some feeling for beauty is perhaps universal among men, the
+same cannot be said of the understanding of beauty. The average man,
+who may exercise considerable taste in personal adornment, in the
+decoration of the home, or in the choice of poetry and painting, is
+at a loss when called upon to tell what art is or to explain why he
+calls one thing "beautiful" and another "ugly." Even the artist and
+the connoisseur, skilled to produce or accurate in judgment, are often
+wanting in clear and consistent ideas about their own works or
+appreciations. Here, as elsewhere, we meet the contrast between feeling
+and doing, on the one hand, and knowing, on the other. Just as practical
+men are frequently unable to describe or justify their most successful
+methods or undertakings, just as many people who astonish us with their
+fineness and freedom in the art of living are strangely wanting in
+clear thoughts about themselves and the life which they lead so
+admirably, so in the world of beauty, the men who do and appreciate
+are not always the ones who understand.
+
+Very often, moreover, the artist and the art lover justify their
+inability to understand beauty on the ground that beauty is too subtle
+a thing for thought. How, they say, can one hope to distill into clear
+and stable ideas such a vaporous and fleeting matter as Aesthetic
+feeling? Such men are not only unable to think about beauty, but
+skeptical as to the possibility of doing so,--contented mystics, deeply
+feeling, but dumb.
+
+However, there have always been artists and connoisseurs who have
+striven to reflect upon their appreciations and acts, unhappy until
+they have understood and justified what they were doing; and one meets
+with numerous art-loving people whose intellectual curiosity is rather
+quickened than put to sleep by just that element of elusiveness in
+beauty upon which the mystics dwell. Long acquaintance with any class
+of objects leads naturally to the formation of some definition or
+general idea of them, and the repeated performance of the same type
+of act impels to the search for a principle that can be communicated
+to other people in justification of what one is doing and in defense
+of the value which one attaches to it. Thoughtful people cannot long
+avoid trying to formulate the relation of their interest in beauty,
+which absorbs so much energy and devotion, to other human interests,
+to fix its place in the scheme of life. It would be surprising,
+therefore, if there had been no Shelleys or Sidneys to define the
+relation between poetry and science, or Tolstoys to speculate on the
+nature of all art; and we should wonder if we did not everywhere hear
+intelligent people discussing the relation of utility and goodness to
+beauty, or asking what makes a poem or a picture great.
+
+Now the science of aesthetics is an attempt to do in a systematic way
+what thoughtful art lovers have thus always been doing haphazardly.
+It is an effort to obtain a clear general idea of beautiful objects,
+our judgments upon them, and the motives underlying the acts which
+create them,--to raise the aesthetic life, otherwise a matter of
+instinct and feeling, to the level of intelligence, of understanding.
+To understand art means to find an idea or definition which applies
+to it and to no other activity, and at the same time to determine its
+relation to other elements of human nature; and our understanding will
+be complete if our idea includes all the distinguishing characteristics
+of art, not simply enumerated, but exhibited in their achieved
+relations.
+
+How shall we proceed in seeking such an idea of art? We must follow
+a twofold method: first, the ordinary scientific method of observation,
+analysis, and experiment; and second, another and very different method,
+which people of the present day often profess to avoid, but which is
+equally necessary, as I shall try to show, and actually employed by
+those who reject it. In following the first method we treat beautiful
+things as objects given to us for study, much as plants and animals
+are given to the biologist. Just as the biologist watches the behavior
+of his specimens, analyzes them into their various parts and functions,
+and controls his studies through carefully devised experiments, arriving
+at last at a clear notion of what a plant or an animal is--at a
+definition of life; so the student of aesthetics observes works of art
+and other well-recognized beautiful things, analyzes their elements
+and the forms of connection of these, arranges experiments to facilitate
+and guard his observations from error and, as a result, reaches the
+general idea for which he is looking,--the idea of beauty.
+
+A vast material presents itself for study of this kind: the artistic
+attempts of children and primitive men; the well-developed art of
+civilized nations, past and present, as creative process and as
+completed work; and finally, the everyday aesthetic appreciations of
+nature and human life, both by ourselves and by the people whom we
+seek out for study. Each kind of material has its special value. The
+first has the advantage of the perspicuity which comes from simplicity,
+similar for our purposes to the value of the rudimentary forms of life
+for the biologist. But this advantage of early art may be overestimated;
+for the nature of beauty is better revealed in its maturer
+manifestations, even as the purposes of an individual are more fully,
+if not more clearly, embodied in maturity than in youth or childhood.
+
+Yet a purely objective method will not suffice to give us an adequate
+idea of beauty. For beautiful things are created by men, not passively
+discovered, and are made, like other things which men make, in order
+to realize a purpose. Just as a saw is a good saw only when it fulfills
+the purpose of cutting wood, so works of art are beautiful only because
+they embody a certain purpose. The beautiful things which we study by
+the objective method are selected by us from among countless other
+objects and called beautiful because they have a value for us, without
+a feeling for which we should not know them to be beautiful at all.
+They are not, like sun and moon, independent of mind and will and
+capable of being understood in complete isolation from man. No world
+of beauty exists apart from a purpose that finds realization there.
+We are, to be sure, not always aware of the existence of this purpose
+when we enjoy a picture or a poem or a bit of landscape; yet it is
+present none the less. The child is equally unaware of the purpose of
+the food which pleases him, yet the purpose is the ground of his
+pleasure; and we can understand his hunger only through a knowledge
+of it.
+
+The dependence of beauty upon a relation to purpose is clear from the
+fact that in our feelings and judgments about art we not only change
+and disagree, but correct ourselves and each other. The history of
+taste, both in the individual and the race, is not a mere process, but
+a progress, an evolution. "We were wrong in calling that poem
+beautiful," we say; "you are mistaken in thinking that picture a good
+one"; "the eighteenth century held a false view of the nature of
+poetry"; "the English Pre-Raphaelites confused the functions of poetry
+and painting"; "to-day we understand what the truly pictorial is better
+than Giotto did"; and so on. Now nothing can be of worth to us, one
+thing cannot be better than another, nor can we be mistaken as to its
+value except with reference to some purpose which it fulfills or does
+not fulfill. There is no growth or evolution apart from a purpose in
+terms of which we can read the direction of change as forward rather
+than backward.
+
+This purpose cannot be understood by the observation and analysis, no
+matter how careful, of beautiful _things_; for it exists in the
+mind primarily and only through mind becomes embodied in things; and
+it cannot be understood by a mere inductive study of aesthetic
+experiences--the mind plus the object--just as they come; because, as
+we have just stated, they are changeful and subject to correction,
+therefore uncertain and often misleading. The aesthetic impulse may
+falter and go astray like any other impulse; a description of it in
+this condition would lead to a very false conception. No, we must
+employ a different method of investigation--the Socratic method of
+self-scrutiny, the conscious attempt to become clear and consistent
+about our own purposes, the probing and straightening of our aesthetic
+consciences. Instead of accepting our immediate feelings and judgments,
+we should become critical towards them and ask ourselves, What do we
+really seek in art and in life which, when found, we call beautiful?
+Of course, in order to answer this question we cannot rely on an
+examination of our own preferences in isolation from those of our
+fellow-men. Here, as everywhere, our purposes are an outgrowth of the
+inherited past and are developed in imitation of, or in rivalry with,
+those of other men. The problem is one of interpreting the meaning of
+art in the system of culture of which our own minds are a part.
+Nevertheless, the personal problem remains. Aesthetic value is
+emphatically personal; it must be felt as one's own. If I accept the
+standards of my race and age, I do so because I find them to be an
+expression of my own aesthetic will. In the end, my own will to beauty
+must be cleared up; its darkly functioning goals must be brought to
+light.
+
+Now, unless we have thought much about the matter or are gifted with
+unusual native taste, we shall find that our aesthetic intentions are
+confused, contradictory, and entangled with other purposes. To become
+aware of this is the first step towards enlightenment. We must try to
+distinguish what we want of art from what we want of other things,
+such as science or morality; for something unique we must desire from
+anything of permanent value in our life. In the next place we should
+come to see that we cannot want incompatible things; that, for example,
+we cannot want art to hold the mirror up to life and, at the same time,
+to represent life as conforming to our private prejudices; or want a
+picture to have expressive and harmonious colors and look exactly like
+a real landscape; or long for a poetry that would be music or a
+sculpture that would be pictorial. Finally, we must make sure that our
+interpretation of the aesthetic purpose is representative of the actual
+fullness and manysidedness of it; we should observe, for example, that
+sensuous pleasure is not all that we seek from art; that truth of some
+kind we seek besides; and yet that in some sort of union we want both.
+
+This clearing up can be accomplished only in closest touch with the
+actual experience of beauty; it must be performed upon our working
+preferences and judgments. It must be an interpretation of the actual
+history of art. There is no a priori method of establishing aesthetic
+standards. Just as no one can discover his life purpose apart from the
+process of living, or the purpose of another except through sympathy;
+so no one can know the meaning of art except through creating and
+enjoying and entering into the aesthetic life of other artists and art
+lovers.
+
+This so-called normative--perhaps better, critical--moment in aesthetics
+introduces an inevitable personal element into every discussion of the
+subject. Even as every artist seeks to convince his public that what
+he offers is beautiful, so every philosopher of art undertakes to
+persuade of the validity of his own preferences. I would not make any
+secret of this with regard to the following pages of this book. Yet
+this intrusion of personality need not be harmful, but may, on the
+contrary, be valuable. It cannot be harmful if the writer proceeds
+undogmatically, making constant appeals to the judgment of his readers
+and claiming no authority for his statements except in so far as they
+find favor there. Influence rather than authority is what he should
+seek. In presenting his views, as he must, he should strive to stimulate
+the reader to make a clear and consistent formulation of his own
+preferences rather than to impose upon him standards ready made. And
+the good of the personal element comes from the power which one strong
+preference or conviction has of calling forth another, and compelling
+it to the discovery and defense of its grounds.
+
+In so far as aesthetics is studied by the objective method it is a
+branch of psychology. Aesthetic facts are mental facts. A work of art,
+no matter how material it may at first seem to be, exists only as
+perceived and enjoyed. The marble statue is beautiful only when it
+enters into and becomes alive in the experience of the beholder. Keys
+and strings and vibrations of the air are but stimuli for the auditory
+experience which is the real nocturne or etude. Ether vibrations and
+the retina upon which they impinge are nothing more than instruments
+for the production of the colors which, together with the interpretation
+of them in terms of ideas and feelings, constitute the real picture
+which we appreciate and judge. The physical stimuli and the
+physiological reactions evoked by them are important for our purpose
+only so far as they help us to understand the inner experiences with
+which they are correlated. A large part of our work, therefore, will
+consist in the psychological analysis of the experience of art and the
+motives underlying its production. We shall have to distinguish the
+elements of mind that enter into it, show their interrelations, and
+differentiate the total experience from other types of experience.
+Since, moreover, art is a social phenomenon, we shall have to draw
+upon our knowledge of social psychology to illumine our analysis of
+the individual's experience. Art is a historical, even a technical,
+development; hence the personal enjoyment of beauty itself is
+conditioned by factors that spring from the traditions of groups of
+artists and art lovers. No one can understand his pleasure in beauty
+apart from the pleasure of others.
+
+In so far, on the other hand, as aesthetics is an attempt to define
+the purpose of art and so to formulate the standards presupposed in
+judgments of taste, it is closely related to criticism. The relation
+is essentially that between theory and the application of theory. It
+is the office of the critic to deepen and diffuse the appreciation of
+particular works of art. For this purpose he must possess standards;
+but he need not be, and in fact often is not, aware of them. A fine
+taste may serve his ends. Not infrequently, however, the critic
+endeavors to make clear to himself and his readers the principles he
+is employing. Now, on its normative side, aesthetics is ideally the
+complete rationale of criticism, the systematic achievement, for its
+own sake, of what the thoughtful critic attempts with less exactness
+and for the direct purpose of appreciation. It is beyond the province
+of aesthetics to criticize any particular work of art, except by way
+of illustration. The importance of illustration for the sake of
+explaining and proving general principles is, however, fundamental;
+for, as we have seen, a valuable aesthetic theory is impossible unless
+developed out of the primary aesthetic life of enjoyment and estimation,
+a life of contact with individual beautiful things. No amount of
+psychological skill in analysis or philosophical aptitude for definition
+can compensate for want of a real love of beauty,--of the possession
+of something of the artistic temperament. People who do not love art,
+yet study it from the outside, may contribute to our knowledge of it
+through isolated bits of analysis, but their interpretations of its
+more fundamental nature are always superficial. Hence, just as the
+wise critic will not neglect aesthetics, so the philosopher of art
+should be something of a critic. Yet the division of labor is clear
+enough. The critic devotes himself to the appreciation of some special
+contemporary or historical field of art--Shakespearean drama,
+Renaissance sculpture, Italian painting, for example; while the
+philosopher of art looks for general principles, and gives attention
+to individual works of art and historical movements only for the purpose
+of discovering and illustrating them. And, since the philosopher of
+art seeks a universal idea of art rather than an understanding of this
+or that particular work of art, an intimate acquaintance with a few
+examples, through which this idea can be revealed to the loving eye,
+is of more importance than a wide but superficial aesthetic culture.
+
+In our discussion thus far, we have been assuming the possibility of
+aesthetic theory. But what shall we say in answer to the mystic who
+tells us that beauty is indefinable? First of all, I think, we should
+remind him that his own thesis can be proved or refuted only through
+an attempt at a scientific investigation of beauty. Every attempt to
+master our experience through thought is an adventure; but the futility
+of adventures can be shown only by courageously entering into them.
+And, although the failure of previous efforts may lessen the
+probabilities of success in a new enterprise, it cannot prove that
+success is absolutely impossible. Through greater persistence and
+better methods the new may succeed where the old have failed. Moreover,
+although we are ready to grant that the pathway to our goal is full
+of pitfalls, marked by the wreckage of old theories, yet we claim that
+the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling
+over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing
+can be known by hearsay. If, then, he would really know that the road
+to theoretical insight into beauty is impassable, let him travel with
+us and see; or, if not with us, alone by himself or with some one wiser
+than we as guide; let him compare fairly and sympathetically the results
+of theoretical analysis and construction with the data of his firsthand
+experience and observe whether the one is or is not adequate to the
+other.
+
+Again, the cleft between thought and feeling, even subtle and fleeting
+aesthetic feeling, is not so great as the mystics suppose. For, after
+all, there is a recognizable identity and permanence even in these
+feelings; we should never call them by a common name or greet them as
+the same despite their shiftings from moment to moment if this were
+not true. Although whatever is unique in each individual experience
+of beauty, its distinctive flavor or nuance, cannot be adequately
+rendered in thought, but can only be felt; yet whatever each new
+experience has in common with the old, whatever is universal in all
+aesthetic experiences, can be formulated. The relations of beauty,
+too, its place in the whole of life, can be discovered by thought
+alone; for only by thought can we hold on to the various things whose
+relations we are seeking to establish; without thought our experience
+falls asunder into separate bits and never attains to unity. Finally,
+the mystics forget that the life of thought and the life of feeling
+have a common root; they are both parts of the one life of the mind
+and so cannot be foreign to each other.
+
+The motive impelling to any kind of undertaking is usually complex,
+and that which leads to the development of aesthetic theory is no
+exception to the general rule. A disinterested love of understanding
+has certainly played a part. Every region of experience invites to the
+play of intelligence upon it; the lover of knowledge, as Plato says,
+loves the whole of his object. Yet even intelligence, insatiable and
+impartial as it is, has its predilections. The desire to understand
+a particular type of thing has its roots in an initial love of it. As
+the born botanist is the man who finds joy in contact with tree and
+moss and mushroom, so the student of aesthetics is commonly a lover
+of beauty. And, although the interest which he takes in aesthetic
+theory is largely just the pleasure in possessing clear ideas, one may
+question whether he would pursue it with such ardor except for the
+continual lover's touch with picture and statue and poem which it
+demands. For the intelligent lover of beauty, aesthetic theory requires
+no justification; it is as necessary and pleasurable for him to
+understand art as it is compulsive for him to seek out beautiful things
+to enjoy. To love without understanding is, to the thoughtful lover,
+an infidelity to his object. That the interest in aesthetic theory is
+partly rooted in feeling is shown from the fact that, when developed
+by artists, it takes the form of a defense of the type of art which
+they are producing. The aesthetic theory of the German Romanticists
+is an illustration of this; Hebbel and Wagner are other striking
+examples. These men could not rest until they had put into communicable
+and persuasive form the aesthetic values which they felt in creation.
+And we, too, who are not artists but only lovers of beauty, find in
+theory a satisfaction for a similar need with reference to our
+preferences.[Footnote: Compare Santayana: The Sense of Beauty, p. 11.]
+
+More important to the average man is the help which aesthetic theory
+may render to appreciation itself. If to the basal interest in beauty
+be added an interest in understanding beauty, the former is quickened
+and fortified and the total measure of enjoyment increased. Even the
+love of beauty, strong as it commonly is, may well find support through
+connection with an equally powerful and enduring affection. The
+aesthetic interest is no exception to the general truth that each part
+of the mind gains in stability and intensity if connected with the
+others; isolated, it runs the risk of gradual decay in satiety or
+through the crowding out of other competing interests, which if joined
+with it, would have kept it alive instead. Moreover, the understanding
+of art may increase the appreciation of particular works of art. For
+the analysis and constant attention to the subtler details demanded
+by theory may bring to notice aspects of a work of art which do not
+exist for an unthinking appreciation. As a rule, the appreciations of
+the average man are very inadequate to the total possibilities offered,
+extending only to the more obvious features. Often enough besides,
+through a mere lack of understanding of the purpose of art in general
+and of the more special aims of the particular arts, people expect to
+find what cannot be given, and hence are prejudiced against what they
+might otherwise enjoy. The following pages will afford, I hope, abundant
+illustrations of this truth.
+
+Finally, aesthetic theory may have a favorable influence upon the
+creation of art. Not that the student of aesthetics can prescribe to
+the artist what he shall or shall not do; for the latter can obey, for
+better or worse, only the inner imperative of his native genius. Yet,
+inevitably, the man of genius receives direction and cultivation from
+the aesthetic sentiment of the time into which he is born and grown;
+even when he reacts against it, he nevertheless feels its influence;
+a sound conception of the nature and purpose of art may save him from
+many mistakes. The French classical tradition in sculpture and painting,
+which is not merely academic, having become a part of public taste,
+prevented the production of the frightful crudities which passed for
+art in Germany and England during the present and past centuries. By
+helping to create a freer and more intelligent atmosphere for the
+artist to be born and educated in, and finer demands upon him when
+once he has begun to produce and is seeking recognition, the student
+of aesthetics may indirectly do not a little for him. And surely in our
+own country, where an educated public taste does not exist and the
+fiercest prejudices are rampant, there is abundant opportunity for
+service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DEFINITION OF ART
+
+
+Since it is our purpose to develop an adequate idea of art, it might
+seem as if a definition were rather our goal than our starting point;
+yet we must identify the field of our investigations and mark it off
+from other regions; and this we can do only by means of a preliminary
+definition, which the rest of our study may then enrich and complete.
+
+We shall find it fruitful to begin with the definition recently revived
+by Croce: [Footnote: Benedetto Croce: _Estetica_, translated into
+English by Douglas Ainslie, under title _Aesthetic_, chap. i.] art
+is expression; and expression we may describe, for our own ends, as
+the putting forth of purpose, feeling, or thought into a sensuous
+medium, where they can be experienced again by the one who expresses
+himself and communicated to others. Thus, in this sense, a lyric poem
+is an expression--a bit of a poet's intimate experience put into words;
+epic and dramatic poetry are expressions--visions of a larger life
+made manifest in the same medium. Pictures and statues are also
+expressions; for they are embodiments in color and space-forms of the
+artists' ideas of visible nature and man. Works of architecture and
+the other industrial arts are embodiments of purpose and the well-being
+that comes from purpose fulfilled.
+
+This definition, good so far as it goes, is, however, too inclusive;
+for plainly, although every work of art is an expression, not every
+expression is a work of art. Automatic expressions, instinctive
+overflowings of emotion into motor channels, like the cry of pain or
+the shout of joy, are not aesthetic. Practical expressions also, all
+such as are only means or instruments for the realization of ulterior
+purposes--the command of the officer, the conversation of the market
+place, a saw--are not aesthetic. Works of art--the _Ninth Symphony_, the
+_Ode to the West Wind_--are not of this character.
+
+No matter what further purposes artistic expressions may serve, they
+are produced and valued for themselves; we linger in them; we neither
+merely execute them mechanically, as we do automatic expressions, nor
+hasten through them, our minds fixed upon some future end to be gained
+by them, as is the case with practical expressions. Both for the artist
+and the appreciator, they are ends in themselves. Compare, for example,
+a love poem with a declaration of love.[Footnote: Contrast Croce's use
+of the same illustration: Esthetic, p. 22, English translation.] The
+poem is esteemed for the rhythmic emotional experience it gives the
+writer or reader; the declaration, even when enjoyed by the suitor,
+has its prime value in its consequences, and the quicker it is over
+and done with and its end attained the better. The one, since it has
+its purpose within itself, is returned to and repeated; the other,
+being chiefly a means to an end, would be senseless if repeated, once
+the end that called it forth is accomplished. The value of the love
+poem, although written to persuade a lady, cannot be measured in terms
+of its mere success; for if beautiful, it remains of worth after the
+lady has yielded, nay, even if it fails to win her. Any sort of
+practical purpose may be one motive in the creation of a work of art,
+but its significance is broader than the success or failure of that
+motive. The Russian novel is still significant, even now, alter the
+revolution. As beautiful, it is of perennial worth and stands out by
+itself. But practical expressions are only transient links in the
+endless chain of means, disappearing as the wheel of effort revolves.
+Art is indeed expression, but free or autonomous expression.
+
+The freedom of aesthetic expression is, however, only an intensification
+of a quality that may belong to any expression. For, in its native
+character, expression is never merely practical; it brings its own
+reward in the pleasure of the activity itself. Ordinarily, when a man
+makes something embodying his need or fancy, or says something that
+expresses his meaning, he enjoys himself in his doing. There is
+naturally a generous superfluity in all human behavior. The economizing
+of it to what is necessary for self-preservation and dominion over the
+environment is secondary, not primary, imposed under the duress of
+competition and nature. Only when activities are difficult or their
+fruits hard to get are they disciplined for the sake of their results
+alone; then only does their performance become an imperative, and
+nature and society impose upon them the seriousness and constraint of
+necessity and law. But whenever nature and the social organization
+supply the needs of man ungrudgingly or grant him a respite from the
+urgency of business, the spontaneity of his activities returns. The
+doings of children, of the rich, and of all men on a holiday illustrate
+this. Compare, for example, the speech of trade, where one says the
+brief and needful thing only, with the talk of excursionists, where
+verbal expression, having no end beyond itself, develops at length and
+at leisure; where brevity is no virtue and abundant play takes the
+place of a narrow seriousness.
+
+But we have not yet so limited the field of expression that it becomes
+equivalent to the aesthetic; for not even all of free expression is
+art. The most important divergent type is science. Science also is
+expression,--an embodiment in words, diagrams, mathematical symbols,
+chemical formula, or other such media, of thoughts meant to portray
+the objects of human experience. Scientific expressions have, of course,
+a practical function; concepts are "plans of action" or servants of
+plans, the most perfect and delicate that man possesses. Yet scientific
+knowledge is an end in itself as well as a utility; for the mere
+construction and possession of concepts and laws is itself a source
+of joy; the man of science delights in making appropriate formulations
+of nature's habits quite unconcerned about their possible uses.
+
+In science, therefore, there is much free expression; but beauty not
+yet. No abstract expression such as Euclid's _Elements_, Newton's
+_Principia_, or Peano's _Formulaire_, no matter how rigorous and
+complete, is a work of art. We admire the mathematician's formula
+for its simplicity and adequacy; we take delight in its clarity and
+scope, in the ease with which it enables the mind to master a thousand
+more special truths, but we do not find it beautiful. Equally removed
+from the sphere of the beautiful are representations or descriptions
+of mere things, whether inaccurate or haphazard, as we make them in
+daily life, or accurate and careful as they are elaborated in the
+empirical sciences. No matter how exact and complete, the botanist's
+or zoologist's descriptions of plant and animal life are not works of
+art. They may be satisfactory as knowledge, but they are not beautiful.
+There is an important difference between a poet's description of a
+flower and a botanist's, or between an artistic sketch and a photograph,
+conferring beauty upon the former, and withholding it from the latter.
+
+The central difference is this. The former are descriptions not of
+things only, but of the artist's reactions to things, his mood or
+emotion in their presence. They are expressions of total, concrete
+experiences, which include the self of the observer as well as the
+things he observes. Scientific descriptions, on the other hand, render
+objects only; the feelings of the observer toward them are carefully
+excluded. Science is intentionally objective,--from the point of view
+of the artistic temperament, dry and cold. Even the realistic novel
+and play, while seeking to present a faithful picture of human life
+and to eliminate all private comment and emotion, cannot dispense with
+the elementary dramatic feelings of sympathy, suspense, and wonder.
+sthetic expression is always integral, embodying a total state of
+mind, the core of which is some feeling; scientific expression is
+fragmentary or abstract, limiting itself to thought. Art, no less than
+science, may contain truthful images of things and abstract ideas, but
+never these alone; it always includes their life, their feeling tones,
+or values. Because philosophy admits this element of personality, it
+is nearer to art than science is. Yet some men of science, like James
+and Huxley, have made literature out of science because they could not
+help putting into their writings something of their passionate interest
+in the things they discovered and described.
+
+The, necessity in art for the expression of value is, I think, the
+principal difference between art and science, rather than, as Croce
+[Footnote: _Estetica_, quarta edizione, p.27; English translation.
+p.36.] supposes, the limitation of art to the expression of the
+individual and of Science to the expression of the concept. For, on
+the one hand, science may express the individual; and, on the other
+hand, art may express the concept. The geographer, for example,
+describes and makes maps of particular regions of the earth's surface;
+the astronomer studies the individual sun and moon. Poets like Dante,
+Lucretius, Shakespeare, and Goethe express the most universal concepts
+of ethics or metaphysics. But what makes men poets rather than men of
+science is precisely that they never limit themselves to the mere clear
+statement of the concept, but always express its human significance
+as well. A theory of human destiny is expressed in Prospero's lines--
+
+  We are such stuff
+  As dreams are made of, and our little life
+  Is rounded with a sleep;
+
+but with overtones of feeling at the core. Or consider the passion
+with which Lucretius argues for a naturalistic conception of the
+universe. And the reason why poets clothe their philosophical
+expressions in concrete images is not because of any shame of the
+concept, but just in order the more easily and vividly to attach and
+communicate their emotion. Their general preference for the concrete
+has the same motive; for there are only a few abstractions capable of
+arousing and fixing emotion.
+
+Even as an element of spontaneity is native to all expression, so
+originally all expression is personal. This is easily observable in
+the child. His first uses of words as well as of things are touched
+with emotion. Every descriptive name conveys to him his emotional
+reaction to the object; disinterested knowledge does not exist for
+him; every tool, a knife or a fork, means to him not only something
+to be used, but the whole background of feelings which its use involves.
+Our first perceptions of things contain as much of feeling and attitude
+as of color and shape and sound and odor. Pure science and mere industry
+are abstractions from the original integrity of perception and
+expression; mutilations of their wholeness forced upon the mind through
+the stress of living. To be able to see things without feeling them,
+or to describe them without being moved by their image, is a disciplined
+and derivative accomplishment. Only as the result of training and of
+haste do the forms and colors of objects, once the stimuli to a
+wondering and lingering attention, become mere cues to their recognition
+and employment, or mere incitements to a cold and disinterested analysis
+and description. Knowledge may therefore enter into beauty when, keeping
+its liberality, it participates in an emotional experience; and every
+other type of expression may become aesthetic if, retaining its native
+spontaneity, it can acquire anew its old power to move the heart. To
+be an artist means to be, like the child, free and sensitive in
+envisaging the world.
+
+Under these conditions, nature as well as art may be beautiful. In
+themselves, things are never beautiful. This is not apparent to common
+sense because it fails to think and analyze. But beauty may belong to
+our _perceptions_ of things. For perception is itself a kind of
+expression, a process of mind through which meanings are embodied in
+sensations. Given are only sensations, but out of the mind come ideas
+through which they are interpreted as objects. When, for example, I
+perceive my friend, it may seem as if the man himself were a given
+object which I passively receive; but, as a matter of fact, all that
+is given are certain visual sensations; that these are my friend, is
+pure interpretation--I construct the object in embodying this thought
+in the color and shape I see. The elaboration of sensation in perception
+is usually so rapid that, apart from reflection, I do not realize the
+mental activity involved. But if it turns out that it was some other
+man that I saw, then I realize at once that my perception was a work
+of mind, an expression of my own thought. Of course, not all perceptions
+are beautiful. Only as felt to be mysterious or tender or majestic is
+a landscape beautiful; and women only as possessed of the charm we
+feel in their presence. That is, perceptions are beautiful only when
+they embody feelings. The sea, clouds and hills, men and women, as
+perceived, awaken reactions which, instead of being attributed to the
+mind from which they proceed, are experienced as belonging to the
+things evoking them, which therefore come to embody them. And this
+process of emotional and objectifying perception has clearly no other
+end than just perception itself. We do not gaze upon a landscape or
+a pretty child for any other purpose than to get the perceptual,
+emotional values that result. The aesthetic perception of nature is,
+as Kant called it, disinterested; that is, autonomous and free. The
+beauty of nature, therefore, is an illustration of our definition.
+
+On the same terms, life as remembered or observed or lived, may have
+the quality of beauty. In reverie we turn our attention back over
+events in our own lives that have had for us a rare emotional
+significance; these events then come to embody the wonder, the interest,
+the charm that excited us to recollect them. Here the activity of
+remembering is not a mere habit set going by some train of accidental
+association; or merely practical, arising for the sake of solving some
+present problem by applying the lesson of the past to it; or finally,
+not unpleasantly insistent, like the images aroused by worry and sorrow,
+but spontaneous and self-rewarding, hence beautiful. There are also
+events in the lives of other people, and people themselves, whose lives
+read like a story, which, by absorbing our pity or joy or awe, claim
+from us a like fascinated regard. And there are actions we ourselves
+perform, magnificent or humble, like sweeping a room, which, if we put
+ourselves into them and enjoy them, have an equal charm. And they too
+have the quality of beauty.
+
+Despite the community between beautiful nature and art, the differences
+are striking. Suppose, in order fix our ideas, we compare one of Monet's
+pictures of a lily pond with the aesthetic appreciation of the real
+pond. The pond is undoubtedly beautiful every time it is seen; with
+its round outline, its sunlit, flower-covered surface, its background
+of foliage, it is perhaps the source and expression of an unfailing
+gladness and repose. Now the painting has very much the same value,
+but with these essential differences. First, the painting is something
+deliberately constructed and composed, the artist himself controlling
+and composing the colors and shapes, and hence their values also; while
+the natural beauty is an immediate reaction to given stimuli, each
+observer giving meaning to his sensations without intention or effort.
+Like the beauty of woman, it is almost a matter of instinct. In natural
+beauty, there is, to be sure, an element of conscious intention, in
+so far as we may purposely select our point of view and hold the object
+in our attention; hence this contrast with art, although real and
+important, is not absolute. Moreover, beauty in perception and memory
+is the basis of art; the artist, while he composes, nevertheless partly
+transcribes significant memories and observations. Yet, although
+relative, the difference remains; art always consists of works of art,
+natural beauty of more immediate experiences. And from this difference
+follows another--the greater purity and perfection of art. The control
+which the artist exerts over his material enables him to make it
+expressive all through; every element conspires toward the artistic
+end; there are no irrelevant or recalcitrant parts, such as exist in
+every perception of nature. Last, the beauty of the painting, because
+created in the beholder through a fixed and permaneat mechanism
+constructed by the artist, is communicable and abiding, whereas the
+immediate beauty of nature is incommunicable and transient. Since the
+sthetic perception of nature has its starting point in variable aspects
+that never recur, no other man could see or feel the lily pond as Monet
+saw and felt it. And, although in memory we may possess a silent gallery
+of beautiful images, into which we may enter privately as long as we
+live, in the end the flux has its way and at death shatters this
+treasure house irrevocably. Hence, only if the beauty of the lily pond
+is transferred to a canvas, can it be preserved and shared.
+
+The work of art is the tool of the aesthetic life. Just as organic
+efficiency is tied to the nerve and muscle of the workman and cannot
+be transferred to another, but the tool, on the other hand, is
+exchangeable and transmissible (I cannot lend or bequeath my arm, but
+I can my boat); and just as efficiency is vastly increased by the use
+of tools (I can go further with my boat than I can swim); so, through
+works of art, aesthetic capacity and experience are enhanced and become
+common possessions, a part of the spiritual capital of the race.
+Moreover, even as each invention becomes the starting point for new
+ones that are better instruments for practical ends; so each work of
+art becomes the basis for new experiments through which the aesthetic
+expression of life attains to higher levels. Monet's own art, despite
+its great originality, was dependent upon all the impressionists, and
+they, even when they broke away from, were indebted to, the traditions
+of French painting established by centuries. Through art, the aesthetic
+life, which otherwise would be a private affair, receives a social
+sanction and assistance.
+
+That permanence and communication of expression are essential to a
+complete conception of art can be discerned by looking within the
+artistic impulse itself. However much the artist may affect indifference
+to the public, he creates expecting to be understood. Mere self-
+expression does not satisfy him; he needs in addition appreciation.
+Deprived of sympathy, the artistic impulse withers and dies or supports
+itself through the hope of eventually finding it. The heroism of the
+poet consists in working on in loneliness; but his crown of glory is
+won only when all men are singing his songs. And every genuine artist,
+as opposed to the mere improviser or dilettante, wishes his work to
+endure.[Footnote: See Anatole France: _Le Lys Rouge_. "Moi, dit
+Choulette, je pense si peu a l'avenir terrestre que j'ai ecrit mes
+plus beaux poemes sur les feuilles de papier a cigarettes. Elles se
+sont facilement evanuies, ne laissant a mes vers qu'une espece
+d'existence metaphysique." C'etait un air de negligence qu'il se
+donnait. En fait, il n'avait jamais perdu une ligne de son ecriture.]
+Having put his substance into it, he desires its preservation as he
+does his own. His immortality through it is his boast.
+
+  Exegi monumentum aere perennius
+  Regalique situ pyramidum altius
+       *       *       *       *       *
+  Non omnis moriar.
+
+Art is not mere inspiration, the transient expression of private moods,
+but a work of communication, meant to endure.
+
+There are certain distinguishing characteristics of aesthetic expression
+all of which are in harmony with the description we have given of it.
+In the first place, in art the sensuous medium of the expression
+receives an attention and possesses a significance not to be found in
+other types of expression. Although every one hears, no one attends
+to the sound of the voice in ordinary conversation; one looks through
+it, as through a glass, to the thought or emotion behind. In our routine
+perceptions of nature, we are not interested in colors and shapes on
+their own account, but only in order that we may recognize the objects
+possessing them; in a scientific woodcut also, they are indifferent
+to us, except in so far as they impart correct information about the
+objects portrayed. Outside of art, sensation is a mere transparent
+means to the end of communication and recognition. Compare the poem,
+the piece of music, the artistic drawing or painting. There the words
+or tones must be not only heard but listened to; the colors and lines
+not only seen but held in the eye; of themselves, apart from anything
+they may further mean, they have the power to awaken feeling and
+pleasure. And this is no accident. For the aesthetic expression is meant
+to possess worth in itself and is deliberately fashioned to hold us
+to itself, and this purpose will be more certainly and effectively
+accomplished if the medium of the expression has the power to move and
+please. We enter the aesthetic expression through the sensuous medium;
+hence the artist tries to charm us at the start and on the outside;
+having found favor there, he wins us the more easily to the content
+lying within.
+
+If the medium, moreover, instead of being a transparent embodiment of
+the artist's feelings, can express them in some direct fashion as well,
+the power of the whole expression will gain. This is exactly what the
+sound of the words of a poem or the colors and lines of a painting or
+statue can do. As mere sound and as mere color and line, they convey
+something of the feeling tone of the subject which, as symbols, they
+are used to represent. For example, the soft flowing lines of Correggio,
+quite apart from the objects they represent, express the voluptuous
+happiness of his "Venus and Mars"; the slow rhythm of the repeated
+word sounds and the quality of the vowels in the opening lines of
+_Tithonus_ are expressive in themselves, apart from their meaning,
+of the weariness in the thoughts of the hero, and so serve to re-express
+and enforce the mood of those thoughts. When we come to study the
+particular arts, we shall find this phenomenon of re-expression through
+the medium everywhere.
+
+A second characteristic distinguishing aesthetic expressions from other
+expressions is their superior unity. In the latter, the unity lies in
+the purpose to be attained or in the content of the thought expressed;
+it is teleological or logical. The unity of a chair is its purpose,
+which demands just such parts and in just such a mechanical arrangement;
+the unity of a business conversation is governed by the bargain to be
+closed, requiring such words and such only, and in the appropriate
+logical and grammatical order. The unity of an argument is the thesis
+to be proved; the unity of a diagram is the principle to be illustrated
+or the information to be imparted. Compare the unity of a sonnet or
+a painting. In a sonnet, there is a unity of thought and sentiment
+creating a fitting grammatical unity in language, but in addition a
+highly elaborate pattern in the words themselves that is neither
+grammatical nor logical. In a painting, besides the dramatic unity of
+the action portrayed, as in a battle scene; or of the spatial and
+mechanical togetherness of things, as in a landscape; there is a harmony
+of the colors, a composition of the lines and masses themselves, not
+to be found in nature. And, although the general shape and arrangement
+of the parts of a useful object is dominated by its purpose, if it is
+also beautiful--a Louis Seize chair, for example--there is, besides,
+a design that cannot be explained by use. In artistic expressions,
+therefore, there exists a unity in the material, superposed upon the
+unity required by the purpose or thought expressed. And this property
+follows from the preceding. For, since the medium is valuable in itself,
+the mind, which craves unity everywhere, craves it there also, and
+lingers longer and more happily on finding it; and, since the medium
+can be expressive, the unity of the fundamental mood of the thought
+expressed will overflow into and pervade it. Hence there occurs an
+autonomous development of unity in the material, raising the total
+unity of the expression to a higher power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF ART
+
+
+Our definition of art can be complete only if it enables us to
+understand the value of art. The reader may well ask what possible
+value expression can have when it becomes an end in itself. "I can
+understand," he may say, "the value of expression for the sake of
+communication and influence, but what value can it have of itself?"
+At this point, moreover, we are concerned with the intrinsic value
+immediately realized in the experience of art, not with further values
+that may result from it. Art, no less than practical expression, may
+have effects on other experiences, which have to be considered in
+measuring its total worth; but these we shall leave for investigation
+in our last chapters, after we have reached our fullest comprehension
+of art; we are interested now, in order to test and complete our
+definition, in the resident value only. As a help toward reaching a
+satisfactory view, let us examine critically some of the chief theories
+in the field. First, the theory, often called "hedonistic," that the
+value of art consists in the satisfactions of sense which the media
+of aesthetic expression afford--the delight in color and sound and
+rhythmical movement of line and form. The theory finds support in the
+industrial arts, where beauty often seems to be only a luxurious charm
+supervening upon utility; but also in painting and sculpture when
+appreciated in their decorative capacity as "things of beauty." There
+is a partial truth in this theory; for, as we have seen, the sensuous
+media of all the arts tend to be developed in the direction of pleasure;
+and no man who lacks feeling for purely sensuous values can enter into
+the fullness of the aesthetic experience. But the theory fails in not
+recognizing the expressive function of sensation in art. As Goethe
+said, art was long formative, that is, expressive, before it was
+beautiful, in the narrow sense of charming.[Footnote: "Die kunst is
+lange bildend eh sie schon ist." _Von Deutscher Baukunst_, 1773.]
+In order to be beautiful, it is not enough for a work of art to offer
+us delightful colors and lines and sounds; it must also have a
+meaning--it must speak to us, tell us something.
+
+The second theory which I shall examine is the moralistic or Platonic.
+According to this, art is an image of the good, and has value in so
+far as through expression it enables us to experience edifying emotions
+or to contemplate noble objects. The high beauty of the "Sistine
+Madonna," for example, would be explained as identical with the worth
+of the religious feelings which it causes in the mind of the beholder.
+The advantage of art over life is supposed to consist in its power to
+create in the imagination better and more inspiring objects than life
+can offer, and to free and control the contemplation of them. This is
+the narrower interpretation of the theory. When the notion of the good
+is liberalized so as to include innocent happiness as well as the
+strictly ethical and religious values, beauty is conceded to belong
+to pictures of fair women and children, and to lyrics and romances,
+provided there is nothing in them to shock the moral sense. Aesthetic
+value is the reflection--the imaginative equivalent--of moral or
+practical value.
+
+The prime difficulty of this theory is its inadequacy as an
+interpretation of the whole of actual art; for, in order to find support
+among existing examples, it is compelled to make an arbitrary selection
+of such as can be made to fit it. Actual art is quite as much an image
+of evil as of good; there is nothing devilish which it has not
+represented. And this part of art is often of the highest aesthetic
+merit. Velasquez's pictures of dwarfs and degenerate princes are as
+artistic as Raphael's Madonnas; Goethe's Mephistopheles is one of his
+supreme artistic achievements; Shakespeare is as successful artistically
+in his delineation of Lady Macbeth as of Desdemona. Now for us who
+claim that the purpose of art must be divined from the actual practice
+of artists, from the inside, and should not be an arbitrary
+construction, from the outside, the existence of such examples is
+sufficient to refute the theory in question. If the artist finds a
+value in the representation of evil, value exists there and can be
+discovered.
+
+If, indeed, the sole effect of artistic expression were to bring to
+the mind objects and emotions in the same fashion that ordinary life
+does, then the value of art, the image of life, would be a function
+of the value of the life imaged. And just as one seeks contact with
+the good in real life and avoids the evil, so one would seek in art
+imaginative contact with the good alone. But expression, and above all
+artistic expression, does something more than present objects to the
+imagination and arouse emotions. Art is not life over again, a mere
+shadow of life; if it were, what would be its unique value? who would
+not prefer the substance to the shadow? The expression of life is not
+life itself; hence, even if the evil in life be always evil, the
+expression of it may still be a good.
+
+Another theory, often called the "intellectualistic" theory, claims
+that the purpose of art is truth. "Beauty is truth; truth, beauty."
+The immediate pleasure which we feel in the beautiful is the same as
+the instant delight in the apprehension of truth. There is no difference
+in purpose or value between science and art, but only a difference in
+method--science presents truth in the form of the abstract judgment;
+art, in the form of the concrete image or example.
+
+The difficulty with this theory is the uncertainty as to what is meant
+by truth; hence the many shapes it assumes. But before going deeply
+into this question, let us consider some of the simple facts which
+seem to tell for and against the theory. There can be no doubt that
+many examples of the representative arts--painting, sculpture, novel,
+and drama--are praised for their truth. We demand truth of coloring
+or line in painting, of form in sculpture, of character and social
+relation in the drama or novel. On the other hand, we admit aesthetic
+value to fanciful painting and literature, and to expressions of beliefs
+which no one accepts at the present time. We appreciate the beauty of
+Dante's descriptions of the Inferno and of the conversations between
+him and its inhabitants without believing them to be reports of fact.
+No one values the _Blue Bird_ the less because it is not an account
+of an actual occurrence. Even with regard to the realistic novel and
+drama, no one thinks of holding them to the standards of historical
+or scientific accuracy. And, although we may demand of a landscape
+painting plausibility of color and line, we certainly do not require
+that it be a representation of any identifiable scene.
+
+If by truth, therefore, be meant a description or image of matters of
+fact, then surely it is not the purpose of art to give us this truth.
+The artist, to be sure, may give this, as when the landscapist paints
+some locality dear to his client or the portraitist paints the client
+himself; but he does not need to do this, and the aesthetic value of
+his work is independent of it; for the picture possesses its beauty
+even when we know nothing of its model. In the language of current
+philosophy, truth in the sense of the correspondence of a portrayal
+to an object external to the portrayal, is not "artistic truth."
+
+The partisans of the intellectualistic theory would, of course, deny
+that they ever meant truth with this meaning. "We mean by truth," they
+would say, "an embodiment in sensuous or imaginative form of some
+universal principle of nature and life. The image may be entirely
+fictitious or fanciful, but so long as the principle is illustrated,
+essential truth, and that is beauty, is attained." But if this were
+so, every work of art would be the statement of a universal truth, as
+indeed philosophical adherents of this theory have always
+maintained--witness Hegel. Yet what is the universal truth asserted
+in one of Monet's pictures of a lily pond? There is, of course, an
+observance of the general laws of color and space, but does the beauty
+of the picture consist in that? Does it not attach to the representation
+of the concrete, individual pond? I do not mean that there may not be
+beauty in the expression of universals; in fact, I have explicitly
+maintained that there may, under certain conditions; I am simply
+insisting that beauty may belong to expressions of the individual also,
+and that you cannot reduce these to mere illustrations of universal
+ideas. Because of its completeness and internal harmony, the philosopher
+may find the simplest melody a revelation of the Absolute; but even
+if it were, its beauty would still pertain to it primarily as a
+revelation of the individual experience which it embodies. Again, by
+reason of the freedom from the particular conditions out of which it
+arises acquired by a work of art, its individual meaning easily becomes
+typical, so that it often serves as a universal under which individuals
+similar to those represented are subsumed--as when we speak of "a
+Faust" or "a Hamlet"; nevertheless, the adequate expression of the
+individual is at once the basis of its beauty and of its extended,
+universalized significance. It is when works of art are profoundly
+individual that we generalize their meaning. In art the individual
+never sinks to the position of a mere specimen or example of a universal
+law. The intellectualistic theory is partly true of symbolic art, but
+not wholly, for even there, the individuality of the symbol counts.
+And yet, as we shall see, there is another meaning of artistic truth,
+which is legitimate.
+
+Aesthetic value, therefore, is not alone sensuous value or ethical or
+scientific or philosophical value. A work of art may contain one or
+all of these values; but they do not constitute its unique value as
+art. The foregoing attempts to define the value of art fail because
+they renounce the idea of unique value, substituting goodness, sensuous
+pleasure, or truth-values found outside of art. But the intrinsic value
+of art must be unique, for it is the value of a unique activity--the
+free expression of experience in a form delightful and permanent,
+mediating communication. And this value we should be able to discover
+by seeking the difference which supervenes upon experience through
+expression of this kind.
+
+Apart from expression, experience may be vivid and satisfactory as we
+feel and think and dream and act; yet it is always in flux, coming and
+going, shifting and unaware. But through expression it is arrested by
+being attached to a permanent form, and there can be retained and
+surveyed. Experience, which is otherwise fluent and chaotic, or when
+orderly too busy with its ends to know itself, receives through
+expression the fixed, clear outlines of a thing, and can be contemplated
+like a thing. Every one has verified the clarifying effect of expression
+upon ideas, how they thus acquire definiteness and coherence, so that
+even the mind that thinks them can hold them in review. But this effect
+upon feeling is no less sure. The unexpressed values of experience are
+vague strivings embedded in chaotic sensations and images; these
+expression sorts and organizes by attaching them to definite ordered
+symbols. Even what is most intimate and fugitive becomes a stable
+object. When put into patterned words, the subtlest and deepest passions
+of a poet, which before were felt in a dim and tangled fashion, are
+brought out into the light of consciousness. In music, the most elusive
+moods, by being embodied in ordered sounds, remain no longer
+subterranean, but are objectified and lifted into clearness. In the
+novel or drama, the writer is able not only to enact his visions of
+life in the imagination, but, by bodying them forth in external words
+and acts, to possess them for reflection. In painting, all that is
+seen and wondered at in nature is seen with more delicacy and
+discrimination and felt with greater freedom; or the vague fancies
+which a heated imagination paints upon the background of the mind come
+out more vivid and better controlled, when put with care upon a canvas.
+
+Even ordinary expression, of course, arrests and clarifies experience,
+enabling us to commune with ourselves; but since its purpose is usually
+beyond itself, this result is hasty and partial, limited to what is
+needful for the practical end in view. In art alone is this value
+complete. For there, life is intentionally held in the medium of
+expression, put out into color and line and sound for the clear sight
+and contemplation of men. The aim is just to create life upon which
+we may turn back and reflect.
+
+This effect of artistic expression upon experience has usually been
+called "intuition." Because of its connotation of mysterious knowledge,
+intuition is not a wholly satisfactory word, yet is probably as good
+as any for the purpose of denoting what artists and philosophers of
+art have had in mind and what we have been trying to describe. Other
+terms might also serve--vision, sympathetic insight (sympathetic,
+because it includes the value of experience; insight, because it
+involves possessing experience as a whole and ordered, and as an object
+for reflection). Intuition is opposed, on the one hand, to crude
+unreflecting experience that never observes itself as a whole or attains
+to clearness and self-possession; and, on the other hand, to science,
+which gives the elements and relations of an experience, the classes
+to which it belongs, but loses its uniqueness and its values. Science
+elaborates concepts of things, gives us knowledge about things; art
+presents us with the experience of things purified for contemplation.
+Scientific truth is the fidelity of a description to the external
+objects of experience; artistic truth is sympathetic vision--the
+organization into clearness of experience itself.
+
+Compare, for illustration, life as we live it from day to day with our
+delineation of it as we recall it and tell it to an intimate companion;
+and then compare that with the analysis and classification of it which
+some psychologist or sociologist might make. Or compare the kind of
+knowledge of human nature that we get from Shakespeare or Moliere with
+the sort that we get from the sciences. In the one case, knowledge
+attends a personal acquaintance with the experience, a bringing of it
+home, a feeling for its values, a realization of the inner necessity
+of its elements; in the other, it is a mere set of concepts. Or finally,
+compare the knowledge of the human figure contained in an anatomist's
+manual with a painting of it, where we not only see it, but in the
+imagination touch it and move with it, in short live with it.
+
+Intuition is the effect of artistic appreciation no less than of
+artistic creation. If the artist's expression of his feelings and ideas
+results in intuition, our appreciation of his work must have the same
+value, for appreciation is expression transferred from the artist to
+the spectator. By means of the colors, lines, words, tones that he
+makes, the artist determines in us a process of expression similar to
+his. Out of our own minds we put into the sense-symbols he has woven
+ideas and feelings which provide the content and meaning he intends.
+Hence all aesthetic appreciation is self-expression. This is evident
+in the case of the more lyrical types of art. The lyric poem is
+appreciated by us as an expression of our own inner life; music as an
+expression of our own slumberous or subconscious moods. Yet even the
+more objective types of art, like the novel or the drama, become forms
+of self-expression, for we have to build up the worlds which they
+contain in our own imagination and emotion. We have to live ourselves
+out in them; we can understand them only in terms of our own life.
+
+In the appreciation of the more objective types of art, the personality
+expressed is not, of course, the actual personality; but rather the
+self extended and expanded through the imagination. The things which
+I seem to see and enjoy in the landscape picture I may have never
+really seen; I may have never really moved through the open plain
+there, as I seem to move, toward the mountain in the distance. The
+acts described in the novel or portrayed on the stage I do not really
+perform; the opinions uttered by the persons I do not hold. And yet,
+in order to appreciate the picture, it must be _as if_ I really
+saw the mountain and moved towards it; in order to appreciate the novel
+or the play, I must make the acts and opinions mine. And this I can
+do; for, as it is a commonplace to note, each one of us has within him
+capacities of action and emotion and thought unrealized--the actual
+self is only one of many that might have been--hundreds of possible
+lives slumber in our souls. And no matter which of these lives we have
+chosen for our own, or have had forced upon us by our fate, we always
+retain a secret longing for all the others that have gone unfulfilled,
+and an understanding born of longing. Some of these we imagine
+distinctly--those that we consciously rejected or that a turn of chance
+might have made ours; but most of them we ourselves have not the power
+even to dream. Yet these too beckon us from behind, and the artist
+provides us with their dream. Through art we secure an imaginative
+realization of interests and latent tendencies to act and think and
+feel which, because they are contradictory among themselves or at
+variance with the conditions of our existence, cannot find free play
+within our experience. That same sort of imaginative enlarged expression
+of self that we get vicariously by participating in the life of our
+friends we get also from art.[Footnote: Compare Santayana: _The Sense
+of Beauty_, p. 186.]
+
+Yet in appreciation, as in creation, expression results in intuition.
+Appreciation is no mere imagining, transitory and lawless like a
+daydream. The activity of the imagination is so organized in a permanent
+and perspicuous form that we not only live it, but possess it as an
+object. The activities engaged in building up the work of art in my
+own mind are not the whole of me; judgment remains free to watch and
+synthesize those that are being crystallized there. In looking at a
+portrait, for example, the process of interpreting the life represented
+is ancillary to a total judgment of character. In the novel or drama,
+no matter with what abandon I put myself into the persons and
+situations, the expression of them in outward words and acts, and the
+organization which the artist has imposed upon them, makes of them
+permanent objects for reflection, not mere modes of feeling and
+imagining to endure. Self-expression that does not attain to
+objectivity is incomplete as art. Even music and lyric poetry are
+something more than mere feeling. In all genuine art, experience takes
+on permanence and form--a synthesis, a total meaning, supervenes within
+the flux of impressions and ideas and moods, not excluding, but
+embracing and controlling them. That is intuition.
+
+The insight into experience which art provides is the more valuable
+because it is communicable; to possess it alone would be a good, but
+to share it is better. All values become enhanced when we add to them
+the joy of fellow feeling. The universality of aesthetic expression
+carries with it the universality of aesthetic insight. Merely private
+and unutterable inspirations are not art. Beauty does for life what
+science does for intelligence; even as the one universalizes thought,
+so the other universalizes values. In expressing himself, the artist
+creates a form into which all similar experiences can be poured and
+out of which they can all be shared. When, for example, we listen to
+the hymns of the church or read the poems of Horace, the significance
+of our experience is magnified because we find the feelings of millions
+there; we are in unison with a vast company living and dead. No thing
+of beauty is a private possession. All artists feed on one another and
+into each experience of art has gone the mind-work of the ages.
+
+But there are two types of universality, one by exclusion, the other
+by inclusion. Communists like Tolstoy demand that art express only
+those feelings that are already common, the religious and moral; they
+would exclude all values that have not become those of the race. But
+this is to diminish the importance of art; for it is art's privilege
+to make feelings common by providing a medium through which they can
+be communicated rather than merely to express them after they have
+become common. Understanding is more valuable when it encompasses the
+things that tend to separate and distinguish men than when it is limited
+to the things that unite them. There is nothing so bizarre that art
+may not express it, provided it be communicable.
+
+The life of the imagination, which is the life of art, is, moreover,
+the only life that we can have in common. Sharing life can never mean
+anything else than possessing the life of one another sympathetically.
+Actually to lead another's life would involve possessing his body,
+occupying his position, doing his work, and so destroying him. But
+through the sympathetic imagination we can penetrate his life and leave
+him in possession. To do this thoroughly is possible, however, only
+with the life of a very few people, with intimates and friends. With
+the mass, we can share only ideal things like religion or patriotism,
+but these also are matters of imagination. Now art enlarges the scope
+of this common life by creating a new imaginary world to which we can
+all belong, where action, enjoyment, and experience do not involve
+competition or depend on possession and mastery.
+
+Finally, the intuitions that art provides are relatively permanent.
+Art not only extends life and enables us to share it, but also preserves
+it. Existence has a leak in it, as Plato said; experience flows in and
+then flows out forever. The individual passes from one act to another,
+from one phase of life to another, childhood, then youth, then old
+age. So the race; one generation follows another, and each type of
+civilization displaces a predecessor. Against this flux, our belief
+in progress comforts us; maturity is better than youth, we think, and
+each generation happier and more spiritual than the last. Yet the
+consolations of progress are partial. For even if we always do go on
+to something better in the future, the past had its unique value, and
+that is lost ineluctably. The present doubtless repeats much of the
+form of the past--the essential aspects of human nature remain the
+same; but the subtle, distinctive bloom of each stage of personal life,
+and of each period of the world's history, is transient. We cannot
+again become children, nor can we possess again the strenuous freedom
+of the Renaissance or the unclouded integrity of personality of the
+Greeks.
+
+In the life of the individual, however, the flux is not absolute; for
+through memory we preserve something of the unique value of our past.
+Its vividness, its fullness, the sharp bite of its reality go; but a
+subtilized essence remains. And the worth that we attach to our
+personality depends largely upon it; for the instinct of self-
+preservation penetrates the inner world; we strive not only to maintain
+our physical existence in the present, but our psychic past as well.
+In conserving the values of the past through memory we find a
+satisfaction akin to that of protecting our lives from danger. Through
+memory we feel childhood's joys and youth's sweet love and manhood's
+triumphs still our own, secure against the perils of oblivion.
+
+Now art does for the race what memory does for the individual. Only
+through expression can the past be preserved for all men and all time.
+When the individual perishes, his memories go with him; unless,
+therefore, he puts them into a form where they can be taken up into
+the consciousness of other men, they are lost forever. And just as the
+individual seeks a vicarious self-preservation through identifying
+himself with his children and his race, and finds compensation for his
+own death in their continuance, so he rejoices when he knows that men
+who come after will appreciate the values of his life. We of the present
+feel ourselves enriched, in turn, as by a longer memory, in adding to
+the active values of our own lives the remembered values of the past.
+Their desire to know themselves immortal is met by our desire to unite
+our lives with all our past. Art alone makes this possible. History
+may tell us what men did, but only the poet or other artist can make
+us relive the values of their experience. For through expression they
+make their memories, or their interpretations of other men's memories,
+ours. Art is the memory of the race, the conserver of its values.
+
+The distinguishing characteristics of aesthetic expression observed by
+us--the pleasurableness of the medium, the enhanced unity--serve
+intuition as that has been described by us. One of the strongest
+objections against the theory of art as intuition, as that theory has
+been developed by Croce, for example, is that it provides no place for
+charm. Yet without charm there is no complete beauty, and any
+interpretation of the facts of the aesthetic experience which neglects
+this element is surely inadequate. But charm although an indispensable,
+is not an independent, factor in the experience of art; for it serves
+intuition. It does so in two ways. The charm of the medium, by drawing
+attention to itself, increases the objectivity of the experience
+expressed. Even when the experiences felt into color and line and sound
+are poignantly our own, to live pleasantly in any one of these
+sensations is to live as an object to oneself, the life sharing the
+externality of the medium--we put our life out there more readily when
+it is pleasant there. And the charm of the medium serves intuition in
+another way. When the activities of thought and feeling and imagination
+released by the work of art are delightful, they become more delightful
+still if the medium in which they function is itself delightful. To
+imagine
+
+  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
+  Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn
+
+is a pleasure by itself, but more pleasurable, and therefore more
+spontaneous, because of the melody of sound in which it is enveloped.
+And when the activities expressed are not pleasant, the expression of
+them in a delightful medium helps to induce us to make them our own
+and accept them notwithstanding. The medium becomes a charming net to
+hold us, and because of its allurements we give ourselves the more
+freely to its spirit within. The following, for example, is not an
+agreeable thought:
+
+  To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
+  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
+  To the last syllable of recorded time;
+  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
+  The way to dusty death.
+
+Yet the expression of this thought is pleasant, among other reasons,
+because of the rhythmic charm of language. We shall come back to this
+fact in our chapter on "The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics." There is
+no contradiction between the fair form of a work of art and its content,
+however repellent. For if we value the sympathetic knowledge of life,
+we shall be glad of any means impelling us to undertake what alone can
+give this--a friendly dwelling with life itself. Thus the decorative
+and the expressive functions of art are reconciled--pleasure and
+intuition meet.
+
+Just as from time to time pleasure in sensation has been one-sidedly
+thought to be the purpose of art, so likewise the unity characteristic
+of beautiful things. Indeed, beauty and order have become almost
+synonymous in popular thought. And, to be sure, this unity, as we have
+already remarked, has its own value; the mind delights in order just
+for its own sake, and the artist, who is bent on making something
+worthful on its own account, strives to develop it for that reason.
+And yet unity is no more independent of expression and intuition than
+sensation is; it too enters into their service. Many forms of unity
+in works of art are themselves media of expression--the simplest and
+most striking example is perhaps the rhythmical ordering of sounds in
+poetry and music, the emotional value of which everybody appreciates.
+In a later chapter, I shall try to show that the same is true of harmony
+and balance. In another way, also, unity serves intuition. For the
+existence of order in an experience is indispensable to that wholeness
+of view, that mastery in the mind, which is half of intuition. The
+merely various, the chaotic, the disorganized, cannot be grasped or
+understood. In order that an experience may be understood, its items
+must be strung together by some principle in terms of which they may
+demand each other and constitute a whole. Organization _is_
+understanding. Every work of art, every beautiful thing, is organized,
+and, as we have observed, organized not merely in the thought or other
+meaning expressed, but throughout, in the sensuous medium as well.
+
+So far the value which we have discovered in artistic expression has
+been that of delightful and orderly sympathetic vision. This is
+supplemented from still another source of value. Through artistic
+expression pent-up emotions find a welcome release. No matter how
+poignant be the experience expressed, the weight, the sting of it
+disappears through expression. For through expression, as we have seen,
+the experience is drawn from the dark depths of the self to the clear
+and orderly surface of the work of art; the emotions that weighed are
+lifted out and up into color and line and sound, where the mind can
+view and master them. Mere life gives place to the contemplation of
+life; and contemplation imposes on life some of the calm that is its
+own. The most violent and unruly passions may be the material of art,
+but once they are put into artistic form they are mastered and refined.
+"There is an art of passion, but no passionate art" (Schiller). Through
+expression, the repression, the obstruction of feeling is broken down;
+the mere effort to find and elaborate a fitting artistic form for the
+material diverts the attention and provides other occupation for the
+mind; an opportunity is given to reflect upon and understand the
+experience, bringing it somehow into harmony with one's total
+life,--through all these means procuring relief. It is impossible to
+cite the famous passage from Goethe's "Poetry and Truth" too often:--
+
+  And thus began that bent of mind from which I could not
+  deviate my whole life through; namely, that of turning into
+  an image, into a poem, everything that delighted or troubled
+  me, or otherwise occupied my attention, and of coming to
+  some certain understanding with myself thereupon....
+  All the works therefore that have been published by me are
+  only fragments of one great confession.
+
+[Footnote: English translation, edited by Parke Godwin, Vol. I, p.66.]
+
+This effect of artistic expression belongs, of course, to other forms
+of expression. Every confession, every confidential outpouring of
+emotion, is an example. We have all verified the truth that to formulate
+feeling is to be free with reference to it; not that we thereby get
+rid of it, but that we are able to look it in the face, and find some
+place for it in our world where we can live on good terms with it. The
+greatest difficulty in bearing with any disappointment or sorrow comes
+not from the thing itself--for after all we have other things to live
+for--but from its effect upon the presuppositions, so to speak, of our
+entire existence. The mind has an unconscious set of axioms or
+postulates which it assumes in the process of living; now anything
+that seems to contradict these, as a great calamity does, by destroying
+the logic of life, makes existence seem meaningless and corrupts that
+faith in life which is the spring of action. In order for the health
+of the mind to be restored, the contradictory fact must be somehow
+reconciled with the mind's presuppositions, and the rationality of
+existence reaffirmed. But an indispensable preliminary to this is that
+we should clearly envisage and reflect upon the fact, viewing it in
+its larger relations, where it will lose its overwhelming significance.
+Now that is what expression, by stabilizing and clarifying experience,
+enables us to do.
+
+A great many works of art besides Goethe's, not merely of lyric poetry,
+but also of the novel and drama, among them some of the greatest, like
+the _Divine Comedy_, so far as they spring intimately from the
+life of the artist, are "fragments of a great confession," and have
+had the sanitary value of a confession for their creators. It is not
+always possible to trace the personal feelings and motives lying behind
+the artist's fictions; for the suffering soul covers its pains with
+subtle disguises; yet even when we do not know them, we can divine
+them. We are certain, for example, that Watteau's gay pictured visions
+were the projection--and confession--of his own disappointed dreams.
+The great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect,
+is its universality. Art is the confessional of the race. The artist
+provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and
+heal their souls. In making the artist's expression ours, we find an
+equal relief. Who does not feel a revival of some old or present despair
+of his own when he reads:--
+
+  Un grand sommeil noir
+  Tombe sur ma vie;
+  Dormez toute espoir,
+  Dormez toute envie!
+
+  Je ne vois plus rien,
+  Je perds la memoire
+  Du mal et du bien....
+  Oh, la triste histoire!
+
+yet who does not at the same time experience its assuagement? And this
+effect is not confined to lyrical art, for so far as, in novel and
+drama, we put ourselves in the place of the dramatis persona, we can
+pour our own emotional experiences into them and through them find
+relief for ourselves. Just so, Aristotle recognized the cathartic or
+healing influence of art, both in music and the drama--"through pity
+and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions." [Footnote:
+_Poetics,_ 6, 2. _Politics,_ 5, 7.]
+
+The delightsomeness of the work of art and its self-sufficient freedom,
+standing in contrast with the drab or difficult realities of nature
+and personal striving, serve also to make of beauty a consoler and
+healer. In place of a confused medley of sense impressions, art offers
+orderly and pleasant colors or sounds; instead of a real life of duties
+hard to fulfill and ambitions painfully accomplished, art provides an
+imagined life which, while imitating and thus preserving the interest
+of real life, remains free from its hazards and burdens. I would not
+base the value of art on the contrast between art and life; yet it is
+unlikely, I think, if life were not so bound and disordered, that art
+would seem so free and perfect; and it is often true that those who
+suffer and struggle most love art best. The unity of the work of art,
+in which each element suggests another within its world, keeping you
+there and shutting you out momentarily from the real world to which
+you must presently return, and the sensuous charm of the medium,
+fascinating your eyes and ears, bring forgetfulness and a temporary
+release.
+
+To sum the results of the last two chapters. Art is expression, not
+of mere things or ideas, but of concrete experience with its values,
+and for its own sake. It is experience held in a delightful, highly
+organized sensuous medium, and objectified there for communication and
+reflection. Its value is in the sympathetic mastery and preservation
+of life in the mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ANALYSIS OF THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE: THE ELEMENTS OF THE EXPERIENCE
+
+
+Thus far we have sought to define art, to form a concrete idea of the
+experience of art, and to place it in its relations to other facts.
+We shall now pass from synthetic definition to psychological analysis.
+We want to pick out the elements of mind entering into the experience
+of art and exhibit their characteristic relations. In the present
+chapter we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the elements, leaving
+the study of most of the problems of structure to the following chapter.
+
+Every experience of art [Footnote: Throughout this discussion, I use
+"experience of art," "aesthetic experience," and "beauty" with the same
+meaning.] contains, in the first place, the sensations which are the
+media of expression. In a painting, for example, there are colors; in
+a piece of music, tones; in a poem, word-sounds. To this material,
+secondly, are attached vague feelings. It is characteristic of aesthetic
+expressions, as we have observed, that their media, quite apart from
+anything that they may mean or represent, are expressive of moods--the
+colors of a painting have a _stimmung,_ so have tones and words,
+when rhythmically composed. The simplest aesthetic experiences, like
+the beauty of single musical tones or colors, are of no greater
+complexity; yet almost all works of art contain further elements; for
+as a rule the sensations do not exist for their own sakes alone, but
+possess a function, to represent things. The colors of a landscape
+painting are not only interesting to us as beautiful colors, but as
+symbols of a landscape; the words of a ballad charm and stimulate us
+not only through their music, but because of actions or events which
+they bring before the mind. This involves, psychologically speaking,
+that certain ideas--of trees and clouds in the painting, of men and
+their deeds in the poem--are associated to the sense elements and
+constitute their meaning. Such ideas or meanings are the third class
+of elements in the aesthetic experience. But these ideas, in their turn,
+also arouse emotions, only not of the indefinite sort which belong to
+the sense elements, but definite, like the emotions aroused by things
+and events in real life. For example, Rembrandt's "Man with the Gold
+Helmet" will not only move us in a vague way through the character and
+rhythm of its lines and colors, but will, in addition, stimulate
+sentiments of respect and veneration, similar to those that we should
+feel if the old warrior were himself before us. In such definite
+feelings we have, then, a fourth class of mental elements. A fifth
+class will make our list complete. It consists of images from the
+various sense departments--sight, hearing, taste, smell, temperature,
+movement--which arise in connection with the ideas or meanings, making
+them concrete and full. For example, some of the colors in a landscape
+painting will not only give us the idea that there is sunlight there,
+but will also arouse faint images of warmth, which will make the idea
+more vivid; other colors, representing the clouds, will produce faint
+sensations of softness; still others, representing flowers, may produce
+faint odors.
+
+Let us study sensation as an element in beauty, first. Sensation is
+the door through which we enter into the experience of beauty; and,
+again, it is the foundation upon which the whole structure rests.
+Without feeling for the values of sensation, men may be sympathetic
+and intelligent, but they cannot be lovers of the beautiful. They may,
+for example, appreciate the profound or interesting ideas in poetry,
+but unless they can connect them with the rhythm-values of the sounds
+of the words, they have only an intellectual or emotional, not an
+aesthetic experience.
+
+Yet, despite the omnipresence and supreme worth of sensation in beauty,
+not all kinds are equally fit for entrance into the experience. From
+the time of Plato, who writes of "fair sights and sounds" only, vision
+and hearing have been recognized as the preeminently aesthetic senses.
+These senses provide the basis for all the arts--music and poetry are
+arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision.
+And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of
+all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of
+expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts
+and feelings; so do visual sensations--the facial expression or gesture
+seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract
+colors and space-forms, like red and the circle, have independent
+feeling-tones. A taste or a temperature sensation may be pleasant or
+unpleasant, but has no meaning, either by itself, as a color or a tone
+has, or through association, as a word has. It has no connection with
+the life of feeling or of thought. Its chief significance is
+practical--sweet invites to eating, cold impels to the seeking of a
+warm shelter, touch is a preliminary to grasping. All the so-called
+lower senses are bound up with instincts and actions. Of course sights
+and sounds have also a significance for instinct--the color and form
+and voice of the individual of the opposite sex, for example. But,
+before acting on the prompting of instinct, the lover may pause and
+enjoy the appealing color and form; he may connect his feelings with
+them and hold on to and delight in the resulting experience--an
+emotional appreciation of the object may intervene between the stimulus
+and the appropriate action, and even supplant it. In this way, vision
+and hearing may free themselves from the merely practical and become
+autonomous embodiments of feeling. The distance between the seen or
+heard object and the body is important. The objects of touch and taste,
+on the other hand, have to be brought into contact with the body; the
+practical reaction then follows; there is no time during which it may
+be suspended.
+
+Important also, especially for the beauty of art, is our greater power
+to control sensations of vision and hearing. Only colors and sounds
+can be woven into complex and stable wholes. Tastes and odors, when
+produced simultaneously or in succession, do not keep their distinctness
+as colors and sounds do, but blur and interfere with each other. No
+one, however ingenious, could construct a symphony of odors or a picture
+of tastes. Nevertheless, the possibility of controlling colors and
+sounds and of creating stable and public objects out of them, is only
+a secondary reason for their aesthetic fitness. Even if one could
+construct instruments for the orderly production of tastes and
+odors--and simple instruments of this kind have been devised--one could
+not make works of art out of them; for a succession of such sensations
+would express nothing; they would still be utterly without meaning.
+The fundamental reason for the superiority of sights and sounds is
+their expressiveness, their connection with the life of feeling and
+thought. They take root in the total self; whereas the other elements
+remain, for the most part, on the surface.
+
+Under favorable conditions, however, all sensations may enter into the
+sthetic experience. Despite the close connection between the lower
+senses and the impulses serving practical life, there is a certain
+disinterestedness in all pleasant sensations. Fine wines and perfumes
+offer tastes and odors which are sought and enjoyed apart from the
+satisfaction of hunger; in dancing, movement sensations are enjoyed
+for their own sake; in the bath, heat and cold. But, as we have seen,
+it is not sufficient for a sensation to be free from practical ends
+in order to become aesthetic; it must be connected with the larger
+background of feeling; it must be expressive. Now, under certain
+circumstances and in particular cases, this may occur, even in the
+instance of the lower senses. The perfume of flowers, of roses and of
+violets, has a strong emotional appeal; it is their "soul" as the poets
+say. The odor of incense in a cathedral may be an important element
+in devotion, fusing with the music and the architecture. Or recall the
+odor of wet earth and reviving vegetation during a walk in the woods
+on a spring morning. Even sensations of taste may become aesthetic.
+An oft-cited example is the taste of wine on a Rhine steamer. Guyau,
+the French poet-philosopher, mentions the taste of milk after a hard
+climb in the Pyrenees. [Footnote: _Les Problemes de l'esthetique
+contemporaine_, 8me edition, p. 63.] A drink of water from a clear
+spring would serve equally well as an example familiar to all. The
+warmth of a fire, of sunlight, of a cozy room, or the cold of a star-lit
+winter night have an emotional significance almost, if not quite, equal
+to that of the visual sensations from these objects. Touch seems to
+be irretrievably bound up with grasping and using, but the touch of
+a well-loved person may be a free and glowing experience, sharing with
+sight in beauty. The movement sensations during a run in the open air
+or in dancing are not only free from all practical purpose, but are
+elements in the total animation. And other examples will come to the
+mind of every reader. [Footnote: Compare Volkelt: _System der
+Aesthetik_, Bd. I, Zweites Capitel, S. 92.]
+
+As our illustrations show, the lower senses enter into the beauty of
+nature only; they do not enter into the beauty of art. Their beauty
+is therefore vague and accidental. It usually depends, moreover, upon
+some support from vision, with the beauty of which it fuses. Apart
+from the picturesque surroundings seen, the mountain milk and the Rhine
+wine would lose much of their beauty; the warmth of sunlight or of
+fire, without the brightness of these objects, the odor of flowers
+without their form and color, would be of small aesthetic worth. Through
+connection with vision the lower senses acquire something of its
+permanence and independence. People differ greatly in their capacity
+to render the lower senses aesthetic; it is essentially a matter of
+refinement, of power to free them from their natural root in the
+practical and instinctive, and lift them into the higher region of
+sentiment. But every kind of sensation, however low, may become
+beautiful; this is not to degrade beauty, but to ennoble sensation.
+
+From a psychological standpoint, sensation is the datum of the aesthetic
+experience, the first thing there, while its power to express depends
+upon a further process which links it up with thoughts and feelings.
+We must inquire, therefore, how this linkage takes place--how, for
+example, it comes about that the colors of a painting are something
+more than mere colors, being, in addition, embodiments of trees and
+sky and foliage, and of liveliness and gayety and other feelings
+appropriate to a spring landscape. Let us consider the linkage with
+feeling first.
+
+There are two characteristics of aesthetic feeling in its relation to
+sensations and ideas which must be taken into account in any
+explanation; its objectification in them and the universality of this
+connection. Expression is embodiment. We find gayety in the colors of
+the painting, joy in the musical tones, happiness in the pictured face,
+tenderness in the sculptured pose. We hear the feeling in the sounds
+and see it in the lines and colors. The happiness seems to belong to
+the face, the joy to the tones, in the same simple and direct fashion
+as the shape of the one or the pitch of the others. The feelings have
+become true attributes. It is only by analysis that we pick them out,
+separate them from the other elements of idea or sensation in the
+whole, and then, for the purpose of scientific explanation, inquire
+how they came to be connected. And this connection is not one that
+depends upon the accidents of personal experience. It is not, for
+example, like the emotional significance that the sound of the voice
+of the loved one has for the lover, which even he may some day cease
+to feel, and which other men do not feel at all. It is rather typified
+by the emotional value of a melody, which, through psychological
+processes common to all men, becomes a universal language of feeling.
+The work of art is a communicable, not a private expression.
+
+As we have observed, the elements of feeling in the aesthetic experience
+are of two broad kinds--either vague, when directly linked with the
+sensuous medium, or else definite, when this linkage is mediated by
+ideas through which the medium is given content and meaning. The former
+kind, which I shall consider first, comprises all cases of the emotional
+expressiveness of the medium itself,--of tones and word-sounds and
+their rhythms and patterns, of colors and lines and space-forms and
+their designs. The detailed study of this expressiveness I shall leave
+to the chapters on the arts; here I wish merely to indicate the kind
+of psychological process involved.
+
+In many cases the psychological principle of association operates. The
+tender expressiveness of certain curved lines, like those of the Greek
+amphora, for example, is due, partially at least, to association with
+lines of the human body, with which normally this feeling is associated.
+The associated object, together with its feeling tone, are sufficiently
+common to the experience of all men to account for the universality
+of the emotion, and the isolation of the stimulus--abstract line--from
+its usual context of color and bulk accounts for the vagueness.
+Sometimes, on the other hand, expressiveness seems to be due to a
+direct psychological relation between the sense-stimulus and the
+emotion. This is almost certainly the case with rhythms, and, as I
+shall argue in the chapters on painting and music, is at least partially
+true of colors and tones. The expressiveness is at once too immediate
+and too universal to depend upon association with definite things and
+events, or personal, emotional crises. A rhythm, for example, may be
+exciting the first time it is heard; one does not have to wait to hear
+it at a battle-charge; a melody may be sad even when one has never
+heard it sung by chance at parting. Of course the fact that associations
+are not remembered is no proof that they do not operate; but it is
+difficult to conceive of any which could operate in these cases. For
+this reason, I think, we must suppose that certain sense-stimuli and
+combinations of stimuli not only produce in the sensory areas of the
+brain the appropriate sensations, but that their effects are prolonged,
+overflowing into the motor channels and there causing a total reaction
+of the organism, the conscious aspect of which is a vague feeling. The
+organic resonance is too slight and diffuse to produce a true emotion;
+hence only a mood results.
+
+In all the representative arts the vague expressiveness of the medium
+is reinforced through emotions aroused by ideas which interpret
+sensation as an element of a thing. The green in the painting is not
+only green, but green of the sea; the red is not only red, but red of
+the sky; the curved line is not a mere curve, it is the outline of a
+wave. The totality of colors and lines is not a mere color and line
+composition, but a marine landscape. The feeling tones of the elements
+of this complex and of the complex itself are not only those of the
+colors and lines as such, but of the interpretative ideas as well;
+which in turn are the same as those of the corresponding real things.
+The psychological process is here simple enough. The feeling tone of
+the sea is carried by the idea of the sea, which now fuses with the
+green color and wavy lines of the painting.
+
+But in order fully to explain the phenomena of aesthetic expression,
+it is not sufficient to show how the connection between feeling and
+sensation and idea takes place; it is necessary, in addition, to explain
+the nature of this connection. The feeling is not experienced by us
+as what it is--our reaction to the sensations or represented
+objects--but rather as an objective quality of them. The sounds are
+sad, the curve tender, the sea placid and reposeful. Why is this?
+
+The explanation is, I think, as follows. Despite their usual
+subjectivity, feelings tend to be located in the objective world
+whenever they are in conflict with or not directly rooted in the
+personal life or character of the individual. In listening to music,
+for example, feelings of despair and terror may be aroused in me who
+am perhaps secure and happy; and even if the feelings are joyous, they
+are not occasioned by any piece of personal good fortune--my situation
+in life is the same now as before. Hence, finding no lodgment in the
+ego, and having to exist somewhere, they seek a domicile in the sounds
+evoking them. And, in general, works of art arouse but offer no personal
+occasions for feeling, and therefore absorb it into themselves.
+
+The process of objectification may, however, go further. It often
+happens in the aesthetic experience that feelings are not objectified
+alone, but carry with them the idea of the self--I come to feel
+_myself_ as joyous or despairing in the sounds. The extent to which the
+idea of the self thus follows the objectified feelings depends largely
+upon the amount of their reverberation throughout the organism. When
+this is small, and the feelings are vague and tenuous, as in color
+appreciation, there is little or no definite projection of the idea
+of the self; when, on the other hand, it is large and the emotions are
+strong, as oftentimes in music, where breathing, circulation, hand and
+foot are affected, then I myself seem to be there,--striving, pursuing,
+struggling, in the sounds. I am where my body is. The projection of
+the idea of the self is facilitated for the same reason when the body
+is actually employed in the creation of the work of art, as in singing
+and acting. It also occurs more readily when the life expressed in the
+work of art is akin to the spectator's. Thus, an emotional and
+suggestible woman, in watching a fine performance of "Magda," inevitably
+puts herself in the place of the heroine if she has herself lived
+through a similar experience. But when the life expressed is strikingly
+foreign to our own, the projection of the idea of self is more
+difficult; the duality between subject and object tends to remain.
+
+These phenomena have excited special attention when, as in painting
+and sculpture and the drama, a human being is represented. Suppose,
+for example, I see a statue of a runner ready to start. I not only see
+the form and color of the marble and recognize them as a man's; I also
+feel emotions of excitement, tension, and expectation such as I should
+myself feel were I too posed and waiting to run a race. And these
+emotions I experience as the man's, and as his, not in a vague way,
+but as definitely present in his sculptured form, even in particular
+parts of it,--in the swelling chest and tightened limbs. Or consider
+another case. Suppose I see Franz Hals' "Laughing Cavalier." I feel
+jollity in the face, as the cavalier's. Yet in both cases I may feel
+the emotions as also my own--as if I too were about to run or were
+laughing. And the projection of the idea of the self will occur most
+readily if I am myself a runner or a jolly person. In both instances,
+moreover, the process will be mediated by impulses to movements that
+are the normal accompaniments of the emotions in question. If I observe
+myself carefully, I may find that my own chest is tending to swell and
+my own limbs to tighten, in imitation of the runner's, or my own pupils
+to dilate and the muscles of my face to wrinkle and to part, in
+imitation of the Dutchman's. And these movement-impulses I objectify.
+I not only see jollity in the face, but laughter as well; in the statue,
+not only excitement, but running. And again--where my body is, there
+am I; so I am jolly with the cavalier and excited with the runner. The
+psychology of this process is simple enough. In my experience there
+is a plain connection between the sight of a movement and sensations
+attendant upon movement, and further, a connection between some of
+these movements, namely, the expressive movements, and the emotions
+which they express. In accordance with the law of association by
+contiguity, whenever any one of several mental elements usually
+connected together is present in the mind, the others tend to arise
+also. So here. Seeing the semblance of tight muscles and a smiling
+face, I feel the emotions which have these visual associates, experience
+the correlated movement-sensations, project them all into the object
+which initiated the process.
+
+In recent years, a great deal has been made of these movement-sensations
+in explaining aesthetic feeling. [Footnote: See the discussions in Lee
+and Thompson: _Beauty and Ugliness_.] Yet in the case of all people who
+are not strongly of the motor type, people in whose mental make-up
+movement plays a minor part in comparison with vision and other
+sensations, they play a secondary role, or even hardly any role at
+all. Most spectators, indeed, instead of actually making slight
+movements imitative of the movements seen or represented, and
+experiencing the corresponding sensations, make no movements at all
+and simply experience movement images; this substitution of image for
+movement probably occurs in the minds of all except the most imitative.
+Most people, even of the motor type, do not smile when they see the
+"Laughing Cavalier" or start to run when they see the statue of the
+runner; careful observation of themselves would disclose only faint
+movement images which seem to play about their lips or limbs--mere
+images of movement have supplanted movements. And many visualists would
+not find any images at all. However, although the mistake has been
+committed by some investigators of supposing that everybody experiences
+movement because they themselves, being of the motor type, do, it
+cannot be denied, I think, that such people attain to a vividness of
+aesthetic living not reached by others. They appreciate beauty with
+their bodies as well as with their souls. And in their case too, as
+has been shown, aesthetic appreciation is more strongly histrionic--they
+not only put themselves into the work of art, but the idea of themselves
+as well.
+
+Following the German school of einfuehlung, I have insisted throughout
+this discussion on the importance of feeling in the aesthetic
+experience; yet I do not think the voice of those people can be
+neglected who claim that their experience with works of art is of
+slight or no emotional intensity. There are people who would report
+that they feel no jollity when they see the "Laughing Cavalier," or
+anguish when they read the Ugolino Canto in the Inferno; yet such
+people often have a highly developed aesthetic taste. How can this
+difference be accounted for?
+
+Starting with the emotional appreciation of art as primary, we can
+account for it in this wise. It is a familiar phenomenon in the mental
+life for a concept or idea of an emotional experience to take the place
+of that experience. What man has not rejoiced when the simple and cold
+judgment, "I suffered then," has come to supplant a recurring torment?
+Or who that has lived constantly with a sick person has not observed
+how, looking on the face of pain, inevitably the mere comment, "he is
+in distress," comes to supplant the liveliest sympathetic thrill? There
+are many reasons for this. The idea or judgment is a less taxing thing
+than an emotion, and so is substituted for it in the mind, which
+everywhere seeks economy of effort. The idea is also more efficient
+from a practical point of view, because it leads directly to action
+and does not divert and waste energy in diffused and useless movements.
+The physician simply recognizes the states of mind of his patients,
+he does not sympathize with them. Finally our own reactions to an
+objectified emotion may interfere with the emotion. If, for example,
+we see an angry man, our own fear of him may entirely supplant our
+sympathetic feeling of his anger. In general, in our dealings with our
+fellow men, we are too busy with our attitudes and plans with reference
+to them, and too much concerned with economizing our emotional energy,
+to get a sympathetic intuition of their inner life, and so are content
+with an intellectual recognition of it. Now this habit of substituting
+the more rapid and economical process of judgment for the longer and
+more taxing one of sympathy, is carried over into the world of art.
+
+Nevertheless, the world of art is a region especially fitted for
+_einfuehlung._ For there the need for quick action, which in life
+tends to syncopate emotion, does not exist. The characteristic attitude
+of art is leisurely absorption in an object, giving time for all the
+possibilities of feeling or other experience to develop. Moreover, in
+art there is not the same saving need for the substitution of idea for
+feeling as in real life. For in art, feeling is not so strong as in
+life; even when the artist expresses his own personal experience, he
+lightens its emotional burden through expression, and we, when we make
+his experience ours, find a similar relief. The emotion is genuine,
+only weakened in intensity. In other cases, where the artist constructs
+a world of fictitious characters and events, our knowledge that they
+are not real suffices to diminish the intensity of the emotions aroused.
+For emotions have the practical function of inciting to action, and
+when action is impossible, as in the purely ideal world of the artist,
+they cannot keep their natural intensity. We cannot feel so strongly
+over the mere idea of an event as over a real event. Were it otherwise,
+who could stand the strain of _Hamlet_ or _Othello_?
+
+Throughout this discussion of the elements of the experience of art,
+I have used the terms emotion and feeling with an inclusive meaning,
+to cover impulses as well as feelings in the narrower sense. For in
+the aesthetic experience, there are impulses--impulses to move when
+action is represented in picture and statue, impulses to act, as when,
+in watching a play, we put ourselves in the place of the persons. But
+such impulses are always checked through the realization that they
+come from sources unrelated to our purposes, and fail to get the
+reenforcement or consent of the total self necessary to action. In
+reading or singing the "Marseillaise," to cite an example from poetry,
+I experience all kinds of impulses--to shoulder a musket, to march,
+to kill--but no one of them is carried out. Now an inhibited impulse
+is scarcely distinguishable from an emotion. With few exceptions, the
+impulses in art do not issue in resolves, decisions, determinations
+to act; or, if they do, the determinations refer to acts to be executed
+in the future, in an experience distinct and remote from the
+sthetic--the "Marseillaise" has doubtless produced such resolutions
+in the minds of Frenchmen; and there is much art that is productive
+in that way, providing the "birth in beauty" of which Plato wrote.
+[Footnote: In the _Symposium_.] In art, impulses result in immediate
+action only when action is itself the medium of expression, as in the
+dance, where impulses to movement pass over into motion. Of course such
+actions still remain aesthetic since they serve no practical end and are
+valued for themselves.
+
+If the question were raised, which is more fundamental in the aesthetic
+experience, idea or emotion? the answer would have to be, emotion. For
+there exists at least one great art where no explicit ideas are present,
+music, whereas art without emotion does not exist. Take away the
+emotional content from expression and you get either a mere play of
+sensations, like fireworks, or else pseudo-science, like the modern
+naturalistic play. However, the supreme importance of the idea in art
+cannot be denied. Every complex work of art, save music, is an
+expression of ideas as well as of feelings, and even in music there
+exists the tendency for feeling to seek definition in ideas--do we not
+say a musical idea? And do we not find the masters of so abstract an
+art as ornament employing their materials to represent symbolic
+conceptions? I wish to call the attention of the reader to certain
+very general considerations touching the nature and function of ideas
+in the aesthetic experience, leaving the study of the concrete problems
+to the more special chapters.
+
+First, the relation of the idea to the sense medium of the expression.
+Here, I think, we find something comparable to the process of
+_einfuehlung_. For in art, ideas, like feelings, are objectified
+in sensation. Only sensations are given; out of the mind come ideas
+through which the former are interpreted and made into the semblance
+of things. Consider, for example, Rembrandt's "Night-Watch." A festal
+mood is there in the golds and reds, and gloom in the blacks; but there
+also are the men and drums and arms. If we wished to push the analogy
+with _einfuehlung_, we might coin a corresponding term--_einmeinung_,
+"inmeaning." In all the representative arts, this is a process of equal
+importance with infeeling; for the artist strives just as much to
+realize his ideas of objects in the sense material of his art as to put
+his moods there.
+
+When, moreover, we consider that the expression of the more complex
+and definite emotions is dependent upon the expression of ideas of
+nature and human life, we see that the process is really a single one.
+Feeling is a function of ideas; if, then, we demand sincerity in the
+one, we must equally demand conviction in the other. The poet could
+not convey to us his pleasure at the sight of nature or his awe of
+death unless he could somehow bring us into their presence. The painter
+could not express the moods of sunlight or of shadow until he had
+invented a technique for their representation. Clear and confident
+seeing is a condition of feeling. Hence every advance in the imitation
+of nature is an advance in the power of expression. The demand for
+fidelity of representation, for "truth to nature," so insistently made
+by the common man in his criticism of art, is justified even from the
+point of view of expressionism.
+
+Yet this fidelity of representation does not involve exact reproduction
+of nature. The limitations of the media of the arts definitely exclude
+this. No painter can reproduce on a canvas the infinite detail of any
+object or exactly imitate its colors and lines. In the single matter
+of brightness, for example, his medium is hopelessly inadequate; even
+the light of the moon is beyond his power, not to speak of the light
+of the sun; he has to substitute a relative for an absolute scale of
+values. The sculptor cannot reproduce the color or hair of the human
+body. However, this failure exactly to imitate nature does not prevent
+the artist from suggesting to us ideas of the objects in which he is
+interested. If the outline of the marble be that of a man, we get the
+idea of a man; if the color and shape be that of a tree, we get the
+idea of a tree. Our acceptance of these ideas is, of course, only
+partial; for we are equally susceptible to the negative suggestions
+of the whiteness of the marble and the smallness of the outline of the
+tree. Every work of art represents a sort of compromise between reality
+and unreality, belief and disbelief.
+
+Nevertheless, despite this compromise, the purpose of art is
+uncompromisingly attained. For art does not seek to give us nature
+over again, but to express its feeling tones, and these are conveyed
+when we get an idea of the corresponding object, even if that idea is
+inadequate from a strictly scientific point of view. We do not react
+emotionally to the infinite detail of any object, but only to its
+presence as a whole and to certain salient features. The artist succeeds
+when he constructs a humanized image of the object--one which arouses
+and becomes a center for feeling. This image, when made of a few
+elements, may be far more telling than a much more accurate copy; for
+there is no diffusion of interest to irrelevant aspects. How effective
+a medium for expression are the few and simple lines of Beardsley's
+draftsmanship! The amount of detail necessary to convey an emotionally
+effective idea is relative to the technique of the different arts and
+varies also with the suggestibility and discrimination of the observer.
+Here no a priori principles can be laid down for what only the
+experimental practice of the artist can determine.
+
+Moreover, the negative suggestions of a work of art, although they are
+effective in preventing entire belief in the reality of the idea
+expressed, do not hinder the communication and appreciation of the
+attached feelings. Just so long as the belief attitude is not wholly
+extinguished, this is the case; and the skillful artist takes care of
+that. Of course, an attitude of self-surrender, of willingness to
+accept suggestions, has to be present and we cooperate with the artist
+in creating it. Aesthetic belief implies sufficient abandon that we
+may react emotionally to a suggestion, but not enough that we may react
+practically. We let the idea tell upon our feelings; we do not let it
+incite us to action. The aesthetic plausibility of an idea depends
+largely upon its initial plausibility with the artist. There is nothing
+more contagious than belief. To utter things with an accent of
+conviction is half the battle in getting oneself believed. If the
+artist pretends to believe something and expresses himself with an air
+of assurance, we accept it, no matter how preposterous it may be from
+the practical or scientific point of view. Think of Rabelais!
+
+A work of art is a logical system. It presupposes certain assumptions,
+postulates, conventions, which we must accept if we are to live in its
+world. Now, in order that we may accept them, the artist must first
+have vividly accepted them himself. Only if they have become a very
+part of him, can they become at all valid for us. The failure of
+classicistic art in a non-classical age, of "Pre-Raphaelitism" after
+Raphael, is a failure in this--the artist has never lived even
+imaginatively in the world he depicts. His belief is an artifice and
+a sham, and he cannot impose upon us with his pretense. But once we
+have accepted the artist's postulates, then we are prepared to follow
+him in his conclusions. In the Homeric world, we shall not balk at the
+intercourse between gods and men; in mediaeval painting and drama, we
+shall accept miracle; in _Alice in Wonderland_, we shall accept
+any dream-like enchantment. But we demand that the conclusions shall
+follow from the premises, that the whole be consistent. We cannot
+tolerate miracle in a realistic novel or drama, or glaring inaccuracy
+of fact in a historical novel, because they are in contradiction to
+the laws of reality tacitly assumed. The final demand which we make
+of any work, of art is that it live. What can be made to live for us
+may be beautiful to us. But nothing can draw our life into itself which
+has not drawn the artist's, or which is untrue to its own inner logic.
+
+One of the most life-creating elements of a work of art is imagery.
+Everywhere in art the tendency exists for ideas to be filled out,
+rendered concrete and vivid, through images. In looking at a painting
+of a summer landscape, for example, we not only recognize the colors
+as meaning sunlight, but actually experience them as warm; in looking
+at a statue we not only recognize its surface as that of the body of
+a woman, but we feel its softness and smoothness; which involves that
+the ideas of sunlight and a human body, employed in interpreting the
+sensations received from these works of art, are developed back into
+the original mass of images from which they were derived. However,
+although ideas are formed from images, they are not images,--as our
+ordinary employment of them in recognizing objects attests. We may and
+usually do, for example, recognize a mirror as smooth without
+experiencing it as smooth--the image equivalent of the idea remains
+latent. Our ordinary experience with objects is too hasty and too
+intent on practical ends for images to develop. On the other hand, the
+leisurely attitude characteristic of the aesthetic experience is
+favorable to the recall of images; hence, just as in the aesthetic
+perception of objects we put our feelings into them, so equally we
+import into them the relevant images. The aesthetic reaction tends to
+be total. Our demand for feeling in art also requires the image; for
+feelings are more vividly attached to images than to abstract ideas.
+It is a fact familiar in the experience of everybody that the strength
+of the emotional tone of an object is a function of the clearness of
+the image which we form of it on recall. We can preserve the feeling
+tone of a past event or an absent object only if we can keep a vivid
+image of it; as our image of it becomes vague, our interest in it
+dissipates. Everywhere in our experience the image mediates between
+feeling and idea. So in art. Images have no more an independent and
+self-sufficient status in art than sensations have; like the latter
+they are a means for the expression of feeling. In the painting of
+sunlight, for example, the images of warmth carry joyousness and a
+sense of ease; in the statue, the tactile images convey the emotional
+response to the represented object. In literature the expressiveness
+of images is perhaps even more impressive. Consider how longing is
+aroused by the tactile, gustatory, and thermal images in the oft-quoted
+lines of Keats:--
+
+  O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
+  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.
+
+Examples might be multiplied indefinitely.
+
+In literature alone of the arts, images from all departments of sense
+can be aroused. Visual images play a greater role there than in painting
+and sculpture, for the reason that, in the latter, visual sensations
+take their place--we do not image what we can see. In sculpture, the
+greater part of the imagery is of touch and motion--in the imagination,
+we feel the surfaces and move with the represented motions; the
+whiteness or blackness of the materials prevents the arousal of the
+image of the color of the body. In painting, besides the temperature
+images already mentioned, there are touch images--in still-life, for
+example, when silks and furs are represented; images of odors, in
+flower pieces; of motion, in pictures which depict motion, as in the
+racing horses of Degas; of taste, in pictures of wine and fruit. Of
+course the kind and amount of imagery depend upon the imaginal type
+to which the spectator belongs and the wealth of the imaginal furnishing
+of his mind. In any art, moreover, the chief and requisite thing is
+expression through the sense medium, which should never be obscured
+by expression through associated images. It is not the primary business
+of a flower painter to arouse images of perfume, but to compose colors
+and lines; nor the function of the musician to arouse the visual images
+which accompany the musical experience of many people, but to compose
+sounds. In sculpture, on the other hand, images of touch and movement
+play an almost necessary part, for they are constituent elements in
+the representation of form and motion; yet it is not indispensable to
+the appreciation of sculpture that images of the sweet odor of the
+human body be awakened. The image is seldom the basis of aesthetic
+appreciation; it is more often its completion. But we shall go into
+these matters more in detail in our special chapters.
+
+In the representative arts, particularly painting and sculpture, the
+associated images are fused with the visual sensations which constitute
+the medium. I see the softness and sweet-odorousness of the painted
+rose petal, just as I see the real rose soft and sweet; I see the
+surface of the statue firm and shapely, just as I see the human body
+so. This is because the ideas of the things represented in painting
+and sculpture seem to be actually present in the visual sensations
+which they interpret; the flower and the man seem to be there before
+me. In these arts, aesthetic perception is a fusion of image with
+sensation in much the way that normal perception is. In literature and
+music, on the other hand, the connection between the sense medium of
+the art and the associated images is less close; and for the reason
+that the sounds are no part of the things which they bring before the
+mind. In looking at a picture of a rose, I see the red as an element
+of the rose represented; whereas, in reading about a rose, I only seem
+to hear a voice describing it. In the latter case, therefore, the
+olfactory and visual images have a certain remoteness and independence
+of the word-sounds; I do not actually see and smell them in the sounds.
+However, in the case of familiar words with a strong emotional
+significance, the fusion of image with sound may be almost complete.
+Who, for example, does not see a sweet and red image of a rose into
+the word-sounds when he reads:--
+
+  Oh, my love's like a red, red rose
+  That's newly sprung in June.
+
+Or, when Dante describes the _selva oscura_, who does not see the
+darkness in the word _oscura_? In all such cases a strong feeling
+tone binds together the word-sound with the image. This fusion is most
+striking in poetry because of the highly emotional material with which
+it works.
+
+The ideas and images associated with a work of art depend very largely
+on the education, experience, and idiosyncrasy of the spectator. The
+scholar, for example, will put tenfold more meaning into his reading
+of the _Divine Comedy_ than the untrained person. Or compare Pater's
+interpretation of the "Mona Lisa" with Muther's. Can we say that certain
+ideas and images belong properly to the work of art, while others do
+not? With regard to this, we can, I think, set up two criteria. First,
+the intention of the artist--whatever the artist meant his work to
+express: that it expresses. Yet, since this can never be certainly and
+completely discovered, there must always remain a large region of
+undetermined interpretation. Now for judging the relevancy of this
+penumbra of meaning and association the following test applies--does it
+bring us back to the sensuous medium of the work of art or lead us away?
+Anything is legitimate which we actually put into the form of the work
+of art and keep there, while whatever merely hangs loose around it is
+illegitimate. For example, if while listening to music we give ourselves
+up to personal memories and fancies, we are almost sure to neglect the
+sounds and their structure; we cannot objectify the former in the
+latter; with the result that the composition is largely lost to us.
+Naturally, no hard and fast lines can be drawn, especially in the case
+of works of vague import like music; yet we can use this criterion as a
+principle for regulating and inhibiting our associations. It demands of
+us a wide-awake and receptive appreciation. The genuine meanings and
+associations of a work of art are those which are the irresistible and
+necessary results of the sense stimuli working upon an attentive
+percipient; the rest are not only arbitrary, but injurious.
+
+To this, some people would doubtless object on the ground that art was
+made for man and not man for art. The work of art, they would claim,
+should interpret the personal experience of the spectator; hence
+whatever he puts into it belongs there of right. There are, however,
+two considerations limiting the validity of this assertion. First, the
+work of art is primarily an expression of the artist's personality
+and, second, its purpose is to provide a common medium of expression
+for the experience of all men. If interpretation remains a purely
+individual affair, both its relation to the artist and the possibility
+of a common aesthetic experience through it are destroyed. For this
+reason we should, I believe, deliberately seek to make our appreciations
+historically sound and definite. And in the social and historical
+appreciation resulting, we shall find our own lives--not so different
+from the artist's and our fellows'--abundantly and sufficiently
+expressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ANALYSIS OF THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE: THE STRUCTURE OF THE
+EXPERIENCE
+
+
+In our discussion of first principles, we set down a high degree of
+unity as one of the distinguishing characteristics of works of art.
+In this we followed close upon ancient tradition; for the markedly
+structural character of beauty was noticed by the earliest observers.
+Plato, the first philosopher of art, identified beauty with simplicity,
+harmony, and proportion, and Aristotle held the same view. They were
+so impressed with aesthetic unity that they compared it with the other
+most highly unified type of thing they knew, the organism; and ever
+afterwards it has been called "organic unity." With the backing of
+such authority, unity in variety was long thought to be the same as
+beauty; and, although this view is obviously one-sided, no one has
+since succeeded in persuading men that an object can be beautiful
+without unity.
+
+Since art is expression, its unity is, unavoidably, an image of the
+unity of the things in nature and mind which it expresses. A lyric
+poem reflects the unity of mood that binds together the thoughts and
+images of the poet; the drama and novel, the unity of plan and purpose
+in the acts of men and the fateful sequence of causes and effects in
+their lives. The statue reflects the organic unity of the body; the
+painting, the spatial unity of visible things. In beautiful artifacts,
+the basal unity is the purpose or end embodied in the material
+structure.
+
+But the unity of works of art is not wholly derivative; for it occurs
+in the free arts like music, where nothing is imitated, and even in
+the representative arts, as we have observed, it is closer than in the
+things which are imaged. Aesthetic unity is therefore unique and, if
+we would understand it, we must seek its reason in the peculiar nature
+and purpose of art. Since, moreover, art is a complex fact, the
+explanation of its unity is not simple; the unity itself is very
+intricate and depends upon many cooperating factors.
+
+In the case of the imitative arts, taking the given unity of the objects
+represented as a basis, the superior unity of the image is partly due
+to the singleness of the artist's interest. For art, as we know, is
+never the expression of mere things, but of things so far as they have
+value. Out of the infinite fullness of nature and of life, the artist
+selects those elements that have a unique significance for him.
+
+  Music, when soft voices die,
+  Vibrates in the memory;
+  Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
+  Live within the sense they quicken;
+  Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
+  Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
+  And so thy thoughts when thou art gone,
+  Love itself shall slumber on.
+
+Observe how, out of the countless things which he knows, the poet has
+chosen those which he feels akin to his faith in the immortality of
+love. The painter would not, if he could, reproduce all the elements
+of a face, but only those that are expressive of the interpretation
+of character he wishes to convey. The novelist and the dramatist proceed
+in a like selective fashion in the treatment of their material. In the
+lives of men there are a thousand actions and events--casual spoken
+words, recurrent processes such as eating and dressing, hours of
+idleness and futility which, because repetitious, habitual, or
+inconsequential, throw no light upon that alone in which we are
+interested,--character and fortune. To describe a single example of
+these facts suffices. In the novel and drama, therefore, the
+personalities and life histories of men have a simplicity and singleness
+of direction not found in reality. The artist seeks everywhere the
+traits that individualize and characterize, and neglects all others.
+
+Moreover, since the aim of art is to afford pleasure in the intuition
+of life, the artist will try to reveal the hidden unities that so
+delight the mind to discover. He will aim to penetrate beneath the
+surface of experience observed by common perception, to its more obscure
+logic underneath. In this way he will go beyond what the mere mechanism
+of imitation requires. The poet, for example, manifests latent emotional
+harmonies among the most widely sundered things. The subtle novelist
+shows how single elements of character, apparently isolated acts or
+trivial incidents, are fateful of consequences. He discloses the minute
+reactions of one personality upon another. Or he enters into the soul
+of man himself, into his private and individual selfhood, and uncovers
+the hidden connections between thought and feeling and impulse. Finally,
+he may take the wider sweep of society and tradition into view and
+track out their part in the molding of man and his fate. In the search
+for unity, the artist is on common ground with the man of science; but
+with this difference: the artist is concerned with laws operating in
+concrete, individual things in which he is interested; while the
+scientist formulates them in the abstract. For the artist, unity is
+valuable as characterizing a significant individual; for the scientist,
+it is valuable in itself, and the individual only as an example of it.
+
+This same purpose of affording pleasure in sympathetic vision leads
+the artist not only to present the unity of life, but so to organize
+its material that it will be clear to the mind which perceives it. Too
+great a multitude of elements, elements that are not assorted into
+groups and tied by relations or principles, cannot be grasped. Hence
+the artist infuses into the world which he creates a new and wholly
+subjective simplicity and unity, to which there is no parallel in
+nature. The composition of elements in a picture does not correspond
+to any actual arrangement of elements in a landscape, but to the demands
+of visual perspicuity. The division of a novel into chapters, of the
+chapters into paragraphs, of the paragraphs into sentences, although
+it may answer in some measure to the objective divisions of the
+life-story related, corresponds much more closely to the subjective
+need for ready apprehension. The artist meets this need halfway in the
+organization of the material which he presents. Full beauty depends
+upon an adaptation of the object to the senses, attention, and synthetic
+functions of the mind. The long, rambling novel of the eighteenth
+century is a more faithful image of the fullness and diversity of life,
+but it answers ill to the limited sweep of the mind, its proneness to
+fatigue, and its craving for wholeness of view.
+
+But even all the reasons so far invoked--the necessity for significance,
+the interest in unity, the demand for perspicuity--do not, I think,
+suffice to explain the structure of works of art. For structure has,
+oftentimes, a direct emotional appeal, which has not yet been taken
+into account, and which is a leading motive for its presence. Consider,
+for example, symmetry. A symmetrical disposition of parts is indeed
+favorable to perspicuity; for it is easier to find on either side what
+we have already found on the other, the sight of one side preparing
+us for the sight of the other; and such an arrangement is flattering
+to our craving for unity, for we rejoice seeing the same pattern
+expressed in the two parts; yet the experience of symmetry is richer
+still: it includes an agreeable feeling of balance, steadfastness,
+stability. This is most evident in the case of visual objects, like
+a Greek vase, where there is a plain division between right and left
+similar halves; but it is also felt in music when there is a balance
+of themes in the earlier and later parts of a composition, and in
+literature in the well-balanced sentence, paragraph, or poem. To cite
+the very simplest example, if I read, "on the one hand ... on the other
+hand," I have a feeling of balanced tensions precisely analogous to
+what I experience when I look at a vase. Structure is not a purely
+intellectual or perceptive affair; it is also motor and organic, and
+that means emotional. It is felt with the body as well as understood
+by the mind. I have used the case of symmetry to bring out this truth,
+but I might have used other types of unification, each of which has
+its unique feeling tone, as I shall show presently, after I have
+analyzed them.
+
+Keeping in mind the motives which explain the structure of works of
+art, I wish now to distinguish and describe the chief types. There
+are, I think, three of these, of which each one may include important
+special forms--unity in variety, dominance, and equilibrium.
+
+Unity in variety was the earliest of the types to be observed and is
+the most fundamental. It is the organic unity so often referred to in
+criticism. It involves, in the first place, wholeness or individuality.
+Every work of art is a definite single thing, distinct and separate
+from other things, and not divisible into parts which are themselves
+complete works of art. No part can be taken away without damage to the
+whole, and when taken out of the whole, the part loses much of its own
+value. The whole needs all of its parts and they need it; "there they
+live and move and have their being." The unity is a unity of the variety
+and the variety is a differentiation of the unity.[Footnote: Cf. Lipps:
+_Aesthetik_, Bd. I, Drittes Kapitel.] The variety is of equal
+importance with the unity, for unity can assert itself and work only
+through the control of a multiplicity of elements. The analogy between
+the unity of the work of art and the unity of the organism is still
+the most accurate and illuminating. For, like the work of art, the
+body is a self-sufficient and distinctive whole, whose unified life
+depends upon the functioning of many members, which, for their part,
+are dead when cut away from it.
+
+The conception of unity in variety as organic represents an ideal or
+norm for art, which is only imperfectly realized in many works. There
+are few novels which would be seriously damaged by the omission of
+whole chapters, and many a rambling essay in good standing would permit
+pruning without injury, unless indeed we are made to feel that the
+apparently dispensable material really contributes something of fullness
+and exuberance, and so is not superfluous, after all. The unity in
+some forms of art is tighter than in others; in a play closer than in
+a novel; in a sonnet more compact than in an epic. In extreme examples,
+like _The Thousand and One Nights,_ the _Decameron,_ the _Canterbury
+Tales,_ the unity is almost wholly nominal, and the work is really a
+collection, not a whole. With all admissions, it remains true, however,
+that offenses against the principle of unity in variety diminish the
+aesthetic value of a work. These offenses are of two kinds--the
+inclusion of the genuinely irrelevant, and multiple unity, like double
+composition in a picture, or ambiguity of style in a building. There may
+be two or more parallel lines of action in a play or a novel, two or
+more themes in music, but they must be interwoven and interdependent.
+Otherwise there occurs the phenomenon aptly called by Lipps "aesthetic
+rivalry"--each part claims to be the whole and to exclude its neighbor;
+yet being unable to do this, suffers injury through divided attention.
+
+Unity in variety may exist in any one or more of three modes--the
+harmony or union of cooperating elements; the balance of contrasting
+or conflicting elements; the development or evolution of a process
+towards an end or climax. The first two are predominantly static or
+spatial; the last, dynamic and temporal. I know of no better way of
+indicating the characteristic quality of each than by citing examples.
+
+Aesthetic harmony exists whenever some identical quality or form or
+purpose is embodied in various elements of a whole--sameness in
+difference. The repetition of the same space-form in architecture,
+like the round arch and window in the Roman style; the recurrence of
+the same motive in music; the use of a single hue to color the different
+objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of Whistler: these are simple
+illustrations of harmony. An almost equally simple case is gradation
+or lawful change of quality in space and time--the increase or decrease
+of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting,
+the gentle change of direction of a curved line. In these cases there
+is, of course, a dynamic or dramatic effect, if you take the elements
+in sequence; but when taken simultaneously and together, they are a
+harmony, not a development. Simplest of all is the harmony between
+like parts of regular figures, such as squares and circles; or between
+colors which are neighboring in hue. Harmonious also are characters
+in a story or play which are united by feelings of love, friendship,
+or loyalty. Thus there is harmony between Hamlet and Horatio, or between
+the Cid and his followers.
+
+Aesthetic balance is the unity between elements which, while they
+oppose or conflict with one another, nevertheless need or supplement
+each other. Hostile things, enemies at war, business men that compete,
+persons that hate each other, have as great a need of their opponents,
+in order that there may be a certain type of life, as friends have,
+in order that there may be love between them; and in relation to each
+other they create a whole in the one case as in the other. There is
+as genuine a unity between contrasting colors and musical themes as
+there is between colors closely allied in hue or themes simply
+transposed in key. Contrasting elements are always the extremes of
+some series, and are unified, despite the contrast, because they
+supplement each other. Things merely different, no matter how different,
+cannot contrast, for there must be some underlying whole, to which
+both belong, in which they are unified. In order that this unity may
+be felt, it is often necessary to avoid absolute extremes, or at least
+to mediate between them. Among colors, for example, hues somewhat
+closer than the complementary are preferred to the latter, or, if the
+extremes are employed, each one leads up to the other through
+intermediate hues. The unity of contrasting colors is a balance because,
+as extremes, they take an equal hold on the attention. The well-known
+accentuation of contrasting elements does not interfere with the
+balance, because it is mutual. A balanced unity is also created by
+contrasts of character, as in Goethe's _Tasso_, or by a conflict
+between social classes or parties, as in Hauptmann's _Die Weber_.
+Balanced, finally, is the unity between the elements of a painting,
+right and left, which draw the attention in opposite directions. The
+third type of unity appears in any process or sequence in which all
+the elements, one after another, contribute towards the bringing about
+of some end or result. It is the unity characteristic of all
+teleologically related facts. The sequence cannot be a mere succession
+or even a simple causal series, but must also be purposive, because,
+in order to be aesthetic, the goal which is reached must have value.
+Causality is an important aspect of this type of unity, as in the
+drama, but only because a teleological series of actions depends upon
+a chain of causally related means and ends. The type is of two
+varieties: in the one, the movement is smooth, each element being
+harmoniously related to the last; in the other, it is difficult and
+dramatic, proceeding through the resolution of oppositions among its
+elements. The movement usually has three stages: an initial phase of
+introduction and preparation; a second phase of opposition and
+complication; then a final one, the climax or catastrophe, when the
+goal is reached; there may also be a fourth,--the working out of the
+consequences of this last. Illustrations of this mode of unity are:
+the course of a story or a play from the introduction of the characters
+and the complication of the plot to the denouement or solving of the
+problem; the development of a character in a novel from a state of
+simplicity or innocence through storm and stress into maturity or ruin;
+the evolution of a sentiment in a sonnet towards its final statement
+in the last line or two; the melody, in its departure from the keynote,
+its going forth and return; the career of a line.
+
+As I have indicated before, each type of unity has its specific
+emotional quality. The very word harmony which we use to denote the
+first mode is itself connotative of a way of being affected, of being
+moved emotionally. The mood of this mode is quiet, oneness, peace. We
+feel as if we were closely and compactly put together. If now, within
+the aesthetic whole, we emphasize the variety, we begin to lose the
+mood of peace; tensions arise, until, in the case of contrast and
+opposition, there is a feeling of conflict and division in the self;
+yet without loss of unity, because, if the whole is aesthetic, each of
+the opposing elements demands the other; hence there is balance between
+them, and this also we not only know to be there, but feel there. The
+characteristic mood of the evolutionary type of unity is equally
+unique--either a sense of easy motion, when the process is unobstructed,
+or excitement and breathlessness, when there is opposition.
+
+The different types of unity are by no means exclusive of each other
+and are usually found together in any complex work of art. Symmetry
+usually involves a combination of harmony and balance. The symmetrical
+halves of a Greek vase, for example, are harmonious in so far as their
+size and shape are the same, yet balanced as being disposed in opposite
+directions, right and left. Rhythm is temporal symmetry, and so also
+represents a combination of harmony and balance. Static rhythm is only
+apparent; for in every seeming case, the rhythm really pervades the
+succession of acts of attention to the elements rather than the elements
+themselves; a colonnade, for example, is rhythmical only when the
+attention moves from one column to another. There is harmony in rhythm,
+for there is always some law--metrical scheme in poetry, time in music,
+similarity of column and equality of interval between them in a
+colonnade--pervading the elements. But there is also balance; for as
+the elements enter the mind one after the other, there is rivalry
+between the element now occupying the focus of the attention and the
+one that is about to present an equal claim to this position. Because
+of its intrinsic value, we tend to hold on to each element as we hear
+or see it, but are forced to relinquish it for the sake of the one
+that follows; only for a moment can we keep both in the conscious span;
+the recurrence and overcoming of the resulting tension, as we follow
+the succession through, creates the pulsation so characteristic of
+rhythm. The opposition of the elements as in turn they crowd each other
+out does not, however, interfere with the harmony, for they have an
+existence all together in memory, where the law binding them can be
+felt,--a law which each element as it comes into consciousness is
+recognized as fulfilling. Since we usually look forward to the end of
+the rhythmical movement as a goal, rhythm often exists in combination
+with evolution, and is therefore the most inclusive of all artistic
+structural forms. In a poem, for example, the metrical rhythm is a
+framework overlying the development of the thought. Dramatic unity is
+found combined with balance even in the static arts, as, for example,
+in the combination of blue and gold, where the balance is not quite
+equal, because of a slight movement from the blue to the more brilliant
+and striking gold. I have already shown how harmony, opposition, and
+evolution may be combined in a melody. In the drama, also, all three
+are present. There is a balance of opposing and conflicting wills or
+forces; this is unstable; whence movement follows, leading on to the
+catastrophe, where the problem is solved; and throughout there is a
+single mood or atmosphere in which all participate, creating an
+enveloping harmony despite the tension and action. And other
+illustrations of combinations of types will come to the mind of every
+reader.
+
+Each form of unity has its difficulties and dangers, which must be
+avoided if perfection is to be attained. In harmony there may be too
+much identity and too little difference or variety, with the result
+that the whole becomes tedious and uninteresting. This is the fault
+of rigid symmetry and of all other simple geometrical types of
+composition, which, for this reason, have lost their old popularity
+in the decorative and pictorial arts. In balance, on the other hand,
+the danger is that there may be too great a variety, too strong an
+opposition; the elements tend to fly apart, threatening the integrity
+of the whole. For it is not sufficient that wholeness exist in a work
+of art; it must also be felt. For example, in Pre-Raphaelite paintings
+and in most of the Secession work of our own day, the color contrasts
+are too strong; there is no impression of visual unity. In the dramatic
+type of unity there are two chief dangers--that the evolution be
+tortuous, so that we lose our way in its bypaths and mazes; or, on the
+other hand, that the end be reached too simply and quickly; in the one
+case, we lose heart for the journey because of the obstacles; in the
+other, we lose interest and are bored for want of incidents.
+
+We come now to the second great principle of aesthetic structure--
+Dominance.[Footnote: Cf. Lipps: _Aesthetik_, Bd. I, S. 53, Viertes
+Kapitel] In an aesthetic whole the elements are seldom all on a level;
+some are superior, others subordinate. The unity is mediated through
+one or more accented elements, through which the whole comes to emphatic
+expression. The attention is not evenly distributed among the parts,
+but proceeds from certain ones which are focal and commanding to others
+which are of lesser interest. And the dominant elements are not only
+superior in significance; they are, in addition, representative of the
+whole; in them, its value is concentrated; they are the key by means
+of which its structure can be understood. They are like good rulers
+in a constitutional state, who are at once preeminent members of the
+community and signal embodiments of the common will. Anything which
+distinguishes and makes representative of the whole serves to make
+dominant. In a well-constructed play there are one or more characters
+which are central to the action, in whom the spirit and problem of the
+piece are embodied, as Hamlet in _Hamlet_ and Brand in _Brand_; in every
+plot there is the catastrophe or turning point, for which every
+preceding incident is a preparation, and of which every following one is
+a consequent; in a melody there is the keynote; in the larger
+composition there are the one or more themes whose working out is the
+piece; in a picture there are certain elements which especially attract
+the attention, about which the others are composed. In the more complex
+rhythms, in meters, for example, the elements are grouped around the
+accented ones. In an aesthetic whole there are certain qualities and
+positions which, because of their claim upon the attention, tend to make
+dominant any elements which possess them. In space-forms the center and
+the edges are naturally places of preeminence. The eye falls first upon
+the center and then is drawn away to the boundaries. In old pictures,
+the Madonna or Christ is placed in the center and the angels near the
+perimeter; in fancy work it is the center and the border which women
+embroider. In time, the beginning, middle, and end are the natural
+places of importance; the beginning, because there the attention is
+fresh and expectant; towards the middle, because there we tend to rest,
+looking backward to the commencement and forward to the end; the end
+itself, because being last in the mind, its hold upon the memory is
+firmest. In any process the beginning is important as the start, the
+plan, the preparation; the middle as the climax and turning point; the
+end as the consummation. Of course by the middle is not meant a
+mathematical point of division into equal parts, but a psychological
+point, which is usually nearer the end, because the impetus of action
+and purpose carry forward and beyond. Thus in a plot the beginning
+stands out as setting the problem and introducing the characters and
+situation; then the movement of the action, gathering force increasingly
+as it proceeds, breaks at some point well beyond the middle; in the last
+part the problem is solved and the consequences of the action are
+revealed. Large size is another quality which distinguishes and tends to
+make dominant, as in the tower and the mountain. In one of Memling's
+paintings, "St. Ursula and the Maidens," which, when I saw it, was in
+Bruges, the lady is represented twice as tall as the full grown girls
+whom she envelops in her protecting cloak; yet, despite the
+unnaturalness, we do not experience any incongruity; for it is rational
+to our feeling. Intensity of any sort is another property which creates
+dominance--loudness of sound in music; concentration of light in
+painting, as in Rembrandt; stress in rhythm; depth and scope of purpose
+and feeling, as in the great characters of fiction. The effectiveness of
+intensity may be greatly increased through contrast--the pianissimo
+after the fortissimo; the pathos of the fifth act of _Hamlet_ set off by
+the comedy of the first scene. Sometimes all the natural qualifications
+of eminence are united in a single work: in old paintings, for example,
+the Christ Child, spiritually the most significant element of the whole,
+will be of supernatural size, will occupy the center of the picture,
+will have the light concentrated upon him, and will be dressed in
+brightly gleaming garments.
+
+As I have already indicated, there may be more than one dominant
+element; for instance, two or more principal characters in a novel or
+play--Lord and Lady Macbeth, Sancho and Don Quixote, Othello and
+Desdemona, Brand and his wife. In this case, there must be either
+subordination among them, a hierarchical arrangement; or else
+reciprocity or balance, as in the illustrations cited, where it is
+difficult to tell which is the more important of the two; otherwise
+they would pull the whole apart. The advantage of several dominant
+elements lies in the greater animation, and when the work is large,
+in the superior organization, which they confer. In order that there
+may be perspicuity, it is necessary, when there are many elements,
+that they be separated into minor groups around high points which
+individualize and represent them, and so take their place in the mind,
+mediating between them and unity when a final synthesis of the whole
+is to be made.
+
+The third great principle of aesthetic structure is equilibrium or
+impartiality. This is a principle counteracting dominance. It demands,
+despite the subordination among the elements, that none be neglected.
+Each, no matter how minor its part in the whole, must have some unique
+value of its own, must be an end as well as a means. Dominance is the
+aristocratic principle in art, the rule of the best; this is the
+democratic principle, the demand for freedom and significance for all.
+Just as, in a well-ordered state, the happiness of no individual or
+class of individuals is sacrificed to that of other individuals or
+classes; so in art, each part must be elaborated and perfected, not
+merely for the sake of its contribution to the whole, but for its own
+sake. There should be no mere figure-heads or machinery. Loving care
+of detail, of the incidental, characterizes the best art.
+
+Of course this principle, like the others, is an ideal or norm, which
+is only imperfectly realized in many works of art. Many a poet finds
+it necessary to fill in his lines and many a painter and musician does
+the like with his pictures or compositions. There is much mere
+scaffolding and many lay-figures in drama and novel. But the work of
+the masters is different. There each line or stroke or musical phrase,
+each character or incident, is unique or meaningful. The greatest
+example of this is perhaps the _Divine Comedy_, where each of the
+hundred cantos and each line of each canto is perfect in workmanship
+and packed with significance. There is, of course, a limit to this
+elaboration of the parts, set by the demands for unity and wholeness.
+The individuality of the elements must not be so great that we rest
+in them severally, caring little or nothing for their relations to one
+another and to the whole. The contribution of this principle is
+richness. Unity in variety gives wholeness; dominance, order;
+equilibrium, wealth, interest, vitality.
+
+The structure of works of art is even more complicated than would
+appear from the description given thus far. For there is not only the
+unity of the elements among themselves, but between the two aspects
+of each element and of the whole--the form and content. This--the unity
+between the sense medium and whatever of thought and feeling is embodied
+in it--is the fundamental unity in all expression. It is the unity
+between a word and its meaning, a musical tone and its mood, a color
+and shape and what they represent. Since, however, it is indispensable
+to all expression, it is not peculiar to art. And to a large extent,
+even in the creative work of the artist, this unity is given, not made;
+the very materials of the artist consisting of elementary
+expressions--words, tones, colors, space-forms--in which the unity of
+form and content has already been achieved, either by an innate
+psycho-physical process, as is the case with tones and simple rhythms,
+or by association and habit, as is the case with the words of any
+natural language, or the object-meanings which we attach to colors
+and shapes. The poet does not work with sounds, but with words which
+already have their definite meanings; his creation consists of the
+larger whole into which he weaves them. Of course, even in the case
+of ordinary verbal expression, the thought often comes first before
+its clothing in words, when there is a certain process of choice and
+fitting; and in painting there is always the possibility of varying
+conventional forms; yet even so, in large measure, the elements of the
+arts are themselves expressions, in which a unity of form and content
+already exists.
+
+In art, however, there are subtler aspects to the relation between
+form and content, and these have a unique aesthetic significance. For
+there, as we know, the elements of the medium, colors and lines and
+sounds, and the patterns of these, their harmonies and structures and
+rhythms, are expressive, in a vague way, of feeling; hence, when the
+artist employs them as embodiments of his ideas, he has to select them,
+not only as carriers of meaning, but as communications of mood. Now,
+in order that his selection be appropriate, it is clearly necessary
+that the feeling tone of the form be identical with that of the content
+which he puts into it. The medium as such must reexpress and so enforce
+the values of the content. This is the "harmony," as distinguished
+from the mere unity, of form and content, the existence of which in
+art is one of its distinguishing properties. I have already called
+attention to this in our second chapter. It involves, as we observed,
+that in painting, for example, the feeling tone of the colors and lines
+should be identical with that of the objects to be represented; in
+poetry, that the emotional quality of meter and rhythm should be attuned
+to the incidents and sentiments expressed. Otherwise the effect is
+ugly or comical.
+
+When we come to the work of art, this harmony is already achieved. But
+for the artist it is something delicately to be worked out. Yet, just
+as in ordinary expression form and content often emerge in unison, the
+thought itself being a word and the word a thought; so in artistic
+creation, the mother mood out of which the creative act springs, finds
+immediate and forthright embodiment in a congenial form. Such a
+spontaneous and perfect balance of matter and form is, however, seldom
+achieved without long and painful experimentation and practice, both
+by the artist himself in his own private work, and by his predecessors,
+whose results he appropriates. Large traditional and oftentimes rigid
+forms, such as the common metrical and musical schemes and architectural
+orders, into which the personal matter of expression may aptly fall,
+are thus elaborated in every art. As against every looser and novel
+form, they have the advantages first, of being more readily and steadily
+held in the memory, where they may gather new and poignant associations;
+second, of coming to us already freighted with similar associations
+out of the past; and last, of compelling the artist, in order that he
+may fit his inspiration into them, to purify it of all irrelevant
+substance. Impatient artists rebel against forms, but wise ones either
+accommodate their genius to them, until they become in the end a second
+and equally spontaneous nature, or else create new forms, as definite
+as the old.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN AESTHETICS, AND ITS SOLUTION THROUGH THE TRAGIC,
+PATHETIC, AND COMIC
+
+
+When, in our third chapter, we defined the purpose of art, we indicated
+that it was broad enough to include the expression of evil, but we did
+not show in detail how this was possible. That is our present theme.
+
+Art is sympathetic representation; the effort not only to reveal an
+object to us, but to unite us with it. The artist finds no difficulty
+in accomplishing this purpose with reference to one class of
+objects--those which, apart from portrayal, we call beautiful. To these
+we are drawn immediately because they serve directly the ends of life.
+Nature sees to it that we dwell with pleasure on the sight of healthy
+children, well-grown women, and bountiful landscapes. And to the
+representations of such objects we are attracted by the same instincts
+that attract us to the things themselves. No special power of art is
+required that we take delight in them; the task of the artist is half
+accomplished before he begins. Yet the scope of art is wider than this,
+for it represents evil as well as good. Death as well as life, sickness
+and deformity as well as health, suffering as well as joy, sin equally
+with goodness, come within its purview. And these also it not only
+reveals to us but makes good to know, so good in fact that they are
+perhaps the preferred objects of artistic representation. But instead
+of being able to rely on instincts that would draw us to these objects,
+art has to overcome those that would lead us away from them. It has
+to conquer our natural horror at death, pain at suffering, and revulsion
+against wickedness. How does it? That is the problem of evil in
+sthetics.
+
+There are many means by which this problem is solved. In the first
+place, the mere fact that art is representation and not reality does
+much toward overcoming any feelings of moral or physical repugnance
+we might have toward the objects represented. These feelings exist for
+the sake of action; hence, when action is impossible--and we cannot
+act on the unreal--although they may still persist, they become less
+strong. Toward the merely imaginary, the practical and moral attitudes,
+which towards the real would lead to condemnation and withdrawal, lose
+their relevance and tend to disappear. That is one of the advantages
+of art over the more immediate perception of life. It is difficult to
+take a purely aesthetic attitude towards all of life, to seek only to
+get into sympathetic contact with it for the sake of an inner
+realization of what it is; much of it touches us too closely on the
+side of our practical and moral interests. A certain man, for example,
+does not belong to our set, or his ways are so bohemian that it would
+imperil our social position or the safety of our souls to get acquainted
+with him; so we reject him and cast him into the outer darkness of our
+disapproval--or he rejects us. Such a person, we feel, is to be avoided
+or haply, if we be saints, to be saved from himself; but not to be
+accepted and understood. And even if we succeed in freeing ourselves
+from the moral point of view, we are still preoccupied with the
+practical, if the man happens to interest us commercially; we have not
+the time nor the desire to see his nature as a whole. Not so in art.
+As a character in a novel, a man cannot be employed; nor can it be a
+hazard to keep company with him; and his soul is surely beyond our
+saving; the only thing left for us to do is to sympathize with and try
+to understand him, to enter into communion with his spirit. By freeing
+life from the practical and moral, art gives the imagination full sway.
+This, to be sure, is only a negative force working in the direction
+of beauty, yet is important none the less because it enables the more
+positive influences to function easily.
+
+One of these is what I would call "sympathetic curiosity," which may
+encompass all images of life. Things which, if met with in life, would
+certainly repel, when presented in image, simply excite our curiosity
+to know. Of course some are impelled by the same interest to get into
+contact with all experience--_Homo sum: humani nihil alienum a me
+puto_--yet with the great majority the impulses to withdraw are too
+strong. But all have a desire for further knowledge when a mere idea
+of human life, however repellent, is presented; for the instinct of
+gregariousness, which creates a special interest in our kind, works
+with full force in the mind to strengthen curiosity. There is no part
+of human experience which it does not embrace. We can well forego
+knowledge of stars and trees, but we cannot remain ignorant of anything
+human. As the moth to the flame, we are led, even against our will,
+into all of life, even the most unpleasant. The charm possessed by the
+novel and unplumbed, by such stories as _Jude the Obscure_, or by the
+weird imaginings of a Baudelaire, comes from this source. It is no mere
+scientific curiosity, because it includes that "consciousness of kind,"
+which makes us feel akin to all we know.
+
+Sympathetic curiosity, however, seldom works alone, for other interests,
+less worthy and therefore often unavowed, usually cooperate to overcome
+our repugnances towards the unpleasant. Many of our repugnances are
+not simple and original like those felt towards death, darkness, and
+deformity, but highly complex products of education, which may be
+dissolved by a strong appeal to the more primitive instincts which
+they seek to repress. An artist may, for example, through a vivid
+portrayal, so excite the animal lust and cruelty which lurk hidden in
+all of us as to make the most morally reprehensible objects acceptable.
+Nature has taken many a revenge on civilization through art. Although
+no one should demand that these appeals be entirely excluded, yet when
+they operate alone, without the sublimation of insight, they are
+flagrantly unaesthetic in their influence, because they deprive the
+work of art of its freedom.
+
+Another means which the artist may employ in order to win us is the
+appeal of sense. However repellent be the objects which he represents,
+if he can clothe them in a sensuous material which will charm us, he
+will have exerted a powerful countervailing force. We have already had
+occasion to observe this in our first chapter. Through the call of
+sense we are invited to enter and are made welcome at the very threshold
+of the work of art. Engaging lines, winsome colors and tones, and
+compelling rhythms can overcome almost any repugnance that we might
+otherwise feel for the subject-matter. Their primary appeals are
+superior to all the reservations of civilization. No wonder that the
+stern moralists who would keep beauty for the clean and holy have been
+afraid of art! Yet the delight of sense, because its emotional effect
+is diffused, does not interfere with the contemplative serenity of
+art, as unbridled passion does; it even quiets passion by diverting
+the attention to itself; hence may always be employed by the artist.
+A good example of the aesthetic fascination of sensation is Von Stuck's
+"Salome" in the Art Institute of Chicago. For all normal feeling,
+Salome dancing with the head of John the Baptist is a revolting object;
+yet how beautiful the artist has made his picture through the simple
+loveliness of gold and red!
+
+It would be a mistake, however, to infer the indifference of the
+subject-matter in art. The creation of a work of art is based on a
+primary aesthetic experience of nature or human life, and not everything
+is capable of producing such an experience in all men. The subject
+must be one towards which the artist or spectator is able to take the
+sthetic attitude of emotional, yet free, perception. Some people are
+unable to lay aside their moral prepossessions towards certain phases
+of life or even towards representation of them; the idea affects them
+as would the reality. For such people even the genius of a Beardsley
+is too feeble to create an experience of beauty out of the material
+with which he works. Or again, some people cannot objectify their
+sensual egotistic impulses and feelings; for them the reading of a
+Boccaccio, for example, is only a substitute for such feelings, not
+a means of insight into them. It requires a robust intellectual
+attitude, a predominance of mind over feeling and instinct, aesthetically
+to appreciate some works of art. But for those who can receive it, the
+representation of any phase of life may afford an aesthetic experience,
+may create a thing good to know, if only it be mastered by the mind
+and embodied in a charming form.
+
+The charm of sense together with the satisfaction of insight are
+sufficient to explain the conquest of evil by art. Yet further means
+have been employed--the special appeals of the tragic, pathetic, and
+comic.
+
+What any one may mean by tragic is largely a matter of personal
+definition or tradition; yet there is, I think, a common essence upon
+which all would agree. First, tragedy always involves the manful
+struggle of a personality in the pursuit of some end, at the cost of
+suffering, perhaps of death and failure. The opposition may come from
+nature, as in _The Grammarian's Funeral_; from fate, as in the
+_Oedipus_; from social and political interests, as in _Antigone_; that
+is of little moment; it is important solely that the battle be accepted
+and waged unflinchingly to the issue. In this ultimate sense, most of
+human life is tragic; because it involves a continual warfare with
+circumstances, which the majority of people carry on with a silent
+heroism. Originally, only the glorious and spectacular conflicts of
+great personalities were deemed worthy of representation in art; but
+with the growth of sympathy the range of tragic portrayal has gradually
+been extended over almost the whole of human life. The peasant in his
+struggle for subsistence against a niggardly soil, or the patient woman
+who loses the bloom of her youth in the unremitting effort to maintain
+her children, are tragic figures.
+
+Second, it is part of the essence of tragedy that the conflict should
+be recognized as necessary and its issue as inevitable. In one form
+or another, whether as Greek or Christian or naturalistic, fatality
+has remained an abiding element in the idea of tragedy. The purpose
+or passion or sentiment which impels the hero to undertake and maintain
+the struggle must be a part of his nature so integral that nothing
+else is possible for him. "_Ich kann nicht anders_" is the cry
+of every tragic personality. And the opposition which he meets from
+other persons, from social forces or natural circumstances, must seem
+to be equally fateful--must be represented as issuing from a counter
+determination or law no less inescapable than the hero's will. Even
+when the catastrophe depends upon some so-called accident, it must be
+made to appear necessary that our human purposes should sometimes be
+caught and strangled in the web of natural fact which envelops them.
+
+The reasons for our acceptance of tragedy are not difficult to find
+and have been noted, with more or less clearness, by all students. We
+accept it much as the hero accepts his own struggle--he believes in
+the values which he is fighting for and we sympathetically make his
+will ours. Moreover, we discover a special value in his courage which,
+we feel, compensates for the evil of his suffering, defeat, or death.
+So long as we set any value on life, it is impossible for us not to
+esteem courage; for courage is at once the defense against attack of
+all our possessions and the source, in personal initiative and
+aggressive action, of newer and larger life. And any shrinking that
+we may feel against the sternness of the struggle is quenched both by
+the hero's example and by our recognition of its necessity. Since we
+are not participants of it, our protest would be futile, and even if
+we played a part in it, we should be as foolish as we should be weak,
+not to recognize that the will which opposes us is as inflexible as
+our own--"such is life"--that is our ultimate comment. An appreciation
+of tragedy involves, therefore, a sure discernment of the essential
+disharmony of existence, yet at the same time, a feeling for the moral
+values which it may create; neither the optimist nor the utilitarian
+can enter into its world.
+
+There are, however, works of art in which sheer evil, without any
+compensating development of character, is portrayed; where indeed the
+struggle may even cause decay of character. In Zola's _The Dram
+Shop_, for example, the story is the tale of the moral decline,
+through unfortunate circumstances and vicious surroundings, of the
+sweet, pliant Gervaise. Instead of developing a resistance to
+circumstances which would have made them yield a value even in defeat,
+she lets herself go and is spoiled beneath them. She has no friend to
+help or guardian angel to save. We do not blame her, for, with her
+soft nature, she could not do otherwise than crumble under the hard
+press of fate; neither can we admire her, for she lacks the adamantine
+stuff of which heroes are made. This is pathos, not tragedy. And just
+as most of human life involves tragedy in so far as it develops a
+strength to meet the dangers which threaten it, so likewise it involves
+pathos, in so far as it seldom resists at every point, but gives way,
+blighted without hope. Many a man or woman issues from life's conflicts
+weaker, not stronger; broken, not defiant; petulant, not sweetened;
+and at the hour of death there are few heroes. Yet there may be beauty
+in the story of this human weakness and weariness. Whence comes it?
+How can the representation of this sheer evil become a good? The
+principle involved is a simple one. Announced first, as far as I know,
+by Mendelssohn, it has recently been much more scientifically and
+penetratingly analyzed by Lipps, although wrongly applied by him to
+the tragic rather than the pathetic.[Footnote: Cf. Lipps: _Der Streit
+ber die Tragodie_, and _Aesthetik_, Bd. I, S. 599.]
+
+It is a familiar and generally recognized experience, as Lipps has
+observed, that any threat or harm done to a value evokes in us a
+heightened appreciation of its worth. Parting is a sweet sorrow because
+only then do we fully realize the worth of what we are losing; the
+beauty of youth that dies is more beautiful because in death its
+radiance shines the brighter in our memory. A good in contemplation
+comes to take the place of a lost good in reality. Just as we hold on
+the more tightly to things that are slipping away from us in a vain
+effort to keep them, so to save ourselves from utter sorrow, we build
+up in the imagination a fair image of what we have lost, free of the
+dust of the world. This makes the peculiar charm of the delicate and
+fragile, of weak things and little things, of the transient and
+perishable; they awaken in us the tender, protective impulse while
+they last, and when they are gone they suffer at our hands an
+idealization which the strong and enduring can never receive. Our pity
+for them mediates an increased love of them; we mock at fate which
+deprives us of them by keeping them secure and fairer in our memory.
+
+As in life, so in art. Beneath and around the pictured destruction and
+ruin there opens up to us a more poignant vision of the loveliness of
+what was or might have been. At the end of _The Dram Shop_, when
+Gervaise sinks into ruin, we inevitably revert to the beginning and
+see again, only more intensely, the gentle girl that she was, or else,
+going forward, we imagine what she might have been, if only she had
+been given a chance. The form of a possible good rises up from under
+the actual evil. The story of oppression becomes the praise of freedom;
+the picture of death, a vision of life. I know of no finer example of
+this in all literature than Sophocles' _Ajax_. Ajax has offended
+Athena, so he, the hero of the Grecian host, is seized with the mad
+desire to do battle with cattle and sheep. In lucid intervals he laments
+to his wife the shameful fate which has befallen him. How glorious his
+former prowess appears lost in so ridiculous a counterfeit! And his
+despair creates its magic.
+
+In almost all so-called tragedies, true tragedy and pathos are
+intermingled; for we feel both pity and admiration, and the pity
+intensifies the admiration. The danger that threatens or the disaster
+that overwhelms the values which the hero embodies make us realize
+their worth the more. Throughout the _Antigone_ we admire the
+heroine's tragic courage of devotion; but it is at the point when,
+just before her death, she laments her youth and beauty that shall go
+fruitless--
+
+  Alechron, anymenaion, oute ton gamon
+  mepos lachousan oute paideion tpophaes
+
+that we feel the fullness of strength that was needed for the sacrifice.
+One might perhaps think this lament a blemish of weakness in a picture
+of fortitude; but the impression is just the opposite, I believe; for
+force is measured by what it overcomes.
+
+There are so many different theories of tragedy that it would be
+impossible, were it worth while, to embark on a criticism of all of
+them. There are certain ones, however, which, because of their wide
+acceptance, demand some attention at our hands. First, it is often
+assumed that a tragedy should represent the good as ultimately
+triumphing, despite suffering and failure. But how can the good triumph
+when the hero fails and dies? Only, it is answered, if the hero
+represents a cause which may win despite or even because of his
+individual doom; and it is with this cause, not with him, that we
+chiefly sympathize. This was Hegel's view, who demanded that the tragic
+hero represent some universal interest which, when purged of the
+one-sidedness and uncompromising insistence of the hero's championing,
+may nevertheless endure and triumph in its genuine worth. In the
+_Antigone_, Hegel's favorite example, the cause of family loyalty
+finds recognition through the punishment of Creon for the girl's death;
+while at the same time the principle of the sovereignty of the state
+is upheld through her sacrifice. There are many tragedies which conform,
+at least partially, to this scheme; but not all, hence it cannot be
+a universal norm. In _Romeo and Juliet_, for example, although
+the death of the young people serves to bring about a reconciliation
+of their families, the real principle for which they suffered--the
+right of private choice in matters of love--is in no way furthered by
+the outcome of the play. And, although it is always possible to
+universalize the good which is sought by any will, it is not possible
+to deflect upon a principle the full intensity of our sympathy, away
+from the individual, concrete passion and action. Whenever a great
+personality is represented, it is his personal suffering and fortitude
+that win at once our pity and our admiration. For private sorrows, for
+the ruin of character, for the death of those whom we are made to love,
+there can be no complete atonement in the universal; because it is
+with the individual that we are chiefly concerned. No; the
+reconciliation lies where we have placed it--in tragedy, in the personal
+heroism of the strong character; in pathos, in the vision, not in the
+triumph, of the good.
+
+The ordinary Protestant theological theory of tragedy is even more
+inadequate than the Hegelian. For, by assuming that there is no genuine
+loss in the world, that every evil is compensated for in the future
+lives of the heroes, it takes away the sting from their sacrifice and
+so deprives them of their crown of glory. It makes every adventure a
+calculation of prudence and every despair a farce. It is remote from
+the reality of experience where men stake all on a chance and, instead
+of receiving the good by an act of grace, wring it by blood and tears
+from evil.
+
+On much the same level of thinking is the moralistic theory which
+requires that the misfortunes of the hero should be the penalty for
+some fault or weakness. This view, which has the authority of Aristotle,
+is also based on the doctrine of the justice of the world-order. It
+was pretty consistently carried out in the classical Greek drama;
+although there suffering is not exacted as an external retribution,
+but as the inevitable consequence of the turbulent passions of the
+characters; for even the punishment for offenses against the gods is
+of the nature of a personal revenge which they take. Later, of course,
+when the gods retreated into the background of human life, retributive
+justice was conceived more abstractly. Now, it must be admitted, I
+think, that this idea, so deeply rooted in the popular mind, has exerted
+a profound influence on the drama; yet it cannot be applied universally
+without sophistry. To be sure, in _Romeo and Juliet_, the young
+people were disobedient and headstrong; in _Lear_, the old father
+was foolishly trustful of his wicked daughters; these frailties brought
+about their ruin. But did they deserve so hard a fate as theirs? Did
+not Lear suffer as much for his folly as his daughters for their
+wickedness? This is always true in life, and Shakespeare holds the
+mirror up to nature--but is it consistent with the theory of retributive
+justice? One can usually trace back to some element of his nature,
+physical or moral, the misfortunes that befall an individual; even
+those which we call accidents, as Galton claimed, are often due to
+some inherent defect of attention which makes us fail to respond
+protectively at the right moment. If we take the self to include the
+entire organism, then it remains true that we cooperate as a partial
+cause in all that happens to us. Ophelia's weak and unresisting brain
+must share with the stresses which surrounded her the responsibility
+for her madness. In this sense, and in this sense only, do we deserve
+our fate, be it good or ill. Yet, when interpreted in this broadest
+meaning, retributive justice loses all ethical significance. And the
+cosmic disharmony appears all the more glaring. It ceases to be
+chargeable to an external fate or God, to the environment or convention,
+which might perhaps be mastered and remolded; and is seen pervading
+the nature of reality itself, no accidental circumstance, but essential
+evil, ineradicable. The greatest tragic poets see it thus. And then
+blame turns to understanding and resentment into pity.
+
+Retributive justice, as the motive force of tragedy, has for us lost
+its meaning. We no longer feel the necessity of justifying the ways
+of God to man, because we have ceased to believe that there exists any
+single, responsible power. The good is not a preordained and
+automatically accomplished fact, but an achievement of finite effort,
+appearing here and there in the world when individuals, instead of
+contending against each other, cooperate for their mutual advantage.
+
+In addition to the comic, there is much artistic representation of
+evil which can be classed neither as pathetic nor as tragic. Neither
+moral admiration nor idealization are aroused by the characters
+portrayed. They may be great criminals like Lady Macbeth or Iago, or
+the undistinguished and disorderly people of modern realistic
+literature, yet in either case we find them good to know. And we do
+so, not merely because we enjoy, as disinterested onlookers, the
+spectacle of human existence, but because the artist makes us enter
+into it and realize its values. For even that which from the moral
+point of view we pronounce evil is, so long as it maintains itself,
+a good thing from its own point of view. Every will, however blind and
+careless, seeks a good and finds it, if only in hope and the effort
+to attain. Through the intimacy of his descriptions and often against
+our resistance, the artist may compel us to adopt the attitude of the
+life which he is portraying, constraining us to feel the inner necessity
+of its choices, the compulsion of its delights. It is difficult to
+abandon ourselves thus to sympathy with what is wrong in life itself,
+because we have in mind the consequences and relations which make it
+wrong; yet we all do so at times, whenever we let ourselves go, charmed
+by its momentary offering. But in the world of art this is easier,
+because there the values, being merely represented, can have no sinister
+effects. When great personalities are portrayed, this abandon is
+readiest; for the strength or poignancy of their natures carries us
+away as by a whirlwind. Witness Lady Macbeth when she summons the
+powers of hell to unsex her for her murderous task, or Vanni Fucci in
+the _Inferno_,[Footnote: _Inferno_, Canto 25, 1-3.] who mocks
+at God. For the instant, we become as they and feel their ecstasy of
+pride and power as our own. Yet the great artist can awaken this
+sympathy even for characters that are small and weak. In Gogol's _Dead
+Souls_, for example, there are no heroes. The most interesting
+characters are the country gentlemen who return to their estates
+planning to write books which will regenerate Russia. But the old
+habits of life in the remote district are too strong. So, instead of
+writing, they fall back into the routine of their ancestors and merely
+smoke and dream. Here are failure and mediocrity; yet so intimate is
+the artist's story that we not only understand it all, but feel how
+good it is--to dream our lives away. I do not doubt that in this story
+there are elements of pathos and comedy; yet, in general, the
+delineation is too objective for either; we neither laugh nor cry, but
+are simply borne on, unresisting, ourselves become a part of the silent
+tide of Russian life.
+
+The problem of evil in aesthetics may finally be solved by the use of
+the comic. For in comedy we take pleasure in an object which, in the
+broadest sense, is evil. In order for an object to be comical there
+must be a standard or norm, an accepted system, within which the object
+pretends but fails to fit, and with reference to which, therefore, it
+is evil. There must be some points of contact between the object and
+the standard in order that there may be pretense, but not enough points
+for fulfillment. If we never had any definite expectations with
+reference to things, never made any demands upon them; if instead of
+judging them by our preconceived ideas, we took them just as they came
+and changed our ideas to meet them,--there would be nothing comical.
+Or, if everything fitted into our expectations and was as we planned
+it, then again there would be nothing comical. In a world without
+ideas, the comic could not exist. The comic depends upon our
+apperceiving an object in terms of some idea and finding it incongruous.
+The most elementary illustrations demonstrate this. The unusual is the
+original comic; to the child all strange things are comical--the
+Chinaman with his pigtail, the negro with his black skin, the new
+fashion in dress, the clown with his paint and his antics. As we get
+used to things, and that means as we come to form ideas of them into
+which they will fit, adjusting the mind to them, rather than seeking
+to adjust them to the mind, they cease to be comical. So fashions in
+dress or manners which were comical once, become matters of course and
+we laugh no longer. Enduringly comic are only those objects that
+persistently create expectations and as persistently violate them.
+Such objects are few indeed; but they exist, and constitute the
+perennial, yet never wearying, stock in trade of comedy. But the comic
+spirit does not have to depend upon them exclusively, for, as life
+changes, it constantly raises new expectations and offers new objects
+which at once provoke and fail to meet them. Everything, therefore,
+is potentially comical and, in the course of human history, few things
+can escape a laugh; some curious mind is sure, sooner or later, to
+bring them under a new idea against which they will be shown up to be
+absurd. The sanctities of religion, love, and political allegiance
+have not been exempt.
+
+Why, if the comical object is always opposed to our demands, should
+we take pleasure in it? How can we be reconciled to things that are
+admittedly incongruous with our standards? Why are we not rather
+displeased and angry with them? Investigators have usually looked for
+a single source of pleasure in the comic, but of those which have been
+suggested at least two, I think, contribute something. First, by
+adopting the point of view of the standard as our own, identifying
+ourselves with it, and through the contrast of ourselves with the
+object, we may take pleasure in the resulting exaltation of ourselves.
+The pleasure in the comic is often closely akin to that which we feel
+in distinction of any kind. We feel ourselves superior to the object
+at which we laugh. There is pride in much of laughter and not
+infrequently cruelty, a delight in the absurdities of other men because
+they exalt ourselves as the representatives of the rational and normal.
+There is often a touch of malice even in the laughter of the child.
+Nevertheless, the pleasure in the comic is still contemplative, and
+so far aesthetic, because it is a pleasure in perception, not in action.
+No matter how evil be the comic object, we do not seek to destroy or
+remodel it; action is sublimated into laughter.
+
+But the pleasure in the comic may arise through our taking the opposite
+point of view--that of the funny thing itself. Instead of upholding
+the point of view of the standard, we may identify ourselves with the
+object. If the comic spirit is oftentimes the champion of the normal
+and conventional, it is as often the mischief-maker and rebel. Whenever
+the maintaining of a standard involves strain through the inhibition
+of instinctive tendencies, to relax and give way to impulse causes a
+pleasure which centers itself upon the object that breaks the tension.
+The intrusive animal that interrupts the solemn occasion, the child
+that wittingly or not scoffs at our petty formalities through his naive
+behavior, win our gratitude, not our scorn. They provide an opportunity
+for the welcome release of nature from convention. And the greater the
+strain of the tension, the greater the pleasure and the more
+insignificant the object or event that will bring relief and cause
+laughter. The perennial comic pleasure in the risque is derived from
+this source. There is an element of comic pleasure in the perpetration
+of any mischievous or unconventional act. Those things which men take
+most seriously, Schopenhauer has said, namely, love and religion, and
+we might add, morality, are the most abundant sources of the comic,
+because they involve the most strain and therefore offer the easiest
+chances for a playful release. Even utter and absolute nonsense is
+comical because it undoes all Kant's categories of mind.
+
+Hence, contrary to the theory of Bergson, the spontaneous as well as
+the mechanical and rigid may be comical. Sometimes the same object may
+be comical from both the points of view which we have specified; this
+is always true, as we shall see, in the most highly developed comedy.
+For example, we may laugh at the child's prank because it is so absurd
+from the point of view of our grown-up expectations as to reasonable
+conduct, and at the same time, taking the part of the child, rejoice
+at the momentary relief from them which it offers us. Our scorn is
+mixed with sympathy. And oftentimes the child himself will hold both
+points of view at once, laughing at his own absurdity and exulting
+nevertheless in his own freedom. This is the essence of slyness. It
+follows, moreover, that a thing which was comical for one of the reasons
+assigned may become comical for the other, by a simple change in the
+point of view regarding it. For the behavior which first pleased us
+because it was unconventional tends itself to become a new convention,
+with reference to which the old convention then becomes the object of
+a laughter which is scornful. The tables are turned: the rebel laughs
+at the king.
+
+The foregoing explanation of why we find the comical pleasant also
+explains why so many of our other pleasures are intermixed with the
+comical--why so often we not only smile when we are pleased, but laugh.
+For, in the case of all except the most elementary enjoyments, our
+pleasures are connected with the satisfaction of definite expectations
+regarding the actions or events of our daily lives. But, owing to the
+dulling effect of habit, the pleasure attendant upon these satisfactions
+gradually becomes smaller and smaller or even negligible; until, as
+a result, only the novel and surprising events which surpass our
+expectations give us large pleasure; but these are comical. With the
+child, whose expectations are rigid and few in number because of his
+lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures,
+like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child
+almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase "to be highly
+tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter
+and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains
+and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way
+to an impulse contains a slight element of the mischievous or
+ridiculous; whence, for this reason too, the pleasant is also the
+comical. In fact, most of the pleasures of highly complex and reflective
+persons are tinged with laughter.
+
+We expect art to accomplish three great results--reconciliation,
+revelation, and sympathy. So far we have shown how comic art may
+accomplish the first; we have yet to prove how it may accomplish the
+rest. In his book _Le Rire_, Bergson has expressed the view that
+comedy is explicitly falsifying and unsympathetic. As to the former
+charge, we can, I think, convince ourselves of the opposite if we
+examine certain of the more obvious methods of comedy, particularly
+those which might seem at first sight to lend support to his contention.
+One of the most common of these is exaggeration. The simplest example
+is caricature, where certain features of an object are purposely
+exaggerated. The effect is, of course, comical, because we expect the
+normal and duly-proportioned. What a manifest falsification, one might
+assert! Yet just the opposite is the actual result. For every good
+caricaturist selects for exaggeration prominent and characteristic
+traits, through which by the very emphasis that is placed upon them,
+the nature of the individual is better understood. Another favorite
+method is abstraction. Certain traits are presented as if they were
+the whole man. We get the typical comic figures of the novel and drama;
+the physician who is only a physician; the lawyer who injects the legal
+point of view into every circumstance of life; the lover or the miser
+who is just love or greed; the people who, as in Dickens, meet every
+situation with the same phrase or attitude, This, too, looks like a
+plain falsification of human nature, because, however strong be the
+professional bias or however overmastering the ruling passion, real
+people are always more complex and many-sided, having other modifying
+and counteracting elements of character which prevent their speech and
+actions from being completely monotonous and mechanical. Nevertheless,
+we can again acquit the comic writer of falsification, because we
+understand the method which he is employing, the trick of his trade.
+He deceives no one. On the contrary, he enables us to perceive the
+logic of certain elementary springs of character. Following the method
+of the experimentalist, he selects certain aspects from the total
+complexity of a phenomenon and shows how they work when isolated from
+the rest. And, like the man of science, he provides insight into the
+normal, because we can accept his results as at least partially or
+approximately true. Art of this kind is abstract and therefore less
+valuable than the portrayal of the concrete; yet only the dogmatist
+who insists on the restriction of art to the individual can reject it.
+
+There is, however, a third common method of comical representation
+which neither exaggerates nor abstracts, but preserves the concreteness
+of the finest art--we may call it the method of contrast. It consists
+in exhibiting the contrast between the actual conduct of men and women
+and the standard,--either that which they themselves profess to live
+up to or our own, which we impose upon them. Their pretenses are
+unmasked or their absurdities shown up against the ideal of
+reasonableness. We behold the _bourgeois_ who would be a gentleman
+remain _bourgeois_ and the women who would be scholars remain
+women. Success in comedy of this kind depends upon possessing the
+ability to formulate the implicit assumptions underlying the behavior
+of the people portrayed or to make one's own standards with reference
+to them valid for the spectator. Here is no falsification, but, on the
+contrary, a vivid revelation of the truth; because, just as by placing
+two colors in contrast with one another the hue of each is intensified,
+so by setting man in relief against the background of what he ought
+to be, we perceive his real nature more sharply. As the child dressed
+like a grown-up appears all the more childish for his garb, so man
+appears the more human for his pretenses. To be sure, in order to
+increase the comical effect, this method is often employed in
+conjunction with that of exaggeration. The Athenian democracy was
+probably not quite so stupid as Aristophanes represents it; the average
+Britisher is not so philistine as Shaw paints him. Yet the measure of
+exaggeration may be small and we readily discount it. And finally,
+whereas in simple representation there is a revelation of the object
+only, in comical representation there is a two-fold revelation,--of
+the ideal and of the incongruous reality. The former is always
+indirectly revealed; for, as we know, the very existence of the comic
+depends upon it. The man who laughs, his notion of the right and the
+reasonable, his attitude towards the world and life, become manifest
+through the things which he laughs at. Only a man of a certain kind,
+with a certain sympathy and antipathy, could laugh as he laughs. The
+comic writer, however much of a scoffer and a skeptic, and however
+much he may deny it, is always an idealist. And it is for the revelation
+of themselves as much as for the revelation of the people whom they
+portray that we value the work of a Swift, a Voltaire, or a Thackeray.
+
+Another charge which has been brought against the comic is that it is
+unsympathetic. Its attitude, it is said, is one of externality, opposed
+therefore to the intimacy necessary for the complete aesthetic reaction.
+Whereas simple aesthetic representation places us within the object
+itself, comical representation only exhibits a relation between it and
+an idea. We judge it from our point of view, not from its own. The
+pleasure in pride and superiority which we feel towards the comical
+object seems also inconsistent with sympathy; for sympathy would create
+a fellow feeling with it, and place us not above, but on a level with
+it. If we do sympathize, the comic object ceases to be comical and
+becomes pathetic. We can find the follies and sins of men comical just
+so long as we do not sympathize with the sufferings which they entail.
+There is nothing comical that may not also become pathetic; and the
+difference depends exactly on the presence or absence of sympathy.
+Nothing, for example, is more pathetic than death; yet if you keep
+yourself free of its sorrow, there is nothing more comical--that man,
+a little lower in his own estimation than the angels, should come to
+this, a lump of clay.
+
+It is unquestionably true that a free, disinterested attitude is
+essential to comedy. You must not let yourself be carried away by any
+feeling; if you are over-serious you cannot laugh; you must keep to
+reflection and comparison. Yet this attitude is not utterly destructive
+of all feeling. Man is complex enough at once to feel and to reflect.
+He can pity as well as laugh. The pathetic and the comic are constantly
+conjoined--witness our feeling towards Don Quixote or towards any of
+the great characters of Thackeray--we do not know whether to laugh or
+to cry. And in the most effective comedy, the standard applied to the
+comical object is not foreign, but rather, as we have observed, the
+implicit standard of the object itself, discernible only by the most
+intimate acquaintance with it. The sting of laughter comes from our
+acceptance of it as valid for ourselves; we blush and join in the laugh
+at ourselves. The mischievous-comic, moreover, depends directly upon
+sympathy; for it requires that we take the point of view of the funny
+thing; our pleasure in it implies a secret sympathy for it--we hold
+it up to a standard, yet all the time are in sympathy with its
+rebellion. When we laugh at the prank of the child, love is mixed with
+the laugh. The dual nature of man as at once a partisan of convention
+and of the impulses that it seeks to regulate, is nowhere better
+illustrated than in the comic. Finally, disinterestedness is not
+peculiar to comedy; for it pervades all art. Feeling must be dominated
+by reflection; even pathos demands this, for, if we lose ourselves in
+sorrowful feeling, no fair image can arise and steady us.
+
+There is, however, much comedy that is obviously unsympathetic, even
+hostile. There is satire, which condemns, as well as humor which
+pardons. The one blames the unexpected and unconventional, the other
+sympathizes with it. Comedy is either biting or kindly. The one is
+moralistic and reformatory in its aim, the other is aesthetic and
+contemplative. Because of its failure in sympathy, satirical comedy
+is incomplete as art. It provides insight and pleasure in the object,
+but no union with it. It does not attain to beauty, which is free and
+reconciling. Kindly comedy or humor, on the other hand, is full beauty,
+combining sympathy with judgment, abandon with reflection. Nevertheless,
+satire tends inevitably towards humor. For what we laugh at gives us
+pleasure, and what pleases us we must inevitably come to like, and
+what we like cannot long fail to win our sympathy. I do not think that
+even a Swift or a Voltaire could have been irreconcilably opposed to
+a world which offered them so much merriment. The satire, which begins
+in moral fervor, must end in understanding. The bond that binds us to
+our fellows is too strong to be broken by the aloofness of our
+condemnation. The same intelligence that discerns the incongruity
+between what men ought to be and what they are, cannot fail to penetrate
+the impelling reasons for the failure. Only in humor is sympathetic
+insight complete. Satire has the temporal usefulness of a practical
+expedient, humor the eternal value of beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE STANDARD OF TASTE
+
+
+Our interest in art is seldom a matter of mere feeling or appreciation;
+usually it is a matter of judgment as well. Beginning in feeling, the
+sthetic experience passes over into comparison and estimation--into
+criticism, and there finds its normal completion. This, which is
+evidently true of the aesthetic life of artists and connoisseurs, is
+true also of average men. We all enjoy the beautiful in silence, but
+afterwards we want to talk about it to our friends. If conversation
+about art were suppressed, the interest in it would hardly survive.
+On this side, the enjoyment of art is intensely sociable, for to the
+civilized man sociability means discourse.
+
+But, as Kant pointed out, it is characteristic of conversation about
+art that the participants try to reach agreement in their judgments
+without acknowledging common principles with reference to which disputes
+can be decided. And yet, since no man is content to hold an opinion
+all by himself, but each tries to persuade the others of the validity
+of his own judgment, it would seem as if there must be some axioms or
+postulates admitted by all. Hence what Kant called the antinomy of
+taste: Thesis--the judgment of taste is not based on principles, for
+otherwise we would determine it by proofs; antithesis--the judgment
+of taste is based on principles, for otherwise, despite our
+disagreements, we should not be quarreling about it.
+
+In accordance with this situation, two opposed theories of criticism
+have always existed. On the one hand, in face of the apparent
+lawlessness of beauty, some thinkers have believed that there exist
+principles which can be applied to works of art to test their beauty
+with a certainty equal to that of the principles of logic in their
+application to inferences. Lessing, for example, in the _Hamburgische
+Dramaturgic_ wrote that the laws laid down by Aristotle in the
+_Poetics_ were as certain in their application to the drama as
+Euclid's _Elements_ in geometry. This comparison is a forcible
+statement of belief in the existence of aesthetic standards, held by
+the entire classical tradition, and still held by those who are
+spiritually akin to it, although of course no one to-day would
+claim--and when it came to details Lessing himself did not claim--that
+the judgment of Aristotle or of any one else is infallible. To-day
+those who believe in the possibility of rational aesthetic criticism
+think that reflection upon the purpose and methods of the arts results
+in the formulation of broad principles by means of which judgments of
+taste can be appraised and a community of taste achieved. These
+principles, they would admit, are more difficult of application than
+the simpler logical rules, owing to the greater subtlety and complexity
+of art, yet, when found, have an equal validity within their own field.
+
+On the other hand, the view that "there is no disputing about tastes"
+has never lacked adherents. According to this view, criticism can be
+only a report of personal, enthusiastic appreciation or repugnance
+without claim to universality. Anatole France, surely a master of such
+criticism, has expressed this conviction as follows: "L'estetique ne
+repose sur rien de solide. C'est un chateau en Pair. On veut l'appuyer
+sur Pethique. Mais il n'y a pas d'ethique. Il n'y a pas de sociologie"
+... And again, in the same preface to _La Vie Litteraire:_ "Pour
+fonder la critique, on parle de tradition et de consentement universel.
+Il n'y en a pas. L'opinion presque general, il est vrai, favorise
+certains oeuvres. Mais c'est en vertu d'un prejuge, et nullement par
+choix et par effet d'une preference spontane. Les oeuvres que tout le
+monde admire sont celles que personne n'examine." Although the classic
+view is, I think, nearer the truth, let us examine the arguments that
+may be advanced in favor of the impressionistic theory, as it has been
+called. What is there about aesthetic appreciation that makes it
+seemingly so recalcitrant to law?
+
+First, every aesthetic experience is unique, and therefore, it is
+claimed, incomparable. Art is the expression of personality, and
+personality is always individual. But unique things are, in the end,
+incapable of classification, hence are not amenable to general laws
+or principles. Of course, works of art can be classified by following
+some abstract characteristic, arranged in a series according as this
+quality is realized in them to a greater or less degree; but, in so
+far as a work is beautiful, it contains at least one quality not
+possessed by other works, the quality that gives it its distinctive
+flavor,--which is, indeed, its beauty. The impressionist would admit,
+for example, that in intellectual power Keats's _Eve of St. Agnes_
+is inferior to Wordsworth's _Intimations_; also that it lacks the
+moral grandeur of the latter; but would claim, on the other hand, that
+in saying this, one is far from judging the beauty of Keats's poem,
+because that is completely lacking in Wordsworth. So far as the poem
+is beautiful, it is unique; hence you get no farther with it through
+comparison with some other poem. You either appreciate it absolutely
+or you do not; if you do, well and good; you may then write a prose
+poem about it, if you desire, and so communicate some of your feeling
+for it to another person; if you do not appreciate it, no one can blame
+you or quarrel with you; all that any one can do is to invite you to
+read again, and, perhaps through his eloquence, seek to inspire you
+with--his own enthusiasm. Every work of art is superlative. Just as
+the lover thinks his sweetheart the most beautiful woman in the world,
+so he who appreciates a work of art finds it supreme. And among
+superlatives there is no comparison, no better or worse.
+
+From another point of view, moreover, the aesthetic experience seems
+unfavorable to comparison and classification. For a work of art demands
+a complete abandon of self, an entire absorption in it of attention
+and emotion. Every picture has a frame, and every other work of art
+an ideal boundary to keep you in its world. Beyond the frame you shall
+not go; beyond the stage you shall not pass; beyond the outline of the
+statue you shall not look. And if you do pass beyond, you have lost
+the full intensity and flower of the experience; and whatever
+comparisons you then make will not concern its original and genuine
+beauty. Every work of art is jealous; to appreciate it aright, you
+must for the moment appreciate it singly, without thought of another.
+Finally, the impressionist or skeptic would maintain that an alleged
+aesthetic principle would necessarily be abstracted from extant works
+of art; hence could not be applied to new art. A thing which does not
+belong within a class cannot be judged by principles governing that
+class. In so far, therefore, as a work of art is original, it must
+frustrate any attempt to judge it by traditional, historical
+standards--and what other standards are there?
+
+Although the two facts of the aesthetic experience--its uniqueness and
+claim to complete sympathy--upon which the skeptical opinion can be
+based, are undoubted, the inferences deduced from them do not follow.
+If they did follow, the aesthetic experience would be fundamentally
+different from every other type; it would be totally atomic and
+discrete, instead of fluid and continuous like the rest. But its
+apparent discreteness is due to a failure to distinguish between the
+silent, unobtrusive working of comparison and the more obvious and
+self-conscious working. When rapt in the contemplation of a work of
+art, I may seemingly have no thought for other works; relative isolation
+and circle-like self-completeness are characteristic of the aesthetic
+experience; yet, as a matter of fact, the completeness of my reaction
+and the measure of my delight and absorption are partly determined by
+the accordance of the given work of art with a certain expectation or
+set of mind with reference to objects of its sort. I can consent fully
+to the will of the artist only if he has first consented to my will
+as expressed in other works which I have enjoyed and praised. The
+situation in aesthetics is no different from that which exists in any
+other field of values; through many experiences of good things I come
+to form a type or standard of what such things should be like; and,
+if any new thing of the kind is presented to me, I cannot be so well
+pleased with it if it does not conform. The type may never be formulated
+by me explicitly, yet it will operate none the less. The formation of
+what is called good taste occurs by exactly this process. The first
+work of art that I see, if it please me, becomes my first measure. If
+I see a second, in order to win my approval, it will either have to
+satisfy the expectation aroused by the first, or else surpass it. In
+the latter case, a standard somewhat different from the old is created
+through the new experience; and, when I have acquired a large
+acquaintance with works of art, there grows up a standard which is the
+resultant of all of them--a type or schema no longer associated with
+particular works. Sometimes, however, it happens that the standard
+continues to be embodied in some one or few works which, because of
+outstanding excellence, serve as explicit paradigms governing judgment;
+such works are classics in the true sense. And the impressionist is
+certainly wrong in his contention that the aesthetic appreciation of
+a work of art excludes the recall of other works and conscious
+comparison with them. It is only when appreciation is of the more naive
+sort that this is the case. The trained observer, on seeing one of
+Vermeer's pictures, for example, cannot fail to think of other works
+of the same artist; and, if he is learned in the history of art, he
+may even recall the whole development of Dutch painting. For the moment,
+perhaps, at the beginning, the single work will completely absorb the
+attention; but, as we linger in appreciation and reflect upon it, our
+memory is sure to work. And the process of memory and comparison cannot
+be excluded on the ground that it is an external, irrelevant context
+to appreciation; for it actually functions to determine the degree of
+pleasure and absorption in a work of art. Moreover, this process of
+memory and comparison is not confined to the individual observer; it
+is social and historical as well. All art movements are inspired by
+the desire to improve on, or to create something different from, the
+conserved tradition. The process of creation itself involves comparison
+and the recognition of a standard. And for our civilization at any
+rate these movements are international. They are not the products of
+isolated discrete groups, impenetrable to each other, but of a
+relatively universal, continuous experience.
+
+As for the uniqueness of aesthetic value, that, to be sure, is a fact;
+yet uniqueness is never the whole of any object. Those aspects which
+ally it with other things are just as genuinely its own as those which
+differentiate it from them; they equally are a part of its beauty. The
+attempt to separate any part of a work of art from the rest as "the
+real part" is an unwarranted and arbitrary dismemberment. The work is
+whole, and beauty belongs to it as whole. Hence, when, through
+comparison, you attend to the qualities that are shared with other
+works, you are still judging the reality and beauty of the object,
+quite as much as when you seek to taste its unique flavor. A competent
+judgment can neglect no aspect. The judgment that a work of art is
+better or worse than another in some general aspect touches it just
+as surely as the feeling for its distinctiveness. And if it be true
+that so far as things are unique they are all on a level, it is equally
+true that so far as they are not unique they are capable of being
+serialized, and our total judgment upon them must follow the lines of
+comparison.
+
+It is impossible, therefore, not to compare works of art one with
+another. We will concede to the impressionist that anything which
+anybody finds beautiful is beautiful momentarily; but we must insist
+on the everyday fact that, because of the operation of the standard
+as a result of growing experience in art, what once seemed beautiful
+often ceases to seem so. And we must also insist that among the things
+surviving as beautiful we inevitably set up a hierarchy, a scale. A
+plurality of values, each unique and in its own way indispensable to
+a complete world of values, is not inconsistent with relations of
+higher and lower among them. The impressionist has taught us to love
+variety and to renounce the bigotry of the old refusal to accept
+anything short of the highest. But in aesthetics--and in ethics too,
+I believe--the standpoint of Spinoza rules: "God is revealed in the
+mouse as well as in the angel, although less in the mouse than in the
+angel;" and, I should add, the revelation through the humbler mouse
+is necessary to a complete revelation of God, that is, of the Good.
+Or, as Nietzsche said, "_Vieler Edlern naemlich bedarf es, dass es
+Adel gebe!_" Our appreciation of _Midsummer Night's Dream_ does not
+prevent us from appreciating _Alice in Wonderland,_ just as our esteem
+for the man does not hinder our feeling for the peculiar charm of the
+child.
+
+What takes place through the process of comparison is this: we come
+increasingly to realize what we want of art. Every artist seeks to
+express something in terms of the material with which he works. But
+it is only by experimenting with his medium that he learns what he can
+and what he cannot do; and it is only by constant hospitable, yet
+discriminating appreciation by us spectators that we, in our turn,
+discover what to demand of him and commend. Consider, for example, the
+history of painting. That we want of a picture, sometimes the
+delineation of emotion and action, yes; but above all and always, the
+representation of visible nature, with space and atmosphere and
+light--this purpose has been developed slowly and as the result of
+many experiments and comparisons. But having won it, we are secure in
+it. We shall still appreciate the beauty of the primitives and
+academics, but we shall not be able again to prefer them to the
+_plein-airistes_. Or recall the development of English poetry.
+We still admit the contribution of Dryden and Pope, but we shall never
+have to fight over again the battle won by Wordsworth and his
+contemporaries for imagination and emotion. Our conception of the
+purpose of poetry has been enriched by an insight that we cannot
+permanently lose. There are, to be sure, retrograde movements in the
+arts--like the Pre-Raphaelite movement in painting--but they are soon
+recognized as such.
+
+Now with reference to the purpose of art to express in a given material,
+there are, I think, a few general principles of judgment applying to
+all the arts, implicitly or explicitly recognized in criticism, and
+capable of formulation. First, the complete use of the medium. We
+prefer, other things being equal, the work of art that has fully
+exploited the expressive possibilities of its medium to one that has
+failed to do so. As an illustration, I would cite the almost universal
+condemnation, at the present time, of neo-classical sculpture, in which
+the touch values of the surfaces of statues were destroyed. Of course
+some compensating gain may be claimed--a greater visual purity; yet,
+as we shall see, from the point of view of expression, the gain was
+negligible compared with the loss. So likewise, unless the
+_vers-libristes_ can show some positive gain in expression,--a
+power to do something that normal verse cannot do, their work must
+rank lower than normal verse, which makes fuller use of the rhythmic
+possibilities of language.
+
+Second, the unique use of the material. What we want of art depends,
+not only on comparison between works of art belonging to the same
+genre, but on comparison of the purposes of different genres, indeed
+of the different arts themselves. What we want of painting depends
+upon what we want of sculpture; what we want of poetry depends upon
+what we want of painting and music. We compare picture with picture;
+but equally we compare picture with statue and poem. We do not want
+the sculptor to try to do what the painter can do better, and
+vice-versa; or the poet to encroach on the domains proper to the
+musician and painter. We do not want poetry to be merely imagistic or
+merely musical when we have another art that can give us much better
+pictures and still another that can give us much better music than any
+word-painting or word-music. When we read a poem, we do not want to
+be made to think how much better the same thing could be done in a
+different medium. There is nothing so salutary in keeping an art to
+its proper task as a flourishing condition of the other arts. Here the
+great example is France, where the limitations of the different arts
+have been best recognized all the while the highest level of perfection
+has been reached in many arts contemporaneously.
+
+Third, the perfect use of the medium in the effort to fulfill the
+artistic purpose of sympathetic representation--the power to delight
+the senses and create sympathy for the object expressed, on the one
+hand, and the range of the vision of the object, on the other; the
+depth and the breadth of the aesthetic experience. With reference to
+the former we ask: how vividly does the work of art force us to see;
+how completely does it make us enter into the world it has created;
+and, in doing this, how poignantly has it charmed us, how close has
+it united us to itself? The measure of this is partly subjective and
+irreducible to rules; yet experience in the arts establishes a norm
+or schema of appreciation through the process of comparison, largely
+unconscious, by which what we call good taste is acquired. There are
+certain works of art that seem to have fulfilled this requirement in
+the highest possible degree, thus attaining to perfection within their
+compass. Such, for example, are some of Sappho's or Goethe's lyrics,
+or the Fifth Canto of the _Inferno_. Nothing more perfect, more
+beautiful of their kind can be conceived. And to see how works of art
+may differ in degree of perfection of sympathetic vision, one has only
+to recall lesser works expressing the same themes. Yet we recognize
+greater works even than those cited--works in which, although the
+sympathetic vision is no more penetrating and compelling, it is broader,
+more inclusive. Goethe's _Faust_ is greater than any of his lyrics
+because the range of experience which it expresses is vaster. A
+Velasquez is greater than a Peter De Hooch because, in addition to an
+equal beauty of expression through color and line and composition, an
+equal dominion over light and space, it contains a marvelous revelation
+of the inner life, which is absent from the latter. According to
+Berenson, no one has yet painted the perfect landscape because thus
+far only a certain few aspects have been expressed, but not all.
+
+There are, I think, certain qualities which are generally recognized
+as necessary to the perfect fulfillment of the artistic purpose of a
+work; which follow, indeed, from the very meaning of art. Thus, without
+uniqueness and freshness there can be no perfection in artistic
+expression. A well-worn or even an identical expression may have value
+in the solution of a practical problem, or in bringing men into
+good-natured relationships with one another in social life; as when,
+for example, the officer cries "Halt!" repeatedly, or we say "Good
+morning" at breakfast; because, in such cases, the expression gets its
+significance from the context in which it belongs. But in art, where
+expression is freed from the particular setting within which it arises,
+thus attaining universality, the repetitious and imitative, having no
+environment from which they may derive new meaning, are purposeless.
+They are, indeed, worse than negligible, because having grown into the
+habit of expecting originality, we are disappointed and bored when we
+fail to find it. Originality is, of course, relative; it is not
+incompatible with the reminiscence of old works--what works of art are
+not reminiscent?--but it does prohibit saying the old things over again
+in the same medium; the artist must have a new message to put into the
+medium; or else, if the old themes are still near to his heart, he
+must invent a new form in which to express them, from which they will
+derive a new music. Closely allied to freshness are spontaneity and
+inner necessity, the signs of a genuine, as opposed to a factitious,
+expression. If we get the impression from a work of art that no part
+could be otherwise--not a single line or note or stroke of the
+brush--then we have the same sort of feeling towards it that we have
+towards the living thing that was not made by hands capriciously, but
+grew in its inevitable way in accordance with the laws of its own
+nature. Of course, works of art are products of thought, of plan, and
+conscious purpose; they are seldom composed all at one flash, but grow
+tentatively into their final form; nevertheless, in the words of Kant,
+"A work of art must look like nature, albeit we know that it is art."
+Sense charm and order are also necessary; for they are the conditions
+of a perfect sympathy and vision. We are indulgent towards the vigorous,
+impatient passion that bubbles over into rough and careless music or
+poetry, but are not satisfied with it. For art's task is not merely
+to express, but to dominate through expression, to create out of
+expression, beauty; and without order and charm of sense, there is no
+beauty. Compose your passion, we say to the musician; pattern it forth,
+we say to the poet; it will not lose its vigor; rather it will acquire
+a new power; for thus it will achieve restraint, the sign of art's
+dominion.
+
+The recognition of the principles indicated presupposes, of course,
+that art really has a purpose with reference to which it can be judged
+as successful or unsuccessful. But I do not see how this can very well
+be denied. Art is one of the oldest of human activities, one might
+almost say institutions, and it is inconceivable that it should not
+have been directed by some intention, conscious or unconscious. To be
+sure, men have expressed this intention in varying, often in
+inconsistent ways, but the same is true of all other human activities
+and institutions. Few would deny, I suppose, that science and the state
+have purposes; yet how various have been the definitions of them. These
+variations have corresponded, without doubt, to adaptations to new
+conditions, yet throughout some unique purpose in human life has been
+subserved. So with art. Art has been identified now with one interest
+and now with another; what people want of art differs from one age to
+another, and each must define that for itself; yet throughout there
+has been a core of identity in the purposes it has served. In our own
+age we witness the attempt to distinguish the purpose of art from the
+purposes of other elements of civilization, with which it has often
+been fused and confused,--science, religion, morality. Correspondingly
+we witness the effort to limit the functions of political control; to
+take from its jurisdiction religion, culture, love. And this effort
+is for the sake of a fuller and freer realization of values.
+
+Furthermore, not only has art a general function, but this function
+is differentiated among the different art forms and genres. No work
+of art can be judged without reference to its function. Its beauty
+consists in the fulfillment of this function. Now this function is,
+of course, largely unique for each art form and for each particular
+work of art, and every work has to be judged with reference to its
+individual purpose, yet a knowledge of other works of the same artist
+and the same genre, and of the general history of art, helps to divine
+this purpose and to judge of its relative success. There is a large
+measure of continuity in the intentions of a given artist and school
+of art. The development of painting in the last century is a striking
+illustration of such continuity. The painters sought to develop a
+definite tradition, thinking of themselves as carrying further the
+work of their predecessors. Of course these developments were largely
+technical in character, but beauty itself is the fruition of technique.
+
+The people who base a skeptical opinion upon the historical changes
+in taste forget that taste is necessarily a growth; that it is developed
+by trial and error, through and despite the following of many false
+paths. Only if the standard were something delivered to men by divine
+revelation--as indeed the old dogmatists came very close to believing--
+would it be strange and inconsistent for changes to occur. But if, as
+is the fact, the standard is experimental and representative of actual
+artistic purposes, then change is normal. Moreover, the standard is
+not single and absolute, but plural and relative. Growth in taste means
+not only development along a given line, within a given form, but
+enlargement through the origination of new forms and beauties. It is
+not like the straight line growth of an animal, but rather radial,
+like the growth of a plant, sending out branches in every direction.
+An art may attain to perfection in a certain genre, and then continue
+only through the creation of new types. Thus sculpture and architecture
+reached a kind of perfection in the classic, beyond which it was
+impossible to go--the only possible development lay in the creation
+of new types.
+
+If it is true, then, that the existence of standards has a sound basis
+in the aesthetic experience, how can their apparent failure to work and
+secure unanimity of judgment be explained? How account for the actual
+chaos of judgment? Partly, at least, because many judgments passed on
+works of art are not aesthetic judgments at all. These must be eliminated
+if any consensus is to be won. We may call these judgments "pseudo-
+sthetic" judgments. They fall naturally into several classes, which
+it will be worth while to describe.
+
+First, there is the very large class of partisan judgments--judgments
+based, not upon a free appreciation, but upon some personal predilection
+or transient appeal. To this class belong the special preferences of
+boyhood and youth--the liking for Cooper and Jules Verne, for example--
+and those due to nationality, like the Englishman's choice of Thackeray
+and the Frenchman's of Balzac, or, what is a more flagrant case, the
+long resistance of the French public to the beauty of Wagner's music.
+The former type of judgment is corrected by the simple process of
+maturing, when the beauties appreciated in youth are not lost, but
+only given their due place in the hierarchy of aesthetic values; the
+latter type, on the other hand, being more deeply based, is more
+difficult to remedy. But that even this prejudice can be largely
+overcome is shown by the example of critics who, through prolonged
+sympathetic study, come to prefer the art of a foreign land. A notable
+example of this is Meier-Graeffe, who condemns almost all of modern
+German painting and exalts the French. [Footnote: See his _Modern
+Art_, and his special studies of Manet, Renoir, and Degas.] Patriotic
+preferences are so difficult to overcome because they spring from
+limitations of sympathy. Sympathy depends upon acquaintance, and few
+of us can acquire the same expertness in an alien language or artistic
+form that we possess in our own. Yet, understanding the reason for
+these deficiencies of judgment, we can go to work to improve them,
+through increasing our knowledge of foreign art.
+
+No less inevitable psychologically is the preference for works of art
+that treat of the problems and conditions of contemporary life. Part
+of this, to be sure, is expressive merely of some transient mood of
+the popular mind. The enthusiasm, happily passing, for the plays of
+Brieux or the craze for Algerian landscapes in France after the
+acquirement of the colony, are examples. Such preferences, being
+superficially motivated, correct themselves with ease, giving way to
+some new fashion in taste. The preference for works of art that reflect
+the more serious and permanent problems of contemporary society is
+more firmly rooted. Men inevitably seek the artistic expression of the
+things that deeply concern them. The problems of the reconstruction
+of the family, of the working classes, and of government must continue
+to inspire art and to determine our interest in it, until new
+difficulties occupy our minds. The mere passage of time, however,
+brings a remedy for critical injustices flowing from this source; for,
+when present problems are solved, the difference between living art,
+which expresses them, and historical art, vanishes. Then, only those
+works which reflect the eternal enigmas have any advantage over the
+others. The same process tends to eliminate the prejudice, rooted in
+temperament, in favor of the old and familiar in art; or, following
+a different bent, in favor of the new and startling. In such cases,
+a just estimate can be made only when the new becomes the old, and
+both are reduced to a common level.
+
+Another type of pseudo-aesthetic judgment is the imitative. By this I
+mean the judgment which is made because somebody else has made it,
+particularly somebody in authority. The imitative judgment is the
+expression, in the field of aesthetics, of what Trotter has called "herd
+instinct," [Footnote: See his _The Herd Instinct in Peace and War_,
+first part.] the tendency on the part of the gregarious animal to make
+his acts and habits conform to those of another member of the same
+group, particularly if that member is a leader or represents the
+majority. The dislike of loneliness and the love of companionship
+operate, as we have already had occasion to notice, even in the sphere
+of the spirit. Differences here separate people just as other
+differences do. In art, herd instinct tends to make the judgment of
+the authoritative or fashionable critic take the place of spontaneous
+and sincere judgment. I do not mean that such judgments are usually
+consciously insincere; although they often are so, since men seek to
+ingratiate themselves by flattering even the aesthetic opinions of those
+whose love or protection they desire. I do mean, however, that they
+tend to suppress opinions which would reflect an autonomous
+appreciation. Moreover, whatever may be said for herd-instinct in the
+realm of politics and morals, where the need for common action makes
+necessary some sort of consensus among the members of a group, very
+little can be said for it in aesthetics, where no practical issues are
+directly involved. There, herd instinct simply substitutes sham
+appreciation for a vital and healthy reaction. Of course, imitative
+judgments must be distinguished from those that agree because they are
+based on a genuine contagion or community of feeling. This distinction
+may be a difficult one for the outsider to make; but is not so for the
+individual concerned. I do not deny the value of authority in aesthetics;
+what I am inveighing against is the substitution of authority for
+sincerity. In art, the suasion of the norm should be absolutely free,
+with no penalty except isolation from the best. The only value of
+authority is to counteract laziness and superficiality of appreciation;
+to stimulate those who would rest content with first impressions to
+a more studious and attentive examination. Yet, however great be our
+natural desire to convince others of beauty, we want their conviction
+to be as sincere as our own: we do not want it to be
+factitious,--suggested or dragooned. It is often too easy, rather than
+too hard, to win agreement.
+
+The question of the place of authority in aesthetics is raised again
+by a consideration of another class of pseudo-aesthetic judgments,
+which I shall call ignorant judgments. These judgments are perfectly
+sincere, but express an aesthetic experience that is imperfect, owing
+to defective understanding of art. So many people judge works of art
+as if they could assimilate them immediately, without any knowledge
+of their purpose and technique. They fail to recognize that a work of
+art has a language, with a vocabulary and grammar, which has to be
+mastered through study. A work of art is a possibility of a certain
+complex of values, not a given actuality that can be grasped by merely
+stretching out the hand. Very little of any work of art is given--just
+a few sense stimuli; the rest is an emotional and meaningful reaction,
+which has to be completed in a determinate fashion. A work of art is
+a question to which the right answer has to be found. And in order to
+find the answer, it is necessary to know both what to look for and
+what not to look for. For example, in judging Japanese prints, one
+must realize, from the limitation of the medium, that one cannot look
+for all the fullness of expression of shadow and atmosphere possible
+in an oil painting; or in judging decorative or post-impressionistic
+painting, one must realize that the purpose of the artist is chiefly
+to obtain musical effects from color and line, not to represent nature
+realistically.
+
+Because works of art are ideals, possibilities of experience, and not
+given things which everybody can appreciate without knowledge and
+effort, I am skeptical of all results obtained in laboratories of
+experimental aesthetics, where college students are asked to judge
+works of painting, music, and sculpture. An uninstructed majority vote
+cannot decide any question in aesthetics. Such experiments, with the
+exception of those that concern the most elementary reactions, yield
+interesting statistical results about the groups employed as subjects,
+but are of no value in aesthetics. And what wonder that we should find
+people disagreeing in their judgments when, because of ignorance, they
+are not reporting about the same objects!
+
+Finally, an aesthetic consensus is possible only if non-aesthetic
+standards and all judgments based on false conceptions of the purpose
+of art are eliminated. Some of these judgments I have already
+discussed--the scientific and the moralistic. The purpose of art is
+sympathetic vision, not scientific truth or edification. It is often
+necessary, in order to win a vision of actual life, for the artist to
+possess scientific knowledge; but only as a means, not as an end. And
+again, insight into the more enduring preferences of men and the
+conditions of their happiness, upon which rational moral standards are
+founded, is indispensable to a complete interpretation of life; but
+there is much of life that can be envisaged sympathetically, that is,
+artistically and beautifully, with small hold on ethical wisdom. No
+one, I suppose, would regard de Maupassant as a wise man in the Greek
+sense of possessing a philosophical grasp of the norms which make up
+the conscience of men, yet few would deny him the supreme gift of
+delineating the pathos and comedy of passion. I do not doubt that men
+will always judge works of art from abstract standpoints; that to-day
+they will judge them from the points of view of science and morals,
+since we are so dominated by their sway; but I do claim that these
+standards are not aesthetic, and that so long as they control our
+estimates of art, there can never be anything except chaos in taste;
+for they will always come into conflict with the genuinely aesthetic
+point of view. And, I ask, why not grant to art its autonomy? If art
+has a unique purpose, different from that of science or morals, why
+should we not judge it in terms of that purpose?
+
+Of course, since man's nature is one, not many, it will always be
+impossible entirely to get rid of the non-aesthetic bases of judgment.
+Personal predilection for a certain kind of subject-matter, patriotic
+preference for one's own language and style, the influence of authority
+and the lure of the crowd, the intrusion of the moralistic and the
+scientific bias,--all these must, to a greater or less degree, divide
+and dispute the hegemony of taste. Nevertheless, although it is
+impossible to reach a pure aesthetic judgment, we ought to strive to
+approach it, and, by dint of training and clear thinking about art,
+we can approach it. We ought to do this, not because of any formalism
+or purism, but for the sake of preserving the unique value of art,
+which is covered up or destroyed by the intrusion of non-aesthetic
+standards of judgment. For judgment does influence feeling, especially
+such a delicate and subtle thing as aesthetic feeling. The patriotic
+and the partisan judgments narrow appreciation, the imitative substitute
+a judgment for a feeling, the moralistic and scientific prejudices
+often inhibit the possibility of the aesthetic reaction at the start,
+or, if they allow it to begin, prevent the full sympathy and abandon
+which are required for its consummation. We can get scientific truth
+from science, why then seek it in art? We can obtain moral wisdom from
+the philosopher and priest, why require it of the artist? Reformers
+and statesmen will enlighten us concerning reconstruction, why not
+turn to them? I do not mean, of course, that art may not express the
+mystery and the wonder of science, the voice of conscience, the cry
+of distress; but even this is not science, or sociology, or morals;
+and art must and should also express dark passion, hot hate or love,
+and joy--in the sea, in sunlight, in the shadow of leaves on the grass,
+in the bodies of men and women--and the other myriad forms of human
+life and nature that are neither right nor true, but simply are. And
+furthermore: the tyranny of the scientific and the moral is the death
+of art. Art can live only when free. So long as men are subject to the
+exclusive habit of condemning and praising and analyzing and
+classifying, they are incapable of a free envisagement and expression.
+Between sociology and Puritanism, the artistic novel and the drama
+have become all but impossible in this country. During the nineteenth
+century, the predilection, among the Pre-Raphaelites, for the scientific
+and moral nearly killed landscape painting in England, its birthplace.
+And only in France, where alone of modern nations the moral and hygienic
+attitude towards the human body has not completely driven out the
+artistic, has there been a vital and enduring sculpture.
+
+If the aesthetic judgment is given autonomy, a sure foundation for
+aesthetic norms can be established, because then art will be judged
+with reference to a perfectly definite purpose. Feeling will always
+tell us whether a thing is beautiful or not; but feeling itself will
+depend upon whether the implicit purpose of art has been realized;
+and, when we reflectively consider a work in relation to other works,
+we shall have a solid basis for comparison. Judgment will have a
+foundation in reason as well as in feeling. We shall ask of the artist,
+not whether he has instructed us or edified us, but solely whether he
+has given us a new and sympathetic vision of some part of our
+experience. The kind of vision that he gives us will depend, of course,
+upon the materials of his art--it will be one thing in sound, another
+in color or line or patterned words. Even as we demand of art in general
+a unique value, as fulfilling a unique function, so we shall demand
+of the different arts that each provide us with the unique beauty which
+its materials can create. We shall therefore commend the separation
+of the arts and view with suspicion any attempt to fuse them. Whatever
+be his materials, we shall demand of the artist always the same result:
+that he make us see, and command our sympathy and delight for his
+vision. Any judgment that we make, or any standard that we set up,
+must proceed upon a knowledge of this master purpose and of the
+materials and technique of the particular art through which it is to
+be realized. And such standards, experimental and tentative, but
+nevertheless potent and directive, are capable of discovery and
+formulation. Some of the larger and more important of these we shall
+try to set forth in our chapters on the special arts. An artist who
+works within these standards is sure to produce something beautiful;
+one who breaks them will fail or, rarely, find some hitherto
+undiscovered, surprising beauty in the medium.
+
+There still remains for consideration the fear lest the recognition
+of standards may discourage new experiments and so interfere with the
+creative impulse. It is true that tragedies have occurred when criticism
+has been unsympathetic and malicious--remember Keats and the struggles
+of the early French impressionistic painters--but even then I doubt
+if any real harm to art has resulted. For the situation in aesthetics
+differs from the situation in ethics and politics where the retarding
+effect of convention is undeniable. In art there can never be the same
+closeness of alliance between convention and vested interests that is
+so repressive a force in the "world." It is probably true indeed that,
+as Plato said, "when the modes of music change, so do constitutions
+change"; for example, there is doubtless to-day some connection between
+imagist poetry, post-impressionistic painting, Russian music, and
+revolutionary sentiment--witness, in our own country, _The Masses_
+and _The Seven Arts_--but the link is too delicate to alarm the
+powers that be. The upholding of a standard must be allied with material
+interests if it is to be repressive of creation and novelty. But, as
+a free force, operating solely by influence, the standard has the
+effect only of keeping alive the love of excellence, and, by providing
+some stability in the old, creating that contrast between the new and
+the old, so stimulating to the new itself. For the impulse to originate
+operates best alongside of and in opposition to the desire to conserve.
+France has been the great originator in the plastic arts during recent
+times; but it has also been the only country where a genuine traditional
+standard has existed. When tradition is based on experiments, as in
+art, it cannot be in essence hostile to them. And all valid aesthetic
+principles are sufficiently broad and abstract not to interfere with
+novelty and creation.
+
+When such principles as we have tried to formulate are admitted, the
+world of aesthetic judgments can be organized and some consensus about
+the beautiful achieved. Without an approach to a consensus, the aesthetic
+impulse can never be content; for it is indefeasibly sociable. Agreement
+in judgments depends upon a common experience, and this also art can
+provide. For beauty is constituted of elementary reactions to sense
+stimuli which are well-nigh universal among men, and of symbols and
+meanings which can be learned like any language. The delight in harmony
+and balance, order and symmetry and rhythm, and again, the pleasure
+in the unique and well finished, are felt by every one. The entire
+form side of art, its structure or design, is based on fundamental and
+enduring elements of human nature. The symbolism of sensation, its
+musical expressiveness, as we have called it, is rooted likewise in
+reactions and interpretations that either are, or may become, through
+suggestion and training, common property. There are, of course, the
+people who have no feeling for tones, and through defective memory for
+tones, no appreciation of musical design; there are also those who are
+insensitive to color and line. In many cases, through the training of
+the attention, these defects can be overcome; yet, in others, they are
+permanent and incurable. This fact limits the universality of art;
+oftentimes, when two people are discussing a work, they are not talking
+about the same object; for a large part of its potentialities are lost
+to one of them. Nevertheless, the validity of empirical standards among
+those who are capable of appreciating the whole of a work of art is
+not touched by this fact. Those who can agree, ultimately will agree.
+As for art as representation, that is a language readily acquired. It
+is an easier and more natural language than ordinary speech. What is
+meant by the colors and lines of a painting or statue, or by the mimic
+of the drama, is immediately grasped by any intelligent person; for
+to make use of images of things in order to represent them is a
+universal habit among men. The painting and sculpture of the Chinese
+are intelligible to us; not so their speech. Of course, to some extent,
+the language of painting and sculpture is conventional; the limits of
+accuracy of imitation are not set by nature, except at the extremes,
+but by the tradition or practice of painters. Yet the convention is
+a simple one, easily understood and accepted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE AESTHETICS OF MUSIC
+
+
+In this and the following chapters which treat of the arts, I plan to
+make a concrete application of the aesthetic theory thus far developed.
+I want to show how the general principles which we have tried to
+establish can be used to explain the facts of our artistic experience.
+In doing this I shall hope to achieve a double purpose: first, to
+verify anew our theory of art, and second, to deepen and enlighten
+appreciation.
+
+I begin with music because, as we shall see, there is a musical factor
+in all the arts, an understanding of which at the beginning will enable
+us to proceed much more easily in our survey of them. I shall confine
+myself to an elementary analysis; for a more detailed study would take
+us beyond the bounds of general aesthetics and would require a knowledge
+of the special technique of the arts which we cannot presuppose.
+Moreover, we shall not concern ourselves with the origin or history
+of the arts further than is needful for an understanding of their
+general character. We are investigating the theory, not the history,
+of taste, and are more interested in the present developed aesthetic
+consciousness than in its rudimentary forms.
+
+As we appreciate it to-day, music lends itself readily to our definition
+of art. It is a personal expression--who, when listening to music which
+he enjoys, does not feel himself poured forth in the tones? It is
+social and public--what brings us together under the sway of a common
+emotion more effectively than concert or opera? It is a fixed and
+permanent expression, for we can renew it so long as men preserve the
+score where it is written; and, finally, it is free--who can find any
+practical or moral or scientific purpose in an etude of Chopin or a
+symphony of Mozart? Music is the most signal example of a mode of
+expression that has attained to a complete and pure aesthetic character,
+an unmixed beauty. Yet this was not true of music in its earlier forms,
+and a long process of development was necessary before freedom was
+realized. For we must look for the beginning of music in any and all
+sounds through which primitive men sought to express and communicate
+themselves. These were, first of all, the cries of the human voice,
+expressive of fear and need and joy--at once direct outpourings of
+basic emotions and signals to one's fellows, to help, to satisfy, and
+to sympathize. In the voice nature provided man with a direct and
+immediate instrument for the expression and communication of himself
+through sound. Then, perhaps by accident, man discovered that he could
+make sounds in other ways, through materials separate from his body,
+and so he constructed drums and cymbals and gongs; and by means of
+these, too, he communicated his needs and stimulated himself to rage
+and excitement--and his enemy to fear--in war dance and battle rush.
+And in doing this he was imitating nature, whose noises, exciting and
+terrifying, he had long known: the clap of thunder, the whistle of the
+wind, the roar of the waves, the crackling of burning wood, the crash
+of fallen and breaking things.
+
+Out of unbeautiful noise sprang beautiful music. Men discovered that
+through the voice they could make not only expressive noises, but also
+pleasant tones; they found, perhaps by accident, that they could do
+much the same thing with reeds and strings; they observed that when
+they beat their drums at regular intervals to mark the motion of the
+dance, they not only danced together more easily, but also experienced
+joy in the very sounds they made; or that when they threshed the corn
+with rhythmic strokes or rowed a boat in rhythmic unison, their task
+was lightened and their wearied attention distracted to the pleasure
+of their noise. Hence at their dances of love or war or religion, they
+sang instead of shouted; and their instruments of irregular and
+expressive noise became instruments of rhythmical and melodious tones.
+Eventually, having experienced the pleasure there is in tones and
+rhythmical sounds, they made them for their own sake, apart from any
+connection with tribal festivals, and the free art of music was born.
+And yet, as we shall see, the significance of music depends largely
+upon the fact that tones are akin to noises; music could not take such
+a hold of the emotions of men did they not overhear in the tones the
+meaningful and poignant noises of voice and nature; to understand
+music, we must think of it against its background of expressive noise.
+In music we still seem to hear a voice that breaks the silence and
+speaks, the thunder that terrifies.
+
+The material of music consists of tones, the conscious counterparts
+of periodic, longitudinal vibrations of the air. Tones differ among
+themselves in many attributes, of which the following are of chief
+importance for music: pitch, determined by rate of vibration, through
+which tones differ as higher and lower; color, determined by the
+complexity of the vibration wave, the presence of overtones of different
+pitch along with the fundamental tone in the total sound; intensity,
+dependent upon the amplitude of the vibration, through which tones of
+the same pitch differ as soft or loud; and finally, quality, that
+specific character of a tone, by reason of which middle C, for example,
+is more like the C of the octave below or above than like its nearer
+neighbors, B or D, whence the series of tones, although in pitch linear
+and one-dimensional, is in quality periodic, returning again and again
+upon itself, as we go up or down the scale. [Footnote: "See Geza Revesz:
+_Tonpsychologie_."]
+
+The number of qualities in use in music--twelve in our scale of equal
+temperament--is, of course, not all there are in the world of tones;
+they are a human and arbitrary selection, governed by technical and
+historical motives, into which we shall not enter. Peoples with a
+different culture have made a different selection. But we are not
+concerned with the music of angels or of orientals, but with our own.
+With these twelve, with their possible variations in pitch, loudness,
+and tone-color, the musician has a rich and adequate material.
+
+All the elements of an aesthetic experience are present in striking
+simplicity even in the single musical tone. There is the sensuous
+medium, the sound; there is a life expressed, a feeling aroused in us,
+yet so completely objectified in the sound that it seems to belong to
+the latter on equal terms with color or quality or loudness; there is
+a unity and variety and orderly structure in the dominance of the
+fundamental among the overtones and the fusion of all in the total
+clang. Thus every note is a complete little aesthetic organism. Yet
+the beauty of single tones is very slight,--less, I think, than that
+of single colors; they need the contrast or the agreement in consonance
+with other tones in order to awaken much feeling; they must be members
+of a wider whole; observe how, when sounded after other tones, they
+become enriched through the contrasting or consonant memory of those
+tones. Nevertheless, the single tone has its feeling, however slight,
+and to understand this is to go a long way toward understanding the
+more complex structures of music.
+
+In the first place, tones, unlike noises, are all pleasant. Although
+we cannot be sure why this is true, there can be little doubt, I think,
+that the regularity of the vibrations of the former, in contrast with
+the irregularity of the latter, is largely responsible. The clang,
+with its ordered complexity, is a stimulus that incites the sense organ
+and connected motor tracts to a unified and definite response, unlike
+noise, which creates confusion. The pleasure in the single tone is
+similar, in its causes, to the pleasure in the consonance of two tones.
+As we should expect from this analogy, the pleasure is greater in rich
+tones, which contain many partials, than in thin tones, which are
+relatively uninteresting. But the feeling of tones is something more
+than mere pleasantness; it is also a mood. Now this mood of tones is
+partly due to associations,--some superficial in character, like the
+pastoral quality of flute tones or the martial character of bugle
+tones, others more fundamental; but it has also a still deeper-lying
+root. For a sound stimulus awakens not only a sensory process in the
+ear, the correlative of which is a sensation, but also incipient motor
+reactions, which, if carried out, would be an emotion, but which, being
+too slight and diffuse, produce only what we call a mood. Every
+sensation has a meaning for the organism in an environment where it
+has constantly to be on its guard for danger or assistance; every
+sensation is therefore connected with the mechanism of reaction, with
+its attendant emotions. In ordinary experience, there are objects
+present to which the organism may actually respond, but in the aesthetic
+experience there are no real objects towards which a significant
+reaction can take place; in music, the source of the sound is obviously
+of no practical importance, while in such arts as painting and sculpture
+where interesting objects are represented, the objects themselves are
+absent; hence the reaction is never carried out, but remains incipient,
+a vague feeling which, finding no object upon which it may work itself
+off, is suffused upon the sensation. These sense feelings are the
+subtle, but basal, material of all beauty.
+
+The variety of moods expressed in tones is almost endless. When we
+experience them, they come to us as the inner life of the total concrete
+tones, but they depend actually upon the working together of all the
+tonal attributes,--color, quality, pitch, and loudness. There is the
+subtle intimacy of violin tones compared with the clear arresting ring
+of the trumpet; the emotional differences between qualities like C and
+G, too delicate for expression in words; the piercing excitement of
+the high, bright tones, compared with the earnest depth of the low,
+dull tones; the almost terrifying effect of loud tones compared with
+the soothing influence of soft tones.
+
+The precise psychophysical mechanism through which the different moods
+are aroused is for the most part hidden from us; yet in certain
+particulars we can form some idea of it. For example, the richness of
+feeling in the tones of certain instruments as compared with others
+is doubtless due to the fact that through the presence of more overtones
+and the admixture of noise, the reaction is more complex; the tense
+excitement of high and loud tones, as compared with the soft and low,
+is probably connected with the fact that their higher vibration rate
+and greater amplitude of vibration produce a more marked effect, a
+more pervasive disturbance,--the organism does not right itself and
+recover so rapidly and easily. These direct and native elements of
+feeling are then broadened out and intensified through other elements
+that come in by way of association. For example, in order to sing high
+tones, a greater tension and exertion of the vocal chords is needed
+than for low tones; loud tones suggest loud noises, which, as in
+breaking and crashing and thundering, are inevitably associated with
+fear; the loud is also the near and present and threatening, the low
+is distant and safe. Although each tone, as separate and individual,
+possesses its own feeling in its own right, the tonal effects are
+immensely accentuated by contrast with one another,--the high against
+the low, the poor against the rich, the loud against the soft--and
+through the summation, by means of repetition, of the influences of
+many tones of like character; the full meaning of music depends upon
+the relations of tones, especially the temporal relations.
+
+This fact was fully recognized by Aristotle, who raised the question
+why tones are so much more expressive than colors. Music is almost the
+sole important art that relies on the expressiveness of the sense
+material alone, independent of any element of meaning. To be sure, the
+beauty of oriental rugs depends entirely on their color and line
+harmonies; for the meanings which the patterns have for their oriental
+makers is generally unknown to us of the western world; yet what we
+feel when we contemplate them cannot compare in volume and intensity
+with what we experience when we listen to music. And Aristotle correctly
+assigned one of the chief reasons for the superior significance of
+music--its temporal character. A color or line scheme may express a
+momentary mood, with perhaps just the most rudimentary movement as we
+go from the dark to the bright colors, or as we follow the motion of
+the lines as they curve or converge; yet it cannot express an action
+or process that begins, proceeds, continues, ends. When we look at the
+colors or lines of a painting or rug, we feel intensely, but there is
+no development or process of feeling; if the mind moves, it moves
+inevitably not with, but away from, what it sees. But tones are given
+to us in succession; we are forced to move with them; hence they come
+to express for us, in ways which we shall try to analyze, the changing
+and developing process of the inner life.
+
+In its temporal aspect, music has two chief characteristics, rhythm
+and melody. In our music these are inseparable; yet they can be
+separated for the purposes of analysis; and a rhythmical roll of
+drumbeats or a careless succession of tones harmonically related proves
+that each may produce an aesthetic effect without the other. We shall
+consider melody first.
+
+A mere succession of tones, however pleasing separately, does not make
+a melody; for melody depends on a definite scale and on certain
+relations between the tones of the scale. These relations illustrate
+the three modes of aesthetic unity. First, there is harmony. Tones are
+harmonically related when they belong to the leading chords of the
+key. The tones of such chords, when sounded together, are consonant.
+Now harmony, which is an aesthetic feeling, although not identical with
+consonance, which is a purely sensory relation between tones, depends
+nevertheless upon consonance. In order to understand harmony, we must
+therefore first understand consonance, and, in order to do this, we
+must begin by describing the experience and then look for its possible
+causes. [Footnote: Consult the discussions in Karl Stumpf,
+Tonpsychologie; Carl Emil Seashore, The Psychology of Musical Talent,
+chap. VII.] As for the first, consonant tones, when sounded together,
+seem to fit one another, almost to fuse, despite the fact that the
+different tones are distinguishable in the whole. This fitting together,
+in turn, seems to depend on a resemblance or partial identity between
+them. For example, the most consonant tones are a note and its octave,
+which are, perhaps, actually identical in quality; but lesser intervals
+are also alike, as for example a note and its fifth, which are more
+readily mistaken for one another than two dissonant tones, say a note
+and its seventh. As for the explanation of consonance, we know that
+consonant tones have identical partial tones and are caused by vibration
+rates that stand to one another in simple ratios. Thus in a clang
+composed of a tone and its fifth, the first partial of the fifth is
+the second partial of the prime, and the vibration ratios are as two
+to three. The bearing of this second fact on the question of partial
+identity will become clear if we consider the concrete case of a tone
+produced by 24 vibrations per second, whose fifth would then be produced
+by 36 vibrations per second, and then consider the same tone and its
+dissonant second, the ratio of whose vibrations is 24 to 27; in the
+former case, there is a common part of 6 vibrations, a fourth of the
+total number of the first tone; in the latter, only 3, an eighth. That
+identity of partial tones is not a sufficient explanation of
+consonance--as Helmholtz thought it to be--is proved by the fact that
+simple tones, which have no partials, may still be consonant.
+Nevertheless, an identity of partials does undoubtedly contribute to
+the consonance of the complex tones used in our music; ultimately,
+however, the final reason for consonance must be sought in some
+underlying identity within the tones themselves, an identity that seems
+to be given psychologically in their resemblance, and with which
+physically the simplicity of their vibration ratios probably has
+something to do. And that in music the feeling of harmony should depend
+upon partial identity is what we should expect from our previous study
+of harmony in general. [Footnote: See page 87.]
+
+The second of the tonal relations upon which melody depends is contrast.
+First, there is the contrast between the high and the low; even when
+notes are harmonically related, as a note and its fifth, they are in
+contrast, in so far as the one is measurably higher and more distant
+than the other. Of equal importance is the rivalry between the
+fundamental tones in the leading harmonic chords; for example, the
+rivalry between the tonic and the dominant. For each of these claims
+to be the center of the melodic progression, and draws to itself all
+the tones which belong to its chord. Dissonance is a cause of rivalry;
+for a dissonant tone is one that will not fit into a given harmony;
+yet since it is still a part of the melody, must have its home
+somewhere, and belongs therefore in another harmony, which, through
+this tone, is set up in rivalry with the prevailing one. A tone that
+did not belong to any harmony would not be a dissonance, but a
+discord,--a tone without meaning musically. Dissonances, like other
+contrasts, enrich the melody by establishing rival harmonies; discords
+destroy melodies. Just as the drama has little significance without
+conflict, so melodies are uninteresting without dissonances.
+
+Were it not for the third of the tonal relations, melodies would lack
+unity and system and go to pieces under the stress of rival forces.
+This third relation may be call finality; [Footnote: The explanation
+of this is obscure; there is no unanimity among the specialists in
+musical theory.] it belongs among relations we have called evolutionary.
+By it is meant the fact that certain tones demand and naturally lead
+into other tones, in which they seem to find their completion or
+fulfillment. For example, the tones of a chord demand the fundamental
+tone of the chord; dissonances must be "resolved,"--must be followed
+by other tones of their own harmony; the diatonic tones over and above
+the tonic--the "upleader" and "downleader"--naturally lead into the
+tonic; and all the tones demand, either immediately or through the
+mediation of other tones, the tonic of the scale to which they belong.
+This principle of finality, which, in the classic music, is the basis
+of what is called "tonality," by establishing the tonic as the center
+of reference and point of completion of all tones, gives to melody its
+dramatic unity. Through it, by creating the tonic chord as fundamental,
+the rivalry between the tonic, dominant, and subdominant is overcome,
+and all dissonances finally resolved into unity. Definite scales and
+tonal laws and schemes of composition are of the utmost importance for
+musical composition; there are, of course, many of these besides the
+classical, and they are all partly conventional; but that does not
+matter so long as, by being well known, they enable the melody to move
+along definite lines, arousing and fulfilling definite expectations.
+Those forms of modernist music that dispense with scales altogether,
+in which therefore there are no fixed _points de repere_ like the
+tonic or dominant of the older music, can express chance momentary
+moods by means of rich and strange colors, but not an orderly and
+purposeful experience.
+
+Of course, in our modern harmonic music the melodic movement proceeds
+by means, not of single tones, but of chords. Yet no new principle is
+introduced by this fact. For the chords have in part merely the
+significance of highly enriched tones, the harmonized tones of the
+chords taking the place of the partials of the single notes and
+imparting a more voluminous color, which may have its own beauty as
+such; and, in addition, they simply confer upon the melody another
+dimension, as it were, the tonal relations of harmony and contrast
+operating between the tones of the chords simultaneously, as well as
+temporally between the successive elements of the melody.
+
+The orderly beauty which the tonal relations confer upon music is
+further enriched and complicated by rhythm. Rhythm in music is of two
+sorts: a rhythm of time and a rhythm of accent, or increased loudness.
+Through the one, the duration of a musical composition is divided up
+into approximately equal parts filled by notes and rests of definite
+length, and through the other, the light notes are subordinated to the
+heavy notes. The two, however, are interrelated; for the bars are
+divided from each other by the accents, and the accents recur at
+approximately equal intervals.
+
+The pleasure in rhythmical arrangement is derived from two sources:
+first, from the need for perspicuity which is fulfilled through the
+regular grouping of the tonal elements in the bars,--their length being
+adjusted to the average length of an attention wave, and the number
+of tones that fill them to the number of items which can be taken in
+at one act of attention,--and through the subordination of the light
+to the heavy within the bars, the bars to the measures, and the measures
+to the periods. The second source of satisfaction in rhythm is the
+combination of feelings of balance and harmony aroused--a rhythm is
+not only a pleasing perspicuous order, but an emotion. [Footnote: See
+chap. V, p.90] For every recurring accent and interval competes with
+its predecessor for the mind's attention, yet is in agreement with it
+since it, too, fulfills the law that pervades them all.
+
+The full significance of both melody and rhythm depends, however, upon
+their interrelation, the concrete musical structure, the motive or
+melody in the complete sense, being an indissoluble unity of both. Now
+if we take the term will with a broad meaning, Schopenhauer's
+characterization of melody as an image of the will still remains the
+truest aesthetic interpretation of it. For, when we hear it, we not
+only hear, but attend to what we hear; we hear each tone in its
+relations of harmony or contrast or fulfillment to other tones,
+freighted with memories of its predecessors and carrying with it
+expectations, which the following tones fulfill or deny. The melody
+begins, let us suppose, with the tonic note. This note then becomes
+for us a plan or purpose; for as it goes, it leaves in the mind a
+memory of itself, no mere pale sensation--no image ever is--but a motor
+set, an expectation and desire to hear the note again. If the next
+note is harmonically related, this purpose is partially fulfilled and
+we get the satisfaction of a partial success. If, however, the tone
+does not belong to the tonic chord, but, let us suppose, to the
+subdominant, it comes as a hindrance, an obstacle, or perhaps as a new
+and rival purpose springing up in the course of the fulfillment of the
+old,--a purpose which can be satisfied only through the other tones
+of its chord. Hence the tension of conflicting expectations and the
+excitement as now the one and now the other is fulfilled in the
+succeeding notes. Yet, since all other harmonies are subordinated to
+the tonic harmony, and even through their very opposition increase our
+desire for it, they must give way to the fundamental purpose with which
+we started; and when the tonic does eventually triumph, it fulfills
+not only itself, but all lesser desires of the melody; in it we find
+what we have been seeking, we arrive where we set out to go. And in
+this success we not only obtain what we first wanted, but more--an
+experience enriched by every conflict, and harmonious ultimately through
+the inner adjustment and resolution of its elements; for in hearing
+the final note we hear the memories of all previous tones, also. When
+the departures from the keynote are many and distant and sudden, and
+the melody wanders into the bypaths of foreign harmonies, moving along
+broken and zigzag lines, it expresses an exciting, a dangerous and
+difficult adventure; when, however, the departures are gradual and
+confined for the most part within the limits of a single harmony,
+moving in a smooth and curving path, it expresses a life that is secure
+and happy, tending to repose as the line approaches the horizontal,
+and as repetitions of the same note predominate.
+
+Rhythm enters into melody to differentiate and emphasize. By means of
+accent and time-value, the different tones are weighted and their
+relative value fixed. The heavy tones assert their will with a more
+insistent energy; the long tones upon which we linger make a deeper
+and more lasting impression; while the light and short tones in contrast
+become points of mere passing and transition. If, moreover, we include
+the element of tempo, then all the temporal feelings are introduced
+into melody--the excitement of rapid motion, the calmness of the slow;
+the agony of delay, of waiting and postponement, with the triumph and
+relief when the expected note arrives at last. Finally, the effects
+of shading must be added, the contrasts between piano and
+forte--loudness that brings the tones so near that they may seem
+threatening in their insistence; softness that makes them seem far
+away and dreamlike.
+
+Following the large idea introduced by Schopenhauer, which was enriched
+by the minuter studies of Lotze, Wundt, and Lipps, we may sum the
+foregoing analysis in the statement that music expresses the abstract
+aspects of action, its ease or difficulty, its advance or retrocession,
+its home coming or its wandering, its hesitation or its surety, its
+conflicts and its contrasts, its force or its weakness, its swiftness
+or slowness, its abruptness or smoothness, its excitement or repose,
+its success or failure, its seriousness or play. Then, in addition,
+as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this
+abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that the
+content of music becomes not a mere form of life, but life itself.
+
+It is, of course, obvious that our analysis has confined itself to the
+barest elements of the musical experience. Our music to-day, with its
+many-voiced harmonies, with its procession of chords instead of single
+tones, with its modulation into related keys, has an infinite wealth
+and complexity defying description. A large part of the astonishing
+effect of music is derived from the fact that in a brief space we seem
+to hear and absorb so much: the careers of multitudinous lives
+compressed into an instant. Yet the meaning of the complex whole can
+be understood, I think, from such an analysis of the simple structure
+as has been given.
+
+The methods by which the larger musical wholes are built up illustrate
+principles of aesthetic structure with which we are already familiar.
+There is the harmonious unification of parts through the simple
+repetition of motives, their inversion or imitation in higher or lower
+keys, either successively or simultaneously; the execution of the same
+theme in another time or tempo; and through the interweaving of themes.
+There is the balance of contrasted or competing themes; the
+subordination of the lesser to the more striking and insistent motives;
+the preparation for, emergence and triumph of, a final passage that
+resolves all dissonances and adjusts all conflicts. Because of music's
+abstractness, the connection between the parts of a musical composition
+may be loose or subtle, taxing the synthetic powers even of the educated
+listener; yet some contrast or analogy of feeling must always unite
+them. The structure of the whole may be either static or dramatic; in
+the former case the dramatic element is confined to the themes, the
+purpose of the whole being merely to work out all their significant
+variations,--to embroider and repeat them in new keys and rhythms and
+tempos, and to contrast them with other themes. Repetition is the great
+creative principle of musical development, the composer seeking to say
+over again in ever new forms what he has said before. And this, again
+because of the abstractness of music, is a significant process; to
+repeat the concrete is tiresome and trivial, but an abstract form is
+always enriched by appearing in a new shape.
+
+The explanation of musical expression thus far given, although it
+suffices to account for the basis of all musical feeling, is, I think,
+inadequate to its full volume and intensity. There is a concreteness
+of emotional content in some musical compositions--an arousal of terror
+and longing and despair and joy--infinitely richer than any abstract
+forms of feeling.
+
+To account for this, two sources of explanation suggest themselves.
+First, the arousing of emotions through deep-lying effects of rhythm.
+It is a well-known fact, cited in most discussions of this subject,
+that the motor mechanism of the body is somehow attuned to rhythm.
+When we hear rhythmical sounds, we not only follow them with the
+attention, we follow them also with our muscles, with hand and foot
+and head and heart and respiratory apparatus. Even when we do not
+visibly move in unison with the rhythm--as we usually do not--we tend
+to do so, which proves that in any case the motor mechanism of the
+body is stimulated and brought into play by the sounds. There is a
+direct psychophysical connection between the hearing of rhythmic sounds
+and the tendency to execute certain movements. But there is an equally
+direct relation between emotions and tendencies to movements, through
+which the former find expression and are given effect in the outer
+world. To every kind of emotion--love and hate and fear and sorrow and
+joy--there corresponds a specific mode of motor manifestation. The
+connection between rhythmic sound and emotion is therefore plain; the
+link is a common motor scheme. Rhythms arouse into direct and immediate
+activity the motor "sets" that are the physical basis of the emotions,
+and hence arouse the corresponding emotions themselves, without any
+ground for them outside of the organism. And these emotions, since
+they are aroused by the sounds and not by any object to which they
+might be directed and upon which they might work themselves off in a
+meaningful reaction, are interwoven into the sounds,--they and the
+sounds come to us as a single indissoluble whole of experience. The
+emotions become the content of the sounds. And hence the strangeness
+of the musical experience--the fact that we feel so deeply over nothing.
+
+The second cause for the concreteness of the musical experience I take
+to be certain emotions and feelings which are aroused by association,
+not with the rhythmic elements of music alone, but with the tone-color,
+intensity, and melody also. There is a human quality, a poignancy and
+intimacy, about much music, which can be understood only through its
+analogy with the sounds of the human voice. For the human voice is
+emotionally expressive through its mere sound alone: one can know a
+large part of what is going on in the breasts of people who talk in
+a foreign tongue just by listening to the sound of their voices--their
+excitement or boredom, their anger, love, or resentment; and one becomes
+conscious of these emotions, as in hearing music, without knowing what
+they are all about. All human emotions betray themselves in speech
+through the rise and fall, range of intervals, loudness or softness,
+tempo and differences of duration of tone. Now, although it is far too
+much to say that music is actually an imitation of the voice, it is
+nevertheless true, as Diderot thought, that in certain musical passages
+we overhear the voice. There is never any exact similarity between
+music and vocal sounds, but there is enough resemblance to awaken by
+association the feelings that are the normal accompaniments of such
+sounds. Any tone analogies that there happen to be are felt as such.
+This is notably true of all music that has a peculiar lyrical and human
+quality,--the music that readily becomes popular because it seems to
+speak direct to the heart. Originally, all music was song, and since
+speech and song employ the same organ, it would be surprising indeed
+if something of the same expression of the emotions that overflows
+into the one should not also overflow into the other, and that musicians
+should not, unconsciously or consciously, tend to choose their melodies
+because of such analogies. Instrumental music probably got its first
+melodies from song, and despite its vast present complexity and
+independence, has never completely lost touch with song. Since the
+first meaningful sounds that we hear are those of the voice, music
+must always have for us the significance of a glorified speech.
+
+The fault of the original proposers of the speech theory was that they
+thought it a complete explanation of the facts of musical expression.
+Its explanatory value is, however, strictly limited, and supplemental
+to the more basic considerations adduced; yet it remains a necessary
+part of the complex theory of the complex fact we are studying. And
+the acceptance of it as such does not imply a belief in the speech
+theory of the origin of music. Song did not grow out of impassioned
+speech, but arose coeval with speech, when men found--perhaps by
+accident--that they could make with their voices pure and pleasing
+tones and intervals of tones, and express something of their inner
+selves in so doing. Yet, as I have suggested, it would be strange if
+speech did not react upon song--if the first vocal tones were not
+purified words, and the first intervals an approximation to those of
+speech. Thus in song, lyric poetry and music arose together as a single
+art for the expression of feeling, until the development of instrumental
+music freed the one and the invention of writing freed the other; while
+speech kept to its different and original purpose--the expression of
+ideas for practical ends, and produced an aesthetic form of its own
+only at a later period and under independent influences.
+
+The complete understanding of musical expression involves, finally,
+as was suggested at the beginning of this chapter, the recognition of
+the analogy that exists between music and the noises produced by nature
+and human activities. Through the imitation of their rhythm, force,
+and tempo, some of these can be directly suggested by musicians. Yet
+this direct suggestion, although employed by the greatest composers,
+plays a subordinate part in music, and, since it introduces an element
+of representation of the outer world--_tonmalerei_--is usually
+felt to involve a departure from the prime purpose of music: the
+expression of the inner world through the emotional effects of pure
+sound. In the best program music, therefore, the purpose of the composer
+is not the mere imitation of nature--which is never art at all, and
+in music is always recognized as an unsaesthetic _tour de force_
+of mere cleverness--but rather the arousal of the feelings caused by
+nature. And as an aid in the expression of such feelings, imitation,
+when delicately suggestive rather than blatant, will always play a
+part.
+
+There are, however, subtler and remoter analogies between music and
+noise, which produce their effects whether the musician wills them or
+not. Such, for example, are loud bursts of tone suggesting falling or
+crashing, events which usually have a terrifying significance;
+crescendoes, suggesting the approach of things, so often full of
+expectancy and excitement; diminuendoes, suggesting a gradual departure
+or fading away, bearing relief or regret. And there are doubtless
+hundreds of other such associations, too minute or remote or long-
+forgotten to recover, which add their mite of feeling to swell and
+make vast the musical emotion. As Fechner pointed out, these
+associations may work quite unconsciously, giving evidence of their
+functioning only through the feeling tones which they release. So
+important is the part which sound plays in our lives that there must
+be an especially large number of such underground associations aroused
+by music. All of our experiences are connected together by subconscious
+filiation; but it is only in art that their residual feeling tones
+have a full opportunity to come into the mind; for in everyday life
+they are crowded out by the hurry of practical concerns. In the earlier
+stages of the development of music they must have contributed a still
+larger share to musical expression, when the different forms of music
+were connected by habit and convention with particular crises and
+occasions, religious, domestic, and social, in the life of individuals
+and groups. But even to-day, despite the new freedom of music, they
+are not absent.
+
+Looking back over our analysis of music, we see that it is characterized
+by the expression of emotion without the representation of the causes
+or objects of emotion. This fact, which has now become a well-recognized
+part of aesthetic theory, distinguishes music from all the other arts.
+Music supplies us with no definite images of nature, as painting and
+sculpture do, and with no ideas, as poetry does. It contains feelings,
+but no meanings. Music offers us no background for emotion, no objects
+upon which it may be directed, no story, no _mise en scene_. It
+supplies us with the feeling tones of things and events, but not with
+the things or events themselves. It moves wholly in a world of its
+own, a world of pure feeling, with no embodiment save only sound. It
+may express terror, but not terror over this or that; joy, but whether
+the joy that comes from sight of the morning or of the beloved, it
+cannot tell. In one brief space of time, it may arouse despair, hope,
+triumph--but all over nothing.
+
+Yet--and this is the central paradox of music--despite its abstractness,
+nay, because of this very quality, it remains the most personal and
+intimate of the arts. For, itself offering no images of things and
+events to which we may attach the feelings which it arouses, we supply
+our own. We fill in the impersonal form of musical feeling with the
+concrete emotions of our own lives; it is our strivings, our hopes and
+fears, which music expresses. By denying us access to the world about
+us, music compels us to turn in upon ourselves; it is we who live there
+in the sounds. For, as we have seen, the rhythmic tones seize hold not
+only of our attention, but of our bodies also--hand and foot and head
+and heart, resounding throughout the whole organism. And, where our
+bodies are, there are we. Moreover, our life there in the sounds need
+not remain without objects because the music does not describe them
+to us; for out of our own inner selves we may build up an imaginary
+world for our feelings. As we listen to the music, we shall see the
+things we hope for or fear or desire; or else transport ourselves among
+purely fanciful objects and events. Music is a language which we all
+understand because it expresses the basic mold of all emotion and
+striving; yet it is a language which no two people understand in the
+same way, because each pours into that mold his own unique experience.
+In itself abstract and objectless, it may thus become, in varying ways,
+concrete and alive.
+
+The great variety in the interpretation of musical compositions has
+often been used as an argument against the existence of emotions in
+music, but is, as we have seen, the inevitable result of their
+abstractness. This abstractness may, indeed, be so great that apparently
+opposite concrete emotions, such as love and religious adoration,
+despair and joy, may be aroused in different people, according to
+different circumstances, by the same piece. The music of the opera can
+be used in the cathedral. Yet strikingly dissimilar emotions have
+common elements--worship is the love of God; joy may be a rage equally
+with disappointment; and at their highest intensity, all opposed
+emotions tend to pass over into each other: hope into fear, love into
+hate, exaltation into depression. The elementary feelings out of which
+our complex emotions are built are few and simple; hence each one of
+the latter is identical in some ingredients with the others. And even
+the elementary feelings may have common aspects of intensity and tempo,
+of strain and excitement. Some musical compositions, like the fugues
+of Bach, seem to express nothing more than such extremely abstract
+modes of feeling, without arousing any associations that would impel
+the mind to make a more concrete interpretation. To express feelings
+of this kind in language is, of course, impossible, for the reason
+that our emotional vocabularies have been constructed to communicate
+only the emotions of everyday life. Other types of music--like the
+romantic tone poetry of a later day--which are more abundant in their
+associations, and hence richer in their emotional content, are difficult
+of translation for another reason: the rapidity of succession and
+subtlety of intermixture of the expressed feelings are beyond the reach
+of words, even of a poet's, which inevitably stabilize and isolate
+what they denote.
+
+But abstract and objectless emotions occur in other regions of
+experience beside the musical, even beyond the entire field of the
+aesthetic. All except the most healthy-minded and practical people are
+at times filled with vague fears, longings, and joys, the objects or
+causes of which they cannot formulate. Normally, feeling is directed
+towards definite objects and leads to action upon them, but may
+nevertheless become isolated from its proper connections, and function
+without issue. The extreme cases of this are the pathological states
+of mania and depression, where such feelings assume proportions
+dangerous to the existence of the individual. Intoxication and hysteria
+present analogous, though more transient phenomena. And one may observe
+the autonomous development of mere feeling even in the healthy life,
+as when one remains jolly after all occasion for it has ceased, or
+angry after the cause for anger has been removed. All feelings tend
+to acquire a strength beyond what is necessary for action and to endure
+after their proper objects and conditions have disappeared; hence the
+luxury of grief and revenge and sentimentality.
+
+In their most general character, musical emotions stand on a level
+with other purposeless emotions, except that they are deliberately
+induced and elaborated to an extent and complexity unmatched elsewhere.
+But while these emotions are morbid and evil outside of music, within
+music they are innocent. For outside of music they spring from
+dislocations of the practical and striving core of the personality,
+where, if persistently indulged in, they exacerbate the disturbance
+of which they are the sign, interfering with action and eventually
+endangering the health and happiness of the individual; while in music,
+being induced from the outside by mere sounds, they have no ground
+within the personality itself where they can take root, and hence exert
+only a harmless and transient effect upon the mind; they belong to the
+surface, not to the substance of the self, to imagination, not to the
+will. Or when, as sometimes happens, the deeper and perhaps morbid
+strata of the self are reached by the sounds, the feelings which are
+awakened from their sleep there, where they might be productive of
+evil dreams, find an orderly and welcome release in the sounds--they
+are not only aroused, but carried off by the music. This the Greeks
+understood when they employed music as a healer of the soul and called
+this effect catharsis.
+
+If, indeed, music were just a means for the arousal of feelings, it
+would not be a fine art, but an orgy. For, in order to be aesthetic,
+feelings must be not merely stimulated by, but objectified in, the
+sense medium, where they can be mastered and known. But the intimacy
+of music is not in contradiction with the freedom and objectivity
+characteristic of all art. For musical feelings, although they are
+experienced as our own, are nevertheless also experienced as the sounds;
+in music we live, not as we live ordinarily, within our bodies, but
+out there, in a rarer and unpractical medium--tone. And in this new
+region we gain dominion over our feelings, through the order which the
+form of the music imposes upon them, and also self-knowledge, because,
+in being externalized in the sounds, our feelings become an object for
+our reflection and understanding. In music the light of reflection is
+turned straight upon ourselves.
+
+The poignancy of music depends upon just this fact that through it we
+get a revelation of ourselves to ourselves. In the other arts, this
+revelation is indirect, occurring through the representation of the
+lives of other, real or fictitious, personalities; but in music, it
+is direct; for there the object of expression is oneself. Even in the
+lyric poem, where the reader and the poet tend to become identical,
+the unity is less complete; for when embodied in words, feelings become
+more exterior than when put forth into tones; a tone is closer to the
+self, because like a cry or a laugh, it is less articulate. Moreover,
+words are means of communication as well as expression; they therefore
+embody of any experience only as much as can be passed from speaker
+to hearer; the unique is for the most part lost on the way; but in
+music the full personal resonance of experience is retained. In music
+we get so close to ourselves that at times it is almost frightening.
+
+And this is the reason why, on all the high or serious occasions of
+human life, music is alone adequate to express its inner meaning. At
+a marriage or a funeral, in church or at a festival, the ceremonial
+is traditional and social; it expresses the historical and group
+significance of the situation, but not that which is unique and just
+one's own; it always contains, moreover, much that is outgrown and
+unacceptable--a creed of life or love or death that belongs to the
+past, not to us. But the music embodies all that we really believe and
+feel about the fact, its intimate, emotional essence, clear of
+everything irrelevant and external.
+
+But music does more than express the inexpressible in ourselves; it
+gives us entrance into a supernatural world of feeling. Except at the
+rare high moments of our lives, its joys and despairs are too exalted
+for us; they are not ours; they belong to gods and heroes. In music
+the superman is born into our feelings. Music does for the emotions
+what mythology and poetry do for the imagination and philosophy for
+the intellect--it brings us into touch with a more magnificent life,
+for which we have perhaps the potency, but not the opportunity here.
+And in doing this, music performs a great service; for, outside of
+love and war, life, which offers endless occasions for intense thought
+and action, provides few for passionate feeling.
+
+Thus far our study of the art has been confined to so-called absolute
+music. We must now complete our survey by a rapid consideration of the
+union of music with the other arts. Because of its abstractness, music,
+of all the arts, lends itself most readily to combination with others;
+yet even in the case of music the possibility of union is limited by
+the existence of a clear identity between the arts combined. Thus,
+music goes well with the temporal arts, poetry, the dance, and the
+drama, and particularly well with the first two because they are
+rhythmical; it will also unite with architecture, because that is
+another abstract art; but with the static, concrete arts like painting
+and sculpture, it will not fuse. One might perhaps accompany a picture
+with a single chord whose emotional meaning was the same as that of
+the color scheme and the objects represented, but not with more; for
+the aesthetic experience of the picture is instantaneous and complete,
+while that of the music requires time for its development and fruition;
+hence the two would soon fall apart, and a person would either have
+to ignore the music or cease to look at the picture.
+
+Originally, of course, music was always combined with some other art,
+and first of all, probably with the dance. In its earliest form, the
+dance was a communal religious expression, about which we shall have
+little to say, since it belongs to the past, not to living art. For
+to-day the dance is a free art like music. The beauty of the dance
+consists, first, in the free and rhythmical expression of impulses to
+movement. This expression, which is direct for the dancer who actually
+carries out her impulses in real motion, is for the spectator indirect
+and ideal, for he experiences only movement-images aroused by movements
+seen, and then, by feeling these into the limbs of the dancer, dances
+with her in the imagination. And to secure this free and large, even
+though vicarious, expression of pent-up impulses to movement is very
+grateful to us whose whole movement life is impoverished, because
+restricted by convention and occupation to a few narrow types. But the
+dance would have little interest for men were it not for another element
+in its beauty: the expression of the amorous feelings of the spectator.
+These, although really located in the breast of the spectator, are
+nevertheless embodied in the personality of the dancer, whose charm
+they constitute. Finally, the content of the dance may be further
+enriched through the use of symbolic costume and mimetic gestures,
+suggesting emotions like joy or love or grief, emotionally toned ideas
+like spring, or actions such as courtship. Now music, with its own
+rhythmical order and voluminous emotional content, has an obvious
+kinship with the rhythmic form and amorous substance of the dance, and
+so can well serve to accompany it.
+
+The result of the union is to enforce the rhythmic experience through
+the medium of sound, the dance keeping time with the music, and, through
+the heightened emotional tone and increased suggestibility created by
+the music, to deepen the sympathetic rapport between dancer and
+spectator. Thus the music is given a concrete interpretation through
+the dance, and the dance gains in emotional power through the music.
+In the union, the gain to the dance is clear and absolute; but the
+music pays a price for the concreteness of content which it secures,
+by forfeiting its power to express chance inner moods--what it gains
+in definiteness it loses in scope and universality. And only music
+with a strong and evident rhythm is capable of union with the dance;
+the more complex and subtle music, aside from the impossibility of
+making its delicate rhythms fit into those of a dance, has a variety
+and sublimity of meaning so far transcending the personality of any
+human being, that to attempt to focus it in a dancer, no matter how
+charming, would be a travesty.
+
+Of equal naturalness and almost equal antiquity with the union of music
+with the dance, is its union with poetry. In song this union is a real
+fusion; for the tones are the vocal word-sounds themselves, purified
+into music. Here, of course, unlike absolute music, the tones are
+expressive, not only as other tones are through their mere sound, but
+also through their meaning. And this can well be; for as Schopenhauer
+remarked, just as the universal may be illustrated by any object which
+embodies it, so the vague musical content of a tone may be fused with
+the concrete meaning of a word of like feeling. And for many hearers
+music doubtless gains by thus becoming articulate; for, being unable
+to supply out of their own imagination the concreteness which music
+lacks, they welcome having this done for them by the poet; yet the
+gain is not without a corresponding loss. For when the musical meaning
+is specialized through the emotions that are the burden of the song,
+it necessarily loses the power which it would otherwise have of
+expressing one's own inner life--once more, what it gains in
+definiteness it loses in scope. It no longer possesses the unique
+function of the musical. Hence, if we love the music, we shall not
+care whether or not we understand the meaning of the words, and what
+we shall value in the song will be only the peculiar intimacy which
+it derives from its instrument, the voice. Only rarely is it otherwise,
+as in some of the songs of Schumann, when the poetic interpretation
+is so beautiful and so completely at one with the musical feeling,
+that we prefer to accept it rather than substitute our own
+interpretation for the poet's. But even so, the music, if genuine,
+will have value without the words. At the opposite pole are those
+songs, often popular, where the music, having little worth in itself,
+is a mere accompaniment for the words. In all cases, however, the music
+can lend to the poetry some of the intimacy which is its own, so that
+its burden has a deeper echo in the soul.
+
+Yet much of poetry is unfit for union with music. This is true, first,
+of all highly intellectual poetry, where the emotions are embodied in
+complex and abstract ideas. One could not, for example, readily set
+Browning to music. Music may be deep, mystic, even metaphysical in its
+meaning, but it cannot be dialectical. The emotions that accompany
+subtle thought, even when intense, are not of the voluminous, massive
+kind which music expresses; they lack the bodily resonance of the
+latter; they are, moreover, clean-cut and static, while in music
+everything flows in half-lights, like a river moving in moonlight.
+On the other hand, poems which express rapidly developing states of
+mind, which contain quick, subtle transitions, are equally unfit for
+union with music. For music, although always in motion, is always in
+slow motion; it needs time to get under way, and time for its
+development in embroidering, varying, and repeating its theme. And
+this difficulty applies in a general way to every union between poetry
+and music. For words are primarily practical and communicative, and
+therefore cut short the passion which they express; whereas tones,
+never having had any other purpose than expression, draw it out and
+let it have its way. Moreover, poetry, because of its definiteness,
+is compatible with only a limited range of variation, beyond which it
+becomes monotonous, while music, because of its abstractness, permits
+of variations almost endless, and is enriched by every new shape in
+which its meaning can appear. If, therefore, poetry is to keep time
+with the slow movement of the music and conform to its mode of
+development, the verses have to be repeated again and again; but this
+destroys the poetic form--as in the oratorio, with its senseless
+iterations.
+
+Finally, the temporal and developmental character of the drama would
+seem to fit it for union with music. Yet the union of these two arts
+is confronted with the same difficulties that beset the connection
+between poetry and music. The movement of the acting drama is swift
+and straight, that of music is slow and circular; hence if the music
+is to have its way, the action of the drama must stand. In consequence
+of this, there is little real action in most operas, prolonged dialogues
+in song taking its place. Only rarely--as for example in Strauss'
+"Salome," perhaps--is the form of the drama preserved. As a rule the
+unity of the musical form is also destroyed, the thread of the story
+being substituted for it. Last, as in the song, the universality of
+the music is renounced in favor of the interpretation given to it by
+the program. In the _leit-motif_, indeed, as Wagner uses it, where
+a musical phrase is provided with a fixed connotation of ideas and
+acts which is understood by the hearer whenever it recurs, opera ceases
+to be music at all in the strict sense, and becomes a musical language.
+Yet in the opera, as in the song, the music, when genuine, possesses
+its own independent meaning, which can be appreciated without the
+_mise en scene_ or the program. And then only rarely, as in the
+Toreador song in "Carmen," is the action so close to the inner meaning
+of the music, that the latter seems to gain by the interpretation.
+
+It follows that Wagner's dream of making the opera a sum of all the
+values of poetry, drama, and music, and so an art more beautiful than
+any one of them, is fallacious. For, as we have repeatedly seen, in
+uniting the arts, there is gain as well as loss; something of the form
+or meaning of each has to be sacrificed. The work that results from
+the combination is really a new art-form, in which the elements are
+changed and their individuality partly destroyed; and its value is a
+new value, which may be equal to, but is certainly no greater than,
+that of any other art-form. To put the matter epigrammatically, when
+the arts are added together, one plus one does not equal two, but only
+one again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE AESTHETICS OF POETRY
+
+
+Our study of music in the preceding chapter has prepared us for the
+study of poetry, for the two arts are akin. Both are arts of sound and
+both employ rhythm as a principle of order in sound. They had a twin
+birth in song, and although they have grown far apart, they come
+together again in song. In many ways, music is the standard for verse.
+Yet, despite these resemblances, the differences between the arts are
+striking. In place of music's disembodied feelings, poetry offers us
+concrete intuitions of life,--the rehearsal of emotions attached to
+real things and clean-cut ideas. Poetry is a music with a definite
+meaning, and that is no music at all. Much of poetry, gnomic and
+narrative, probably grew out of speech by regularizing its natural
+rhythm, independent of music. To-day poetry is written to be read, not
+to be sung; it is an art of speech, not of song.
+
+All speech is communication, an utterance from a speaker to a hearer.
+In the case of ordinary speech, the aim is to effect some change of
+mind in the interlocutor that will lead to an action beneficial to one
+or both of the persons concerned. Ordinary speech is practical; its
+end is to influence conduct; it is command, exhortation, prayer, or
+threat. Poetry, on the other hand, is "the spontaneous overflow of
+powerful feelings"; its purpose is to express life for the sake of the
+values which expression itself may create, and to communicate them to
+others. [Footnote: Compare F. N. Scott, "The Most Fundamental
+Differentia of Poetry and Prose," in _Modern Language Association
+Publications_, V. 19, pp. 250-269.] The values are given _in the
+utterance itself_; they do not have to be waited for to come from
+something which may develop subsequently. They are the universal
+aesthetic values which may result from any free expression of life--the
+contemplative reliving of its joys, or the mastery of its pains through
+the courageous facing of them in reflection.
+
+Since the appeal of poetry is to the sympathy and thoughtfulness which
+all men possess, there is no need that it be directed, as ordinary
+speech is, to particular men and women whose help or advantage is
+sought. The poet addresses himself to man in general, and only so to
+you and me. Even when ostensibly directed to some particular person,
+a poem has an audience which is really universal. Except in the first
+moment of creative fervor, the friend invoked is never intended to be
+the sole recipient of the poet's words. Oftentimes the poet appeals
+to the dead or to natural objects which cannot hear him. One might
+perhaps infer from this that there is no genuine impulse to
+communication in poetry; that it is pure expression, a dialogue with
+self. But this would be a false inference; for there is always some
+hint in every poem that a vague background of possible auditors is
+bespoken. No matter how intimate and spontaneous, no poem can escape
+being social, and hence, in varying degrees, self-conscious. Art is
+autonomous expression meant to be contagious.
+
+The appeal of scientific expression is also to something universal in
+men--to their love of knowledge and understanding. But there is this
+difference between poetry and science: science seeks merely the
+intellectual mastery of things and ideas, and so is careless of their
+values; while poetry, even when descriptive or thoughtful, ever has
+_life_ as its theme--the way man reacts to his environment and his
+thought. Poetry is never purely descriptive or dialectical. And this
+difference in the substance of the expression determines a difference
+in the direction of interest within the expression. In scientific
+expression, words lead us away to things--pure description, or to their
+meanings--mathematics and dialectic; but in poetry, since the values
+which we attach to things and ideas come from within out of ourselves
+and are embodied in the words, they keep us to themselves; we dwell
+in the expression itself, in the verbal experience--its total content
+of sounds which we hear, ideas which we understand, and feelings which
+we appreciate, is of worth to us.
+
+Since poetry is an art of speech, we can understand it only through
+a study of words, which are its media. A single word is seldom an
+integral element of speech; yet it may fairly be called the atom, the
+ultimate constituent of speech. Now a word is a structure of a
+potentially fourfold complexity. First, it is a phenomenon of sound
+and movement--something heard and uttered. Its sound, and the
+movement-sensations from vocal cords and tongue and lips which accompany
+its production, are the sensuous shell of the word. Second, embodied
+in this as the speaker utters it, associated to it as the hearer
+understands it, is its meaning. The meaning is either an idea of a
+concrete thing or situation, or an abstraction. This is the irreducible
+minimum of a word, but is seldom all. For, in poetry, some emotional
+response to the object meant by the word impels to its utterance, and
+this is embodied in it when it is uttered, and a similar feeling is
+awakened in the auditor when it is heard or read. A word not only
+mirrors a situation through its meaning, but preserves something of
+the mind's response; it communicates the total experience,--the self
+as well as the object. Finally, the meaning of a word may not remain
+a mere idea, but may grow out into one or more of the concrete images
+of which it is the residuum. When, for example, I utter the word
+"ocean," I may not only know what I mean and re-experience my joy in
+the sea, but my meaning may be clothed in images of the sight and touch
+and odor of the sea--vicariously, through these images, all my sense
+experiences of the sea may be present in the mind. A word, therefore,
+sounds and is articulated, means, expresses feeling, and evokes images.
+All understanding of poetry depends upon the knowledge and proper
+evaluation of the functioning of these aspects of a word. Let us
+consider in a general way each one of them.
+
+In ordinary speech, the sound and articulation of a word, although
+indispensable to utterance, and therefore a necessary part of it, are
+of little or no value in themselves; for our interest is centered upon
+the meaning or upon the action which is expected to result from its
+understanding. We do not attend to the quality and rhythm of the word-
+sounds which we utter or hear, and the articulatory sensations, although
+felt, have only a shadowy existence in "the fringe of inattention."
+But in poetry, which is speech made beautiful, the mere sound of the
+words has value. In hearing poetry, we not only understand, but listen;
+we appreciate not only the ideas and emotions conveyed, but the
+word-sounds and their rhythms as well. Even in silent reading, poetry
+is a voice which we delight to hear. [Footnote: And for many this
+"inner speech" consists quite as much of articulation as of sound. The
+"sound" of a word is really a complex of actual sounds plus associated
+articulation impulses. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, when
+I refer to the sound of words, I shall have in mind this entire complex.
+We may therefore say that in silent reading poetry is a voice which
+we delight both to hear and to use.]
+
+Yet, despite the importance which sound acquires in poetry, it never
+achieves first place; it never becomes independent, as in music; but
+shares hegemony with the other aspects of the word. In practical or
+scientific speech, the chief aspect is meaning; for it is the meaning
+which gives us knowledge and guides our acts. Indeed, for all practical
+purposes, the meaning of words consists in the actions which are to
+be performed on hearing them. If I ask a man the way and he tells me,
+the quality of his voice, the interest which he takes in telling me,
+and the images which float across his mind are of no importance to me,
+so long as I can follow his directions. But in poetry the situation
+alters once more. For there, since expression itself has become the
+end, and all action upon it is inhibited, the feeling which prompts
+it becomes a significant part of what I appreciate. In poetry the
+meanings are secondary to emotions. Yet the meanings are still
+indispensable; for they indicate the concrete objects or ideas towards
+which emotion is directed. In ordinary speech, meanings are guides to
+action; in aesthetic speech, they are formulations of feelings. And
+just in this power of a word to fixate emotion lies the chief difference
+between poetry and music, where feeling, being aroused by sound alone,
+is vague and objectless.
+
+Ideally, every word in a poem should be charged with feeling; but
+actually this is not the case, for many words, taken by themselves,
+are too abstract or commonplace to possess any. Words all too familiar,
+or connectives, like "and" and "but" and "or," are examples of this;
+the former may be avoided by the poet, but the latter are indispensable.
+Originally, no doubt, every word had an emotional coloring, if only
+that of a child's curiosity; and some words have meanings too deeply
+rooted in feeling ever to lose it. No amount of familiarity can deprive
+such words as "death" and "love" and "God" of their emotional value.
+Words like these must forever recur in the vocabulary of poets. Yet,
+since in living discourse a meaning is seldom complete in a single
+word, but requires several words in a phrase or sentence, a word which
+by itself would be cold may participate in the general warmth of the
+whole of which it is a part. Consider, for example, the last line of
+the final stanza of Wordsworth's "The Lost Love":--
+
+  She lived unknown, and few could know
+     When Lucy ceased to be;
+  But she is in her grave, and O!
+     The difference to me!
+
+The first three words, by themselves, are completely bare of emotional
+coloring, yet, taken together with the last, and in connection with
+the whole stanza, and in the setting of the entire poem, they are aglow
+with the most poignant passion.
+
+As for the image, the last of the aspects of a word, the judgment of
+Edmund Burke, in his "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful" still remains
+true: in reading words or in listening to them, we get the sound and
+the meaning and their "impressions" (emotions), but the images which
+float across the mind, if there are any, are often too vague or too
+inconstant to be of much relevance to the experience. They are,
+moreover, highly individual in nature, differing in kind and clearness
+from person to person. The recent researches into imageless thinking
+are a striking confirmation of Burke's observation. It is now pretty
+clearly established that the meaning of words is something more than
+the images, visual or other, which they arouse. Probably the meaning
+is always carried by some sort of imagery, differing with the mental
+make-up of the reader, but the meaning cannot be equated to the imagery.
+For example, you and I both understand the word "ocean"; but when I
+read the word, I get a visual image of green water and sunlight, while
+you perhaps get an auditory image of the sound of the waves as they
+break upon the shore. Sound, meaning, feeling, these are the essential
+constituents of discourse; imagery is variable and accidental. It is
+impossible, therefore, to found the theory of poetry on the image-making
+power of words. [Footnote: For the opposite view, consult Max Eastman:
+_The Enjoyment of Poetry._] And yet, imagery plays a primary role
+in poetic speech. For, as we have observed so often, feelings are more
+vital and permanent when embedded in concrete sensations and images
+than when attached to abstract meanings. Through the image, the poet
+confers upon his art some of the sensuousness which it would otherwise
+lack. It is not necessary that the image appear clear in the mind; for
+its emotional value can be conveyed even when it is obscure and
+marginal. When, for example, we read,
+
+  Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+  Thou dost not bite so nigh
+  As benefits forgot,
+
+the word "bitter" may arouse no vivid gustatory image, the word "bite"
+no clear image of pain; yet even when these images are very dim, they
+serve none the less to establish the feeling of intense disagreeableness
+which the poet wishes to convey. Poetry, therefore, because it is more
+emotional than ordinary speech, is more abundantly imaginal.
+
+Having distinguished in a general way the four elements of
+speech--sound, meaning, feeling, and imagery--we are prepared to study
+them singly in greater detail. We want to build out of a study of these
+elements a synthetic view of the nature and function of poetry, and
+apply our results to some of its newer and more clamant forms. Let us
+begin with sound. In our first chapter we observed that the medium of
+an art tends to become expressive in itself,--that in poetry the mere
+sound and articulation of words, quite apart from anything which they
+mean, may arouse and communicate feelings. What we have called the
+primary expressiveness of the medium is nowhere better illustrated
+than in poetry. But just what is expressed through sound, and how?
+
+Every lover of poetry is aware of the large share which the mere sound
+of the words contributes to its beauty. This is true even when we
+abstract from rhythm, which we shall neglect for the time being, and
+think only of euphony, alliteration, assonance, and rime. There is a
+joy truly surprising in the mere repetition of vowels and consonants.
+For myself, I find a pleasure in the mere repetition of vowels and
+consonants all out of proportion to what, a priori, I should be led
+to expect from so slight a cause. And yet we have the familiar analogies
+by means of which we can understand this seemingly so strange delight,
+the repeat in a pattern, consonance in chord and melody. If the
+repetition of the same color or line in painting, the same tone in
+music, can delight us, why not the repetition of the same word-sound?
+In all cases a like feeling of harmony is produced. And the same general
+principle applies to explain it. All word-sounds as we utter or hear
+them leave memory traces in the mind, which are not pure images (no
+memory traces are), but also motor sets, tendencies or impulses to the
+remaking of the sounds. The doing of any deed--a word is also a
+deed--creates a will to its doing again; hence the satisfaction when
+that will is fulfilled in the repeated sound, when the image melts
+with the fact. And the same law that rules in music and design holds
+here also: there must not be too much of consonance, of repetition,
+else the will becomes satiated and fatigued; there must be difference
+as well as identity,--the novelty and surprise which accompany the
+arousal of a still fresh and unappeased impulse. This is well provided
+for in alternate rimes, where the will to one kind of sound is suspended
+by the emergence of a different sound with its will, and where the
+fulfillment of the one balances the fulfillment of the other. All these
+facts are illustrated in such a stanza as this:--
+
+  Fear no more the heat o' the sun
+    Nor the furious winter's rages;
+   Thou thy worldly task hast done,
+    Home art gone and ta'en thy wages;
+   Golden lads and girls all must,
+    As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
+
+Here, for example, the "f"-sound in "fear" finds harmonious fulfillment
+in "furious"; the "t"-sound in "task," its mate in "ta'en"; the
+"g"-sound in "golden," its match in "girls"; "sun" and "done," "rages"
+and "wages," illustrate a balance of harmonies; while in the consonance
+of "must" and "dust," the whole movement of the stanza comes to full
+and finished harmony.
+
+Thus taken together, word-sounds, as mere sounds, are expressive of
+the general form-feelings of harmony and balance. But can they express
+anything singly? Is there anything in poetry comparable to the
+expressiveness of single tones or of colors like red and blue and
+yellow? To this, I think, the answer must be, little or nothing. Almost
+all the expressiveness of single words comes from their meaning. At
+all events, the sound and meaning of a word are so inextricably fused
+that, even when we suspect that it may have some expressiveness on its
+own account, we are nearly incapable of disentangling it. As William
+James has remarked, a word-sound, when taken by itself apart from its
+meaning, gives an impression of mere queerness. And when it does seem
+to have some distinctive quality, we do not know how much really belongs
+to the sound and how much to some lingering bit of meaning which we
+have failed to separate in our analysis. For example, because of its
+initial "s"-sound and its hard consonants, the word "struggle" seems
+to express, in the effort required to pronounce it, something of the
+emotional tone of struggle itself; but how do we know that this is not
+due to the association with its meaning, which we have been unable to
+abstract from? Even true onomatopoetic words like "bang" or "crack"
+derive, I suspect, most of their specific quality from their meaning.
+They do have, to be sure, a certain mimetic impressiveness as mere
+sounds; but that is very vague; the meaning makes it specific. The
+sheer length of the word "multitudinous" in Shakespeare's line, "the
+multitudinous seas incarnadine," seems to express something of the
+vastness and prolixity of the seas; but would it if it were not used
+as an adjective describing the seas, and if it did not have just the
+meaning that it has? Of course, in this case, the mere sound is
+effective, but it gets most of its effectiveness because it happens
+to have a certain meaning. Moreover, even the very sound quality of
+words depends much upon their meaning; we pronounce them in a certain
+way, with a certain slowness or swiftness, a certain emphasis upon
+particular syllables, with a high or low intonation, in accordance
+with the emotion which we feel into them. This is true of the word
+"struggle" just cited. Or consider another example. Take the word
+"blow." Who, in reading this word in "Blow, blow, thou winter wind,"
+would not increase its explosiveness just in order to make its
+expressiveness correspond to its meaning?
+
+There is, therefore, a fundamental difference in this respect between
+single word-sounds and single colors or tones; they are not sufficiently
+impressive in themselves, not sufficiently separable from their
+meanings, to have anything except the slightest value as mere sounds.
+In collocation, however, and quite apart from rhythm and alliteration,
+this minute expressiveness may add up to a considerable amount. In
+Matthew Arnold's lines,
+
+  Swept by confused alarms of struggle and flight
+  Where ignorant armies crash by night,
+
+the hardness and difficulty of the consonants in their cumulative force
+become an independent element of expressiveness, strengthening that
+of the meaning of the words. Or in Tennyson's oft-quoted line, "the
+murmuring of innumerable bees," the sounds taken together have a genuine
+imitative effect, in which something of the drowsy feeling of the hive
+is present.
+
+Following the general law of harmony between form and content, the
+beauty of sound should be functional; that is, it should never be
+developed for its own sake alone, but also to intensify, through
+re-expression, the mood of the thoughts. The sound-values are too
+lacking in independence to be purely ornamental. Poetry does indeed
+permit of embellishment--the pleasurable elaboration of sensation--yet
+should never degenerate into a mere tintinnabulation of sounds. The
+rimes in binding words should bind thoughts also; the tonalities or
+contrasts of vowel and consonant should echo harmonies or strains in
+pervasive moods.
+
+It is by rhythm, however, that the chief expressiveness of the mere
+medium is imparted to verse. But here again we shall find sound and
+meaning intertwined--a rhythm in thought governing a rhythm in sound.
+
+Only as a result of recent investigations can a satisfactory theory
+of modern verse be constructed. The making of this theory has been
+largely hampered, on the one hand, by the application of the
+quantitative principles of classical verse to our poetry; and, on the
+other hand, by forcing the analogy between music and verse. The
+insufficiency of the quantitative scheme for English verse is not
+difficult to perceive. Such a scheme presupposes that syllables have
+a fixed quantity of duration, as either long or short, and that rhythm
+consists in the regularity of their distribution. But, although there
+are differences in the duration of syllables, some being longer than
+others, there are no fixed rules to determine whether a syllable is
+short or long; and, what is a more serious objection, it is impossible
+to find any regularity in the occurrence of shorts and longs in normal
+English verse,--in all verse that has not been written with the explicit
+purpose of imitating the Greek or Latin. An examination of any line
+of verse will verify these statements. Take, for example, the first
+three lines of Shakespeare's song,
+
+  Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+  Thou art not so unkind
+     As man's ingratitude.
+
+Here the quantitative scansion is perhaps as follows:--
+
+  - - - - U -
+  - - U x U -
+  U - U - U -
+
+I have given the word "so" a double scansion because I conceive it
+impossible to determine whether it is really long or short. At any
+rate, there is certainly no regularity in the distribution of shorts
+and longs, except in the last of the three lines, and no correspondence,
+except in that line, between the quantitative scansion and the
+rhythmical movement of the verses. And whenever such a correspondence
+exists, it is due either to the fact that the incidence of stress tends
+to lengthen a syllable or to the fact that, oftentimes, in polysyllabic
+words, mere length will produce a stress. This is the modicum of truth
+in the quantitative view. But obviously stress governs, quantity obeys.
+
+Although the quantitative theory of modern verse has been pretty
+generally abandoned, it cannot be said that the ordinary view which
+regards the foot as the unit of verse and its rhythm as determined by
+a regular distribution of accented and unaccented syllables, is in a
+much better case. For in the first place, by accent is usually meant
+word-accent; but monosyllabic words have no word-accent; hence, in
+a succession of such syllables, the accent must be determined by some
+other factor; and, granting this, there is the further fact to be
+reckoned with, that poetic accent is relative--the supposedly unaccented
+syllable is often very highly accented, more highly in fact than some
+of the so-called accented ones. Consider, for example, the line, "From
+sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate," where the word "sings,"
+which in accordance with the conventional iambic scansion would be an
+unaccented syllable, is really strongly accented, more strongly, indeed,
+than "earth" which has an accent. As for the division of the line into
+feet, that is a pure artifice: who, in the actual reading of the above
+line, would divide the words "sullen" and "heaven" into two parts?
+
+The basis of rhythm is, therefore, not word-accent. Value stress is
+the basis.[Footnote: Throughout the discussion of rhythm I borrow from
+Mark H. Liddell: _An Introduction to the Study of Poetry._] Certain
+words, because of their logical or emotional importance, have a greater
+claim upon the attention, and this inner stress finds outward expression
+in an increased loudness, duration, and explosiveness of sound. Stress
+coincides with the word-accent of polysyllabic words because the accent
+is placed on those syllables, usually the root-syllables, which carry
+the essential meaning. And this stress is not simply present or absent
+in a syllable, but greater in some than in others; in iambic rhythm,
+usually greater in the even than in the preceding odd syllable; in
+trochaic, greater in the odd than in the immediately preceding even
+one. The rhythm is rather an undulation of stresses than an alternation
+of stress and lack of stress, something, therefore, far more complex
+and variegated than the old scheme would imply. And of this undulation,
+not the foot, but the line is the unit. The character of the undulation
+of the whole line determines the type of the rhythm, which may be very
+different in the case of lines of precisely the same kind of "feet."
+For example, the line quoted above, "From sullen earth sings hymns at
+heaven's gate," has a distinctly different rhythm from such another
+iambic line as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" This difference
+is due, in part at least, to the fact that the highest peaks of the
+wave in the former are in the center of the line, in "sings" and
+"hymns," while in the latter they are at the end, in "summer's" and
+"day." This undulation of stress is present in prose and in ordinary
+speech; for there also there is a rise and fall of stress corresponding
+to the varying values of the words and syllables; but in prose, the
+undulation is irregular, while in poetry, it is regularized.
+
+From the foregoing it is clear that rhythm does not exist in the mere
+sound of the words alone, but in the thought back of them as well. The
+sounds, as such, have no rhythm in themselves; they acquire rhythm
+through the subjective processes of significant utterance or listening.
+The rhythm is primarily in these activities, and from them is
+transferred to the sounds in which they are embodied. This comes out
+with additional force when we go farther into the analysis of the
+rhythm of verse. We have just seen that the line is one unit of the
+rhythm (this is true even when there are run-over lines, because we
+make a slight pause after the ends of such lines too); but within the
+line itself there are sub-units. These sub-units are units of thought.
+Every piece of written or spoken language is a continuous flow of
+thought. But the movement is not perfectly fluid; for it is broken up
+into elementary pulses of ideas, following discontinuously upon each
+other. In prose the succession of pulses is complex and irregular,
+without any obvious pattern; but in poetry the movement is simple and
+regular and the pattern is clear. Just as in poetry there is a rhythm
+of stress which represents a regularizing of the natural undulations
+in the stress of speech, so there is also a more deep-lying rhythm,
+which arises through a simplification and regularizing of the movement
+of thought-pulsations. The fundamental rhythm consists in an alternation
+of subject-group and predicate-group.
+
+This duality, although always retained as basal, may, however, be
+broken up into a three- or four-part movement whenever the connecting
+links between the subject-idea and the predicate-idea acquire sufficient
+importance, or whenever the one or the other of the two becomes
+sufficiently complex to consist of lesser parts. For example, in
+Shakespeare's thirty-first sonnet, the thought-divisions are three for
+each of the following lines:--
+
+  Thy bosom | is endeared | with all hearts
+  Which I by lacking | have supposed | dead;
+  And there | reigns love, | and all love's loving parts,
+  And all those friends | which I thought | buried.
+
+These divisions are marked by pauses or casuras.
+
+Here, then, in the regularizing of the number of thought-pulsations,
+we have another type of rhythm in poetry, and a rhythm which, coming
+from within, finds outward expression in sound. Cutting across the
+rhythm of stress, it breaks up the latter with its pauses, and imparts
+to the whole movement variety and richness.
+
+But speech has not only its natural rhythm of stress-undulation and
+thought-pulsations; it has also, as we saw in the last chapter, a
+melody. The rise and fall of stress goes hand and hand with a rise and
+fall of pitch. The different forms of discourse, and the different
+emotions that accompany them, are each expressed with characteristic
+variations in pitch. Accepting Wundt's summary of the facts, we find
+that, generally speaking, in the declarative statement and the command,
+the pitch rises in the first thought-division, to fall in the second;
+while in the question and the condition, the pitch rises and falls in
+the first, and then rises again in the second. Doubt, expectation,
+tension, excitement--all the forward looking moods of
+incompleteness--tend to find expression in a rising melody; while
+assurance, repose, relaxation, fulfillment, are embodied in a falling
+melody. The high tones are dynamic and stimulating; the low tones,
+static and peaceful. Now in ordinary speech and prose, the change from
+one tone to another is constant and irregular, following the variation
+of mood in the substance of the discourse. How is it with verse? There
+is a simplification and tonality--identity in tone--which is absent
+from prose. The melody is more obvious and distinctive, because there
+is a greater simplicity in sentence structure and a higher unity of
+mood. Yet there is no absolute regularity; and the amount of it differs
+with the different kinds of poetry: there is more in the simple lyric
+than in the complex narrative; more, for example, in Shakespeare's
+sonnets than in his dramas. The inexpressible beauty of some lines of
+verse comes doubtless from a fugitive melody which we now grasp, now
+lose.
+
+The existence of speech melody and the tonalities of rime, assonance,
+and alliteration suggest an analogy between verse and music. For some
+people, this analogy is decisive. Yet the fundamental difference between
+music and verse must be insisted on with equal force; the purity of
+tone and fixity of intervals between tones, which is distinctive of
+music, is absent from verse. In comparison with music, the melodiousness
+of verse is confused and chaotic; and this condemns to failure any
+attempt to identify the laws of the two arts. Still, we are not yet
+at the end of the analogy. Those who interpret verse in terms of music
+believe that, underlying or supplanting the rhythm of stress, there
+is another rhythm, similar to time in music, and capable of expression
+in musical language. There is, it is claimed, an equality of duration
+between one line and another, and between one foot in a line and
+another; these larger and lesser stretches of duration being divided
+up between syllables and pauses, each syllable and pause occupying a
+fixed quantity of time; just as in music each bar is divided up between
+notes and rests of definite value. Lanier, for example writes the first
+line of Poe's "Raven" as follows:--[Footnote: The Science of English
+Verse, p. 128.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  Once up | on a | mid-night | drear-y;
+
+Fascinating as this procedure is, it is nevertheless a distortion of
+the facts. Poetry is meant to be read, not to be sung; when it is put
+to music and sung, it acquires a character which otherwise does not
+belong to it. We must not be misled by the historical connection between
+verse and song, nor by the frequency with which some verses are set
+to music. Our poetry must be understood as we experience it to-day,
+not as it was experienced in its origins. And there is surely much
+poetry which no one wants to sing. No one wants to sing a sonnet or
+Miltonic blank verse. The attempt to apply musical notation to verse
+is a _tour de force_. Careful observation and experience show that the
+syllables in verse have no fixed duration values, and that there is no
+constant ratio between them.
+
+Nevertheless, musical time is not wholly absent from verse. You cannot
+set it to the metronome or express it in musical notation, yet it is
+there. When lines have the same number of syllables, the time required
+to read them is approximately the same, and we tend to make the duration
+of the thought-divisions equal. Our time-sense is so fallible, we do
+not notice the departures from exactness; and when the durations of
+processes are nearly equal and the values which we attach to them are
+equal, then we are conscious of them as equal. Attention-value and
+time-value are subjectively equivalent. Words which weigh with us give
+us pause, and we reckon in the time of the pause to make up for a
+deficiency in the time required to read or utter the syllables. And
+so time-rhythm enters as still another factor in the complex rhythm
+of verse.
+
+The importance of this rhythm differs, however, with the different
+kinds of verse. In lyric poetry closely allied to song, it is clear
+and strong; while in the more reflective and dramatic poetry, it is
+only an undertone. In some cases, as in the nursery rime,
+
+  Hot cross buns, hot cross buns,
+  If your daughters don't like 'em,
+  Give 'em to your sons.
+  One a penny, two a penny,
+  Hot cross buns,
+
+there is almost no rhythm of stress, but there is a rhythm of time;
+for despite the inequality in the number of syllables, each line has
+approximately the same duration, even the last line with its three
+monosyllabic words being lengthened out into equality with the others.
+The variety in the rhythm is secured through the unequal number of
+syllables in the same stretch of duration, the more rapid movement of
+many syllables being set off over against the slower movement of the
+few. Similarly, Tennyson's poem, which should be scanned as I shall
+indicate, has a rhythm which is chiefly musical.
+
+  Break, | break, | break,
+  On thy cold, | grey stones, | O sea!
+  And I would | that my tongue | might utter
+  The thoughts | That arise | in me.
+
+The stresses are nearly even throughout; the meter cannot be accurately
+described as iambic, trochaic, or anapestic; yet there is a rhythm in
+the approximate temporal equality of the thought-moments. These verses
+are, however, rather songs than poems. The failure to distinguish
+between verses which are songs and those which are poems accounts, I
+believe, for the extremes to which the musical theory of verse has
+been carried.
+
+Still another element of poetry which allies it to music is the
+repetition of the thought-content. Why repetition should be musical
+we already know: music is an art which seeks to draw out and elaborate
+pure emotion; repetition serves this end by constantly bringing the
+mind back to dwell upon the same theme. Moreover, repetition involves
+retardation; for a movement cannot progress rapidly if it has to return
+upon itself; and this slowness gives time for the full value of a
+feeling to be worked out. In all the more emotional and lyric poetry
+we find, therefore, recurrence of theme: the thought is repeated again
+and again; in new forms, perhaps, yet still the same in essence,
+successive lines or stanzas taking up the same burden; sometimes there
+is exact recurrence of thought, as in the refrain. And this repetition
+in the thought is embodied in a repetition of the elements of the
+sound-pattern; the wave type is repeated from verse to verse or recurs
+again and again; there is recurrence of melodic form or parallelism
+between contrasted melodies in different stanzas; there is tonality
+of vowel and consonant sounds in rime and assonance and alliteration;
+there may be an approach to identity in the time-duration of the various
+units. Parallelism or repetition is the fundamental scheme of such
+poetry. But between repetition with its retardation of movement and
+progress towards a goal there is a necessary antagonism; hence in the
+more dramatic and narrative forms of poetry, although recurrence is
+never entirely absent, there is less of it, and the movement
+approximates to that of prose. Emotion demands repetition, but action
+demands progression.
+
+After our analysis of the rhythm of poetry, we are in a position to
+inquire into what can be expressed through it, and how psychologically
+this expression can be explained.
+
+The expressiveness of rhythm is like that of music, vague and
+objectless, for which reason rhythm is properly called the music of
+verse. Almost everything in a general way which we have said about the
+expressiveness of music applies to poetic rhythm. This expressiveness
+cannot be translated into words with any exactness; the most that can
+be done is to find a set of words into which it will roughly fit,
+leaving much vacant space of meaning. That the emotional values of
+rhythms have character is, however, proved by the fact that some rhythms
+are better vehicles for certain kinds of thought than others are. Yet
+it often happens that, just as, in song or opera, the same melody is
+used to express joy or grief, love or religious emotion, so
+approximately the same rhythmic form is employed in the expression of
+apparently antagonistic emotions. Nevertheless, this fact is not fatal
+to expression; for, in the first place, there is much variety of rhythm
+within a given metrical form, so that what superficially may seem to
+be the same rhythm is really a different one; and, in the second place,
+as we have already observed in the case of music, there is much--in
+form and energy of movement--which contrasting emotions have in common,
+and this may be expressed in the rhythmic type. Think of the wide sweep
+of emotions which have been expressed in the sonnet form! Yet consider
+what varieties of rhythm and speech melodies are possible within this
+form, and how, nevertheless, there is an identity of character in all
+sonnets--how they are all thoughtful, all restrained, yet unfaltering
+in their movement!
+
+Without going into details, which would lie beyond the scope of general
+sthetics, it is possible to state the following broad facts (compare
+the similar facts relating to melody) with reference to poetic rhythms:
+a rising rhythm expresses striving or restlessness; a falling rhythm,
+quiet, steadfastness. There is, however, no absolute contrast between
+the two kinds, because a falling rhythm is still a rhythm, and that
+means a movement which necessarily contains something of instability
+and unrest. The contrast is sharpest in the anapestic and dactylic,
+less sharp in the trochaic and iambic. Many a trochaic rhythm becomes
+in effect iambic when the division of the thought moments and the
+distribution of the pauses make the rhythm rise after the first few
+words; and conversely, many an iambic rhythm becomes trochaic through
+a similar shift in the attention. Within a single line, therefore,
+there may be both rising and falling pulsations. Much of the rare
+beauty of poetry comes from such subtle combinations of rhythmic
+qualities.
+
+Through time and tempo also, poetic rhythm is expressive, much after
+the manner of music; by these means too, in addition to the mode of
+stress-undulation, it imitates the temporal and dynamic course of
+action and emotion, and so tends to arouse congruous types of feeling
+in the mind; it is swift or slow, gliding or abrupt, retarded or
+accelerated. Compare the slow and retarded rhythm of "When I have fears
+that I may cease to be," so well adapted to express the gravity of the
+thought, with the rapid and accelerated movement of "Hail to thee,
+blithe spirit!" so full of a quick joyousness. Or compare the light
+legato movement of "Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless,"
+with the heavy staccato movement of "Waste endless and boundless and
+flowerless."
+
+Yet, for all its expressiveness, the music of verse can never stand
+alone. It is too bare and tenuous by itself to win and keep the
+attention or to evoke much feeling. It does not possess the purity of
+color, the loudness, force, or volume of sound that belong to music
+and make music, almost alone of the arts, capable of existing as mere
+form. The rhythm of poetry, derived very largely from a rhythm of
+thought, has need of thought for significance. The thought and the
+music are one. For this reason poetry is better, I think, when read
+to oneself than when read aloud; for then the sound and the sense are
+more intimate; the attention is not drawn off to the former away from
+the latter. Moreover, try as he will, the poet can never make his
+word-sounds fully harmonious; some roughness and dissonance will remain;
+but in silent reading these qualities disappear. However, although by
+itself of small significance, the musical element in verse makes all
+the difference between poetry and prose. Through its own vague
+expressiveness it fortifies the emotional meaning of the poetic
+language, and, at the same time, sublimates it by scattering it in the
+medium. And finally it imparts an intimacy, a personal flavor, which
+also allies poetry with music; for the substance of rhythm is the
+movement of our own inner processes; the rhythm of thoughts and sounds
+is a rhythm in our own listening and attending, our own thinking and
+feeling; the emotional values spring from us as well as from the
+subject-matter. Hence even narrative and dramatic poetry have a lyrical
+tone; we ourselves are implicated in the actions and events portrayed.
+
+The demands made by the form of poetry upon its substance are similar
+to those made by music upon the words in a song, only less stringent.
+The content must be emotional and significant; it cannot be trite and
+cold. The meaning of words would permit the poet to bring before the
+mind all possible objects, events, and ideas, but the music of words
+would be incongruous with most of them. Events narrated must be
+stirring, thoughts uttered must be emotionally toned, things described
+must be related to human life and action. Poetry may desert the royal
+themes of long ago--_arma virumque cano, maenin aeide thea_--and
+relate the lowly life of common folk, even the sordid life of the poor
+and miserable, but when doing so throws over it the musical glamour
+of verse and arouses the heat of sympathy and passion. Although, since
+it makes use of words, poetry should always have a meaning, it need
+not have the definiteness of meaning of logical thought; it may suggest
+rather than explicate; its music is compatible with vagueness. But
+vagueness is not obscurity; the poet should always make us feel that
+we understand him; he should not seek to mystify us, or keep us guessing
+at his meaning. Yet, since the poet operates with words and not with
+mere sounds, great subtlety and precision of thought are possible in
+poetry, although not argument and dialectic. Poetry may express the
+results of reflection, so far as they are of high emotional value, but
+cannot well reproduce its processes; the steps of analysis and inference
+are too cold and hard for the muse to climb.
+
+On the other hand, poetry does not permit of the development and
+iteration of pure feeling which we find in music; for poetic rhythms
+and melodies lack the variety and fluency of the musical. Yet poetry
+is capable, where music is not, of expressing brief, quick outbursts
+of feeling; for a few words, by referring to the causes and conditions
+of feeling, may adequately express what music needs time and many tones
+to convey. Poetry wins beauty by concentration, whereas music gains
+by expansion. There is also a similar relation between prose and poetry
+in this respect; the severity of the form imposes upon poetry a
+simplicity which contrasts with the breadth and complexity of prose.
+As Schopenhauer remarked, every good poem is short; long poems always
+contain stretches either of unmusical verse or unpoetic music. Yet,
+in comparison with prose, the tempo of music is slow; we have to linger
+in the medium in order that its rhythmic and tonal beauties may impress
+us, and this slowness of movement is imparted to the thought; even
+narrative and dramatic poetry suffer retardation; for which reason the
+poetic form must be abandoned if great rapidity of expression is sought.
+
+From our study of the materials and forms of its expression, it becomes
+clear how the subject-matter of poetry is the inner life of mood and
+striving and passionate human action. Emotions may be poured forth in
+words, and, by means of words, actions may be described. But neither
+passion nor action appear in poetry as they are lived and enacted; for
+the poet, working in a medium of words, has to translate them into
+thoughts. Words cannot embody the real experiences which they express;
+experience is fleeting and falls away from the words, which retain
+only an echo of what they mean. Only what can be relived in memory can
+be contained in a word, and not even all of that; for a word is not
+a mere embodiment of an experience, but a communication also, and only
+its public and universal content can pass from a speaker to a hearer.
+Now, this socialized content of a word is a thought. Even passion the
+most spontaneous and lyrical has to be translated into thought,--not
+the abstract thought of scientific expression, but the emotionally
+toned thought of art, thought which, while condensing experience, still
+keeps its values. Emotional thought is the substance of poetry. However,
+albeit an image of the inner life, poetry does not volatilize it into
+pure feeling as music does, but distinguishes its objects and assigns
+its causes. Poetry is concrete and articulate where music is abstract
+and blind. Since words, through their meanings and associated images,
+can express things as well as man's reactions to them, poetry can also
+reflect the natural environment of life, its habitat and seat. And
+yet, because the poet has to translate things into ideas, nature never
+appears in poetry as it is in itself, but as it is implicated in mind.
+For the poet, sea and sky, the woods and plains and rivers, birds and
+flowers, are the symbols of human destiny or the loci of human action.
+Emotion overflows into nature, but this involves the taking up of
+nature into man. Not nature, but man's thoughtful life is the poet's
+theme.
+
+If the foregoing statement is correct, emotional thought rather than
+imagery is the substance of poetry. For poetry, as music with a meaning,
+can be quite free of definite images. "_In la sua volantade e nostra
+pace_" (In his will is our peace) [Footnote: Dante: _Paradiso_,
+3, 85.] is beautiful poetry, yet there is no image. The thought
+formulates a mood and finds a sensuous embodiment in musical language,
+and that suffices for beauty. And yet in poetry, as has been observed,
+thought tends to descend into imagery. By being connected with a
+sensuous material, a thought acquires a firmer support for feeling
+than it could possess of itself as a mere concept. Especially effective
+is the descent to the lower senses; for they are closest to the roots
+of emotion. Let me recall again the Shakespearean lyric which I have
+quoted before in a similar connection, omitting the last lines of each
+stanza:--
+
+  Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+  Thou art not so unkind
+   As man's ingratitude;
+
+  Thy tooth is not so keen
+  Because thou art not seen,
+   Although thy breath be rude.
+
+  Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+  Thou dost not bite so nigh
+   As benefits forgot;
+
+  Though thou the waters warp,
+  Thy sting is not so sharp
+   As friend remembered not.
+
+Here are images of cold--winter, freeze; of touch--blow, breath; of
+pain--tooth, bite, sting, sharp; of taste--bitter. How vividly they
+convey the ache of desolation! Only in words which are imaginative as
+well as musical are the full resources of verbal expression employed.
+
+All the various forms of metaphorical language have the same purpose:
+by substituting for a more abstract, conceptual mode of expression a
+more sensuous and imaginative one, to vivify the emotional quality of
+the situation. When Keats sings,
+
+  ... on the shore
+  Of the wide world I stand and think
+  Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink,
+
+he has in mind to convey to us that renunciation of merely personal
+ambitions which comes to us when we "survey all time and all existence."
+And how does he do it? By evoking the image of the wide stretch of the
+shore of the sea, which, making us feel our nothingness as we stand
+and look out upon it, has the same effect, only more poignant. Of the
+world we have no image--not so, of the shore of the world; and toward
+what we cannot imagine we cannot easily feel. Oftentimes the metaphor
+is latent, a mere adjective undeveloped in its implications, as in
+"bitter" sky; yet the purpose is the same. Incidentally the poet unifies
+our world for us through his metaphors; not as the scientist does by
+pointing out causal and class relations, but by exhibiting the emotional
+affinities of things. He increases the value of single things by giving
+them the values of other things. Every metaphor should serve this
+purpose of emotional expression and unification, should be part of an
+emotional thought; otherwise it is a mere _tour de force_ of
+cleverness, unrelated to the poetic interest and intrinsically
+absurd,--the world has no shore and the wind is not bitter; feeling
+alone can justify such comparisons. Moreover, too many metaphors, or
+metaphors too elaborately developed, by scattering the attention, or
+by drawing it away from the meaning of which the image should be a
+part, have the effect of no image at all. The poetry of Francis
+Thompson, for example, loses rather than gains vitality through its
+imaginative exuberance. We object to decadent poets, not because they
+are sensuous, but because they lack feeling; with them sensation,
+instead of supporting emotion, supplants it. Such poets seek to atone
+for their want of vigorous feeling by stimulating our eyes and ears.
+
+If, as I believe, emotional thought rather than imagery is the essence
+of poetry, then the modern school of imagists and their French forbears
+among the "Parnassiens" are mistaken. Their effort comes in the end
+to a revival of the old thesis _ut pictura poesis_, the attempt
+to make poetry a vision of nature rather than an expression of the
+inner life. They would lead poetry away from the subjectivity of emotion
+into the outer object world. Now, it is indeed possible for the poet
+to represent nature through the images which words evoke in the mind,
+and these images may have significance for feeling. Their very evocation
+in musical language is bound to lend them some warmth of mood. Yet--as
+Lessing showed in his _Laocoon_, despite all the crabbed narrowness
+of his treatment--it is hopeless for the poet to enter into rivalry
+with the painter or sculptor. The colors and forms of things which the
+poet paints for the eye of the mind are mere shadows in comparison
+with those which we really see.[Footnote: The best the poet-painter
+can do is to express his memories of the outer world; but apart from
+some vivid emotion, memories are unsatisfactory in comparison with
+realities.] We admire the marvelous workmanship of such verses as the
+following of Gautier, but they leave us cold; even the melody of the
+language is incapable of making them warm. How poor they are beside
+a painting!
+
+  Les femmes passent sous les arbres
+  En martre, hermine et menu-vair
+  Et les deesses, frileux marbres,
+  Ont pris aussi l'abit d'hiver.
+
+  La Venus Anadyomene
+  Est en pelisse a capuchon:
+  Flore, que la brise malmene,
+  Plonge ses mains dans son manchon.
+
+  Et pour la saison, les bergeres
+  De Coysevox et de Coustou,
+  Trouvant leures echarpes legeres
+  Ont des boas autour du cou.
+
+Of course, poetic pictures can be painted--Gautier has painted them--but
+the standard for each art is set by what it can do uniquely well. If
+the poet works in the domain of the painter, we tend to judge him by
+the alien standards of another art, where he is bound to fall short;
+while if he works within his own province, we judge him by his own
+autonomous laws, under which he can achieve perfection.
+
+Oftentimes, confessing the inability of the image to stand alone, these
+poets make it into a symbol of some mood or emotional thought. Yet the
+image remains the chief object of the poet's care; it was clearly the
+first thing in his mind; the interpretation is an afterthought. The
+poem therefore falls into two parts--a picture and an interpretation,
+with little organic relation between them. Another one of Gautier's
+poems will serve to illustrate what I mean.[Footnote: There are some
+good examples of this in Baudelaire's _Fleures du Mat_. See for
+one,_L'Albatros_.]
+
+LES COLOMBES
+
+  Sur le coteau, la-bas ou sont les tombes,
+  Un beau palmier, comme un panache vert,
+  Dresse sa tete, ou le soir les colombes
+  Viennent nicher et se mettre a couvert,
+
+  Mais le matin elles quittent les branches;
+  Comme un collier qui s'egrene, on les voit
+
+  S'eparpiller dans Fair bleu, toutes blanches,
+  Et se poser plus loin sur quelque toil.
+
+  Mon ame est l'arbre ou tous les soirs, comme elles,
+  De blancs essaims de folles visions
+  Tombent des cieux, en palpitant des ailes,
+  Pour s'envoler des les premiers rayons.
+
+Finally, the effort to detach poetry from the inner world and make it
+an expression of outer things, is incompatible with its musical
+character. For music is essentially subjective, an expression of pure
+mood unaffixed to objects. As rhythmical, poetry shares the inwardness
+of music; wherefore, unless its rhythm is to be a mere functionless,
+ornamental dress, whatever it expresses should have its source in the
+inner man. Of course, through their meanings, word-sounds indicate the
+causes and objects of emotion--and this differentiates music from
+poetry--but in poetry the emotion is still the primary thing, springing
+from inner strivings, and not from objects, as in painting and
+sculpture. It is therefore no accident that the contemporary imagists
+tend to abandon the forms of verse; their poetry has little or no
+regular rhythm; it approximates to prose. For in proportion as poetry
+becomes free, it ceases to be tied to musical expressiveness, and may
+become objective, without prejudice to its own nature. Prose poetry,
+and prose too, of course, may be highly emotional and subjective, for
+words can express emotions directly without any rhythmical ordering;
+yet prose need not be subjective, as poetry must be. There is no
+absolute difference between prose and poetry; for even prose has its
+rhythm and its euphony, its expressiveness of the medium; yet in prose
+the rhythm is irregular and accidental and the expressiveness of the
+medium incomplete, while in poetry the rhythm is regular and pervasive
+and ideally every sound-element, as mere sound, is musical. But this
+more complete musical expressiveness of the medium restricts poetry
+to a more inward world.
+
+By abandoning the strict forms and restraints of regular rhythms, the
+writers of free verse think to gain spontaneity and something of the
+amplitude of prose; yet it is doubtful whether they gain as much as
+they lose. For, in the hands of the skillful poet, the form, having
+become second nature, ceases to be a bond; and the expression, by
+taking on regularity of rhythm, acquires a concentration and mnemonic
+value which free verse cannot achieve. In comparison with free verbal
+expressions, verse forms are, indeed, artifices; yet they are not
+artificial, in the bad sense of functionless, for they possess
+irreplaceable values. Nevertheless, it would be strange if they were
+not from time to time abandoned, the poet reverting to the freedom of
+ordinary speech; just as now and then, in civilized communities, we
+find vigorous and sincere men who tire of culture and take to the
+woods.
+
+The triplicity of the word, as sound, image, meaning, provides a certain
+justification for the variety of tastes in poetry, and accounts for
+the difficulty of setting up a single universal standard. There is an
+unstable equilibrium between the three aspects of words; hence poetry
+tends to become predominantly music or painting or thought, yet can
+never succeed in becoming completely any one of these. And it is
+inevitable that some people should be more sensitive to one rather
+than to another of the aspects of words, preferring therefore the more
+musical, or the more thoughtful, or the more pictorial poetry. And so
+we have poems that would be music, and others that would be pictures,
+and still others that would be epigrams. And each kind has a certain
+right and beauty; but no kind has the unique beauty that is poetical.
+We do not ask their makers not to produce them, nor do we condemn the
+pleasures which they afford us, but we cannot commend them without
+reservation. For the best poems achieve a synthesis of the elements
+of words,--they are at once musical and imaginative and thoughtful.
+Yet with difficulty; for there is an antagonism among the elements:
+when the music is insistent, the thought is obscured; when the images
+are elaborate, their meaning is lost to sight; when the thought is
+subtle or profound, it rejects the image and is careless of sound.
+Swinburne's poetry is full of philosophy, but is so sensuous and musical
+that we miss its thoughts; Browning is too subtle a thinker to be a
+musician. The complexity of poetry is the source of its strength,
+lending it something of the inwardness of music and the plasticity of
+the pictorial arts; but is also the source of its weakness. Seldom
+does it achieve the technical purity and perfection of music and
+painting and sculpture. Music has a clear and simple medium, painting
+and sculpture work with colors and forms which almost are what they
+represent; but word-sounds are not what they mean, and what they mean
+is not precisely the same as the images which they evoke; too often
+the correspondence is factitious and artificial, rarely is there fusion.
+Yet, as I have tried to show, when meaning is made central, sound may
+fit it closely, and when the meaning is emotional, the music of sound
+may echo its cry, and the image, instead of rebelling, may serve.
+Emotional thought is the essence of poetry and the link between its
+music and its pictures.
+
+Of the different modes of poetry, the lyric has rightly seemed the
+most typical. Being an expression of a single, simple mood, its
+subject-matter is most closely akin to the musical expressiveness of
+the rhythm and euphony of the medium. When, moreover, the mood is a
+common one, there occurs that identification of self with the passion
+expressed characteristic of music: the utterance becomes ours as well
+as the poet's; the "I" of the poem is the "I" who read. This is
+especially true when the setting and causes of the emotion are without
+name or place or date; the poem then shares the timelessness and
+universality of music. In such a lyric there is complete symmetry in
+the relation between speaker and hearer; the poet unburdens his heart
+to us, and we in receiving his message tell it back to him. When, on
+the other hand, in explaining his feelings, the poet relates them to
+events and persons which have been no part of our experience, this
+symmetry is lost; we no longer utter the poem ourselves, but merely
+hear the poet speak. Such poetry is already approaching the dramatic;
+for although still the expression of the poet's life, it is no longer
+an expression of the reader's life, and the poet also, as he lives
+past his experience, must come at length to view it as if it were
+another's.
+
+And yet, paradoxical as it may sound, dramatic poetry is dramatic in
+proportion as it is lyrical--that is, according to the degree to which
+the poet has made the life of others his own. Dramatic poetry, when
+truly poetic, is a series of lyrics of the less universal type. In
+another respect, however, dramatic poetry is essentially different
+from the lyrical. For, in dramatic poetry, each utterance is a response
+or invitation to another utterance, while in lyric poetry, utterance
+is complete in itself. The one is social, the other personal: in the
+appreciation of the lyric, the reader is just himself; in the
+appreciation of dramatic poetry, he is a whole society, becoming now
+this man and now that. The unity of the one is the unity of a single
+mood; the unity of the other is the interaction of the dramatis person
+as it works itself out in the mind of the reader. And this difference,
+as we have seen, is imaged in the form. Being self-contained, the lyric
+is a harmonious whole, in which the parts may be repeated for emphasis;
+looking backward and forward, the dramatic utterance is a progressive
+and incomplete whole, which cannot stay for iteration. Lyric poetry
+is like a communication from friend to friend, intimate and meditative;
+dramatic poetry is like a passionate conversation which one overhears.
+
+The life portrayed in the epic poem is even less direct than that which
+is portrayed in the drama; for there the poet does not impersonate the
+agents in the story, but describes them. His description is the first
+thing which we get; we get the action only indirectly through that.
+Hence the story-teller himself--his manner of telling, his reactions
+to what he tells, his sympathy, humor, and intelligence--are part of
+what he expresses. He himself is partly theme. No matter how hard he
+may try to do so, he cannot exclude himself; through his choice of
+words, through his illustrations, through his style, "which is the
+man," he will reveal himself. [Footnote: See Lipps: _Aesthetik_,
+Bd. 1, s. 495 et seq.] We inevitably apprehend, not merely his thoughts,
+but him thinking. In the epic form of poetry, the poet has, moreover,
+an opportunity for a more direct mode of self-revelation, an opportunity
+for comment and judgment upon the life which he portrays. And this we
+should accept, not in a spirit of controversy or criticism, but with
+sympathy, as a part of the total aesthetic expression, striving to get,
+not only the poet's story, but his point of view regarding it as well.
+
+This duality in the life of the epic involves a two-foldness in its
+time. In both lyric and dramatic poetry, life moves before us as a
+single stream actual in the present; but in the epic there is the time
+of the story-teller, which is present, and the time of the events that
+he relates, which is past. And being past, these events appear as it
+were at a distance, at arms' length and remote; they lack the vivid
+reality of things present. Moreover, since the past is finished, unlike
+the present which is ever moving and creating itself anew, the epic,
+in comparison with the drama, comes to us with its parts as it were
+coexisting and complete, more after the manner of space than of time.
+And just as a spatial thing allows us to survey its parts by turn,
+since they are all there before we look; so, in reading an epic, we
+feel that we can proceed at our leisure and, despite the causal
+relation, take the incidents in any order. It is not so in the drama,
+where events move rapidly and make themselves in a determined sequence.
+This is what Goethe meant when he said that substantiality was the
+category of the epic, causality of the drama, although, of course,
+this distinction is not absolute.
+
+Finally, the fact that the epic poet tells rather than impersonates
+his story, enables him to enlarge its scope; for by means of
+descriptions he can introduce nature as one of the persons of the
+action. [Footnote: Compare Munsterberg: _The Eternal Values_, p.
+233.] He can show the molding influence of nature upon man, and how
+man, in turn, interacts not only with his fellows, but with his
+environment. Fate, in the sense of the non-human determinants of man's
+career, can show its hand. In the _Odyssey_, for example, shipwreck
+and the interference of the gods are factors as decisive as Odysseus'
+courage and cunning. By contrast, in lyric poetry, nature is merely
+a reflection of moods; in dramatic poetry, it is simply the passive,
+causally ineffective stage for a social experience wholly determined
+by human agents. This distinction is, however, not absolute. In
+_Brand_, for example, through the stage directions and the
+utterance of the persons, we are indirectly made aware of the control
+exerted by the physical background of the action; in the Greek drama
+we learn this from the Chorus and the Prologue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PROSE LITERATURE
+
+
+There is an almost universal feeling, expressed in many common phrases,
+that prose literature is not one of the fine arts. The reason is this:
+in prose literature there is a conspicuous absence of beauty of form
+and sensation, of the decorative, in comparison with the other arts.
+The vague expressiveness and charm of the medium, the musical aspect,
+is largely lacking. Not wholly lacking, of course, as a multitude of
+beautiful passages testify; yet, in general, it remains true that, in
+prose, the medium tends to be transparent, sacrificing itself in order
+that nothing may stand between what it reveals to thought and the
+imagination. It fulfills its function when the words are not unpleasant
+to the ear, and when their flow, adapting itself to the span and
+pulsation of the attention, is so smooth as to become unnoticeable,
+like the movement of a ship on a calm sea,--when it is a means to an
+end, not an end in itself.
+
+Prose literature is, therefore, incompletely beautiful. The full meaning
+and value of the aesthetic are not to be found there, but rather in
+poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture. Yet prose literature
+remains art, if incomplete art--a free, personal expression of life,
+for the sake of contemplation. As free, it differs from verbal
+expression in the service of practical ends, and as personal, it cannot
+be classed with science. Throughout the long course of its history,
+it has tended to become now the one, now the other of these--and its
+lack of the decorative element has done much to make this possible--but
+its power to outlast the moral and political issues which it has so
+often sought to direct, and its well-merited rejection by sociologists
+and psychologists as anything more than material for their work, are
+sufficient evidence and warning of where it properly belongs,--among
+the arts. The sacrifice of the musical element in the medium does not
+have to be justified on practical grounds as making for efficiency,
+or on scientific grounds as favoring analysis, but may be understood
+from the artistic standpoint. For it was only through a method and
+medium that renounced the musical manner of poetry, with its vaguely
+expressive, yet rigid forms, that the fullness and minuteness of life
+could be represented.
+
+Even the more fluently musical manner of poetical prose is unsuited
+as a medium for the expression of the kind of life which is represented
+in normal prose. Poetical prose is appropriate for the expression of
+deeds and sentiments of high and mystical import only, but not for the
+expression of the more commonplace or definitely and complexly
+articulated phases of life. For the latter, the broader and freer and
+more literal method of strict prose is the only appropriate medium of
+expression. The unmusical character of prose style is not determined
+by weakness, but by adaptation to function.
+
+And, although the medium of prose is attenuated almost to the vanishing
+point, where it may seem to be lost, it may nevertheless borrow from
+its content a beauty of rhythm, imagery, and form that will seem to
+be its very own. For in language, as we observed in our discussion of
+poetry, the meaning and the symbol are so closely one, that it becomes
+impossible, except by analysis, to distinguish them. Prose rhythm is
+fundamentally a rhythmical movement of ideas, like poetic rhythm, only
+without regularization; yet, since the ideas are carried by the words,
+it belongs to them also; images blossom from ideas, yet they too seem
+to belong to the words in which they are incarnated; and the harmony
+and symmetry which thoughts and images may contain as we compose them
+synthetically in the memory, make an architecture of words. The
+transparent medium of prose shares the beauty of its content, just as
+a perfect glass partakes of the color of the light which it transmits.
+
+The psychologic roots of prose literature are the impulses to self-
+revelation and to acquaintance with life. Every thing that has once
+entered into our lives, no matter how intimate, craves to come out;
+the instinct of gregariousness extends, as we have noted, to the whole
+of the mind. The completely private and uncommunicated makes us as
+uncertain and afraid of ourselves as physical loneliness. But in
+addition to the dislike for any form of isolation, even when purely
+spiritual, there is another factor which determines
+self-revelation,--the desire for praise. We want a larger audience for
+our exploits than the people immediately involved in them, so we tell
+them to any listening ear. The friend whispering his confession
+illustrates the one motive; the hero bragging of his deeds illustrates
+the other.
+
+The desire to hear another's story is the obverse of the desire to
+tell one about oneself, just as the impulse to welcome a friend is the
+complement of his impulse to seek our companionship; we receive from
+him exactly what he takes from us,--an enlargement of our social world,
+the creation of another social bond. If we cannot hear his story from
+his own lips, we want to hear it from some third person, who will
+surely be glad to relate it, since he, as bearer of the news, will
+bring to himself something of the glory of the hero. There is malice
+enough in gossip, but most of it is the purest kind of mental and
+emotional satisfaction. Our interest in it is of exactly the same kind
+as our interest in novels and romances. The stories which we tell about
+ourselves and our friends make up the ephemeral, yet real prose
+literature of daily life.
+
+Most stories probably had their origin in more or less literal
+transcriptions from real life. History is the basis of literature.
+However, as stories are passed from one person to another, fiction
+encroaches upon fact. Details are forgotten and have to be filled out
+from the imagination; then a sheer delight in invention enters in; it
+is so interesting to see if you can make a world as good as the real
+one, or even outdo it in strangeness and wonder, provided, of course,
+you can still get yourself believed. Even in the relation of real
+events, creation inevitably plays a part; the whole of any story is
+not worth telling; there must be selection, emphasis upon the most
+striking particulars, and synthesis.
+
+Besides the opportunity which it gives of unhampered control over the
+story, fiction has still other advantages. The interest which we take
+in tales of real life is bound up with personal appeals. This is most
+racy in gossip, but something of the kind lingers in all narratives
+of fact. Literature can become disinterested and universal in its
+appeal only when, keeping the semblance of life, it becomes a work of
+pure imagination. It is then, as Aristotle said, more philosophical,
+that is, more universal and typical, than history.
+
+Another advantage of fiction as compared with history is its
+completeness. The knowledge which we possess of the lives of others
+is the veriest fragment. We know, of course, our own lives best; but
+even of these, unless we are at the end of our years, we do not know
+the outcome. We know next well the life of an intimate--wife, child,
+sweetheart, friend--yet not all of that; there is much he will not
+tell us and much else which we cannot observe; for even he dwells with
+us for a brief time only, and then is gone. Of other people, we can
+know still less; we can observe something, we can get more from hearsay;
+but that is a chaos of impressions; the larger part is inference and
+construction, a work of the imagination, which may or may not be true.
+Even the biography, carefully made from all available data in the way
+of personal recollections, letters, and diaries, although it may
+approach to wholeness, remains, nevertheless, very largely a
+construction, a work of literary fiction. The autobiography comes still
+closer; yet, since it is designed for a public which cannot be expected
+to view it in a solidly detached fashion, it suffers from the reticence
+which inevitably intrudes to suppress. In fiction alone, none except
+artistic motives need intervene to bid silence.
+
+However, although fiction be a purely ideal world of imagined life,
+it is essentially the same as the real social world. For that world
+is also imaginary. We have direct experience of our own lives alone;
+the lives of others can exist for us only in our thought about them.
+To be sure, our daily contact with the bodies of our friends and
+associates gives to this thought something of the pungency of
+self-knowledge; yet in absence, they live for us, as the characters
+in a novel, only in our thought. And the majority of the people,
+personally unknown to us, who make up our larger social world--and for
+most of us this includes the great ones who are such potent factors
+in determining it--are real to us in the same way that Diana or Esmond
+are real. All historical figures belong to this world of imagination.
+Our friends too, as they pass out of our lives or die, and we ourselves
+eventually, will sink into it.
+
+Our interest in the fictional world of the writer is, moreover,
+essentially the same as our interest in the real world. Its persons
+arouse in us the same emotions of admiration, love, or dislike. They
+satisfy the same need for social stimulation, the same curiosity about
+life. Just as we have certain instincts and habits of movement that
+make us restless when they are not satisfied, and afford us a wild joy
+in walking and running when we are released from confinement, so we
+have certain instincts and habits of feeling towards persons which
+demand objects and produce joy when companions are found. An unsatisfied
+or superabundant sociability lies back of our love of fiction. We read
+because we are lonely or because our fellow men have become trite and
+fail to stimulate us sufficiently. If our fellows were not so reticent,
+if they would talk to us and tell us their stories with the freedom
+and the brightness of a Stevenson, or if their lives were so fresh and
+vivid that we never found them dull, perhaps we should not read at
+all. But, as it is, we can satisfy our craving for knowledge of life
+only by extending our social world through fiction. Fiction may teach
+us, edify us, make us better men--it may serve all these purposes
+incidentally, but its prime purpose as art is to provide us with new
+objects for social feeling and knowledge.
+
+The interest which we take in fictitious action is also like that which
+we take in real action. The same emotions of desire for the attainment
+of a goal, suspense, hope, fear, excitement, curiosity and its
+satisfaction, joy, despair, are aroused. And we have a need to
+experience these emotions at high pitch greater than our everyday lives
+can satisfy. Our lives are seldom adventurous all over; there are
+monotonous interludes with no melody, offering us little that is new
+to learn. Our love for war and sport shows that we were not built
+organically for humdrum. Now literature helps to make up for this
+deficiency in real life by providing us with adventures in which we
+can participate imaginatively, and from which we can derive new
+knowledge. If real life did supply us with all the intense living that
+we demand, we might not care to read, although the love of adventure
+grows by feeding, and many an active man revels in tales which simulate
+his own exploits.
+
+It follows that the novelist should imitate life, yet at the same time
+raise its pitch. The realists imitate life deliberately, and we measure
+their worth by their truth, but they select the intense moments. The
+romancers and weavers of fairy tales, on the other hand, instead of
+choosing the vivid moments of real life, in order to stimulate the
+emotions, accomplish the same end by exciting wonder and amazement at
+the exaggerations and unheard-of novelties which they create. Yet even
+they give us truth, not truth in the sense of fact, but in the sense
+of a world which arouses the same elementary emotions, intensified
+though they be through amazement, as are aroused by fact. It matters
+not how outlandish their tales so long as they do this. Love stories
+are so widely interesting because love is the one very vivid emotion
+in most people's lives, although there are other experiences--warfare,
+the pursuit of great aims, the clash of purposes and beliefs, the
+growth of souls--equally intense. Dante's three themes, Venus, Salus,
+Virtus,[Footnote: See his _De Vulgari Eloquentia._] broadly
+interpreted, cover the range of literary subjects.
+
+Of course, since we secure no personal triumphs in reading, and every
+one wishes to play his own part successfully in real life, literature
+cannot become a substitute for life, except with the artist who triumphs
+in making his story. Nevertheless, as Henry James says, fiction may
+and should compete with life, and this it can do by giving us the
+feelings aroused by action without imposing upon us the responsibilities
+and the fateful results of action itself; there we can learn new things
+about life without incurring the risks of participation in it. We can
+play the part of the adventurer without being involved in any blame;
+we can fall in love with the heroine without any subsequential
+entanglements; we can be a hero without suffering the penalties of
+heroism; we can travel into foreign lands without deserting our business
+or emptying our purses. Hence, although no one would exchange life for
+literature, one is better content, having literature, to forego much
+of life.
+
+The elements of every story are these five: character, incident, nature,
+fate, and milieu--the social, historical, and intellectual background.
+Character and incident are capable of some degree of separation, so
+far as, in novels of adventure, the personalities necessary to carry
+on the action may be very abstract or elementary, and so far as, in
+so-called psychological novels, the number of events related may be
+very small and their interest dependent upon their effect on character;
+but one without the other is as inconceivable in a story as it is in
+life itself, and the development of fiction has been steadily in the
+direction of their interdependence. Aristotle's dictum regarding the
+superior importance of plot over character applies to the drama only,
+and because character cannot well be revealed there except through
+action. The construction of character depends upon the delineation of
+distinctive and recognizable physical traits, a surprisingly small
+number sufficing, a mere name being almost enough; upon the definition
+of the individual's position in a group--his relation to family,
+townspeople, and other associates--a matter of capital importance;
+and, finally, information about his more permanent interests and
+attitudes. This construction is best made piecemeal, the character
+disclosing itself gradually during the story, as it does in life, and
+growing under the stress of circumstances. The old idea of fixity of
+character does not suit our modern notions of growth; we demand that
+character be created by the story; it should not preexist, as
+Schopenhauer thought it should, with its nature as determinate and its
+reactions as predictable as those of a chemical substance. And although
+in their broad outlines the possibilities of human nature are perhaps
+fewer in number than the chemical substances, the variations of these
+types in their varying environments are infinite. To create a poignant
+uniqueness while preserving the type is the supreme achievement of the
+writer of fiction. We want as many of the details of character, and
+no more, as are necessary to this end.
+
+By incident is meant action expressing character or action or event
+determining fate. There are a thousand actions, mechanical or habitual,
+performed by us all, which throw no light upon our individuality.
+Almost all of these the novelist may neglect, or if he wishes to
+describe them, a single example will serve to reveal whatever uniqueness
+they may hide. There are an equal number of actions and events like
+blind alleys leading nowhere; from these also the novelist abstracts;
+it is only when he can trace some effect upon fate or character that
+he is interested. The delineation of nature or the milieu is governed
+by the same reference: a social or intellectual environment, no matter
+how interesting in itself, without potent individualities which it
+molds, or scenery, no matter how romantic, unless it is a theater of
+action or a spiritual influence upon persons, has no place in a story.
+Each of these, however, may by itself become the subject-matter of a
+literary essay, provided the writer's own moods and appreciations are
+included; otherwise it is a topic for sociology, history, or topography,
+not for literature.
+
+By fate in a story I mean the writer's feeling for causality. As the
+maker of an image of life, the writer must portray life as molded by
+its past and by all the circumstances surrounding it. He must present
+character as determined by personal influence, by nature and the milieu;
+he must have a vivid sense for the interrelation of incidents. The
+feeling for fate is independent of any special philosophical view of
+the world; it does not imply fatalism or the denial of the spontaneous
+and originative force of personality; it is simply recognition of the
+wholeness of life. Nor, again, does it imply the possibility of
+predicting the end of a story from the beginning, for the living
+sequence, forging its links as it proceeds, is not mechanical; but it
+does imply that after things have happened we must be able to perceive
+their relatedness--the beginning, middle, and end as one whole. In the
+story, there must be the same kind of combination of necessity and
+contingency that there is in life: we must be sure that every act and
+incident will have its effect, and we must be able to divine, in a
+general way, what that effect will be; but owing to the complexity of
+life, which prevents us from knowing all the data of its problems, and
+owing to the spontaneity of its agents and the creative syntheses
+within its processes, we must never be able to be certain just what
+the effect will be like; our every calculation must be subject to the
+correction of surprise. Suspense and excitement must go hand in hand
+with a feeling for a developing inner necessity. There is no story
+without both. Yet no formula for the amount of each can be devised.
+The dependence of man upon nature makes inevitable the occurrence of
+what we call accidents, violent breaks in the tissue of personal and
+social life, unaccountable from the point of view of our human purposes.
+By admitting the part played by the non-human background in determining
+fate, the naturalistic school of writers have enlarged the vision of
+the novelist beyond the range of the tender-minded sentimentalist. It
+is to be expected, moreover, that coincidences should occur,--the
+meeting of independent lines of causation with consequences fateful
+to each. A careful investigation would disclose that most interesting
+careers have been largely determined by coincidences. The only demand
+that we can make of the artist in this regard is that he do not give
+us so many of these that his work will seem unreal. We must not feel
+that he is making the story in order to surprise us and thrill us--the
+purpose of melodrama; the story should make itself. Hardy's _The
+Return of the Native_ is an illustration of failure here; the
+coincidences are so many that it seems magical, the work of a capricious
+genius, not of nature.
+
+By fate in a story we do not mean, of course, the mere causal
+concatenation of events, for some relation to a purposeful life is
+always implied. But since this relation is a general condition applying
+to all art, we shall consider it here only as it affects the unity of
+a story. No rule can be laid down for the compass of a story; it may
+cover a small incident, as in many short stories, or it may embrace
+the whole or the most significant part of a life. The requirement that
+there be a beginning, middle, and end holds, but does not enlighten
+us as to what constitutes an end. Death makes one natural end to a
+story, since it makes an end to life itself; but within the span of
+a life the parts are not so clearly defined. Yet despite the continuity
+and overlapping of the parts of life, there are certain natural breaks
+and divisions,--the working out of a plan to fulfillment or disaster,
+the termination or consummation of a love affair, the commission of
+a crime with its consequences, or more subtle things, such as the
+breaking up of an old attitude and the formation of a new one. In life
+itself there are incidents that are closed because they cease to affect
+us deeply any more, purposes which we abandon because we can get no
+farther with them or because they have found their natural fulfillment,
+points of view which we have to relinquish because life supplies us
+with new facts which they do not include. The unity of a story should
+mirror these natural unities. The search for the wholeness of life
+should not blind us to the relative isolation of its parts; and there
+is fate in the parts as well as in the whole.
+
+The selection of incidents for their bearing upon fate, the selection
+of significant traits for the construction of character, with the
+resulting unity and simplicity of the parts and the whole, is
+responsible for most of the ideality of fiction as compared with real
+life. Real life is a confused medley of impressions of people and
+events, a mixture of the important and the unimportant, the
+consequential and the inconsequential, with no evident pattern. Of
+this, literary art is the _verklartes Bild_. It is not because,
+in literature, men are happier and nobler that life seems superior
+there; but because its outlines are sharper, its design more
+perspicuous, the motives that sway it better understood. It has the
+advantage over life that a landscape flooded with sunshine has over
+one shrouded in darkness.
+
+The way the literary artist builds up the ideal social world of fiction
+follows closely the method which we all employ in constructing the
+real social world. In real life we start from certain perceived acts
+and utterances, to which we then attach purposive meanings, and between
+which we establish relations. The process of interpretation is so rapid
+that, although strictly inferential in character and having imagination
+as its seat, it seems, nevertheless, like direct perception. As we see
+people act and hear them talk, it is as if we had a vision, confused
+indeed, yet direct, of their inner lives. And yet, as we have insisted,
+the real social world is constructed, not perceived.
+
+The literary artist, unless he calls dramatic art to his aid, cannot
+present the persons and acts of his story; he can only describe them
+and report their talk. Description must take the place of vision, a
+recorded conversation the place of a heard one. Yet, by these means,
+the artist can give us almost as direct an intuition as we get from
+life itself; he can make us seem to see and overhear. From the acts
+which he describes we can infer the motives of the characters, and
+from the reported conversations we can learn their opinions and dreams.
+Or the novelist may insert a letter which we can read as if it were
+real. The resulting image of life will be clearer than any we could
+construct for ourselves; for the artist can report life more carefully
+than we could observe it; and he can make his characters more articulate
+in the expression of themselves than ordinary men, giving them a gift
+of tongues like his own. This last is especially characteristic of the
+drama, where sometimes, as in Shakespeare, men speak more like gods
+than like men. And we can listen to the intimate conversation of friends
+and lovers, upon which, in real life, we would not intrude.
+
+This direct method of exposition through the description of acts and
+events and the record of conversations is the basis of every vivid
+story. It leaves the necessary inferences to the reader, just as life
+leaves them to the observer. In the hands of a master like Fontane,
+this method is incomparable; nothing can supplant it. It is the only
+method available for the dramatist, who, however, can make it still
+more effective through histrionic portrayal. Yet it does not suffice
+to satisfy our craving for knowledge of life, for only the broader,
+more obvious feelings can be inferred from the acts of men; the subtler
+and more remote escape. Even in conversation these cannot all be
+revealed; for many of them are too intimate to be spoken, and many
+again are unknown even to those who hold them. To-day we ask of the
+novelist that he disclose the finest, most hidden tissues of the soul.
+To this end, the microscopy of analysis, the so-called psychological
+method, must be employed. The novelist must perform upon his characters
+the same sort of dissection that we perform when, introspecting, we
+seek out the obscurer grounds of our conduct. And in the pursuit of
+this knowledge the novelist can oftentimes do better with his characters
+than we can do with ourselves. For utter sincerity regarding ourselves
+is impossible; the desire to think well of ourselves prevents us from
+recognizing the truth about ourselves. The novelist, on the contrary,
+can be unprejudiced and can know fully what he himself is creating.
+In order to accomplish this same purpose, the dramatist has to introduce
+bits of self-analysis, unusually sincere and penetrating, spoken
+aloud,--in the old style, monologues. And yet, without sacrificing the
+truthfulness of his own art, he cannot go so deep here as the novelist.
+
+Through his analysis of his characters, the novelist must, however,
+construct them; otherwise he is a psychologist, not an artist. A
+synthetic vision of personality must supervene upon the dissection,
+and the emotional interest in character and action must subsist
+alongside of the intellectual interest. He must not let us lose the
+vivid sense of a living presence. In order to keep this, he must
+continue to employ the direct method of description of person and
+action, and report of conversation. How far the analytic method may
+be carried and at the same time the sense of personality kept intact,
+may be inferred from the work of Henry James, who, nevertheless, seems
+at times to fail to bring the out-going threads of his thought back
+into the web which he is weaving.
+
+Again, in order to reach the social, historical, and metaphysical
+background of life--the milieu, the method of thought is the only
+available one. For the milieu is not anything that can be seen or heard
+or touched; it does not manifest itself to perception, but has to be
+constructed by a process of inference and synthesis. Much of it, to
+be sure, can be divined from the acts and conversations, from the dress
+and manners of the characters, but there is always more that has to
+be directly expounded. The writer cannot rely upon the reader's
+perspicacity to make the right inferences, or upon his knowledge to
+supply sufficient data; nor can he make his characters tell all that
+he may want told about their past and the life of the world in which
+they live, and through the influence of which they have become what
+they are. The novelist must construct for the reader the _mise en
+scene_ of his story. Yet this must be held in complete subordination
+to the story. The intellectual background must lie behind, not athwart
+the story; it must be created for the sake of the story, not the story
+for its sake.
+
+A philosophy of life, even, is the inevitable presupposition of every
+story. For no writer, no matter how direct and empirical he may be in
+his methods, can escape from looking at life through the glass of
+certain political, social, and religious ideas. He may have none of
+his own construction, yet he will unconsciously share those of his
+age. The prose literature of our own age, aside from some minor
+differences of technique, differs from that of the past chiefly through
+its more democratic and naturalistic views of life. And just as we
+rightly ask of the novelist that he enlighten us regarding the subtler
+causation of human action, so with equal right we may ask him to exhibit
+the relations of the persons and incidents which he describes to social
+organization, spiritual movements, and nature; for only so can they
+be seen in their complete reality. Yet right here lurks a danger
+threatening the enduring beauty of every story thus made complete. For
+the social and cosmic background of life, as we have observed, can be
+constructed only through thought, and thought, particularly regarding
+such matters, is peculiarly liable to error. The artist who goes very
+deep into this is sure to make mistakes. Even when he tries to use the
+latest sociological, economic, and political theories, he runs great
+risks; for these theories are always one-sided and subject to
+correction; they never prove themselves to be what the artist thinks
+and wants them to be--concrete views which he can apply with utter
+faith. How many stories of the century past have been marred by the
+author's too ready application of Darwinism to social life! When we
+can separate the story from its intellectual background, the inadequacy
+of the latter matters little; for we can apply metaphysical and
+political criticism to the theory and enjoy the story aesthetically;
+but many of our writers come to life with preconceived ideas deeply
+affecting their delineation of it. The picture no longer seems true
+because we feel that a false theory has prevented the artist from
+viewing life concretely and clearly. We could, for example, accept as
+natural and inevitable the ending of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_,
+if Hardy had not presented it as an illustration of the cruel sport
+of the gods. As it stands with the author's commentary, we suspect
+that the girl's fate might have been different,--that perhaps he gave
+it this turn in order to prove his theory of life.
+
+This fault is especially flagrant in the theory-ridden fiction of
+to-day. Determination through the past is overemphasized as against
+the influence of present, novel factors in a growing experience;
+heredity is given undue weight as against the inborn originality of
+personality and the uniqueness acquired through unique experiences;
+the influence of sensual motives is stressed at the expense of the
+moral; and so on through all the other abstractions and insufficiencies
+of "scientific" novel writing. The writer may well profit by everything
+he can learn from science; but he should not let his knowledge prevent
+him from seeing life concretely and as a whole. The literary man's
+science and philosophy are bound to be condemned by the expert, but
+his concrete delineations of life based on direct observation and vivid
+sympathy and imagination are impeccable. His theories may be false,
+but these will always be true. Nothing can take their place in fiction.
+It is they which give enduring value to such tales as _Morte d'Arthur_,
+despite all the crudity of the intellectual background.
+
+Reflections upon life may become matter for literature in the essay,
+quite apart from any story. But the essay, like the story, unless it
+is to compete at a disadvantage with science and philosophy, must rely
+upon first-hand personal acquaintance with life, and artistic
+expression. The more abstract and theoretical it becomes, the more
+precarious its worth. I do not mean that the essayist may not
+generalize, but his generalizations should be limited to the scope of
+his experience of life. I do not mean that he should not philosophize,
+but his philosophy should be, like Goethe's or Emerson's, an expression
+of intuition and faith. Properly, the literary essay is a distinct
+artistic genre--the expression of a concrete _thinking_ personality, and
+its value consists in the living wisdom it contains. Such essays as
+those of a Montaigne or a La Rochefoucauld make excellent materials for
+the social sciences, and can never be displaced by them as sources of
+knowledge of life.
+
+Considerations similar to those which we have adduced regarding the
+implied philosophy of a story apply to its moral purpose. We cannot
+demand of the writer that he have no moral purpose or that he leave
+morality out of his story. For, since the artist is also a man, he
+cannot rid himself of an ethical interest in human problems or with
+good conscience fail to use his art to help toward their solution. His
+observations of moral experience will inevitably result in beliefs
+about it, and these will reveal themselves in his work. Yet we should
+demand that his view of what life ought to be shall not falsify his
+representation of life as it is. Just as soon as the moral of a tale
+obtrudes, we begin to suspect that the tale is false. We have such
+suspicions about Bourget, for example, because, as in _Une Divorce_, we
+are never left in doubt from the beginning as to the conventions he is
+advocating. And along with the feeling for the reality of the story goes
+the feeling for the validity of the moral; they stand and fall together.
+A story's moral, like life's moral, is convincing in proportion as it is
+an inference from the facts. The novelist, fearing that we may not have
+the wits to discern it, is justified in drawing this inference himself;
+yet it must show itself to be strictly an inference from the story--the
+story must not seem to have been constructed to prove it. "_Die
+Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,_" wrote Schiller; even so, the
+delineation of life is the criticism of life. To show the scope of
+disillusion, monotony, repression--life's generous impulses narrowed and
+made timid by the social, economic, and political machine--would be a
+criticism of our modern world; there would be no need of moralizing.
+This the Russian novelists seem to have understood; they judged Russian
+life by describing it.
+
+The man who writes literature as a means for promulgating political
+or moral ideas is either a conservative who desires to return to the
+conventions of the past, or else a radical who seeks the establishment
+of a new mode of life. The method employed by the former usually
+consists in exposing the restlessness and unhappiness of people who
+live in accordance with "advanced" ideas in comparison with the
+contentment of those who follow the older traditions. Such stories
+are, however, inconclusive, because they imply the false sociological
+thesis that the remedy for present ills is a return to the customs of
+the past. Happiness can indeed exist only in a stable society; but
+each age must create its own order to suit its changing needs; it
+cannot, if it would, go back to the old. These stories, therefore,
+although they often contain truthful and valuable pictures of the ills
+of contemporary life, and are useful in helping to conserve what is
+good in the spirit of the past, are nevertheless bound to be futile
+in their main endeavor.
+
+The method of the radical usually consists of two parts: one of
+criticism, designed to show the misery due to existing laws and
+institutions; another of construction, the disclosure of a new and
+better system. But here, too, the constructive part of the story is
+likely to be weak. For whether the writer sets forth his program by
+putting it into the mouth of one of his characters or appends it as
+a commentary to his story, the practicability of his scheme is always
+open to question. It is only through trial that any scheme can be shown
+to be workable. There is, however, a new method that deserves better
+the name of "experimental romance" than Zola's own works. It consists
+in portraying people living in accordance with new sentiments and
+ideals, or even under new institutions imaginatively constructed. Yet
+this method also has its weakness, for it is difficult to make people
+believe in the reality of a life that has not been actually lived.
+Still, this difficulty is not fatal; for experiments in living are
+constantly being made all around us, which the discerning novelist
+needs only to observe and report. He can show the success of these or
+how, if they fail, their failure is due, not to anything inherently
+vicious, but simply to adverse law and opinion. Life is full of such
+stories waiting for some novelist who is not too timid to tell them.
+
+We are thus brought round again to the thesis that the enduringly
+valuable elements of every story are its concrete creations of life.
+In the end, the story teller's fame will rest upon his power to create
+and reveal character and upon his sense for fate. There is just one
+thing that should be added to this--a rich emotional attitude toward
+life. It is the greater wealth of this that makes a novelist like
+Thackeray or Anatole France superior to one like Balzac. The personality
+that tells the story is as much a part of the total work as the
+characters and events portrayed, and must be taken into account in any
+final judgment of the whole. Without the author's vivid and rich
+participation, we who read can never be fully engaged, and we shall
+find more of life in the story, the more there is of him in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE DOMINION OF ART OVER NATURE: PAINTING
+
+
+In literature, as we observed in our last two chapters, nature does
+not find aesthetic expression on its own account. In the lyric, nature
+appears only as the reflection of personal moods and thoughts, in the
+drama and novel and epic only as the theater of human action or the
+determiner of human fate. In painting and sculpture, on the other hand,
+the expression of nature is the primary aim. Of course, in so far as
+this expression is aesthetic, it is an expression not of nature alone,
+but of our responses as well; but nature is the starting point, not
+emotion as in lyric poetry, nor the effect upon destiny as in the epic.
+
+Because they are expressions of nature, and because the copying of the
+human body, of trees, clouds, and the like is an indispensable part
+of their practice, painting and sculpture have seemed to give support
+to the theory of art as imitation. Yet, although the activity of
+imitation is a means to the creation of picture and statue, the mere
+fact of being a copy is not the purpose of the completed work nor the
+ground of our pleasure in it. Not its relation to anything outside
+itself, no matter how important for its making, but its own intrinsic
+qualities constitute its aesthetic worth.
+
+This was true of the earliest efforts in these arts. The primitive
+artist copied not for the sake of copying, but because he ascribed a
+magical power to images. In the image he believed he somehow possessed
+the object itself, and so could control it; to the image, therefore,
+was transferred all the value and potence of the object. The object
+represented was deeply significant; it was perhaps the animal upon
+which the tribe depended for its food, its totem or guardian divinity;
+or else, as among the Egyptians, it was the man himself, of whom the
+image was meant to be an enduring habitation for the soul. If primitive
+men had copied indifferent objects, then we might infer that the mere
+making of an image was the end in view; but this they did not do, and
+it has never been the practice of any vigorous group of artists. Only
+when the means are valued instead of the end--technique in place of
+beauty--does this occur. Through such a mistaking of aims, new
+instruments of expression may be discovered, useful for a future genius,
+but no genuine art is produced. The genuine artist copies, not for the
+sake of copying, but in order to create a work of independent beauty.
+
+This same transference of value to the image, with the consequent
+freeing of the image from the model, can be observed even in
+commemorative art. A king desires, perhaps, to perpetuate his memory;
+how better than through some enduring likeness in stone or paint? While
+he is alive and after his death this image will remind his subjects
+of him and his valorous deeds. The relation to the model seems to be
+fundamental; but in proportion to the success of the artist in making
+a likeness, the stone or paint will be made to seem all alive, and for
+those who cannot come into direct relations with the monarch, he will
+be effectively present in the statue or picture, even when, through
+death, he is removed from all social and practical relations. Who does
+not feel that Philip the Fourth is present on the Velasquez canvas;
+where else could one find him so alive? If the work is artistic, the
+spectator's interest will center in feeling the life in the color and
+line or sculptured form; that it happens to be an imitation of something
+else will become of secondary importance. This is clearest when the
+name of the subject is not known; then surely it is the life before
+us that can alone concern us. Any feeble copy would serve as a reminder,
+but a living drawing or statue brings the man or woman into our
+presence. The aesthetic interest in the work as living supervenes upon
+the interest in it as a mere reminder of life.
+
+This freedom from the model and attainment of intrinsic worth in the
+work of art itself is furthered through the realization of beauty in
+the medium of expression. The colors, lines, and shapes which the
+artist uses have a direct appeal to the eye and through the eye to
+feeling; hence arise preferences for the most agreeable and expressive.
+The artist discovered that he could express his emotion not only through
+representing its object, but through the very colors or lines or shapes
+used in the delineation. These effects, found by chance perhaps in the
+first instance, would later be striven for consciously. In this way,
+through some grace of line, or symmetry of form, or harmony of color,
+the statue or picture would acquire a power to please quite independent
+of any ulterior use or purpose; once more, it would become alive and
+of value on its own account.
+
+We shall begin our study of the representative arts with drawing and
+painting--representation in two dimensions--not because they preceded
+sculpture historically, but because, being more complex arts, a solution
+of the problems which they raise makes a subsequent survey of the
+similar problems of the simpler art relatively easy.
+
+The media of pictorial expression are color and line, and expression
+is attained through them in a twofold fashion. In a picture, every
+element of color or line is expressive directly, just as color and
+line, of some vague feeling or mood, and, in addition, chiefly through
+its resemblance, represents some action or object. The former kind of
+expression is indispensable. No matter how realistic the imitation,
+unless the picture thrill like music, through its mere colors or lines,
+it is aesthetically relatively ineffective. It is not sufficient that
+the picture move us through the vicarious presence on the canvas of
+a moving object; it must stir us in a more immediate fashion through
+the direct appeal of sense. For example, a picture which presents us
+with a semblance of the sea will hold us through the power which the
+sea has over us; but it will not hold us so fast as a picture of the
+same subject which, in addition, grips us through its greens and blues
+and wavy lines. The one sways us only through the imagination, the
+other through our senses as well.
+
+Sensitiveness to color as such, so self-evident to one who possesses
+it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great
+many people. They are probably few, however, who do not feel some
+stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral
+window or upon the red of Venetian glass, or who are entirely
+indifferent to the color of silk. The reason for emotional
+color-blindness is probably not a native incapacity to be affected,
+but rather a diversion of attention; color has come to be only a sign
+for the recognition and subsequent use of things, a signal for a
+practical or intellectual reaction. In our haste to recognize and use
+we fail to see, and give ourselves no time to be moved by mere seeing.
+But when, as in art, contemplation, the filling of the mind with the
+object, is the aim, the power to move of the sensuous surface of things
+may come again into its rights.
+
+The emotional response to color, vague and abstract and objectless,
+is, like music, incapable of adequate expression in words, and for the
+same reason. Words are capable of expressing only the larger and fairly
+well-defined emotions; such subtle shadings and complex mixtures of
+feeling as are conveyed by color and sound are mostly beyond their
+ken. Colors make us feel and dream as music does in the same
+incommunicable fashion. Or rather the only possibility of communicating
+them is through the color schemes arousing them. And for one who
+appreciates color this is sufficient; he can point to the colors and
+say--that is what I feel. To render his feeling also in words would
+be a superfluous business, supposing they could be adequate to express
+it; or, if they were adequate, that would make expression through color
+superfluous. The value of any medium consists in its power to express
+what none other can. Nevertheless, it is possible to find rough verbal
+equivalents for the simpler colors. Thus every one would probably agree
+with Lipps and call a pure yellow happy, a deep blue quiet and earnest,
+red passionate, violet wistful; would perhaps feel that orange partakes
+at once of the happiness of yellow and the passion of red, while green
+partakes of the happiness of yellow and the quiet of blue; and in
+general that the brighter and warmer tones are joyful and exciting,
+the darker and colder, more inward and restful.
+
+To explain the expressiveness of color sensations is as difficult as
+to account for the parallel phenomenon in sounds. Here as there resort
+is had to the principle of association. Colors get, it is thought,
+their value for feeling either through some connection with emotionally
+toned objects, like vegetation, light, the sky, blood, darkness, and
+fire, or else through some relation to emotional situations, like
+mourning or danger, which they have come to symbolize. And there is
+little doubt that such associations play a part in determining the
+emotional meaning of colors--the reticence and distance of blue, the
+happiness of yellow, for example, are partly explained through the
+fact that blue is the color of the sky, yellow the color of sunlight;
+the meaning of black is due, partly at any rate, to association with
+mourning. Yet neither of these types of association seems sufficient
+to explain the full emotional meaning of colors. The conventional
+meanings of colors seem rather themselves to need explanation than to
+serve as explanations--why is red the sign of danger, purple royal,
+white a symbol of purity, black a symbol of mourning? Is it not because
+these colors had some native, original expressiveness which fashion
+and habit have only made more definite and turned to special uses? And
+if we can explain the reticence of blue through association with the
+sky, can we thus explain its quietness? Can the warmth of fire and the
+excitement of blood explain quite all the depth of passionate feeling
+in red? The factors enumerated play a part in the complex effect, but
+there seem to be elements still unaccounted for.
+
+In order to explain the total phenomenon we must admit, as in the case
+of tones, some direct effect of the sensory light stimulus upon the
+feelings. Rays of light affect not only the sensory apparatus, causing
+sensations of color; their influence is prolonged into the motor
+channels, causing a total attitude of the organism, the correlate of
+a feeling. It would be strange if any sensory stimulus were entirely
+cut off by itself and did not find its way into the motor stream. But
+these overflows are too diffuse to be noticed in ordinary experience;
+they are obscured through association or are not given time to rise
+to the level of clear consciousness, because we are preoccupied with
+the practical or cognitive significance of the colors; only in the
+quiet and isolation of contemplation can they come into the focus. Of
+course the student of the evolution of mind will want to go behind
+these color emotions and inquire why a given color is connected with
+a given reaction. He may even want to connect them with instinctive
+responses of primitive men. But here we can only speculate; we cannot
+know.
+
+The problem is further complicated through the fact that private color-
+associations are formed obscuring the aesthetic meanings, which can
+be rediscovered only through the elimination of the former. Color
+preferences are often determined in this way; yet sometimes they spring
+from another and more radical source--an affinity between personal
+temperament and the feeling tone of the preferred color. A consistent
+choice of blues and grays indicates a specific kind of man or woman,
+very different from the chooser of yellows and reds.
+
+Although single color tones are expressive, they seldom exist alone
+in works of art. Significant expression requires variety. The invention
+of original and expressive color combinations is a rare gift of genius.
+Rough rules of color combination have been devised from the practice
+of artists and from experiment, the following of which will enable one
+to produce faultless patterns, but without genius will never enable
+one to create a new expression. Color combinations are either harmonious
+or balanced, the former produced by colors or tones of colors very
+close to one another, the latter by the contrasting or widely sundered.
+In the one case, we get the quiet commingling of feelings akin to each
+other; in the other, the lively tension of feelings opposed. Compare,
+for example, the effect of a Whistler nocturne with a Monet landscape.
+The colors that do not go well together are such as are not close
+enough for union nor far enough apart for contrast. They are like
+personalities not sufficiently at one to lose themselves in each other,
+yet not sufficiently unlike to be mutually stimulating and enlarging,
+between whom there can be only a fruitless rivalry turning into hate.
+Such are certain purples and reds, certain greens and blues. Yet,
+through proper mediation, any two colors can be brought into a
+composition. All colors are brought together in nature through the
+sunlight, and in painting or weaving by giving to rival colors the
+same sheen or brightness. Or again, the union may be effected by
+combining the two with a third which is in a relation of balance or
+harmony with each, as in the favorite scheme of blue, red, and green.
+
+Despite their ability to express, colors cannot stand alone; they must
+be the colors of something, they must make line or shape. Lines, on
+the other hand, seem to be independent of color, as in drawings and
+etchings; yet there is really some color even there--black and white
+and tones of gray. That color and line are independent of one another
+in beauty, is, however, shown by works, such as Millet's, which are
+good in line but poor in color. Lines have, as we have already seen,
+the same duality of function as colors: they express feeling directly
+through their character as mere lines and they represent objects by
+suggesting them through resemblance.
+
+There is, in fact, for those who can feel it, a life in lines of the
+same abstract and objectless sort as exists in colors and tones. Lines
+give rise to motor impulses and make one feel and dream, as music does.
+There are many who are cold to this effect; yet few can fail to get
+something of the vibration or mood of the lines of a Greek vase
+painting, a Botticelli canvas, or a Rembrandt etching. The life of
+lines is more allied to that of tones than of colors because it
+possesses a dynamic movement quality which is absent from the latter.
+This life is, in fact, twofold: on the one hand it is a career, with
+a beginning, middle, and end, something to be willed or enacted; on
+the other hand it is a temperament or character, a property of the
+line as a whole, to be felt. These two aspects of aesthetic lines are
+closely related; they stand to one another much as the temperament or
+character of a man stands to his life history, of which it is at once
+the cause and the result. Just as we get a total impression of a man's
+nature by following the story of his life, so we get the temperamental
+quality of lines by following them with the eye; and just as all of
+our knowledge of a man's acts enters into our intuition of his nature,
+so we discover the character of the total line by a synthesis of its
+successive elements.
+
+It is as difficult, more difficult, perhaps, to put into words the
+temperamental quality of lines as to do the parallel thing with colors.
+Lines are infinite in their possible variations, and the fine shades
+of feeling which they may express exceed the number of words in the
+emotional vocabulary of any language. Moreover, in any drawing, the
+character of each line is partly determined through the context of
+other lines; you cannot take it abstractly with entire truth. It is,
+however, possible to find verbal equivalents for the character of the
+main types of lines. Horizontal lines convey a feeling of repose, of
+quiet, as in the wall-paintings of Puvis de Chavannes; vertical lines,
+of solemnity, dignity, aspiration, as in so much of the work of
+Boecklin; crooked lines of conflict and activity, as in the woodcuts
+of Durer; while curved lines have always been recognized as soft and
+voluptuous and tender, as in Correggio and Renoir. The supposition
+that the curved line is the sole "line of beauty" is the result of a
+narrow and effeminate idea of the aesthetic; yet it must be admitted
+that this form, since it permits of the greatest amount of variation,
+has the highest power of expression; but in many of its more complex
+varieties it loses much of its soft feminine quality, and takes on
+some of the strength of the other forms.
+
+The expressiveness of lines is determined by several--at least three--
+factors. In the first place, the perception of lines is an active
+process. In order to get a line we have to follow it with the eye; and
+if we do not now follow it with our fingers, we at least followed
+similar lines thus in the past. Now this process of the perception of
+a line requires of us an energy of attention to the successive elements
+of the line as we pass over them and a further expenditure of energy
+in remembering and synthesizing them into a whole. This energy, since
+it is evoked by the line and is not connected with any definite inner
+striving of the self, is felt by us to belong to the line, to be an
+element in its life, as clearly its own as its shape. For example, a
+line with many sudden turns or changes of direction is an energetic
+and exciting line because it demands in perception a constant and
+difficult and shifting attention; a straight line, on the contrary,
+because simple and unvarying in its demands upon the attention, is
+monotonous and reposeful; while the curved line, with its lawful and
+continuous changes, at once stimulating yet never distracting attention,
+possesses the character of progressive and happy action. This, the
+primary source of the vital interpretation of lines is supplemented
+by elements derived from association. Lines suggest to us the movements
+of our bodies along paths of similar form, and we interpret them
+according to the feeling of these movements; in the imagination, we
+may seem to move along the very lines themselves as paths. Every skater
+or runner knows the difficulty of moving along a path full of sudden
+turns and angles, a difficulty which, if he is in good trim, may
+nevertheless afford him pleasure in the overcoming; the delightful and
+various ease of moving along curved lines; the monotony of a long,
+straight path, but the quick triumph of going right to the end along
+a short and terminal line of this character. But lines suggest to us
+not only the movements, but also the attitudes of our bodies. They may
+be straight and rising,--rigid or dignified or joyously expanding;
+they may be horizontal and lie down and rest; they may be falling and
+sorrowful; or the shapes whose outlines they form may be heavy or
+light, delicate or ungainly or graceful, as bodies are. Finally, the
+interpretation of lines may be further enriched as follows: The sight
+of a line suggests the drawing of it, the sweep of the brush that made
+it; we ourselves, in the imagination once more, may re-create the line
+after the artist, and feel, just as he must have felt, the mastery,
+ease, vigor, or delicacy of the execution into the line itself. Few
+can fail to get this effect from the paintings of Franz Hals, for
+example, where the abounding energy of the artist is apparent in each
+stroke of the brush. Artists feel this life in execution most strongly;
+yet, since almost every one has had some practice in drawing lines,
+it is potentially a universal quality in a painting.
+
+Lines may be unified according to the three modes of harmony, balance,
+and evolution. The repetition of the same kind of line confers a
+harmonious unification upon a drawing, as in Tintoretto's "Bacchus and
+Ariadne," where the circle is to be found repeated in the crown and
+ring, in the heads of the three figures, in the breasts of Ariadne.
+Similar to this sameness of form is sameness of direction or parallelism
+of lines. Another kind of harmonious unification of lines is continuity,
+where out of different lines or shapes a single line is made. The
+classical geometrical forms of composition, as the circular or
+pyramidal, are good examples of this. The "Odalisque" of Ingres, where
+all the lines of the body constitute a single line, is a notable case.
+What Ruskin has called "the approach, intersection, interweaving of
+lines, like the sea waves on the shore,"--the conspiracy of all the
+lines in a drawing to form one single network, of which illustrations
+could be found in the work of every draftsman, is a kind of harmony
+of line. Symmetrically disposed shapes, and lines whose directions are
+opposed, have the balanced form of unity. Here, from a given point as
+center, the attention is drawn in contrary yet equal ways. Examples
+of this type of composition are abundant among the Old Masters; as a
+rigid form it is, however, disappearing. That the dramatic type of
+unity is to be found in lines will be confirmed by every one who has
+observed the movement, the career of lines. Whenever shapes are so
+disposed that they form a line leading up to a given shape, wherever,
+again, lines converge to a single point, there is a clear case of
+evolution; we begin by attending to the line at a certain point, proceed
+in a certain direction, then reach a terminal point, the goal of the
+process. In Leonardo's "Last Supper," the convergence of the perspective
+lines and the lines formed by the groups of Apostles is a case of
+evolution. The different types of unification are, of course, not
+exclusive. In the painting just referred to, all three are present:
+Christ and the Apostles are arranged along a single line, the two ends
+of which, despite their symmetrical and balanced disposition, converge
+to one central point, the Christ. Every pyramidal form of composition
+is a combination of balance between the elements at the bases of the
+triangle, convergence towards the apex, and harmony through the
+participation of the three elements in a single form. One of the most
+interesting and complex types of organization of lines is rhythm--the
+balanced, harmonious movement of lines. A line is rhythmical when there
+is a balanced alternation of direction in its movement, a turning now
+to the right and now to the left, or vice versa; proportion in the
+length of the segments made by the turns; and general direction--a
+tending somewhere.
+
+As is assumed in the preceding paragraph, the elements of lines may
+be shapes or masses, as well as points. That is, not only do lines
+made up of points form shapes, but shapes in their turn, when arranged
+on a surface, necessarily make lines. Such lines are, as a rule, not
+continuous; yet since the eye takes the shapes successively and in a
+given direction, they are nevertheless true lines and possess the
+qualities of ordinary simple lines. The arrangement of masses in an
+undulating line, say in a landscape painting, has essentially the same
+value for feeling as a similar continuous line; compare this with a
+horizontal arrangement of masses, which has all the quiet and repose
+of a simple horizontal line.
+
+Colors and lines, relying on the direct expressiveness which we have
+been studying, may stand by themselves, as in an oriental rug; yet in
+painting they have another function: to represent. And even in the
+purely ornamental use of color and line, the tendency towards
+representation is apparent everywhere; either the lines are derivatives
+of schematized pictures of men and plants and animals, or else such
+objects are introduced as motives without disguise. In painting,
+therefore, the color red has value not only as so much red, but as
+standing for the red of a girl's lips or cheeks; and that curved line
+is of significance, not as mere line alone, but as the curve of her
+limbs. In this way the native value of the sense symbols becomes
+suffused and enriched with the values of the things they represent.
+The two functions of color and of line should never be indifferent to
+each other; representation should not become a mere excuse for
+decoration, the objects represented having no value in themselves; nor
+should color and line be used as mere signs of interesting objects,
+without reference to their intrinsic value. On the contrary, the two
+functions should play into each other's hands. If, for example, the
+human body is represented, the colors and lines employed should be so
+disposed that they decorate the surface of the picture and hold us
+there through their sheer rhythm and quality; yet, at the same time,
+and through their very ornamental power, they should make us feel the
+more keenly the values of the object they represent. Between the
+immediate values of the colors and lines there should exist unity:
+stimulating colors should go with stimulating lines, quiet colors with
+quiet lines; and the resulting feeling tone of the medium should be
+in harmony with the feeling of the objects represented; the one should
+give the other over again, and so each enforce the other.
+
+Since it is not the purpose of any art to represent mere things, but
+to express concrete "states of the soul," the center of which is always
+some feeling, exact fidelity in the representation of objects is not
+necessary for good painting or drawing. Only so much of things needs
+to be represented as is necessary to give back the life of them.
+Necessary above all is the object as a whole, for to this our feelings
+are attached; now this can usually be far better represented through
+an impressionistic sketch, which gives only the significant features,
+than by a painstaking and detailed drawing. Since, furthermore, the
+life of things can be conveyed through color and line as such, a certain
+departure from realism is legitimate for this end. Without some freedom
+from the exact truth of the colors and lines of things, the artist is
+unable to choose and compose them for expressive purposes; when exactly
+like the objects which they represent, they tend to lose all expressive
+power of their own, becoming mere signs or equivalents of things. A
+certain amount of variation from the normal may be necessary in order
+that the sense symbols shall call attention to themselves, in order
+that we be prevented, as we are not in the ordinary observation of
+nature, from looking through them to the things which they mean.
+Whenever, moreover, the artist wishes to render a unique reaction to
+a scene, he can do so only through a courageous use of the subtle
+language of color and line, which may require a distortion of the
+"real" local qualities of things; for, if he makes a plain, realistic
+copy of the scene itself, he can evoke, and so express, only the normal
+emotional responses to it.
+
+When such departures from the truth of things are properly motivated,
+no one can be offended by them, any more than when the brilliant hues
+of nature appear black and white in a charcoal drawing. The amount of
+realism in any work of art is largely a matter of tacit convention.
+An artist may, if he wishes, use color with no pretense at giving back
+the real colors of objects, but for purely expressive purposes alone,
+relying on line for purposes of representation. This is often done in
+Japanese prints. All that is necessary is that we should understand
+what the artist is doing and find what he presents to us real and
+alive. On the other hand, an expressive use of color and line leading
+to a distortion of objects out of all possibility of recognition, or
+even a use which makes them seem unreal and awry, is without excuse.
+For since colors and lines are employed to bring things before the
+imagination, they should be made to serve this purpose successfully;
+the value which belongs to the things should have a chance to appear;
+but this can happen only if they seem to be actually present before
+us. Painting is not a mere music of color and line expressive of
+abstract and objectless emotions alone, but a poetry, which, through
+the picturing of objects to which emotions are attached, renders the
+latter concrete and definite. Not mere feeling, such as a color or a
+line by itself can convey, but feeling in the presence of nature, which
+can be expressed only when color and line are made into a recognizable
+image of nature, is the substance of painting. One cannot express the
+feeling of the weight and bulk of objects, of their distribution in
+three dimensions, or the value of their shadows or atmospheric
+enveloping, without the representation of weight and bulk and shadow
+and atmosphere and perspective. Every increase in the power to represent
+nature, every advance in the mastery of the object, adds a new power
+over the expression of feeling, which varies with the object. The
+realist is, therefore, right in his demand that nature itself be
+painted; only he should remember that the nature which presents itself
+in art is never the naked object, but veiled in feeling; and, as so
+veiled, may sometimes be seen pretty much as it really is; then again
+with parts concealed, and sometimes even transformed. Both a realism
+that tries to unite fidelity to the full qualities of the object with
+musical expression in the medium, and so to render the more typical
+responses to nature, which depend, for the most part, on the object
+itself, and a symbolism or expressionism that sacrifices fidelity for
+the expression, through the mere medium, of more personal responses,
+are in their rights. Only the limits of both tendencies are
+illegitimate--the use of color and line to produce mere images of
+things on the one hand, or purely musical effects on the other.
+
+The subject matter or content of painting is determined by its language,
+color, and line. These, as we have seen, by an imitation more or less
+exact, represent nature, the world of concrete things as directly
+presented to us in vision, colored and shapely. The inner world is
+expressed only so far as it is revealed in the gestures and attitudes
+of the bodies of men or so far as it is a mood attached to things and
+their colors and shapes. Now space is the universal container in which
+all elements of the visible world are disposed. Every painting,
+therefore, should include a representation of space; it should never
+represent things as if they stood alone without environment or relation.
+Even in the portrait of a single individual some relation to space
+should be indicated; this is accomplished by the background, in which
+the figures should be made to lie, and to which they should seem to
+belong. In front, the space of a picture is limited by the plane of
+the surface on which it is painted; everything should appear to belong
+in the space back of this; nothing should seem to come forward out
+towards the spectator. But behind this, backwards, the space represented
+is unlimited, and its infinite depths may well be indicated by the
+convergence of perspective lines and the gradual fading of the outlines
+and colors of objects.
+
+The represented space of the picture is not, of course, the real space
+of the canvas or of the room in which the picture hangs. The former
+is infinite, while the latter is only so many square feet in area. The
+frame serves the purpose of cutting off the represented space from all
+relation to the real space, of which the frame itself is a part. A
+confusion of these two spaces is sometimes found in crude work and in
+the comments of people upon genuine works of art. I have, for example,
+seen a picture of a lion with iron bars riveted to the frame and
+extending over it,--a represented lion in a real cage! And I once heard
+a man criticise one of Degas' paintings on the ground that "if the
+dancing girl were to straighten her bent body she would bump her head
+on the frame!" The rule that the color of the frame should harmonize
+with the main tones of the picture is no proof that they belong
+together; its purpose is merely to protect the colors of the painting
+from being changed through their neighborhood with those of the frame.
+
+Although painting is essentially a spatial art, it includes a temporal
+element, the "specious present," the single moment of action or of
+motion. The lines are not dead and static, but alive; they progress
+and vibrate; by their means a smile, the rippling of a stream, the
+gesture of surprise, the movement of a dance, may be depicted.
+Successive moments, the different phases of an action or movement,
+cannot, however, be represented. Strict unities of space and time
+should be observed in painting. Only contiguous parts of space and
+only one moment of time should be represented inside a single frame.
+Both these unities were violated in old religious paintings where
+sometimes the Nativity, Flight into Egypt, Crucifixion, and Resurrection
+were all portrayed on one canvas.
+
+The space of painting is no abstract aspect of things such as the
+geometer elaborates. To be in a common space with other things, implies,
+for the pictorial intuition of the world, to be played upon by the
+same light and to be enveloped in the same atmosphere. Space, light,
+and air constitute the milieu in which everything lives and moves and
+has its being in painting. To every difference in the arrangement and
+foreshortening of objects, to every variation in their lights and
+shadows and aerial quality, the sensitive soul responds. The close
+proximity of objects in a tiny room has an effect upon feeling very
+different from their wide distribution over a broad space. An equal
+difference depends upon whether light is concentrated upon objects or
+evenly distributed over them; upon whether it is bright or dim; upon
+whether they are near and clear in a thin air or far and hazy in a
+thick and heavy cloud. The masters of light and air, Rembrandt, Claude,
+Turner, evoke myriad moods through these subtle influences. A long
+development and the following of many false paths was necessary before
+painting discovered its true function as an expression of the elements,
+the once hard outlines of things softening in their enveloping embrace.
+
+The representation of space, which painting alone of all the arts can
+achieve, does not imply, however, a representation of the full plastic
+quality of individual objects, which is the function of sculpture.
+This, to be sure, can be done in painting, as the great
+sculptor-painters of the Renaissance have shown; but it cannot be done
+so well as in sculpture; and when done tends to interfere with other
+things. It makes objects stand out too much by themselves, destroying
+their felt unity with other elements on the canvas, so that when
+provided with all the colors of life, they seem rather real than
+painted, and look as if they wished to leave the world of
+representation, where they belong, and touch hands with the spectator.
+The depth and the extent of space, the distance and the distribution
+of objects, light and shade and air, are all independent of the
+plasticity of individual things, which tends to disappear in proportion
+as they are emphasized. Only when attention is directed to the
+individual object does its full plasticity appear; see it as an element
+of the environing whole, and it flattens out to view.
+
+There are, in fact, two ways of seeing, to each of which corresponds
+a mode of painting. On the one hand, we may see distributively, holding
+objects as individuals each in our attention, neglecting light and
+space and air. Or else we may see synthetically, first the whole which
+light and space and air compose, and then individual things as bearers
+of these. The one is the more practical way of seeing; because, for
+practical purposes, the separate thing that can be grasped and used
+is all important, and the film of light and air and the neighborhood
+of other things are of no account. The other is more theoretical and
+sthetic; for to a pure vision which does not think of handling, there
+are no separate things, but only differences of shape and color and
+location in a single object, the visible whole. [Footnote: Cf. Lipps,
+_Aesthetik_, Bd. 2, s. 165, et seq.]
+
+In the type of painting corresponding to the first way of seeing,
+objects are represented more as we think them to be, or as we should
+find them on further exploration, than as they actually appear to sight
+at any given moment; the outlines are clear and sharp and detail is
+emphasized. This mode of painting is most in place for interiors where
+there is an even distribution and no striking effects of light and
+shade, as in so many genre pictures of the Dutch school; but above all
+when the human significance of objects or their dramatic relations,
+which depend upon their being taken as separate things, is to be
+expressed. For example, to get the expression of the action of a woman
+pouring water into a jug, it is necessary that we feel the shape and
+color of the latter as aspects of a tangible reality having a distinct
+purpose, that of holding water; and this purposefulness makes of the
+object a separate, individual thing. Yet a too great distinction of
+objects and a too great elaboration of detail, as in Meissonier and
+the English Pre-Raphaelites, is inartistic; the picture breaks up into
+separate parts and all feeling of unity is lost. In the work of the
+Flemish and Dutch, on the contrary, we take delight in the perspicuity
+of things without losing the sense of wholeness; for there is a sameness
+and simplicity of color tone which unites them. A genuine and unique
+sthetic value is possessed by such work,--that of clear intuition of
+the visual detail and human significance of things.
+
+Very often the unification in painting of this type is dramatic
+chiefly--some link of action or of symbolism which the elements of
+the picture have as meanings, a unity of content, therefore, and not
+a coloristic or a linear unity. The colors are essentially local colors,
+serving first to characterize and distinguish the objects properly,
+and then to lend to them severally high value through brightness and
+temperament; although harmonizing as mere colors, they are held together
+more through some connection in what they mean than through a unity
+of pure expression. The dominance of any one mass, too, depends more
+upon its superior significance as meaning than upon its claim upon the
+attention through any intrinsic quality of color. Nevertheless, even
+if secondary, the unity and dominance through color and line must be
+present, and should be consonant with the unity and subordination in
+the meanings. The painting of the great Italian masters was of this
+character. In a Madonna picture, for example, the elements representing
+the Holy Family are united through the spiritual oneness of the objects
+which they represent, and the Madonna is dominant through her superior
+significance for the religious life. The colors serve to characterize
+and distinguish the figures; yet between the former there is a harmony
+corresponding to the inner harmony of the latter; the spiritual
+dominance of the Madonna is expressed in a purely formal fashion through
+her larger size, central position, and more brightly gleaming garments.
+
+In painting which corresponds to the synthetic way of seeing, all
+particular objects are subordinated to space and light and air; their
+outlines are melting, suggested rather than seen, and there is little
+emphasis on detail. Turner's painting of light and the more recent
+examples of impressionism afford abundant examples of this. In this
+style, unification is effected almost wholly through color and line
+as such, and through the light and space and air which they represent.
+Just to live in the same atmosphere or in the path of the same light,
+to be enveloped in the same darkness or shadow, or merely to participate
+in a single composition of colors or rhythm of lines serves to unite
+objects. The relative importance of elements, too, is determined rather
+by some intrinsic quality which arrests attention than by any supremacy
+as meanings.
+
+Through such materials and methods as we have described, the
+possibilities and limits of expression in painting are determined.
+First of all, painting has the power, through color and line as such,
+to express the purely musical emotions; this we demand of painting
+just as we demand music of verse: without word-music, there is no
+poetry, no matter how high the theme; so without color and line music,
+no matter how skillful the representation or how noble the subject,
+there is no picture. Painting may give little more than this. In much
+of still-life painting, for example, the values attached to the objects
+represented are borrowed from the music of the medium. And even when
+the objects represented have a value in themselves, the superiority
+of their representation over the mere perception of them in nature
+comes from this source. Why, for example, does the painting of flowers
+by a real master afford a richer aesthetic experience than real flowers?
+Painted flowers have no perfume, rightly called the soul of flowers.
+It is because in painting the expressiveness of the purer and more
+subtly harmonious colors more than compensates for the lack of odor.
+Through the music of color and line we are made responsive to common
+things which otherwise would leave us cold, or if we are responsive
+to them, our sensitiveness becomes finer and keener. It is largely
+because he is so accomplished a musician in color and composition that
+Jan Vermeer can make the inside of a room or some commonplace act by
+a commonplace person the object of an intense and sympathetic
+contemplation.
+
+For the beauty of landscape also, which the art of painting has created
+and which during the last century has become its favorite theme, the
+music of color is equally essential. In its highest form, that beauty
+requires emotional responsiveness combined with the power accurately
+to observe and reproduce the qualities of things; without observation
+and reproduction, the feeling is incommunicable; without feeling, the
+imitation is lifeless. Love of the object, which at once reveals and
+makes responsive, mediates the highest achievements of the art. By
+translating the object into the language of abstract color and line,
+it is purified for feeling; for those qualities toward which feeling
+is indifferent are eliminated; only so much as can enter into an
+expressive color or line composition survives. The artist gives us the
+illusion that he is reproducing our familiar world all the while that
+he is glorifying it through the beauty of the colors in which he paints
+it. The painting of the human body, especially the nude human body,
+belongs to the same class of subjects as the painting of landscapes.
+For the human body unclothed, and as unclothed severed from the
+conventional social world, is a part of nature and speaks to us as
+nature does through form and color. To bring that object before us
+with all its expressive detail; to make us, in the imagination, move
+with it and touch it; to caress it with our eyes; to awaken that
+passionate interest which makes us see and feel it more vividly than
+anything else in the world, yet to subdue passion wholly to a glowing
+contemplation, this is one of the highest achievements of pictorial
+art. And the artistic right to represent it in the woods by lake or
+stream, or in the meadow among other natural things, must be accorded
+to the artist despite all protests of convention and habit; we never
+actually find it there, to be sure, yet there it belongs for imaginative
+feelings. The maidens in Corot's paintings, for example, seem to belong
+as naturally to the landscape as the very trees themselves.
+
+But the painter can depict the human body not merely as something
+sensuously beautiful, but as expressive, through gesture and pose and
+countenance, of character and thought. The complex psychic life of man
+is thus open to him for delineation. In the portrait, through the
+attentive study of the many varying expressions of the inner life,
+leading to the selection of some characteristic pose or action, the
+artist concentrates into a single image what seems to him to be the
+distinctive nature of the man. And he can express this nature over
+again, and so more effectively reveal it, in the mere colors and lines
+which he uses. Thus Franz Hals has embodied the abundance and good
+cheer of his burghers in the boldness and brightness of the lines and
+colors with which he paints them; and Hogarth, in the "Shrimp Girl,"
+through the mere singularity of line and color, has created the eerie
+impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits
+subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the
+painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls
+of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which
+must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the
+same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and
+if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the
+portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal
+characters; ideal, not in the sense of good, but in the sense of more
+highly complex and unified than actually existing persons. Such pictures
+symbolize for us the quintessence and highest level of definite types
+of life. Manet's "Olympia" and Goya's "Maja" belong here equally with
+Leonardo's "Christ" or "Mona Lisa," with Raphael's Madonnas and
+Michelangelo's gods and angels. In them is attained the most intense
+concentration of psychic life possible.
+
+It is now pretty generally recognized that the unities of time and
+space exclude from the sphere of painting story telling and history,
+which require for effective representation more than the single moment
+included in painting. In order to tell a story in painting, one has
+to supplement what is seen with ideas which can be obtained only from
+a catalogue or other source external to the picture; one has to add
+in thought to the moment given on the canvas the missing moments of
+the action. But a work of art should be complete in itself and so far
+as possible self-explanatory; it should not lead us away from itself,
+but keep us always to itself. If the scene represented be a part of
+a story, the story should be so well known that its connection with
+the picture can be immediately recognized without external aid, and
+should admit of a certain completeness in its various parts. The life
+of Christ is such a story; everybody knows it and can interpret a
+picture portraying it forthwith; its various incidents and situations
+have each a unique and complete significance in themselves. Historical
+paintings are not necessarily bad, of course, but the good ones are
+good despite the history, and a proof of their excellence consists in
+the fact that when we see them they make us forget for the moment our
+historical erudition.
+
+This norm does not exclude from the sphere of painting the expression
+of the relation of man to his fellows; it simply confines painting to
+the delineation of momentary and self-sufficient glimpses of social
+life. Pictures representing a mother and child, a pair of lovers, a
+family group, festival, tavern scene, or battle charge are
+illustrations. In Dutch painting the social life of Holland in the
+seventeenth century found its record; yet there is little or no
+anecdote. The genre, the representation of a group of people united
+by some common interest and with an appropriate background, has the
+same legitimacy, if not the same eminence, as the portrait. It does
+not possess the rank of the portrait because, since the interest is
+rather in the action or the situation portrayed, the figures are more
+merely typical, being developed only so far as is necessary to carry
+the action; seldom is a subtle and individualized inner life portrayed.
+
+Objections are rightly raised, however, against pathetic, sentimental,
+and moralistic painting. Here color and line, the whole picture in
+fact, counts for little or nothing except to stir an emotion, usually
+of grief or pity or love, or to preach a sermon; the unity of form and
+content is sacrificed, the one becoming a mere means to the other.
+But, as we know, it is never the purpose of art merely to stir feeling;
+its purpose is to objectify feeling; if the art be painting, to put
+feeling into color and line, and only when feeling is experienced as
+_there_ is it aesthetic feeling at all. And what shall we think
+of a picture like the "Doctor" of Luke Fildes', which is so pathetic
+that one cannot bear to look at it? Surely a picture should make one
+want to see it! Of course I do not mean that an artist cannot paint
+pathetic and sentimental subjects. The great painters of the Passion
+would disprove that with reference to the former and Watteau with
+reference to the latter. But a power to achieve beauty of color and
+line and to objectify pathos and sentiment through them was possessed
+by these painters to a degree to which few others have attained. For
+moralistic painting, however, there can be no excuse. You can paint
+visible things and as much of the soul as can appear through them; you
+cannot paint abstract ethical maxims. Of course a painter may intend
+his picture to be an illustration of some moral maxim, or may even,
+as Hogarth did, paint it to expose the sins of his age and create a
+beautiful work notwithstanding; but only if, in the result, this purpose
+is irrelevant and the concrete delineation everything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SCULPTURE
+
+
+The sculptor has this advantage over all other artists, that his chief
+subject is the most beautiful thing in the world--the human body. In
+two ways the body is supremely beautiful: as an expression of mind and
+as an embodiment of sensuous charm. In the body mind has become actually
+incarnate; there purpose, emotion, and thought have taken shape and
+manifestation. And this shape, through its appeal to the amorous,
+parental, and gregarious feelings, and through the complete organization
+of its parts, has no rival in loveliness. What wonder, therefore, that
+sculptors have always thought of their work as simply one of mere
+imitation of nature, the divine. Yet in sculpture, as in the other
+arts, the imitative process is never slavish, but selective and
+inventive. For the body is interesting to the artist only in so far
+as it is beautiful, that is, so far as it has charm and exhibits the
+control of mind; some of its details and many of its attitudes, having
+no relation to either, are unfit for imitation; and, although inspired
+by his model, the sculptor seeks to create out of his impressions a
+still more harmonious object.
+
+To give to his material the semblance of the body beautiful is the
+technical problem of the sculptor. Although this semblance is primarily
+for sight, it is not exclusively so. For in sculpture shape is not
+two-dimensional, but plastic; and for the full appreciation of
+plasticity, the cooperation of touch is required. Moreover, not only
+the perception of the form, but also a large part of the appreciation
+of the charm of the body depends upon touch. Of course we do not
+ordinarily touch statues, but they should make us want to touch them,
+and we should touch them--in the imagination. The surfaces of the
+statue should therefore be so modeled as to give us, in the imagination,
+the pleasures that we get when we touch the living body. It is well
+known that these touch values were destroyed by the neo-classicists
+when they polished the surfaces of their statues. Such sculpture for
+the eye only is almost as good when reproduced in an engraving that
+preserves its visual quality, and is therefore lacking in complete
+sculptural beauty. But no plane reproduction can replace the best
+Greek, Italian, or French work.
+
+The life of the statue should, however, be more than skin deep. We
+should appreciate it through sensations of motion and strain as well
+as through sight and touch, feeling the tenseness or relaxation of the
+muscles and tendons beneath. We should move with its motion or rest
+with its repose. And this does not mean that we should merely know
+that an attitude of quiet or of motion is represented; we should
+actually experience quiet or motion. In our own bodies sensations
+corresponding to these should be awakened by the visual image of the
+statue, yet should be fused with the latter, becoming for our perception
+its, not ours, in accordance with the mechanism of _einfuhlung_
+described in our fourth chapter. The light rhythmic motion of the
+figures in Carpeaux's "Dance" should thrill in our own limbs, yet seem
+to thrill in theirs.
+
+Because it preserves the full three-dimensional presence of the body,
+sculpture is, next to the drama, the most realistic of the arts. This
+realism is not, however, an unmixed advantage for general appreciation.
+For, finding the shape of the body, men sometimes demand its color and
+life, complaining that the statue is cold and dead;[Footnote: See
+Byron, _Don Juan_, Canto II, cxviii.] or else, giving life to the
+form, they react to it practically and socially, as they would toward
+the real body. Yet, for the one attitude, the art itself cannot be
+held responsible, but rather some want of genius in the artist or lack
+of imagination in the spectator; and as for the other, although only
+a bloodless dogma would demand the elimination of passion and interest
+from the appreciation of sculpture--for unless the marble arouse the
+natural feelings toward the body it is no successful
+expression--nevertheless, good taste does demand that, through attention
+to form and a sense of the unreality of the object, these feelings be
+subdued to contemplation.
+
+In order to keep the statue on the ideal plane, it should not be too
+realistically fashioned. If it looks too much like a man, we shall
+first treat it as a man, as we do one of Jarley's or Mme. Tissaud's
+waxworks, and then after we have been undeceived, we shall have toward
+it an uncanny feeling, totally unaesthetic, as towards a corpse. The
+statue, therefore, if life-sized, should not be given the colors or
+clothing of life. Tinting is not excluded, provided no attempt is made
+at exact imitation; and when the statue is of heroic, or less than the
+normal size, as in porcelain, both coloring and clothing may be more
+realistic. No hard and fast rules can be formulated; yet the principle
+is plain--there should be realism in one aspect, above all in shape,
+in order that there may be an aesthetic semblance of life, but not in
+all, in order that the statue may not be a mere substitute for life,
+awakening the reactions appropriate to life. Moreover, appreciating
+the beauty of his material, the sculptor may not wish to cover it up,
+as he would if he tinted it. As in painting, the attainment of beauty
+in the medium may interfere with full realism in execution. For the
+sake of beauty of color, the worker in bronze will be content to see
+the white man black, and for the sake of beauty of line he may even
+sacrifice something of exactness in the rendering of shape.
+
+For there is a beauty in the media of sculpture, apart from what they
+may represent, quite as real, if not as obvious, as in the other arts.
+And without this beauty, there is no artistic sculpture. Its subtlety
+does not diminish its importance or its effect upon our feeling, for
+it makes all the difference between a mere imitation of nature and a
+work of art charming and compelling. We do not need to recognize its
+existence explicitly in order to appreciate it; yet, as soon as our
+attention is called to it, we admit it and accord to it that rare
+influence which before was felt but nameless.
+
+In the first place, the color of the material is expressive. The black
+and gold of bronze have a depth and intensity, the whiteness of marble
+a coldness, clarity, and, serenity, inescapable. The weight and
+hardness, or lightness and softness, of the material, also count. If
+people do not feel the expressiveness of these qualities directly,
+they nevertheless do feel it indirectly, whenever they appreciate the
+superior fitness of marble and bronze for the embodiment of the heroic
+and supernatural, and of the light and fragile porcelain for the more
+fleeting and trivial phases of life. Size, too, is expressive. There
+is a daintiness and tenderness about a little statue, contrasting
+strongly with the grandeur and majesty of one of heroic size. The usual
+small size of the terra cotta figurines among the Greeks was appropriate
+for the genre subjects which they so frequently represented, and an
+Aphrodite in this material is rather the Earthly than the Heavenly
+Love.
+
+There is also an evident beauty of line in sculpture, similar to the
+beauty of line in painting. The curved line is expressive of movement
+and grace; the horizontal, of repose; the crooked line, of energy and
+conflict. Compare, from this point of view, Rodin's "The Aged Helmet-
+Maker's Wife" with his "Danaid,"--how expressive of struggle and
+suffering are the uneven lines of the former, how voluptuous the curves
+of the latter! Michelangelo is the great example of the use of tortuous
+lines for the expression of conflict. Undulating vertical lines are
+largely responsible for the "grace and dignity" of the classic
+sculpture.
+
+There is an organic unity of line in sculpture, similar again to that
+in painting. And by line I mean not only surface lines, but the lines
+made by the planes in which the body lies, the lines of pose and
+attitude. The predominance of a single type of line, the union of many
+lines to form a single continuous line, balance and symmetry of line,
+proportion of length and parallelism, are all to be found in sculpture.
+Especially important is rhythm--the harmonious, balanced movement of
+lines. In the "Venus de Milo," for example, the plane of the lower
+limbs from the feet to the knees moves to the left; there is an opposite
+and balancing movement from the right knee to the waist; the first
+movement is repeated in the parallel line from the right hip to the
+top of the head; this, in turn, is balanced by a line in the opposite
+direction running from the left hip to the right shoulder, parallel
+to the second line; but the equilibrium of line is not a rigid one,
+for the body as a whole moves in an undulating line to the left,
+imparting grace and a total unity.
+
+The beauty of line in sculpture is, of course, no invention of the
+artist; for nature has created it in the body itself. The sculptor
+takes this beauty as the basis of his work, remodeling only by the
+elimination of details, through which purer effects of line are
+obtained, or by the selection and emphasis of pose, through which these
+effects are rendered more intensely expressive. All conventionalization
+is in the interest of increased beauty of line. But too great a
+sacrifice of the natural contours of the body, as in some of the work
+of the Cubists, results in a lifelessness that cannot be atoned for
+by any formal beauty.
+
+The unification of line in sculpture is a matter not only of lines
+within the whole and of single contours, but of the total visual form
+of the whole, of silhouette. Although three-dimensional, every statue
+casts a two-dimensional image on the retina. It makes as many of these
+plane pictures as there are points of view from which it can be seen.
+One can easily convince oneself of this by viewing a statue from a
+distance, when it will flatten out to a mere outline or silhouette.
+As such, it should be clear and simple and pleasing, capable of being
+grasped as a whole irrespective of detail. Michelangelo demanded that
+every statue be capable of being put inside of some simple geometrical
+figure, like a pyramid or a cube; that there be no wayward arms or
+legs, but close attachment to the body, so close that the statue might
+be rolled down hill without any part being broken off. This last is
+perhaps too rigorous a requirement, but the best work of all periods
+exhibits visual clarity and concentration.[Footnote: Compare Adolf
+Hildebrand, The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture.]
+
+Within its contours the statue stands alone. This is the essential
+difference between painting and sculpture; the painted thing is always
+a part of a larger spatial whole within which it exists in relation
+to other things, while the sculptured thing exists by itself; the space
+of the statue is the space which it fills; there is no further space
+to which it belongs, no background in which it lies. The space of
+sculpture, like the space of painting, is of course a represented or
+imaginary space, to be carefully distinguished from the real space of
+the room in which it is placed and the floor upon which it stands. The
+pedestal serves the same purpose in sculpture as the frame in the
+sister art; it cuts off the ideal space which the statue fills from
+the real space where it is housed, raising it above the common ground
+of real life, with its practical and social attitudes, into the realm
+of contemplation. The pedestal should be of a different material from
+the statue, else it belongs with the latter, and fails to perform its
+separating junction. The plate, on the other hand, should be of the
+same material, otherwise the statue would be made to stand on our
+earth, and in the same space with us.
+
+However, just as in painting every object should be represented as
+belonging to a wider whole of space, so in sculpture, every part of
+the body should be represented as belonging to the whole body. If,
+therefore, only a part of the body is sculptured, it should be evident
+that it is a part and not the whole. In the portrait statue, for
+example, if the head alone is represented, there should appear, along
+with the head, as much of the bust as will suggest attachment to the
+body, in order that it may not seem decapitated! It is because the
+torso is so obviously a fragment of an ideal whole that we do not feel
+it to be an uncanny mutilation of a man or woman. In its present
+condition, the "Venus de Milo" is not the statue of an armless woman,
+but a statue of part of a whole woman.
+
+A statue is not sufficiently unified by representing a single individual
+or several individuals united by some common interest or by
+participation in some common action; the unity in the object should
+be expressed through a unity in the material of representation. The
+finest taste requires that every statue should be made of only one
+kind of material. One part, say the body, should not be of marble, and
+another part, say the girdle, of gold or bronze. Such a combination
+of materials gives the impression of two things juxtaposed, not of a
+single whole. If in defense of this one were to say that through the
+difference of materials real differences in the object are portrayed,
+consistency would require that the principle be carried out, that the
+hair be of another material, and the eyes of still a third, with the
+result of making the statue a sheer agglomerate. And when more than
+one individual is represented, even a unity of material is not
+sufficient; it is necessary, in addition, that the several figures in
+the group be in contact with each Other. It is not enough that they
+stand on the same plate; for the real empty space that we see between
+them will keep them apart. The ideal space to which they belong, and
+the spiritual or dramatic oneness, should be mediated by a material
+touch of hands or other parts of the body. Compare, in this connection,
+Rodin's "Citizens of Calais" where this principle is violated, with
+the three figures from the summit of his "Hell Gate," where it is
+observed. In the former we simply know that the figures belong together,
+but we do not feel them as together.[Footnote: Compare Lipps,
+_Aesthetik_, Bd. 2, Fuenftes Kapitel.]
+
+In the normal type of sculpture only one figure is represented. For
+this, there is, perhaps, a chief point of regard, in front, the same
+as that which we ordinarily occupy with reference to our fellow men.
+Yet, since the body is beautiful from every point of view, the statue,
+unless designed to fit into a niche, should be so made that we shall
+want to move around it and survey it from every angle. Here is another
+difference between painting and sculpture. In the group, however, where
+several figures are represented united by some common interest or by
+participating in some common action, this difference is already
+beginning to disappear. For, in order to appreciate the dramatic
+significance of the group, the point of regard from in front is
+essential. The other aspects remain important for their corporeal
+beauty, but, since that is not ordinarily paired with an equal inner
+significance, they come to acquire a secondary place.
+
+Impressionistic sculpture represents a further departure from the
+normal and in the direction of the pictorial. Here part of the block
+from which the statue has been hewn is left an integral member of the
+piece; and out of it the figure seems to grow, as it were. It performs
+in the whole a function corresponding to the background of a
+portrait--the representation of the environment. Thus, in Meunier's
+"The Miner," the block represents the mine; in Rodin's "Orpheus and
+Eurydice," it represents the mouth of Hades; in his "Mystery of the
+Spring," a basin. Through the possibility of thus representing the
+relation of man to his environment a notable extension in the scope
+of sculpture is obtained.
+
+When a background is introduced, the figure or figures, being members
+of a larger whole, require less detailed treatment, less clearness of
+outline. Their parts may even be left in large measure unfinished, the
+contours melting together with the block. A special point of regard,
+from which alone the figures are modeled, is obviously essential.
+Striking is the contrast of this type with the classic, where the
+utmost precision in modeling is necessary. Along with the diminished
+emphasis on clearness of form goes an increased effort at the portrayal
+of the inner, more spiritual life; sentiment and mystery find an
+unwonted place in the art. Rodin's "Psyche" is a good illustration.
+Yet, despite these differences, the classic demand for living surfaces,
+for rhythmical lines, for perspicuity and totality of silhouette, for
+singleness and unity of material, abides.
+
+However, when the block attains prominence, the unification of the
+different figures through contact is no longer of equal necessity. The
+background serves the purpose of bringing the figures together, of
+providing a material bond between them. This is especially true in the
+various kinds of relief, between which and sculpture in the round,
+impressionistic sculpture is a sort of compromise. In relief there may
+even be a representation of perspective, the figures seeming to lie
+behind each other, flatter and smaller to indicate distance. But we
+shall not enter into the technique of this, which obviously approaches
+that of painting.
+
+When the charm of the body is the prime object of expression, those
+actions and poses which exhibit grace and vigor are the ones naturally
+chosen. This beauty is best revealed in the single figure, because in
+the group there is usually some dramatic interest which diverts
+attention from it. The figure is preferably wholly or partially
+undraped, or when drapery is used, it should reveal the body underneath
+and possess beauty of line of its own. Elaboration of drapery for its
+own sake, or in order to display virtuosity in modeling, shows lack
+of true sculptural vision, which always has its eye on the naked form.
+Aside from lack of charm, the old and crippled are avoided because
+their inharmonious lines would appear again in a statue which reproduced
+them; it is not possible, as in painting, to make a harmony out of
+them through relation to other lines in the total work, for no other
+lines exist; nor can their natural ugliness be so easily made acceptable
+through beauty of color and light. Nevertheless, no one can dogmatically
+assert that the artist must confine himself in his choice of subjects.
+If by harmonizing the distorted lines of an ugly body with each other,
+and by enhancing the given purity and expressiveness of his material,
+the artist can create a beauty of form overlying the repellence of the
+subject, and if he can make us feel the tragedy or pathos of age and
+disease, no one can gainsay his work. In his "Aged Helmet-Maker's
+Wife," Rodin has perhaps accomplished this. [Footnote: See Rodin's own
+defense of this statue in his _L'Art_, chap. II.]
+
+In the classic sculpture the expression of the inner life is subordinate
+to the expression of corporeal beauty. Or, so far as mind is revealed,
+the revelation occurs through the body as a whole,--through attitude
+and pose and act. In this way complete unity between the inner and the
+outer beauty is preserved. For when through subtle modeling of the
+face the expression of the intense and individualized life of thought
+is attempted, the beauties of soul and body tend to fall apart and
+become rivals for attention. In classic sculpture, therefore, the face
+is rightly somewhat inexpressive, or better, is expressive of only the
+broad and typical human emotions. Fine or deep qualities may, however,
+be expressed; for dignity, poise, intelligence, sorrow, and active joy
+make themselves manifest in the total _habitus_ of the body no less than
+in the face.
+
+The work of Michelangelo is a further proof that sculpture can express
+the spiritual life, not only in the face, but in the body also. The
+expression there is no different in essential kind from that found in
+the heroic classic sculpture. It is universal, typical, not individual,
+personal; of the gods, not of men. Its quality alone differs; it is
+monstrous, pathological, grandiose, instead of serene and happily
+balanced.
+
+But sculpture can also portray the individualized psychic life.
+[Footnote: Consult the discussion in Rodin's _L'Art_, chap. VII.]
+For this, the portrait bust is the most appropriate medium of
+expression. By separating the head, the natural seat of mind, from the
+rest of the body, the rivalry between the beauty of soul and form is
+obviated. How much sculpture can do in this way is shown by the work
+of the Greeks and Romans in ancient times, and by such men as Houdon
+and Rodin among the moderns. Think of the intense and concentrated
+expression of thought and emotion in the "Voltaire" of Houdon and the
+"Dalou" of Rodin! Success depends largely upon the modeling of the
+subtle lines of the face, where the more highly specialized workings
+of the mind leave their impress. Whatever of character the face may
+express can be expressed over again in its image. Of course the unique
+responses of mind to definite situations, such as, for example, the
+conversation of a man with his fellows, cannot be portrayed in
+sculpture, which isolates the individual. But the characteristic mood
+and attitude, the permanent residuum and condition of these responses,
+can be portrayed; and this constitutes personality or character. As
+Schopenhauer declared, the character of a man is better revealed in
+the face when he is in repose than when he is responding to other men,
+for there is always a certain amount of dissimulation or insincerity
+in social intercourse. The impossibility of rendering the color and
+animation of the eye constitutes a real deficiency, but, as has often
+been pointed out, this is partly minimized through the fact that the
+expression of the eye depends largely upon the brows; by itself, the
+eye is inexpressive. The portrait statue has much the same purpose as
+the bust, and hence should be draped. The heroic, equestrian statue,
+however, expresses rather the imposing, socially perceptible side of
+the man, than the inner life of thought and sentiment revealed in the
+bust.
+
+The development of sculpture has produced nothing more beautiful than
+the solitaire statues which the Greeks have left us; and when we think
+of Greek sculpture we usually have in mind these marble or bronze
+images of gods and heroes. But we should not forget the figurines of
+terra cotta, a genre sculpture, representing men and women in the acts
+and attitudes of daily life, at work and at play. The ideal of sculpture
+should not be pitched too high. There is no reason why, with the example
+set by the Greeks, sculpture should not portray the lighter and more
+usual phases of human life. If sculpture is to strike new paths, and
+be something more than a repetition of classical models, it must become
+more realistic. And, as we have already noted, by making use of the
+block as a sort of background, even some relation of man to his
+environment can be represented. Through the group the simpler relations
+of man with his fellows--comradeship, love, conflict, or common
+action--can be expressed; although the power of sculpture is greatly
+limited in this direction. Sculpture is often taxed by people who
+emphasize the importance of the political and industrial mechanism
+with inability to portray large groups of men and the more complex
+relations arising out of the dependence of man upon nature and society.
+But one may well urge the compensating worth which sculpture will
+always possess of recalling men to a sense of the value and beauty of
+the individual as such, especially in an age like our own where they
+tend to be forgotten.
+
+The principles that apply to the use of historical, literary, and
+symbolic themes in painting hold with increased force in sculpture.
+We must admit the right of the sculptor to illustrate simple and
+well-known historical or fictitious situations. At the same time,
+however, we must remember that a work of this kind is subject to a
+twofold standard: first and indispensable, the sculptural, is the form
+animate and beautiful; then, are the life and action appropriate to
+the idea? The first is alone absolutely unequivocal. The second, on
+the other hand, is largely relative; for unless the sculptor has carried
+out the idea in so masterly a fashion that we can think of no other
+possibility--as Phidias is said to have done with his statue of
+Zeus--there must always be something arbitrary about any particular
+representation. This arbitrary element is increased in symbolic
+sculpture. You can perhaps depict an actual or fictitious human
+situation by means of sculptured bodies and make your image seem
+inevitable; but how can you make bodies the vehicles of abstractions?
+Moreover, sculpture is a realistic art; it presents us with the
+semblance of living forms, and if these forms are monstrous or are
+shown accomplishing impossible things, they cannot escape a certain
+aspect of the ridiculous. I have in mind Rodin's "Man and His Thought."
+If the man were only represented fashioning the figure with his hands,
+his hands guided by his thought; but the hands are inactive, and the
+figure grows by thought alone! Or consider "The Hand of God" by the
+same artist. To say that we are in the hands of God is a good
+metaphorical way of expressing our dependence upon the Destiny that
+shapes our ends; but it is another thing to exhibit us as actually
+enfolded by a hand.
+
+The more sensitive we are to the beauty of the body and of the mind,
+so far as manifest through the body, the better content we shall be
+with normal sculpture and the less urgently we shall demand symbolism.
+Of course all statues may become symbolic, as all works of art may,
+in the sense of possessing a universal meaning won by generalizing
+their individual significance. Symbolic in this legitimate way were
+the statues of the Greek gods; thus Aphrodite, who was lovely, became
+Love, and Athena, who was wise, became Wisdom. But there is nothing
+arbitrary in such symbolism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BEAUTY IN THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS: ARCHITECTURE
+
+
+In the arts which we have studied so far, beauty has been the sole or
+chief end; in the industrial arts, beauty can be only a part of their
+total meaning. No matter how much of an artist a builder or a potter
+may be, he is necessarily controlled by the practical needs which
+houses and pots subserve. This was the original condition of all
+artists; for "in the beginning," before life's various aims were
+distinguished and pursued in isolation, the beautiful was always married
+to some other interest. Our method of study has, therefore, reversed
+the temporal order; but with intent, for we believe that the nature
+of a thing is better revealed in its final than in its rudimentary
+form. To complete our survey of the arts, we must, however, give some
+consideration to those works in which the unity of the useful and the
+beautiful is still preserved; and as an example we have chosen
+architecture, the most magnificent of them all.
+
+First, we must clear up what might seem to be an inconsistency in our
+thinking. In our definition of art we insisted upon the freedom of
+beauty and the contrast between the aesthetic and the practical
+attitudes, yet now we are admitting that some things may be at once
+useful and beautiful. It would seem as if we must either modify our
+definition of art or else deny beauty to such objects as bridges and
+buildings. But we cannot do the latter, for the beauty of Brooklyn
+bridge or Notre Dame in Paris is a matter of direct feeling, which no
+theory can disestablish. And it is impossible to solve the problem by
+supposing that in the industrial arts beauty and utility are extraneous
+to each other, two separable aspects, which have no intimate connection.
+For the fact that a bridge spans a river or that a church is a place
+of worship is an element in its beauty. The aesthetic meaning of the
+object depends upon the practical meaning. You cannot reduce the beauty
+of a bridge or a cathedral to such factors as mere size and fine
+proportions, without relation to function. No preconceived idea of the
+purity of beauty can undermine our intuition of the beauty of utility.
+
+Yet the dependence of beauty upon utility in the industrial arts is
+not at variance with the freedom from practical attitudes which we
+have claimed for it. For the beauty is still in the realm of perception,
+of contemplation, not of use. It is a pleasure in seeing how the purpose
+is expressed in the form and material of the object, not a pleasure
+in the possession of the object or an enjoyment of its benefits. I may
+take pleasure in the vision of purpose well embodied in an object which
+another man possesses, and my admiration will be as disinterested as
+my appreciation of a statue. And even if I do make use of the object,
+I may still get an aesthetic experience out of it, whenever I pause and
+survey it, delighting in it as an adequate expression of its purpose
+and my own joy in using it. Then beauty supervenes upon mere utility,
+and a value for contemplation grows out of and, for the moment,
+supplants a value in use. I now take delight in the perception of an
+object when formerly I took delight only in its use; I now enjoy the
+expression of purpose for its present perceived perfection, when once
+I enjoyed it only for its ulterior results. Such intervals of restful
+contemplation interrupt the activity of every thoughtful maker or user
+of tools. Thus the practical life may enter into the aesthetic, and
+that which grows out of exigence may develop into freedom.
+
+There is one more objection which may be urged against the aesthetic
+character of the expression of practical purpose, namely, that the
+appreciation of it is an affair of intellect, not of feeling. This
+would indeed be fatal if it were necessarily true; but all men who
+love their work know that they put into admiration for their tools as
+much of warm emotion as of mind. There remains, however, the genuine
+difficulty of communicating this emotional perception of useful objects,
+of making it universal. It must be admitted that the attitude of the
+average beholder towards a useful object is usually practical, not
+contemplative, or else purely intellectual, an effort to understand
+its structure, with the idea of eventual use. Most works of industrial
+art produce no aesthetic experience whatever. But to be a genuine and
+complete work of fine art, an object must be so made that it will
+immediately impel the spectator to regard it aesthetically.
+
+From what we have already established, we know how this requirement
+can be met: by elaborating the outer aspects of the object in the
+direction of pleasure and expression. By this means the beauty of mere
+appearance will strike and occupy the mind, inducing the aesthetic
+attitude towards the outside, from which it may then spread and embrace
+the inner, purposive meaning. The obviously disinterested and warmly
+emotional admiration of the shape will prevent the admiration for the
+purposive adaptation from being cold and abstract. Hence, although
+from the point of view of utility the beauty of mere appearance may
+seem to be a superfluity, it is almost indispensable from an aesthetic
+point of view, since it raises the appreciation of the purpose to the
+aesthetic plane. And we can understand how enthusiastic workmen, whose
+admiration for their work is already aesthetic, must necessarily desire
+to consecrate and communicate this feeling by beautifying the appearance
+of their products; how inevitably, through the ages, they have made
+things not only as perfect as they could, but as charming.
+
+When developed for the ends of the aesthetic life, the useful object
+exhibits, therefore, two levels of beauty: first, that of appearance,
+of form and sensation, line and shape and color; and second, that of
+purpose spoken in the form. The first is of the vague and immediate
+character so well known to us; the second is more definite and less
+direct, since it depends upon the interpretation of the object in terms
+of its function. The relation between the two is like that which
+obtains, in a painting, between color and line, on the one hand, and
+representation, on the other. When the first level of beauty is richly
+developed on its own account, it becomes ornament. In a Greek vase,
+for example, there is a beauty of symmetrical, well-proportioned shape,
+delicate coloring of surface, and decorative painting, which might be
+felt by people who knew nothing of its use; and, in addition, for those
+who have this knowledge, a beauty in the fine balance of parts in the
+adjustment of clay to its final cause. These factors, which we have
+distinguished by analysis, should, however, be felt as one in the
+aesthetic intuition of the object; the form, although beautiful in
+itself, should reveal the function, and the decoration, no matter how
+charming, should be appropriate and subordinate. Otherwise, as indeed
+so often happens, the beauty of one aspect may completely dominate the
+others; when the object either remains a pretty ornament perhaps, but
+is functionally dead; or else, if it keep this life, loses its unity
+in a rivalry of beautiful aspects.
+
+All these points are strikingly illustrated in architecture. The
+architects claim that their art is a liberal one aiming at beauty, yet
+most buildings to-day are objects of practical interest alone. Their
+doors are merely for entrance, their windows for admission of light,
+their walls for inclosure. Few people, as they hurry in or out of an
+office building or a railway station, stay to contemplate the majesty
+of the height or the elegance of the facade; they transact their
+business, buy their tickets, check their luggage, and go. Even when
+the building has some claim to beauty, the mood of commercial life
+stifles observation; or, if the building is observed, there is no
+strong emotion or vivid play of imagination, no permanent impression
+of beauty lingering in the memory, no enrichment of the inner life,
+such as a musical air or a poem affords, but only a transient and
+fruitless recognition. For this reason many have thought that buildings
+must become useless, as castles and ruined temples are, in order to
+be beautiful. Yet, in proportion as this is true, it involves a failure
+on the part of architecture, a failure to make the useful a part of
+the beautiful. A building, which was designed to be a habitation of
+man, when taken apart from the life which it was meant to shelter and
+sustain, is an abstraction or a vain ornament at best. If the company
+which peopled it are gone, it can win significance only if we re-create
+them in the imagination, moving in the halls or worshiping at the
+altars. We cannot get rid of the practical for the sake of the aesthetic,
+but must take up the practical into the aesthetic. For this reason
+architecture has achieved its greatest successes where its uses have
+been most largely and freely emotional, most closely akin to the
+brooding spirit of beauty--in religious buildings.
+
+Most buildings, it must be admitted, are not beautiful at all. In order
+to be beautiful, they should be alive, and alive all over, as a piece
+of sculpture is alive; there should be no unresponsive surfaces or
+details; but most of our buildings are dead--dead walls, dead lines,
+oblong boxes, neat and commodious, but dead. The practical problems
+which the architect has to solve are so complex and difficult, and the
+materials which he uses are so refractory, that there is inevitably
+a sacrifice of the beauty of appearance to utility. The very size of
+a building makes it aesthetically unmanageable all over. Here the lesser
+industrial arts, like the goldsmith's, have an advantage in the superior
+control which the workman can exert over his materials; his work is
+that of a single mind and hand; it does not require, as architecture
+does, the cooperation of a crowd of unfeeling artisans. In architecture,
+mechanical necessities and forms threaten to supplant aesthetic
+principles and shapes. The heavy square blocks, the rectangular lines,
+seem the antithesis of life and beauty. "All warmth, all movement, all
+love is round, or at least oval.... Only the cold, immovable,
+indifferent, and hateful is straight and square.... Life is round, and
+death is angular." [Footnote: Ellen Key, _The Few and the Many_,
+translated from a quotation in Max Dessoir, _Aesthetik und Allgemeine
+Kunstwissenschaft_, page 396.] What vividness of imagination or
+sentiment can transmute these dead and hollow masses into a life
+universally felt?
+
+And yet, in a series of works of art among the most magnificent that
+man possesses, this miracle was achieved. The Greek temples and Gothic
+cathedrals are so much alive that they seem not to have been made with
+hands, but to have grown. The straight lines have been modified into
+delicate curves, the angles have given place to arches, the stiff and
+mathematical have been molten into movement and surprise, the heaviness
+has been so nicely balanced or overcome that it has been changed into
+lightness, with the help of human and animal sculpture and floral
+carving the inorganic has been transformed into the organic, by means
+of painting and stained glass even the dull surfaces of walls and
+windows have been made to glow into life. Artists wrought each portion
+and detail, and built the whole for the glory of God and the city, a
+monument for quiet contemplation, not a mere article to be used. With
+few exceptions, any architectural beauty that we create is but a feeble
+echo of theirs. Some day we may be able to produce something worthy
+to be placed by its side, but only when we have sanctified our life
+with communal aims. The aesthetic effect of a building depends upon
+many factors, of which only a few can be analyzed by us in this short
+chapter. If we abstract from its relation to purpose, architecture is
+fundamentally an art of spatial form. Working freely with it, under
+the sole limitation of function, the architect can make of this form
+a complex, various, and beautiful language intelligible to all men,
+and possessed of a systematic, yet fluent logic. Of this language the
+simplest element is line. At first view, as we approach a building
+from the outside, its beauty, as in the case of sculpture, is
+essentially pictorial. For, although a building is a three-dimensional
+solid in reality, each view of it is a two-dimensional surface, bounded
+by lines and divided and diversified within by other lines. Now these
+lines have their life and beauty like the lines of a picture. How they
+get this life and what its specific quality is in the case of particular
+lines, we need not explain again; but no one can fail to feel the
+upward movement of the vertical lines of the Gothic style, the repose
+of the horizontal lines of the Renaissance style, the playful grace
+of the Rococo. Naturally, since the front of a building, where one
+enters, is the most important and the most constantly in view, its
+pictorial beauty is elaborated with especial care by the architect.
+This is the justification of the overshadowing preeminence of the
+facade in Renaissance palaces, which indeed was oftentimes the only
+visible part of the outside of the building. When, however, the building
+is perspicuous all round, it should, like a statue, present a beautiful
+view from every standpoint.
+
+In architecture, as in painting, the visual elements are adapted to
+one or the other of the two chief ways of seeing. Either the surfaces
+are seen as wholes primarily and the details in subordination; or else
+the parts stand out clear and distinct, and the whole is their
+summation. The former is always the case when the surfaces are left
+plain with few divisions, or, if the surfaces are divided, when the
+lines intersect and intermingle, as is exemplified in late Renaissance
+or Baroque work, where the walls are covered with lavish ornament, the
+enframement of windows is broken by moldings and sculpture which carry
+into the surrounding spaces, and where, instead of embracing one story,
+the "orders" comprise the entire height of the building. The second
+possibility is well illustrated by the early classical Renaissance,
+where the surface of each story, sharply separated from the others by
+the line of the frieze, is divided regularly by arches or columns,
+each window clearly enframed, and every sculptured ornament provided
+with a niche.
+
+There is, however, this fundamental difference between architectural
+and pictorial lines: the latter are usually pure kinematical lines,
+lines of free and un-resisted movement, while the former are usually
+dynamical, lines of force which move against the resistance of mass.
+In a picture objects are volatilized into light and have lost all
+weight; but in architecture, since they are present in reality and not
+in mere semblance, their weight is retained. A Greek column, for
+example, not only moves upward, but also against the superincumbent
+load of the entablature which it carries. The difference between the
+two arts can be appreciated by comparing the picture of a building
+with the building itself; in the former, despite the fact that we know
+how heavy the dome or pediment is, and how strong therefore the piers
+or columns that support it, we hardly feel them as heavy or strong at
+all--the forces and masses have been transformed into abstract lines
+and shapes. Sometimes, however, architectural lines and surfaces remain
+purely kinematical; on the inside of our rooms, for example, when the
+surfaces are smooth, and especially when they are decorated, we often
+feel no tension of conflicting forces, but only a quiet play of
+movements; it is as if the walls had been changed into the paper or
+paint that covers them. The vividness of the expression of mechanical
+forces in architecture depends, moreover, upon the kind of materials
+employed; it is greater in marble than in wood, and less in our modern
+constructions of steel and glass, where the piers move in single
+vertical lines from the bottom to the top of the building, than in the
+old forms, where the upper part of the building is frankly carried by
+the lower.
+
+The mere expression of mechanical forces in a building would not,
+however, be aesthetic by itself, no matter how obvious to the mind.
+We must not only know these forces to be there, we must also feel them
+as there; we must appreciate them in terms of our own experiences in
+supporting weights and overcoming resistances. We must transform the
+mechanical into the vital, the material into the human. Art is an
+expression of life, not of mathematics. And this translation is not
+the result of an unusual, artificial attitude assumed for the sake of
+aesthetic appreciation; it is the natural mode of apperceiving force
+and mass. We cannot see a column supporting an entablature without
+feeling that it stands firm to bear the weight, much as we should stand
+if we were in its place. If this is a "pathetic fallacy," it is one
+which we all inevitably commit. Even the skeptic, if he were to examine
+carefully into his own mind, would find that he commits it, whenever
+he gives to the column, not a casual or merely calculating regard, but
+a free and earnest attention. If he gives his mind to the column and
+lets the column take hold of his mind, allowing his psychological
+mechanism to work unhampered, he will commit it. The aesthetic intuition
+of force--the human way of appreciating it--is, in fact, primary; the
+purely mechanical and mathematical is an abstraction, superimposed for
+practical and scientific purposes.
+
+The interplay of humanized mechanical energies, of which architecture
+is the expression, may be conceived as the resultant of four chief
+forces, acting each in a definite direction: upward, downward, outward,
+and inward. The downward force is associated with the weight of the
+materials of which the building is constructed. To all physical objects
+we ascribe a tendency toward the earth. An unsupported weight will
+fall, and even when supported will exert a pressure downward. And this
+tendency is no mere directed force in the physical sense, but an
+impulse, in the personal sense. For when with hand or shoulder we
+support a weight, we inevitably interpret it in terms of our own
+voluntary muscular exertion in resisting it; even as we strive to
+resist it, so it seems to strive to fall. Although this force is exerted
+downward, it shows itself in the horizontal lines of a building, in
+string courses, parapets, cornices, friezes; for the horizontal is the
+line parallel to the earth, toward which the force is directed, and
+along which we lie when we rest.[Footnote: Compare the discussion of
+Lipps, _Aesthetik_, Bd. 1, Dritter Abschnitt, although I am far
+from accepting all of his analyses.]
+
+Opposed to the downward force is the upward force. If an object does
+not fall, it must be supported by a force in the upward direction; the
+hand must exert a force perpendicular to the mass which it carries;
+the body must hold itself erect in order to bear its own weight. Just
+so, an architectural member, if it is not to collapse, must raise
+itself upward. Upward forces are revealed by the vertical lines of a
+building--the prevailing lines of columns, piers, shafts, pinnacles,
+towers, spires. We interpret vertical lines as moving upward, partly
+because the eye moves upward in scanning them, partly because we
+ourselves move in lines of this general direction in going from the
+bottom to the top of a building. Even when we are at the top of a
+building we apprehend its vertical lines as rising rather than as
+descending, because we ourselves had to rise in order to get there.
+Converging lines, as of towers and spires, we also interpret in the
+same way as going to the point of meeting above.
+
+Acting in conjunction with the downward force is an outward one. The
+lower parts of a construction tend to spread out as they give way under
+the weight of the superincumbent masses; if they are very much broader
+than the latter, they give the impression of great weight carried. As
+a result, a horizontal line is introduced, and the longer it is in
+comparison with the vertical line of height, the heavier the effect.
+Compare, for example, the impression made by a tall and thin triangular
+shape, with a low and broad one; and compare also the relative lengths
+of the horizontal and the vertical lines. The former shape seems simply
+to rise, while the latter lifts. We seem to observe the working of
+this outward force, as Lipps has remarked, in the spreading out of the
+trunks of trees at the base and in the feet of animals; and we feel
+it in ourselves whenever we spread our limbs apart to brace ourselves
+to withstand a load.
+
+Whenever the outward force is resisted, it gives evidence of the
+existence of a force operating in the opposed direction--inward. Without
+this force, the lower parts of a construction would lack all solidity
+and spread like a molten mass on the ground. This is especially striking
+where the material, instead of spreading outward and downward, seems
+to press itself inward and upward. Compare, for example, a shape whose
+base-line is smaller than the line of its top with one in which the
+reverse holds true. The former gives the impression of lightness and
+agility, with a prevailing upward trend, the other an impression of
+weight and heaviness, with a prevailing trend towards the ground.
+Obviously, the outward and the inward forces are correlative and
+complementary: we have already observed that a construction would
+collapse without the inward; we can now see that it would disappear
+entirely without the outward. Obviously, also, the inward and upward
+go together, and the downward and outward.
+
+Even a plain rectangular wall manifests the interplay of these forces.
+The horizontal dimension represents the downward and outward force of
+the weight; the vertical dimension, the upward forces, which prevent
+the wall from collapsing in itself and hold it upright; while the
+lateral boundaries give evidence of the inward tension that keeps the
+mass together. But the most beautiful expressions of architectural
+forces are to be found in the historical styles. In each style there
+is a characteristic relationship between the forces, imparting a
+distinctive feeling. I shall offer a brief analysis of some of these.
+
+Many have recognized that the classical Greek construction, as
+illustrated in the Doric temple, expresses a fine equilibrium between
+the upward and the downward forces, embodied in the vertical and
+horizontal lines respectively. The upward force is manifest primarily
+in the vertical columns, and is emphasized there by the flutings, the
+slight progressive narrowing toward the top, and the inward effort of
+the necking just below the echinus. The downward force is embodied in
+the horizontal lines of the lintel, architrave, cornice, and in the
+hanging mutules and gutta. The two forces come to rest in the abaci,
+which, as the crowning members of the columns, directly carry the
+weight of the entire entablature. The equilibrium between the horizontal
+and the vertical tendencies is, however, not a static but a moving
+one; for the two opposing forces are present in every part of the
+building from the stylobate to the ridge of the triangular pediment.
+The downward force is already manifest in the widened base of the
+column, where it works in conjunction with the inward tendency, and
+shows its effect at the critical points at the top of the supporting
+column--in the spreading echinus with its horizontal bands beneath and
+in the horizontal lines of the abaci. The upward force, on the other
+hand, is continued right through the solid mass of the entablature,
+in the vertical lines of the triglyphs, in the antefixes, and even to
+the very apex of the building, where the ascending lines of the
+triangular pediment meet. The resulting total effect is that of a
+perfect, yet swaying balance.
+
+The aesthetic effect derived from the interplay of forces in the Ionic
+form is similar to that in the Doric, only more delicate and elastic.
+The slender columns, being less rugged and resistant than the Doric,
+seem to transmit the weight supported, which shows itself, therefore,
+in the outward spreading molded base; but this apparent lack of strength
+in the column is compensated for by the elastic energy in the coiled
+spring of the volutes, upon which, with the slight mediation of a
+narrow band, the entablature rests. Here most of the upward energy of
+the Ionic form is concentrated; for although the dentils of the frieze
+perform the function of the triglyphs, they are too small to do it
+effectively; the style lacks, therefore, the gentle harmonizing of
+forces all over, characteristic of the Doric, and evinces instead a
+clean-cut elastic tension at a given point. This effect is, however,
+somewhat softened by the breaking up of the downward force of weight
+by means of the recessed divisions of the architrave. In the Corinthian
+capital, which has the same general feeling as the Ionic, the elastic
+tension is still further diminished through the renewed emphasis on
+the mediating abacus, the reduction of the size of the volutes, and
+the overhanging floral carvings. However, by reason of the strength
+given by the bell and the projecting outward and upward curving form
+of the abacus, the suggestion of weakness in the Corinthian form is
+overcome, but the gentleness remains.
+
+If the Greek construction expresses a balance between the upward and
+downward forces, the arched forms that followed express the victory
+of the upward. In the arch the upward force, instead of being arrested
+where the support meets the mass to be carried, is continued throughout
+the mass itself. Of the two chief types of arches, the round and the
+pointed, each has a specific feeling. We shall study the round form
+first, where the vertical tendency is indeed victorious, but only
+through reconciliation and compromise.
+
+In the round arch all four forces are beautifully expressed. The upward
+is manifest, first, in the vertical pier, which acts very much as the
+column does, and, in Roman work, was often replaced by the column. The
+opposing downward force is expressed in the horizontal upper bound of
+the arch and in the line of the impost, also horizontal, which breaks
+the vertical line and so marks the place where the two forces come
+into sharpest conflict. In this conflict, the vertical is victorious;
+for, instead of being stopped by the impost, it is carried up throughout
+the entire construction by means of the upward and inward curving of
+the arch. The very curve of the arch shows, however, that the victory
+is not absolute; for its circular form is obviously determined as a
+compromise between an inward centripetal force, moving upward and
+diminishing the breadth of the arch to a mere point at its apex, and
+an outward centrifugal force, gradually spreading the arch downward
+until it reaches its greatest breadth at the impost, where it is
+arrested by the opposing vertical force in the pier. To the historical
+imagination, the round arch seems, therefore, to express the genial
+classical idea of a control by the higher nature which nevertheless
+did no violence to the demands of the lower. In the spherical dome the
+effect is the same, only the interplay of forces operates in three
+dimensions instead of two.
+
+When arches are superposed, the upward movement proceeds in stages,
+beginning anew at each horizontal division of the wall space. The use
+of entablatures applied to the wall and of engaged columns, common in
+Roman work, seems to involve an attempt at a fusion of two contradictory
+styles, and is usually condemned as such. This contradiction can be
+solved, however, by viewing the entablatures as mere weightless lines
+of division of the wall, usually marking off the different stories,
+and by viewing the columns in a similar fashion as having no supporting
+function--which is actually the case--and as simply serving the purpose
+of framing the arches. At most they merely indicate the direction of
+the chief contending forces,--the parallel lintels signalizing the
+force of weight, and the vertical columns, standing one upon the other,
+pointing the movement of the upward force. They have, therefore, a
+pictorial rather than a dynamic significance.
+
+Differences of feeling in arched forms depend upon the relative height
+of arches and supporting piers and columns. The vertical effect is
+strongly emphasized when the latter are relatively high, while the
+effect of weight is increased in flattened arches, which for this
+reason are especially appropriate for crypts and prison entrances.
+Interesting complications are introduced in arcades or intersecting
+vaults, where a single column serves as a support for two or more
+arches; for there the vertical force is divided, flowing in different
+directions in the little triangular piece of wall between, or along
+the ribs of the vaults. Something similar occurs in the Byzantine dome
+on pendentives, only instead of supporting the horizontal weight of
+a gallery or a vault, the triangular pendentives meet the outward
+thrust of a superposed dome.
+
+In Renaissance architecture and the modern classical revivals, where
+Greek and Roman styles are freely adapted to novel modes of life and
+purpose, no essentially new form was added to architectural speech.
+There were combinations of old forms into more complex structures, but
+no new important elements. The most outstanding novelty is perhaps the
+reversed relation between the whole and the parts. [Footnote: See P.
+Frankl, _Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst_, 1914.] In
+the classic styles, whether arched or Greek, the whole is built up of
+the parts additively; each is a relatively independent center of energy
+complete in itself; first the columns, then the architrave, frieze,
+and cornice, then the pediment; or first one row of arches, then another
+row on top of this, and so on. Coordination is the governing principle.
+But in the modern adaptations, even where coordination rather than
+subordination rules in the pictorial sphere, the whole is first
+dynamically and the parts are secondary. In the typical Renaissance
+facade, for example, the arches of the windows are rather openings in
+the walls than supporting members. They are centers of little eddies
+of force, rather than independent parts of the main determining stream
+of energy. The wall rises as a whole to its heavy overhanging cornice,
+despite the horizontal divisions marking the stories. There are,
+however, important differences between the various modern types; the
+earlier Renaissance forms, for example, keeping closer to the antique
+than the later Baroque and Rococo.
+
+The complete triumph of the vertical tendency, foreshadowed in the
+Roman, was proclaimed in Gothic architecture in the use of the pointed
+arch. For in the round arch the vertical has not conquered after all;
+the horizontal is still active there, even to the apex of the arch,
+where the tangential line is parallel to the earth, the line of weight.
+But in the pointed style the victory of the vertical is clearly
+decisive,--the upward and inward forces, by elongating and narrowing
+the curve of the arch to a point, have dominated the downward and
+outward. The great height of the piers, the gabled roofs, the ribs of
+the vaults the pointed form of the windows, the towers, spires, and
+pinnacles,--all proclaim it. Yet this victory does not occur without
+opposition; for the higher the vaulting, the greater the weight to be
+carried; the greater, therefore, the outward thrust, which had to find
+its expression and its stay in the buttress. But even the buttress,
+although it bears witness to the outward and horizontal force of weight,
+was nevertheless so fashioned with its gable and pinnacle, or its own
+arched form, as to aid the upward movement. The thinness of walls and
+partitions, and the piercing of these with arches and windows, by
+lightening the force of weight, also contributed to increase the
+vertical movement. At sight of a true Gothic cathedral, we feel
+ourselves fairly lifted off the ground and rushed upward.
+
+In thinking of the beauty of architecture, we are all too apt to
+consider the exterior exclusively, forgetting that the inside of a
+building, where we live, is even more important practically, and is
+capable of at least as great an aesthetic effect.
+
+The characteristic aesthetic effect of the interior is a function of
+the inclosed space, the volume, not of the inclosing walls taken singly.
+The walls are only the limits of this space, they are not the space
+itself. Of course, the walls within have their own beauty, of surface
+and pervading energy, but this does not differ markedly from that of
+the walls seen from the outside, and what we have established for the
+one holds for the other. But the beauty of the inclosed space is
+something entirely new.
+
+In itself, however, mere volume of space is no more aesthetic than
+mere bounding line or surface; in order to become beautiful, it must
+become alive. But how can space--the most abstract thing in the
+world--become alive? By having the activities which it incloses felt
+into it. Just as our bodies are felt to be alive because our activities
+express themselves there, so our rooms, because we live and move within
+them. As we enter a cathedral and look down the long aisle, the movement
+of our eyes inevitably suggests the movement of our bodies; or, as we
+look up and our eyes follow the ribs of the vaulting, it is as if we
+ourselves were borne aloft; in the imagination we move through the
+open spaces; and since we do not actually move, we locate our impulses
+to movement, not in our bodies, but in the space through which we take
+our imagined flight. Every object suggests movement to it, and we fill
+the intervening space with this imagined movement, provided only we
+stay our activities and give time for the imagination to work its will.
+Thus all space may become alive with the possibilities of movement
+which it offers.
+
+The aesthetic effects of volume vary chiefly according to size and
+shape. In order to be appreciated, these effects must in general be
+somewhat striking; otherwise they pass unnoticed, and we simply take
+the interiors of our buildings as matters of course.
+
+It is a curious fact that an impression of vastness can be secured by
+inclosing a relatively small space. A square, like the Place de la
+Concorde, or even the inside of a cathedral, produces a feeling of
+size almost, if not quite, as great as an open prairie or sea. The
+reason, I suppose, is that an inclosed space offers definite points
+as stimuli and goals for suggested movements. As we imaginatively reach
+out and touch these points, we seem to encompass their distance; and
+the volume of our own bodies seems to be magnified accordingly. The
+boundaries of the space become a second and greater integument. This
+is of decisive importance; for the aesthetic appreciation of size is
+relative to an appreciation of the size of our own bodies; in nature
+itself there is nothing either large or small. Along with the sense
+of vastness goes a sense of freedom; the one is the aesthetic experience
+resulting from the imaginative reaching of the goal of a movement, the
+other is the feeling of the imagined movement itself.
+
+When, on the other hand, an inclosure is small, as in the case of a
+cell, and especially when the ceiling or vault is low, as in a crypt,
+it feels cabined and confined, because our own possibilities of movement
+are restricted. In order to avoid this feeling, if a space is limited
+in one direction, it must be free in another; if narrow, it must be
+long; if small in plan, it must be high, as in a tower.
+
+The form of an inclosed space is also expressive. There are two chief
+types, the longitudinal and the radial; but since these may exist
+either in plan or in elevation, four possibilities result: the
+longitudinal-horizontal, as in an aisle; the longitudinal-vertical,
+as in a tower; the radial-horizontal, illustrated by every equilateral
+plan--triangle, square, regular polygon, and above all, the most perfect
+form of this type, the circle; and finally, the radial-vertical, of
+which domed spaces, like the Pantheon or St. Paul's, are examples. The
+terms used to designate them, together with the examples, afford a
+good idea of what these space forms are, making further description
+unnecessary. It is interesting to observe how different the expression
+of the square and the triangle is when they determine the plan of an
+inclosed space from what it is when they are the shapes of walls.
+[Footnote: Compare Fritz Hoeber: _Systematik der
+Architekturproportionen_, II, B, a. ] In the case of the latter,
+according to the analysis which we have given of them, the figures
+represent an interplay of antagonistic horizontal and vertical forces,
+about an axis drawn perpendicular to the midpoint of the base line;
+while as plans they express forces homogeneous in kind radiating from
+their centers. The feeling of longitudinal forms is one of continued
+movement, forward or upward as the case may be; when the distance is
+very great, the feeling is of infinity, either of vista, as in an
+aisle, or of height, as in a tower, for even when the point at the end
+is clearly seen and known, we continue it in the imagination. The
+radial forms, on the other hand, even when the axes are very long,
+express completeness and security, for no matter how far we go in any
+one direction, we have to proceed along a line which brings us back
+to our starting point; in following to the top the movement of the
+curved line of a dome or an apse, the continuation of the same line
+carries us down on the other side to a point corresponding to the one
+from which we set out; if we wander, we return home.
+
+With reference to the division of interiors into parts, the same two
+types are exemplified which we found in studying the visual and the
+dynamic aspects of buildings. Either the parts of the interior space
+are clearly marked off from each other, and the perception of the whole
+which they constitute is reached by a process of summation; or else,
+to one standing within, the space is first perceived as a whole, and
+its parts, lacking clear definition, are perceived subsequently. In
+the former type, the parts are of pronounced individuality, and the
+whole is their free and joint work; in the latter, the parts are merged,
+and tend to be lost in the whole. These two possibilities exist whether
+the space be of radial or longitudinal form. In general, the classical
+styles lend themselves to the coordinate type of division of the
+interior, while the later styles favor the subordination of the parts
+to the whole.
+
+The other factors in the beauty of architecture, besides the expression
+of the forces resident in its forms, can receive only scant notice
+from us. Among these is light--its admission, exclusion, and diffusion.
+A house with ample windows flooded with sunshine shares the feeling
+of an open day; a cathedral, dimly lighted, stimulates a mood of
+brooding mystery and meditation, like some dark forest. Another factor
+is color. Color plays a double part in architecture: first, to enliven
+the neutral tones of certain materials; and second, to impart specific
+moods. It was no barbaric taste, but a keen feeling for life and warmth
+that induced the Greeks to paint their temples; and without their rose
+windows, Gothic cathedrals are like faces from which the glow of life
+is departing. The different colors have the same feelings in
+architecture that they have in painting. The reds and purples of
+ecclesiastical stained glass stimulate the passion of adoration, the
+blues deepen it, and the yellows seem to offer a glimpse of heavenly
+bliss. Sound, its presence or its absence, is another factor in
+architectural expression: the quiet of the church in contrast with the
+noise of the busy street outside, the peal of the organ, or the chorus
+of young voices. Although architecture is a spatial art and music a
+temporal art, they nevertheless go well together because the emotions
+aroused by both are vague and voluminous, and the sounds, reverberating
+from the walls and filling the inclosed spaces, seem to fuse with them.
+Ornamental carving performs a diversifying and enlivening function
+similar to that of color. So long as its lines follow those of the
+architectural forms, it may well be rich and elaborate. It is fitting,
+moreover, that buildings designed to be houses of the gods should
+contain their images, and that the same spirit that expresses itself
+in playful lines should become embodied in griffin and gargoyle.
+Finally, erected in the open, with no shelter or enframement, a building
+is, in large measure, a part of nature and possesses something of the
+beauty of nature. Rooted to one place like a tree, it shares the beauty
+of its site, and responds to the ever varying effects of light and
+shadow, rain and mist and snow.
+
+The abstract beauty of architecture can be understood without any
+knowledge of the purposes of buildings. A Hindu who knows nothing of
+our civilization cannot fail to be responsive to Notre Dame, any more
+than we can fail to admire the beauty of Taj Mahal. The very simplest
+architectural forms, like the pyramids or the Washington monument,
+provided they are of sufficient size and mass, speak an eloquent
+language which is immediately understood. And the content of their
+speech is not so abstract as might be judged from our previous studies
+of it; for in architecture, as in music, concrete emotions and
+sentiments flow into the channel cut by the form. Longing, aspiration,
+and mystery have universally been felt into a form pointing skyward;
+and the feeling of incompleteness has been lost, and security regained,
+in an overarching dome.
+
+There is, however, this difference between architecture and music. In
+music, the emotional content is purely personal; while in architecture,
+it may become social and historical. Architectural purposes are all
+social: the purposes of a family, a nation, a cult. And the purposes
+of the greatest of buildings--of those which serve the nation and
+religion--are also historical; about them gather the traditions of
+a community. Centers of the life of a people, created by it and enduring
+with it, they become its symbols; or outlasting it, memorials and
+witnesses to it. The vague emotions aroused by the architectural forms
+are pointed and enriched by this spirit: the vastness, seclusion,
+magnificence, mystery, and aspiration of the Gothic cathedral become
+associated with the life of the medieval Catholic church; the fine
+balance, clarity, and simplicity of the Greek temple with the best in
+Greek culture. This interpretation of a building in terms of its purpose
+and history is necessary to a complete aesthetic appreciation. Without
+it, a building may have many beauties, all the beauties which we have
+analyzed; but they are all separate, and there is no beauty of the
+whole. It is the life which the many parts and aspects serve that makes
+them into one.
+
+I shall close this chapter with a brief discussion of architectural
+composition. The unity of a building is constituted primarily by the
+necessary adjustment of part to part which makes possible the life
+that it incloses. How the parts serve this purpose is not immediately
+evident to intuition; nor can it be; yet it should be intelligible to
+a thoughtful study. The knowledge thus gained may then enter into an
+imaginative vision, for which the building will seem like an organism
+pulsing with life.
+
+This purposive unity cannot well be secured without spatial contiguity;
+here, as in sculpture, a unified life demands a unified material. Yet
+sometimes detached structures belong together functionally, and may
+be felt as one aesthetically, provided they are similar in design and
+some one of them is dominant; otherwise, each claims to be a distinct
+individual, and aesthetic rivalry is the result.
+
+Functional unity, although necessary, is not sufficient for aesthetic
+unity; in addition, there must be formal unity--design, composition.
+To study this adequately would require a separate treatise, which has
+not yet been written, so far as I know, with anything approaching
+philosophical depth and completeness; but for our plan it will be
+sufficient to show how the general principles of aesthetic form are
+illustrated in architecture; and because of the perspicuity of things
+spatial, these principles are nowhere else so lucidly manifest.
+
+Since architecture is a spatial art, unity in variety is chiefly a
+matter of harmony and balance rather than of evolution, and of these
+harmony is perhaps the most conspicuous. Harmony is secured in many
+ways.
+
+First, by giving the whole building or parts of the building a simple
+geometrical form readily perceived,--for example, the cruciform plan
+of many Gothic cathedrals, the oblong plan and oblong surmounted by
+a triangle in the facade of the Greek temple, the octagonal shape of
+a Renaissance chapel. A higher degree of harmony is obtained when the
+same shape is repeated throughout the various parts of the
+building,--the cylinder in the columns, the triangle or semicircle in
+the arches and gables. A step further is taken in the same direction
+when the different similar parts are all of the same size, as in the
+Greek temple, where the columns are all of one size, and similar parts
+of columns of equal size, and the metopes and triglyphs likewise.
+
+A more complex type of harmony, since it admits of greater variety,
+is proportionality. Proportionality may be of various kinds. It may
+be merely the existence of a definite numerical relation between the
+dimensions of single parts, or the areas of various parts, of a
+building. This, in turn, may be either a simple arithmetical relation,
+such as exists between the parts of a Greek facade, each being some
+simple multiple of the unit or module; or a more complex relation like
+the Golden Section, where the smaller is to the larger dimension as
+the larger is to the sum of both; or like that which obtains when
+different parts form a geometrical series, where each is smaller or
+larger than the preceding by some fraction of the latter. The relation
+between the length and breadth of the facade of the Ducal Palace in
+Florence illustrates the Golden Section; the heights of the stories
+of the Peller House in Nuremberg form a geometrical series. This type
+of harmony is most complete when the proportion between the dimensions
+of the different parts is the same as that of the whole building,--by
+the ancients called _concinnitas_ because it produces a feeling
+akin to that of musical harmony. Dominance of a particular kind of
+line, horizontal or vertical, also gives harmony. Finally, harmony is
+secured by sameness of direction of line: the alignment of windows or
+parallelism between moldings dividing the surfaces of walls, for
+example.
+
+The relations, so seemingly mathematical, upon which architectural
+harmony is based, need not be exact, for two reasons: minor deviations
+are not perceptible, and even when perceptible, they give to the whole
+a feeling of life. Our experience with living things has taught us
+that, despite their orderliness, there is no exact mathematical
+regularity in their proportions; hence forms which cannot be precisely
+formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly
+geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear
+forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency,
+for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the
+plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically
+human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical
+relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the
+classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, have felt the
+circle and the square, and every other exact embodiment of clarity and
+intelligence, to be beautiful. In no other art has the passion for the
+intelligible been so perfectly expressed as in classical architecture.
+
+Next in importance to harmony as a mode of unity in variety in
+architecture is balance. Balance implies emphatic variety, or contrast.
+One mode of balance, that between the upward and the downward
+tendencies, we have already discussed. There is another mode, similar
+to that which exists in painting and sculpture, the balance between
+the right and left members of a building. In order that this type of
+balance may be appreciated, there must be some axis or line of mediation
+between the parts, from which the opposing tendencies take their start;
+otherwise we view the parts together, instead of in opposition. For
+example, there is balance between two wings of a building which are
+separated by some central member or link; balance between the aisles
+of a church on either side of the nave; balance between the sets of
+three columns right and left of the door in the Greek hexastyle temple.
+Such cases of symmetry between equal right and left parts are the
+simplest examples of balance; but there are other, more complex types.
+For example, the parts may be unequal, yet balance nevertheless,
+provided their inequality is compensated for by some enrichment of
+design or ornament in the lesser part. Or again, there may be a balance
+between contrasting shapes, such as the square and the triangle, when
+they make an equal claim upon the attention.
+
+Although, since architecture is a static art, evolution is not so
+important as harmony and balance, it exists nevertheless. In a
+colonnade, as you look down it, with the height of the columns
+diminishing in perspective, there is a rhythmical movement of eye and
+attention toward the last column as a goal. There is the same rhythmical
+movement in following the arches on either side of the nave of a church
+leading to the apse.
+
+There is a rhythmical movement in the progressive diminution of the
+height of the stories of a building, going towards the top. In such
+spatio-temporal rhythms, the proportional equality between the members
+corresponds to the equal intervals in temporal rhythms, and the
+alternation between member and intervening space, or between member
+and line of division, corresponds to the alternation between heavy and
+light accents. Last, evolution is present in architecture, whenever,
+often without rhythmical divisions, the attention is impelled to move
+along lines that meet at a point which serves as a climax, as in all
+triangular forms where the lines lead up to the apex,--pointed windows
+or arches, towers ending in belfries or pinnacles.
+
+Dominance, with its correlative, subordination, are everywhere present
+in architecture. In general, size and a central position, which usually
+go together, determine preeminence. The largest masses and those which
+occupy a central position inevitably rule the others. The towers and
+the facade dominate the exterior of a Gothic cathedral, the middle
+doorway is superior to those which flank it, and within, the central
+and larger nave dominates the smaller aisles on either side. When there
+are many dominant elements, as is necessarily the case in a large
+building, they must be unified by balance, if there are two, or by
+subordination to one of them, if three or more; otherwise, each claims
+to be the whole and the building falls apart into its members. There
+cannot well be three vertical dominant parts, because the central one
+makes a claim to preeminence which cannot be satisfied without
+superiority in size. A central member should, therefore, either be
+made larger than those flanking it, or else should be reduced to the
+status of a mere subordinate link between the others.
+
+In the horizontal division of a building into stories--as, for example,
+in the Palazzo Farnese near Rome--it is easier for the prominent parts
+to be equal, because they are better united by the evident contiguity
+of their masses, by their inclosure in a simple geometrical shape, and
+enframement between base and overhanging cornice. Yet here also we
+observe the tendency to make the middle larger or otherwise dominant,
+exemplified even in the building cited, where the central part is
+distinguished by the ornamental shield, upon which the attention is
+focused. When there are four horizontal divisions, our tendency is to
+divide them into groups of two; but unless this grouping is clearly
+marked by a molding or other such device, our purpose is defeated
+because each of the two can itself be divided into two parts, whence
+we get the four parts again, among which there is not sufficient unity.
+When, however, there are more than four stories, they cease to function
+as individuals and become members of a series, the rhythm of which
+creates the necessary unity. Even in this case, however, the tendency
+toward grouping into three with the middle dominant persists; for, as
+a rule, the stories are divided by moldings into three parts, of which
+the central part is the largest. Four equal stories are difficult
+because they at once resist an arrangement into threes and yet fall
+short of being the series which they suggest. When a series of stories
+is divided into three parts, a superior aesthetic effect is gained if
+the height of each story diminishes in some regular ratio from the
+bottom to the top, thus expressing the gradual overcoming of the
+downward force by the upward,--the rhythm becomes dynamical as well
+as kinematical.
+
+All good architectural styles illustrate the principle of impartiality,
+which demands the careful elaboration of parts. Yet, as we have
+indicated, there are two possibilities: some styles are founded on the
+idea of the subordination of the parts to the whole, and so permit of
+a less elaborate execution of details, while others are based on the
+idea of coordination among the parts within the whole, and so require
+that each part be vividly clear, distinct from the others, and possessed
+of a pronounced individual beauty. These two types are exemplified in
+each of the three aspects of a building--the visual, the dynamic, and
+the voluminal. For the Greek and Roman architecture and for that of
+the Renaissance, the former was the ideal; while the latter is clearly
+characteristic of the more modern forms; between these stand the
+Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic, in which a union of the two types,
+in what has well been called an organic type, was attempted, and perhaps
+achieved in the last. The former has the feeling of the mechanical,
+rational view of life, which is the classical; the latter has the
+feeling of the mystical and organic view, which is modern.[Footnote:
+See P. Frankl, _Die Entwieklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst_, 1914.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE FUNCTION OF ART: ART AND MORALITY
+
+
+That an interest is innocent and pleasure giving is no longer considered
+sufficient to justify its existence; it must also, in order to be
+sanctioned in our jealous and economical world, prove itself a
+beneficent influence upon the total man and the group. For the time
+being at least, the day of _laissez-faire_ is done; men can no
+longer appeal to their personal needs, their inner necessities, or
+even their consciences, in defense of their activities. Public opinion,
+and sometimes reason, are the only arbiters of right. It may well
+happen that, in a new age, men will be more generous and less exacting,
+once again recognizing inherent rights in spontaneous activities; but
+that age is not ours. Not even art can claim privilege; in vain will
+the artist boast of his genius or the art-lover of his delights, if
+he can exhibit no pervasive good. It is not enough, therefore, that
+we should have described the peculiar, inward value of art; we must
+further establish that it has a function in the general life.
+
+Three classes of people, the puritans, the philistines, and the
+proletarians, question the value of art in this sense. These classes
+are, of course, not new to our civilization, but are rather perennial
+types of human nature, appearing under one or another name and guise
+in every age. To the puritan, art is immoral; to the philistine, it
+is useless; to the proletarian, it is a cruel waste.
+
+One illustration of the complexity of human culture is the fact that
+art has now been regarded as the symbol and ally of goodness, and now
+as its enemy. This paradox can, I think, be partly explained by making
+a distinction between the ethical and the moral point of view regarding
+conduct. From the one point of view, the good belongs to all free,
+creative acts that look toward the growth and happiness of individuals;
+from the other point of view, it consists in conformity to law,
+convention, and custom. It is evident that these two attitudes must
+sometimes come into open or secret conflict. For law and convention
+represent either an effort to fix and stabilize modes of conduct that
+have proved themselves to be good under certain conditions; or else,
+as is more often true than is admitted, an attempt to generalize the
+good of some special class or type of men and impose it as a norm for
+all; and obviously these efforts will, from time to time, be opposed
+either to the freedom of individuals, or to their growth, under changing
+conditions.
+
+Now in the sense defined, the spirit of art is fundamentally ethical
+and, at the same time, fundamentally non-moral. It is fundamentally
+ethical, for art is itself a freely creative and happy activity, and
+tends to propagate itself in spontaneity in other fields; it is an
+inspiration in every struggle for liberty and the remolding of the
+world. The artist and art lover, who value the expression of
+individuality in art, cannot fail to appreciate it outside of art. On
+the other hand, the spirit of art is fundamentally non-moral, for the
+sthetic attitude is one of sympathy--an attempt at once to express
+life and to feel at one with it; it demands of us that we take the
+point of view of the life expressed and, for the moment at any rate,
+refrain from a merely external judgment. Through art we are compelled
+to sympathize with the aspiration towards growth, towards happiness,
+even when it leads to rebellion against our own standards and towards
+what we call sin. The sympathy, realism, and imagination of art are
+antagonistic to conformist morality. By making us intimately acquainted
+with individuals, art leads to skepticism of all general rules.
+
+The puritan, therefore, who is an exponent of the extremest and
+narrowest conformist morality, is more nearly right in his
+interpretation of the relation between art and morality than more
+liberal people who, because of their love of art, seek to ignore or
+palliate the facts. Hence, in order to defend art, one must reckon
+seriously with the puritan.
+
+The puritan is fearful, above all, of works of art that represent moral
+evil. The method of artistic representation, which aims at awakening
+sympathy for the life portrayed, is bound, he thinks, to demoralize
+both the artist and the spectator. But art is something more than
+sympathy, and there are other aspects of the aesthetic experience which
+tend to render that sympathy innocuous, even from the standpoint of
+the puritan. In the first place, the sympathy is usually with an
+imagined life that has no direct relation to the will and gives the
+spectator no opportunity to enter into and share it--he participates
+through the imagination, not through the senses. Moreover, neither the
+mind nor the will is a _tabula rasa_; no mature person comes to
+a work of art without certain habits and preferences already
+predetermined, which no mere imagination can destroy, but only, if at
+all, some concrete opportunity and temptation. Hence men can lead a
+manifold life, partly in the imagination and partly in action, without
+any corruption of heart or paralysis of will. In real conduct, to lead
+a double life is demoralizing because there choices are exclusive and
+each of the two lives tends to interfere with and spoil the other; but
+imagination does not conflict with reality, for they have no point of
+contact and do not belong to the same world.
+
+In the second place, a work of art is an appeal to mind as well as to
+sympathetic feeling. It is no mere stirring of emotion and passion,
+but a means to insight into them. The attitude of reflection which it
+engenders is unfavorable to impetuous action. Providing no immediate
+stimulus to action, it allows time for a better second thought to
+intervene. Even when it offers suggestions for unwonted acts, it
+furnishes the spirit and the knowledge requisite for determining whether
+they will fit into the scheme of life of the spectator. It is
+characteristic of the puritanic critics of art, in their eagerness to
+find motives for condemnation, to overlook this element of reflection.
+
+It is forgotten, finally, that by providing an imaginative experience
+of passion and adventure, art often becomes rather a substitute for
+than an incentive to them. The perfection of form, the deep repose and
+circle-like completeness of the work of art, tend to prevent one from
+seeking a corresponding real experience, which would have none of these
+qualities, but perhaps only misery and wear and tear instead. Thus the
+work of art may propagate itself in a search for new aesthetic
+experiences rather than in analogous conduct.
+
+To the artist who is living the evil life which he expresses, there
+can be even less danger in expression, than to the spectator. For the
+expression is not the cause of his life, but only its efflorescence.
+The roots of evil lie deep below in the subsoil of instinct. Without
+expression, life would be much the same, only secret instead of
+articulate. The puritan shows a shocking naivete in thinking that he
+can reform life by destroying its utterance. Moreover, to express life
+implies a certain mastery over it, a power of detachment and reflection,
+which are fundamentally ethical and may lead to a new way of living.
+
+Every form of life has an inalienable right to expression. In order
+to be judged fairly, it must be allowed to plead for itself, and art
+is its best spokesman. And that we should know life sympathetically
+is of practical importance; for otherwise we shall not know how to
+change it or indeed that it ought to be changed at all. Only by knowing
+other ways of life can we be certain of the relative worth of our own
+way; knowledge alone gives certitude. Without knowledge we run the
+risk of becoming ruthless destroyers of things which an intelligent
+sympathy might well preserve and find a place for in the world.
+
+To all these considerations the puritan will doubtless oppose a truth
+impossible to deny. Experience, he will say, is one, not many;
+imagination and action are not separated by an impassable wall; things
+merely imagined or dreamed, even when they do not directly issue in
+action, may nevertheless influence conduct through a slow and subtle
+transforming effect upon the sentiments and valuations which make up
+its background. Character can be maintained only by a vigilant and
+steady control over impulses which are always threatening rebellion;
+purity of mind only through the rigid exclusion of the sensual,
+luxurious, and ignoble; imaginative sympathy with evil, even when
+sublimated in art, must necessarily undermine the one and becloud the
+other. "If thine eye offend thee, cut it out and cast it from thee."
+
+The truth which the puritan announces does not, I think, warrant the
+inference which he draws from it or alter the situation as I have
+described it. For morality, to be genuine, must be a choice; the good
+must know its alternative or it is not good. Only those who already
+have a penchant for sin will be corrupted by imaginative sympathy with
+passion; a character that cannot resist such an influence is already
+undermined. Life itself is the great temptation; how can one who cannot
+look with equanimity upon statues and pictures fail to be seduced by
+live men and women? If men can resist the suggestions that emanate
+from life they can surely withstand those that come from art. And mere
+purity of mind is not equal in value to that insight into the whole
+of life which a freely creative art provides. We wish to penetrate
+sympathetically all of our existence; nothing human shall remain foreign
+to us; we would enter into it all; there is no region of the grotesque,
+the infernal, or the sinful from which we would be shut out. In
+comparison with the sublimity of this demand for the complete
+appreciation of life, the warnings of a rigorous moralism seem timorous,
+and the sanctuary of purity in which it would have us take refuge, a
+prison.
+
+Whatever conflict there may be between the spirit of art and conformist
+morality, there is none with a genuine and rational ethics. For the
+latter would formulate ways of living suited to the diversity of
+individuals and sympathetic with their every impulse and fancy. It
+would impose external constraint only where necessary for the existence
+and perpetuation of social life, leaving to personal tact, good will,
+and temperance the finer adjustments of strain. But apart from aesthetic
+culture, there can be no rational morality, for that alone engenders
+the imaginative sympathy with individual diversity upon which the
+latter rests. Without imaginative sympathy morality will always be
+coarse, ruthless, and expressive of the needs and sentiments of some
+special type which sets out to reform or govern the world. Under such
+a regimen, which is actual in every community devoid of imagination,
+virtue must always remain suspect and vice tolerable; the one a
+hypocrisy, the other a secret and venial indulgence, and nature will
+take its revenge upon the law in violent or perverse compensations.
+Hence, instead of being a hindrance, art ought to be a help to a
+rational morality: its realism should foster sincerity, its imagination,
+sympathy and justice. The moralist inspired by art would seek to impose
+upon men only that kind of form and order which is characteristic of
+art--one which respects the peculiarities of the material with which
+it works, and issues in a system in which all elements freely
+participate. [Footnote: Compare Schiller, _On the Aesthetic Education
+of Man_, Fourth Letter: "The civilized man makes nature his friend,
+and honors her freedom, while he merely fetters her caprice."]
+
+The philistine's objection to art is that it is useless. And if we
+only knew what was really useful, this would be a damning indictment.
+But, not being much given to abstract reflection, the philistine is
+usually at a loss to inform us. However, by talking with him, we can
+eventually divine what he thinks the useful to be. Useful is what
+contributes to the procurement of those things which he and his
+congeners value--material wealth, power, and sensual enjoyment. Art
+is useless because it will not prepare a banquet, build a bridge, or
+help to run a business corporation. The artist is a contemptible fellow
+because he cares more for his art than for the things of the world;
+for whatever the worldling values he thinks every one else should
+value.
+
+To the artist, criticism of this kind seems to betray the most shameless
+arrogance, and he meets contempt with contempt. Who is he that would
+be the judge between worldly goods and beauty? Surely the philistine
+is no competent judge; for he only can judge fairly between two values
+who appreciates both, and, by his own confession, the philistine does
+not appreciate art. Hence the claim of the philistine seems not to
+merit consideration. Through his lack of sympathy for art, he puts
+himself beyond the possibility of fruitful debate. In this he is unlike
+the puritan, who is often all too sensitive to beauty for his own
+good--hence his alarms.
+
+If the objection of the philistine were the same as the proletarian's,
+that art is a luxury, a waste of the energies of the community, which
+might better be employed in feeding the hungry and saving sinners, it
+would be more worthy of a hearing; and so he often represents it. But
+in this he is hardly sincere; and the appropriate answer is a _tu
+quoque_, the fitting reply to every piece of insincere criticism.
+Does the philistine feed the poor and save the sinners? Who is commonly
+more careless of the workers' needs and more cruel to the fallen in
+his self-righteous probity? For the philistine is often a puritan.
+And who is more luxurious than he? Who consumes more in his own person
+of the energies of the toilers? It costs little to maintain an artist,
+but it taxes thousands to support the philistine and his wife. Of
+course, in return, the worldling performs a service to the community
+in the organization of industries, but many of these do not sustain
+the needs of the masses and are devoted to the manufacture of luxuries
+for the well-to-do.
+
+The insincerity of the philistine's attitude is disclosed by his changed
+attitude towards the artist who acquires fame and wealth through his
+art. For now that the artist shows himself capable of getting the
+things the philistine values, the latter accords him esteem. Or let
+an interest in art become fashionable, and once again the philistine
+is won over.
+
+The traditional hostility between the philistine and the artist is
+offensive to reason, which would discover points of contact and
+reconciliation between all attitudes. One apparent place of meeting
+might seem to be just the worldling's love of luxury itself. Luxury
+is a development of pleasure of sense beyond the necessary, paralleling
+the freedom and refinement of sensation in art. There is, moreover,
+a certain imaginative quality in reputation and glory, so well-prized
+by the worldling, which, as we shall see, is akin to the ideality of
+art. And yet both the imagination and the luxury of the worldling are
+usually lacking in one element essential to real kinship with the
+spirit of art--disinterestedness. The worldling's dreams of glory are
+projections of ambition, his luxuries subtle stimulations of appetite
+or instruments of display, her self-adornment a fine self-exhibition
+or coquetry. The love of insight, the free emotion, the enjoyment of
+sensuous harmonies for their own sake, are lacking or subordinate.
+Glory and luxury are too often mere masks of ambition and appetite,
+and at best counterfeits of beauty. Nevertheless, the luxurious
+developments of ambition and appetite are ever on the verge of tending
+toward the aesthetic. For when ambition has no longer to struggle against
+the world and is satisfied, the imagination that served it may become
+free; and when appetite is cloyed, the instrumentalities of sensuous
+pleasure can find a new meaning as beautiful. Then the worldling becomes
+the patron of the artist and the two are reconciled. And all along
+this result was preparing. For instinct seldom completely dominates
+imagination and sensation; there is always some aesthetic freedom in
+the self-adornment and display of the wealthy. The absence of anxiety
+may release aesthetic interests that would have died in the struggle
+for existence; prosperity is often the herald of beauty.
+
+The proletarian's criticism of art is of unimpeachable sincerity, for
+when he talks of art as a luxury he speaks from the heart and in answer
+to bitter experience of want. There is a genuine element of moral
+indignation in his feeling that there must be something wrong with a
+public conscience that countenances, even glorifies extravagance, all
+the while that women slave and children die of underfeeding and neglect.
+This feeling is intensified when he compares the thousands paid for
+a single hour of a prima donna's song or a playwright's wit with his
+own yearly wage laboriously earned. What supreme worth does art possess
+that it should be valued so disproportionately?
+
+Yet, sincere as this complaint is, it is largely misdirected; for art
+is not the extravagance which it may superficially seem to be. Most
+of the best art has been produced by poor men who never dreamed of the
+prices that would be paid for their work when they were old or after
+they were dead. And these prices represent no consumption of the labor
+and capital of the community, but only a transference of wealth from
+one man to another. Even when the artist is paid large sums for his
+picture or opera or play, these sums do not represent their real cost,
+but only what they can command in a market controlled by rich consumers.
+The real cost of genuine art is very small--only enough to maintain
+the artist in freedom for his work; for he would still produce without
+the incentive of large rewards. The seeming extravagance of art cannot,
+therefore, be blamed upon art itself, but upon the price system of
+modern capitalist economy. And this, of course, is clearly perceived
+by the "intellectual proletarians," who are willing to accord to the
+artist a place of honor as fellow-worker and "comrade," and direct
+their attacks, not upon him, but upon capitalism.
+
+There is, however, a deeper root to the proletarian's grievance against
+the artist--the feeling that the moral principle of mutuality is
+violated in their relationship. The workman plows for him, cooks for
+him, builds for him, spins for him, but what does he do in return? He
+paints pictures, makes statues, writes novels or poems or plays or
+sonatas which the workman has neither the leisure nor the education
+to enjoy. The money paid by the artist to the artisan represents nothing
+which the former rightfully owns or can give, but only a claim to the
+labor of other men, enforced by the system of wage-economy. Of course,
+not only art but all speculation, all pure science and disinterested
+historical knowledge, is subject to this criticism. And such criticism
+is no longer purely academic, for to-day there exist large masses of
+men in every community determined to bring about a "world dictatorship
+of the proletariat" based on just this principle of mutuality in the
+relations of men. Is this principle itself rational, and would art
+survive in a regime which embodied it? These, I repeat, are no longer
+speculative, but intensely practical problems.
+
+Those who fear for art in a society where the process of democratization
+should go to its extreme limit of development point to the moving
+picture, the cheap magazine story and novel, the vaudeville and
+"musical" comedy, as a hint of what to expect. These, they will say,
+are the popular forms of art, to the production of which the artist
+would have to devote his time and skill in return for subsistence.
+Under the present system the people get what they want, but in a
+proletarian state nobody would be allowed to get anything else.
+
+Of course, as to what would happen in a workers' republic, were it
+ever constituted, we can only speculate; but where we cannot know,
+there hope has an equal chance with fear. We have the single example
+of the Russian experiment from which to make inferences, the general
+validity of which is seriously limited by the peculiarities of the
+Russian nature and situation. But there, at any rate, we do know that
+efforts have been made to advance general education, to bring the
+classic literature within reach of the masses, and to encourage opera
+and drama. In Russia, at all events, the leaders of the revolutionary
+movement have sought rather to destroy what they believe to be a
+monopoly of culture than culture itself; and in England also they have
+a similar aim.
+
+There can be little doubt, I think, that our capitalist economy does
+promote a monopoly of culture. Through their control of the market,
+the wealthy are able to bid up the prices of works of art until they
+are beyond the reach of the less prosperous. As a result, the best
+paintings and sculptures, with the exception of those that find their
+way into museums, are accumulated in inaccessible private collections,
+and opera and music are made needlessly expensive. One very evil
+consequence is the substitution of a purely pecuniary standard of
+valuation for aesthetic standards. I know a painter who made the
+experiment of reducing the price of his pictures to twenty-five dollars,
+in the hope that many people who really loved art but were unable to
+pay large prices would buy them, and that thus, by selling many of his
+pictures at a low price, he would be able to make as much money as if
+he sold only a few at the prevailing high rates. The experiment failed
+completely, for people thought that paintings at such a low price must
+be inferior, and even those who could afford to buy them, would not.
+The painter now tried the reverse experiment and raised the prices of
+all his works, with much better success, for people reasoned--the
+higher the price, the better the picture. But worst of all, through
+the purely commercial motives governing those who undertake to supply
+the people with works of art, the public taste is corrupted; little
+or no attempt is made to educate the masses, but merely to give them
+anything that will entertain them after a day of fatiguing
+labor,--anything that will sell. The demoralizing effect of
+commercialism upon artists themselves is too well known to require
+more than a reminder; hasty work for the sake of money supplants careful
+work for the sake of beauty; whole arts, like that of oriental rug
+weaving, are thereby threatened with extinction; and, instead of
+producing spontaneous art that would express themselves, people allow
+themselves to be merely entertained by things supplied to them, nasty
+and cheap--folk art disappears.
+
+If, on the other hand, the commercial motive were eliminated, who can
+say what might not result, in each community, from the experimentation
+of men who could not make money but only honor and a living from the
+profession of providing people with interesting ways of spending their
+leisure. The increased efficiency of machine tool work will inevitably
+make possible a great reduction in hours of labor, when the workers
+themselves control industry for their own benefit rather than for that
+of a class bent on still further increasing its own wealth and power.
+It is entirely possible that the leisure of men will then absorb as
+much of their devoted energies as work does now, and that they will
+be educated for the one as well as for the other. It is not impossible
+to hope that, the machine tool supplanting the slave, the commonwealth
+of workers will develop as free and liberal a life as existed among
+the citizens of ancient Greece. Then perhaps each group will have its
+painters, actors, and musicians just as surely as it now has its judges,
+aldermen, and police.
+
+It is impossible to judge what art might do for people in a reorganized
+society by what it does for them now. Art has its roots in interests
+that are well nigh universal. Everybody loves to dance, to sing, to
+tell a story; everybody loves either to paint or be painted, to
+sculpture or be sculptured. Again, everybody is at least potentially
+sensitive to rhythm, harmony, and balance, and to the beauties of
+lines, colors, and tones. It is not native incapacity, but rather a
+failure in aesthetic education due to the one-sided emphasis on work
+rather than play, industry rather than leisure, success rather than
+happiness, that is responsible for much of the seeming lack of artistic
+appreciation among the masses. Under a different social system the
+people may come to recognize the artist as a fellow-worker, elaborating
+his products in exchange for other desirable things, and may accord
+him welcome rather than envy.
+
+However, it will doubtless always remain true that the subtler and
+more intellectual types of art can never become popular. Like higher
+mathematics, they will continue to be completely intelligible only to
+the few. Yet I can conceive of no social system likely to grow out of
+modern tendencies that would suppress them. The artist in the new state
+would have his leisure, as other men would, in which he could devote
+himself to the refinements of his art. It is doubtful whether he would
+have less time for that then than he has now. How many artists under
+our present system waste a large part of their lives doing hack work
+of various kinds to make a living; only the fortunate few are masters
+of themselves. Moreover, under any social system, men would be permitted
+to spend their surplus income as they chose, and the art lovers of the
+future are as likely to spend it for art then as now. Not being so
+rich, they could not reward the artist so munificently as some are
+rewarded now; but even now most working artists are poor, and the
+impulse to art is independent of large rewards. Heretical and unpopular
+artists, who could find no public backing, would come to be supported
+by their own special clients, as they are to-day. In a complex rational
+society, the principle of mutuality would be transitive rather than
+strictly symmetrical--a woman would cook for a machine designer although
+she got no machine in return, provided the designer made one, say, for
+the shoemaker, who could thus supply her with shoes. Just so, there
+is no moral objection to the artist's receiving goods and services
+from people to whose life he contributes nothing personally, so long
+as these people are compensated by those whose life he does enrich.
+In other words, part of the reward which the art lover would receive
+for the work he performed would be paid, not to himself, but to the
+artist--art would be voluntarily supported by those who appreciated
+it. No complex social life could be maintained under the principle of
+strict mutuality, and certainly no system that undertook to preserve
+the variety and spontaneity of human interests. Only a complete
+dead-level regimentation of human life in accordance with the average
+desires of the masses, which is unlikely, would destroy the more
+intellectual and subtle types of art, and, by the same token,
+speculation and disinterested higher learning. The higher culture has
+survived many revolutions; it will survive the next, when it comes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FUNCTION OF ART: ART AND RELIGION
+
+
+The distinctive purpose of art, so we have argued throughout this
+study, is culture, the enrichment of the spirit. But lovers of art
+have always claimed for it more active and broader influences. To my
+thinking, most of such claims, especially in our age, like similar
+claims for religion, are greatly exaggerated. Passion, convention,
+economic fact in the largest sense, practical intelligence, these are
+the dominant forces swaying men, not beauty, not religion. Indeed, one
+who would compare the influence of art upon life at the present time
+with its influence upon primitive societies might infer the early
+extinction of that influence altogether. For among primitive men the
+influence of art is all-pervading. With them art is inseparable from
+utility and communal activities, upon which it has an immediate
+modifying or strengthening effect. The movement of civilization, with
+the exception of the Greek, mediaval, and renaissance city states, has
+involved a breaking away from this original unity until, among
+ourselves, art is developed and enjoyed in isolation from the rest of
+life. Art is valued for its own sake, for its contribution to culture,
+not for any further influence upon life, and this freedom has come to
+be part of its very meaning. Instead of being interested only in
+pictures and statues representing ourselves, our rulers, our gods, or
+our neighborhood, we enjoy imitations of people who have had no effect
+upon our lives whatever and scenes which we have never visited, and
+we repair to museums to see them; instead of employing music to beautify
+our daily life, we leave that life for the concert hall, where we shut
+ourselves away for a few hours of "absolute" musical experience. Prose
+literature and the drama, when inspired by contemporary social problems,
+offer exceptions to this isolation, for through their ability to express
+ideas they can exert a more pervasive influence. Although social
+problems are solved in obedience to forces and demands beyond the
+control of artists, literary expression is effective in persuading and
+drawing into a movement men whose status would tend to make them hostile
+or indifferent, as in Russia, where numerous men and women of the
+aristocratic and wealthy classes became revolutionaries by reason of
+literature. And yet the literary arts also have acquired a large measure
+of isolation and independence. A play representing Viennese life is
+appreciated in New York, a novel of contemporary manners in England
+is enjoyed in America. Literature does not depend for its interest
+upon its ability to interpret and influence the life that the reader
+himself lives; he values it more because it extends than because it
+reflects that life. People decry art for art's sake, but in vain.
+
+The development of the relation of religion to life has been parallel
+to the development of art. Originally, religion penetrated every
+activity; now, by contrast, it has been removed from one after another
+of the major human pursuits. Agriculture, formerly undertaken under
+the guidance of religion; science, once the prerogative of the
+priesthood; art, at one time inseparable from worship; politics, once
+governed by the church and pretending a divine sanction; war, until
+yesterday waged with the fancied cooperation of the gods--even these
+are now under complete secular control. To be sure, there is some
+music, sculpture, painting, and poetry still in the service of religion,
+but its relative proportion is small; kings and congresses still appeal
+for divine aid in times of crisis, but that is perfunctory; men still
+pray for rain during drought, but without faith. No one would pretend
+that our commerce and manufacturing have any direct relation to
+religion. People still invoke divine authority for moral prescriptions,
+but the sanctions actually operating are social instincts and fear of
+public opinion and the law. Religion retains a direct and potent
+influence only in the institution of marriage, the experience of death,
+philosophy, and the social life and charities conducted by the churches.
+Yet even in these spheres the influence is declining, and, so far as
+it persists, is becoming indirect. Civil and contractual marriage are
+slowly supplanting religious marriage; there are thousands living in
+our large cities who do not feel the need of the church to establish
+and cement their social life; most philosophers disclaim any religious
+motive or authority for their investigations or beliefs. Only over
+death does religion still hold undisputed sway.
+
+However, despite the separation of religion and art from life, they
+may continue to exert influence upon it. But, barring some new
+integration of the sundered elements of our culture, which we may
+deeply desire but cannot predict, this influence must be indirect and
+subtle, and must occur independent of any institutional control. In
+the case of both it consists in imparting to life a new meaning and
+perfection, thus making possible a more complete affirmation of life
+and a freer and more genial attitude and conduct.
+
+For unless the spirit of art or of religion is infused into life, we
+never find it quite satisfactory. To be sure, men sometimes think they
+find perfection in certain things--in practical or moral endeavor, in
+love or in pleasure; but unless art or religion is mixed into them,
+they always prove to be, in the end, disappointing. No practical purpose
+is ever quite successful; there is always some part of the plan left
+unaccomplished; and the success itself is only momentary, for time
+eventually engulfs it and forgets it. Practical life does not produce
+any permanent and complete work; its task is done only to be done over
+again; every house has to be repaired or torn down, every road rebuilt;
+every invention is displaced by a new one. This is true even on the
+higher planes of practical life, in political and social reconstruction.
+Certain evils may be removed, certain abuses remedied, but new ones
+always arise to take their places; and even when the entire system is
+remodeled and men think that the day of freedom and justice has dawned
+at last, they find, after a generation, a new tyranny and a new
+injustice. The movement of life makes it impossible for any plan to
+long endure. Hence the disillusion, the feeling of futility that so
+often poisons the triumphs of practical men. And without the spirit
+of art or of religion even love does not satisfy. For imagination
+creates the perfection of its object and, aside from institutional
+bonds fast loosening, a faith in the continued growth with one another
+and with a child, which is essentially religious, creates the permanence
+and meaning of its bond. Love's raptures, in so far as they are
+instinctive, are, of course, independent of any view of life; but apart
+from imagination and faith in one another, love does not keep its
+quality or renew itself in memory, nor can it survive death which
+always impends to destroy. Men often seek escape from the feeling of
+imperfection in frivolity, but ennui is the inevitable consequence,
+and reflection with its doubts cannot be stilled.
+
+By contrast, in the religious experience and in beauty men feel that
+they find perfection; hence the attitude of self-surrender and
+joyousness characterizing both. The abandon of the spectator who decrees
+that for the moment his life shall be that of the work of art, is
+matched in the mystical experience by the emotion expressed in Dante's
+line, "In his will is our peace." And in both the self-surrender is
+based on a felt harmony between the individual and the object--the
+beautiful thing appeals to the senses, its form is adapted to the
+structure of the mind, its content is such as to win interest and
+sympathy; the divine is believed to realize and quiet all of our
+desires. But while in beauty we feel ourselves at home with the single
+object, in religion we feel at rest in the universe.
+
+When religion and art are separated from the other parts of life, as
+they are fast becoming now, the peculiar quality of the experiences
+which they offer can be rendered universal only by freely infusing it
+everywhere, through faith, in the case of the one, through imaginative
+re-creation, in the case of the other. The religious experience is a
+seeming revelation of a perfect meaning in life as a whole; this meaning
+must now be imparted to the details of life. By a free act of faith
+the scattered and imperfect fragments must be built into a purposive
+unity. The poisonous feeling of futility, will then be lost; each task,
+no matter how petty or ineffectual, will become momentous as
+contributing something toward the realization of a good beyond our
+little existence; and we, however lowly, will find ourselves sublime
+as instruments of destiny. There is nothing vain to him who believes.
+And if the believer cannot build a meaning into history and social
+life as he knows them empirically, he may extend them by faith in a
+future life, through which his purposes will be given the promise of
+eternity and the tie between parents and children, friends and lovers
+and co-workers, an invincible seriousness and worth. Being at peace
+with the universe, he may be reconciled to the accidents of his life
+as expressions of its Will.
+
+The method of reconciliation through religion can well be understood
+by its effect on the attitude towards evil. To one who has faith in
+the world as perfect, evil becomes an illusion that would disappear
+to an adequate vision of the Divine. The supposedly evil thing becomes
+really a good thing--a necessary means to the fulfillment of the divine
+plan, either in the earthly progress of humanity or in the future life;
+or if the more mystical types of religion provide the starting point,
+where individuality itself is felt to be an illusion, a factor in the
+self-realization of the Absolute. The evil thing remains, of course,
+what it was, but the interpretation, and therefore the attitude towards
+it, is transformed. Pain, sorrow, and misfortune become agents for the
+quickening of the spirit, death a door opening to unending vistas.
+
+The attitude of faith is not embodied in dogmatic and speculative
+religious doctrines alone; for it finds expression in other beliefs--in
+progress, in the possibility of a sunny social order, in the perpetuity
+of human culture, in the peculiar mission of one's race or country.
+Such beliefs are expressions primarily of faith, not of knowledge;
+like religion, they are interpretations of life based on aspiration,
+not on evidence; and through them men secure the same sort of
+re-enforcement of motive, courage, and consolation that they derive
+from the doctrines called religious. But the sphere of faith is wider
+even than this; the almost instinctive belief that each man has in his
+own longevity and success, the trust in the permanence of friendship
+and love, the confidence in the unique value of one's work or
+genius--these are also convictions founded more on desire than on
+knowledge, and may function in the same way as religion in a man's
+life.
+
+The re-affirmation of life which art may inspire is independent of any
+belief or faith about the world. It occurs rather through the
+application to the objects and incidents of life of a spirit and
+attitude borrowed from artistic creation and appreciation. It is a
+generalization of the aesthetic point of view to cover life as well
+as art; an attempt to bring beauty from art into the whole of life.
+Although to-day works of art themselves are severed from direct contact
+with the rest of life, something of the intention and method of the
+artist may linger and be carried over into it. Art, the image of life,
+may now serve as a model, after which the latter, in its turn, will
+be patterned.
+
+The spirit of art has two forms, one constructive, the other
+contemplative, and both may be infused into life. When the former is
+put there, each act and task is performed as if it were a work of art.
+This involves "throwing the whole self" into it, not only thought and
+patience, but enthusiasm and loving finish, even as the artist puts
+them into his work, so that it becomes a happy self-expression. Nothing
+shall interfere with or mar it, or spoil its value when recalled. The
+imperfection and transiency of the result are then forgotten in the
+inspiration of endeavor; and the work or act, no matter how
+insignificant, becomes perfect as an experience and as a memory. The
+generations may judge it as they will, but as an expression of the
+energies of my own soul, it is divine. Of course, from the industry
+of our time, where most work is mechanical and meaningless to him who
+performs it, the spirit of art has largely fled. Yet there still remain
+tasks which we all have to execute, if not in business, then at home,
+which, by arousing our interest and invention, may become materials
+for the spirit of art. We have at least our homes, our pleasures, our
+relations with one another, our private adventures, where we can still
+be free and genial and masterly. And for our work, art will continue
+to be an ideal, sorrowfully appealing.
+
+The scope of the spirit of art may be extended beyond the single task
+or act to embrace the whole of one's life. Impulse offers a plastic
+material to which form may be given. The principles of harmony, balance,
+evolution, proper subordination, and perfection of detail, indispensable
+to beauty in art, are conditions of happiness in life. The form of a
+work of art and the form of a happy life are the same, as Plato
+insisted. [Footnote: See, for example, _The Gorgias_, 503, 504.]
+In order to yield satisfaction, the different parts of life must
+exemplify identity of motive, continuity and orderliness in the
+fulfillment of purpose, lucidity of relation, yet diversity for
+stimulation and totality. There must be a selective scheme to absorb
+what is congenial and reject the unfit. This sense for form in life
+may lead to the same results as morality, but the point of departure
+and the sanction are different. Morality is largely based on conformity,
+on submission to the general will, and is rendered effective by fear
+of public disapproval and supernatural taboos; while the aesthetic
+direction of life has its roots in the love of form and meaning, and
+its sanction in personal happiness. Moreover, to the reflective person,
+looking before and after, life has the same sort of reality as a story,
+and is bound to be judged in some measure like a story. The past and
+the future live only in the imagination, and when we survey them there
+they may please us with their interest, liveliness, and meaning, much
+as a work of art would, or displease us with their vanity and chaos.
+In this way personality may acquire an imaginative value fundamentally
+aesthetic. This is different from moral value, which has reference to
+the relation of a life to social ideals; it is more comprehensive than
+the religious judgment, which is interested only in saving the soul;
+because it includes every element of life,--sense, imagination, and
+achievement, welcoming all, so long as they contribute something to
+a significant, moving whole.
+
+The feeling for perfection of form and imaginative meaning in life is
+no invention of philosophers and aesthetes, but part of the normal
+reaction to conduct. Everybody feels that certain acts, or even certain
+wishes, are to be rejected by himself, not because they are
+intrinsically bad or wrong, but because they are inconsistent with his
+particular nature, and, on the other hand, that there are certain
+interests that should be cultivated, not because they are universally
+right or good, but because they are needed to give his life complete
+meaning. And again, all except the meanest and most repressed souls
+desire somewhat to shine, if not in the world at large, at least among
+their friends, and act with a view to appearance and to some total
+survey of their lives that would consider not merely its goodness or
+usefulness, but its imaginative emotional appeal. This appeal is the
+strongest on the death of a great man; this lives longest in the memory.
+The love of the romantic and adventurous is partly instinctive, but
+largely imaginative, for it has in view not merely the rapturous
+pleasures of the hazardous moment, but the remembered delights of
+recall and expression to others. The love of glory is also imaginative,
+a feeling for the dramatic extending even beyond the grave. The
+ambitious man seeks to make a story out of his life for posterity to
+read and remember, just as the artist makes one out of fictitious
+material. More might develop out of this love of form and drama in
+life. We have it to a certain degree of cultivation in picturesque and
+refined manners, dress, and ceremonial, but even there it is hampered
+through conventionality and want of invention; further evolved and
+extended into the deeper strata of life, it would lead to a more
+interesting and productive existence. Surely, if God is an artist as
+well as a judge, he will welcome into heaven not only those who have
+lived well, but also those who have lived beautifully.
+
+There is no necessity, finally, why the constructive spirit of art
+should be confined to the personal life and should not, in some measure
+at least, penetrate the community and even the state. By appealing to
+imaginative feeling, the activities of various individuals and groups,
+when coordinated and given a purposeful unity, produce an aesthetic
+effect. The organization of a business or a university may easily come
+to have such a value for one who has helped to create it, especially
+if the place where the communal spirit operates is beautiful,--the
+office, the campus, the shop. Seldom, to be sure, do we find this value
+in our busy and haphazard America, but in many quarters the intention
+to create it is awake. As for the state, it is, of course, too little
+dominated by disinterested intelligence to be beautiful; yet Plato's
+ideal of statecraft as a fine art still rules the innermost dream of
+men.
+
+The contemplative spirit of art is perhaps more important than the
+constructive in its application to life. Not that any sharp line can
+be drawn between them, for contemplation must always attend or follow
+creation, to judge and enjoy; yet towards that part of life which we
+cannot control, our attitude must be rather that of the spectator than
+the creator. We cannot interfere with the greater part of life; we
+can, however, observe it and, in the imagination, transform it, where
+we can then envisage it as we should a work of art. As we watch it,
+life itself may become beautiful, and instead of giving ourselves to
+it half-heartedly and with reserve, we shall accept it with something
+of the abandon of passionate love,--"In thee my soul hath her content
+so absolute." To this end it is necessary to detach life from our more
+selfish interests and ambitions, from the habits of thought, annoying
+and preoccupying, that relate to self alone. To the worldly and self-
+centered, life is interesting only so far as it refers to pride or
+ambition or passion; otherwise it is indifferent, as none of their
+concern. But to the religious and to the aesthetically minded, there
+is no part of life that may not be of interest; to the former, because
+they impute something of transcendent perfection to it all; to the
+latter, because they have set themselves the inexhaustible task of its
+free, imaginative appreciation.
+
+To this end, it is also necessary, after learning to view life
+objectively and impersonally, to attend to it leisurely and
+responsively, as we should to a work of art, allowing full scope to
+the disinterested feelings of curiosity, pity, sympathy, and wonder
+to create emotional participation.
+
+Then the world may become for us the most magnificent spectacle of
+all. To imaginative feeling, every landscape is a potential painting,
+every life-story a romance, history a drama, every man or woman a
+statue or portrait. Beauty is everywhere, where we who are perhaps not
+artists but only art lovers can find it; we cannot embody it in enduring
+form or throw over it the glamour of sensuous loveliness, but we can
+perceive it with that free appreciation that is the essence of art.
+And for this, of course, the artists have prepared us; it is they who,
+by first exhibiting life as beautiful in art, have shown us that it
+may be beautiful as mirrored in the observing mind. One region after
+another has been conquered by them. The poets and the painters created
+the beauty of the mountains, of windmills and canals, of frozen wastes
+and monotonous prairies, of peasants and factories and railway stations
+and slums. Themselves the first to feel the value of these things,
+through some personal attachment or communion with them, they have
+made it universal through expression. Their works have become types
+through which we apperceive and appreciate the world: we see French
+landscapes as Lorrain and Corot saw them, peasants after the fashion
+of Millet, the stage after Degas. In vain men have prophesied limits
+to the victorious advance of art. Just at the time when, in the middle
+of the last century, some men feared that science and industry had
+banished beauty from the world, the impressionists and realists
+disclosed it in factory and steamboat and mine. In this way modern
+art, which might seem through its isolation to have taken beauty away
+from the world to itself, has given it back again.
+
+The spirit of art, no less than of religion, can help us to triumph
+over the evils of life. There are three ways of treating evil
+successfully: the practical way, to overcome it and destroy it; the
+religious way, by faith to deny its existence; the aesthetic way, to
+rebuild it in the imagination. The first is the way of all strong men;
+but its scope is limited; for some of the evils of life are insuperable;
+against these our only recourse is faith or the spirit of art. The
+method of art consists in taking towards life itself the same attitude
+that the artist takes towards his materials when he makes a comedy or
+a tragedy out of them; life itself becomes the object of laughter or
+of tragic pity and fear and admiration. As we observed in our chapter
+on "The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics," laughter is an essentially
+aesthetic attitude, for it implies the ability disinterestedly to face
+a situation, although one which opposes our standards and expectations,
+and to take pleasure in it. All sorts of personal feelings may be mixed
+with laughter, bitterness and scorn and anger; but the fact that we
+laugh shows that they are not dominant; in laughter we assert our
+freedom from the yoke of circumstance and make it yield us pleasure
+even when it thwarts us. Laughter celebrates a twofold victory, first
+over ourselves, in that we do not allow our disappointments to spoil
+our serenity, and second over the world, in that, even when it threatens
+to render us unhappy, we prevent it. Fate may rob us of everything,
+but not of freedom of spirit and laughter; oftentimes we must either
+laugh or cry, but tears bring only relief, laughter brings merriment
+as well.
+
+Even with the devil laughter may effect reconciliation. Practical men
+will try to destroy him, but so far they have not succeeded; men of
+faith will prophesy his eventual ruin, but meanwhile we have to live
+in his company; and how can we live there at peace with ourselves
+unless with laughter at his antics and our own vain efforts to restrain
+them? Surely the age-long struggle against him justifies us in making
+this compromise for our happiness. We who in our lifetime cannot defeat
+him can at least make him yield us this meed of laughter for our pains.
+People who think that laughter at evil is a blasphemy against the good
+set too high a valuation upon their conventions. No one can laugh
+without possessing a standard, but to laugh is to recognize that life
+is of more worth than any ideal and happiness better than any morality.
+
+And if by laughter we cannot triumph over evil, we may perhaps achieve
+this end by appreciating it as an element in tragedy or pathos. For
+once we take a contemplative attitude towards life, foregoing praise
+and blame, there is no spectacle equal to it for tragic pity and fear
+and admiration. There is a heroism in life equal to any in art, in
+which we may live imaginatively, and in so living forgive the evil
+that is its necessary condition. Or, when life is pathetic rather than
+tragic, suffering and fading and weak rather than strong and steady
+and resisting, we may win insight from the pitiable reality into the
+possible and ideal; the shadow of evil will suggest to us the light
+of the good, and for this vision we shall bless life even when it
+disappoints our hopes. The very precariousness of values, which is an
+inevitable accompaniment of them, will serve to intensify their worth
+for us; we shall be made the more passionately to love life, with the
+joys that it offers us, because we so desperately realize its
+transiency. Our knowledge of the inescapableness of death and failure
+will quiet our laments, leaving us at least serene and resigned where
+our struggles and protests would be unavailing. It is by thus
+generalizing the point of view of art so that we adopt it towards our
+own life that we secure the catharsis of tragedy. Instead of letting
+sorrow overwhelm us, we may win self-possession through the struggle
+against it; instead of feeling that there is nothing left when the
+loved one dies, we may keep in memory a cherished image, more poignant
+and beautiful because the reality is gone, and loving this we shall
+love life also that has provided it.
+
+Finally, in subtle ways, the influence of art, while remaining indirect,
+may affect practical action in a more concrete fashion. For silently,
+unobtrusively, when constantly attended to, a work of art will transform
+the background of values out of which action springs. The beliefs and
+sentiments expressed will be accepted not for the moment only,
+aesthetically and playfully, but for always and practically; they will
+become a part of our nature. The effect is not merely to enlarge the
+scope of our sympathies by making us responsive, as all art does, to
+every human aspiration, but rather to strengthen into resolves those
+aspirations that meet in us an answering need. This influence is
+especially potent during the early years of life, before the framework
+of valuations has become fixed. What young man nursed on Shelley's
+poetry has not become a lover of freedom and an active force against
+all oppression? But even in maturer years art may work in this way.
+One cannot live constantly with the "Hermes" of Praxiteles without
+something of its serenity entering into one's soul to purge passion
+of violence, or with Goethe's poetry without its wisdom making one
+wise to live. The effect is not to cause any particular act, but so
+to mold the mind that every act performed is different because of this
+influence.
+
+I would compare this influence to that of friends. Friends may, of
+course, influence conduct directly and immediately through advice and
+persuasion, but that is not the most important effect of their lives.
+More important is the gradual diffusion of their attitudes and the
+enlightenment following their example. Through living their experiences
+with them, we come to adopt their valuations as our own; by observing
+how they solve their problems, we get suggestions as to how to solve
+ours. Art provides us with a companionship of the imagination, a new
+friendship. The sympathetic touch with the life there expressed enlarges
+our understanding of the problems and conditions of all life, and so
+leads to a freer and wiser direction of our own. On the one hand new
+and adventurous methods of living are suggested, and on the other hand
+the eternal limits of action are enforced.
+
+Once more I would compare the influence of art with that of religion.
+The effect of religion upon conduct is partly due to the institutions
+with which it is connected and the supernatural sanctions which it
+attaches to the performance of duty; but partly also, and more
+enduringly, to the stories of the gods. Now these stories, even when
+believed, have an existence in the imagination precisely comparable
+to that of works of art, and their influence upon sentiment is of
+exactly the same order. They are most effective when beautiful, as the
+legends of Christ and Buddha are beautiful; and they function by the
+sympathetic transference of attitude from the story to the believer.
+Even when no longer accepted as true their influence may persist, for
+the values they embody lose none of their compulsion. And, although
+as an interpretation of life based upon faith religion is doubtless
+eternal, its specific forms are probably all fictitious; hence each
+particular religion is destined to pass from the sphere of faith to
+that of art. The Greek religion has long since gone there, and there
+also a large part of our own will some day go--what is lost for faith
+is retained for beauty.
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+General Works
+
+_English._
+
+SANTAYANA, G. The Sense of Beauty, 1897; Reason in Art, 1906.
+MUENSTERBERG, H. The Principles of Art Education, 1905; The
+ Eternal Values, Part 3, 1909.
+LEE and THOMPSON. Beauty and Ugliness, 1911.
+CARRITT, E. I. The Theory of Beauty, 1914.
+KNIGHT, WM. The Philosophy of the Beautiful, Part 1, 1891;
+ Part 2, 1893.
+PUFFER, ETHEL. The Psychology of Beauty, 1905.
+BROWN, BALDWIN. The Fine Arts, 1892.
+ROWLAND, E. The Significance of Art, 1913.
+MARSHALL, R. Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics, 1894; Aesthetic
+ Principles, 1895.
+SULLY, J., and ROBERTSON, G. C. Aesthetics.
+BOSANQUET, B. History of Aesthetics, 1904; Three Lectures on
+ Aesthetics, 1914.
+GORDON, KATE. Aesthetics, 1909.
+
+_German._
+
+LIPPS, T. Aesthetik, 1903-1905.
+VOLKELT, J. System der Aesthetik, 1905-1914.
+DESSOIR, M. Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 1906.
+COHN, J. Allgemeine Aesthetik, 1901.
+MEUMANN, E. Aesthetik der Gegenwart, 1912; System der
+ Aesthetik, 1914.
+UTITZ, E. Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Kunstwissenschaft, Bd. 1,
+ 1914.
+MUELLER-FRIENFELS, R. Psychologic der Kunst, 1912.
+WITASEK, S. Grundzuege der Allgemeinen Aesthetik, 1904.
+GROOS, K. Der Aesthetische Genuss, 1902.
+LANGE, K. Das Wesen der Kunst, 1901.
+FIEDLER, C. Der Ursprung der Kuenstlerischen Thaetigkeit, 1901.
+KANT, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790; English translation by
+ J. H. Bernard, 1892.
+
+_French._
+
+TAINE, H. The Philosophy of Art, English translation, 1867.
+SULLY-PRUDHOMME, R. F. A. L'Expression dans les beaux arts, 1883.
+GUYAU, J. M. Les problemes de l'estetique contemporaine, 1884;
+ L'Art au point de vue sociologique, 1889.
+BRAY, L. Du Beau, 1902.
+SEAILLES, G. Essai sur le genie en l'art, 1897.
+SOURIAU, P. La suggestion en l'art, 1909.
+LALO, CH. Les Sentiments esthetiques, 1910; Introduction
+ l'estetique, 1913.
+DUSSAUZE, H. Les Regies estetiques et les lois du sentiment, 1911.
+FONTAINE, A. Essai sur le principe et les lois de la critique d'art,
+ 1909.
+
+_Italian._
+
+CROCE, B. Estetica, 1902; English translation, 1909; French
+ translation, 1904; German translation, 1905; Breviario di
+ estetica, 1913.
+PILO, M. Estetica.
+PORENA, M. Che cos' e il bello? 1905.
+
+EXPERIMENTAL AESTHETICS
+
+FECHNER, G. T. Vorschule der Aesthetik, 1876.
+KUELPE, O. Der gegenwaertige Stand der experimentellen Aesthetik,
+ in Bericht ueber den 2ten Kongress fuer experimentelle
+ Psychologie, 1907.
+STRATTON, G. M. Psychology and Culture, 1903.
+VALENTINE, C. W. Experimental Psychology of Beauty.
+MYERS, C. S. Introduction to Experimental Psychology, 1911.
+WUNDT, WM. Physiological Psychology.
+LALO, CH. L'Estetique experimentale contemporaine, 1908.
+
+Works on the Origins of Art
+
+HIRN, Y. The Origins of Art, 1900.
+GROSSE, E. The Beginnings of Art, English translation, 1897.
+WALLASCHEK, R. Primitive Music, 1903.
+BUECHER, K. Arbeit und Rhythmus, 1899.
+GUMMEBE, F. B. The Beginnings of Poetry, 1901.
+GROOS, K. The Play of Man, 1901.
+FRAZER, J. G. The Golden Bough, 1907-1915.
+WUNDT, WM. Volkerpsychologie, 1911; Elements of Folk Psychology,
+ 1916.
+SPEARING, H. G. The Childhood of Art, 1913.
+
+Additional References for Special Subjects
+
+_Chapter Six.--The Tragic._
+
+ARISTOTLE. Poetics.
+CORNEILLE, P. Discours de la tragedie, 1660.
+LESSING, G. E. Hamburgische Dramaturgic, 1767.
+SCHOPENHAUER. The World as Will and Idea; English translation,
+ Vol. 1, Bk. 3; Vol. 3, Ch. 27.
+HEGEL, G. W. F, Vorlesungen ueber die Aesthetik, 3ter Abschnitt,
+ 3tes Kapitel.
+HEBBEL, F. Ein Wort ueber das Drama, 1843.
+LIPPS, T. Der Streit ueber die Tragoedie, 1891.
+VOLKELT, J. Aesthetik des Tragischen, 1906; System der Aesthetik,
+ Bd. 2, 1910.
+BRADLEY, A. C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909.
+BUTCHER, S. H. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 1898.
+NIETZSCHE, FR. Die Geburt der Tragoedie, 1870.
+
+_Chapter Six.--The Comic._
+
+LIPPS, T. Komik und Humor, 1898.
+BERGSON, H. Laughter, English translation, 1913.
+FREUD, S. Wit, and Its Relation to the Unconscious, English
+ translation, 1916.
+MARTIN, L. J. Experimental Prospecting in the Fields of the
+ Comic, _American Journal of Psychology_, Vol. 16, 1905.
+SCHOPENHAUER, A. The World as Will and Idea, English translation,
+ Vol. 2, Ch. 8.
+VOLKELT, J. System der Aesthetik, Bd. 2, 1900.
+SULLY, J. Essay on Laughter, 1902.
+SPENCER, H. Physiology of Laughter, in _Essays, Scientific,
+ Political and Speculative_. SIDIS, B. Psychology of Laughter, 1913.
+MEREDITH, GEORGE. An Essay on Comedy, 1897.
+
+_Chapter Seven.--The Standard of Taste._
+
+TAINE, H. The Ideal in Art, 1867.
+LEMAITRE, J. Les Contemporains.
+FRANCE, A. La Vie litteraire.
+BRUNETIERE, FERD. Questions de critique, 1889.
+BABBITT, IRVING. The New Laocoon, 1910.
+GATES, L. E. Impressionism and Appreciation, in _The Atlantic
+ Monthly_, July, 1900.
+BALFOUR, A. J. Criticism and Beauty, 1910.
+PATER, WALTER. The Renaissance, 1873.
+SYMONDS, J. A. Essays, Speculative and Suggestive, 1890.
+CAINE, T. HALL. Cobwebs of Criticism, 1883.
+HENNEQUIN, E. La Critique scientifique, 1888.
+SPINGARN, J. E. Creative Criticism, 1917.
+
+_Chapter Eight.--Music._
+
+RIEMANN, H. Elemente der musikalischen Aesthetik, 1900.
+HANSLICK, E. Vom Musikalisch-Schoenen, 11th ed., 1910.
+GEHRING, A. The Basis of Musical Pleasure, 1910.
+COMBARIEU, J. Music: Its Laws and Evolution, 1910.
+GURNEY, E. The Power of Sound, 1880.
+BUSONI, F. Sketch of a New Athetic of Music, 1911.
+LALO, C. Esquisse d'une estetique musicale scientifique, 1908.
+AMBROS, W. A. Die Grenzen der Musik und Poesie, 1872.
+WAGNER, R. Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft; Oper und Drama.
+STUMPF, C. Tonpsychologie, 1883, 1890, and articles in _Zeitschrift
+ fuer Psychologie._
+HELMHOLTZ. Sensations of tone, 1895.
+MEYER, MAX. Contributions to a Psychological Theory of Music,
+ _University of Missouri Studies_, 1901,1. No. 1;
+ The Psychology of Music, in _American Journal of
+ Psychology_, 1903: 14.
+BINGHAM, W. VAN DYKE. Studies in Melody, 1910.
+LIPPS. Zur Theorie der Melodie, in _Zeitschrift fuer
+ Psychologie_, 1902:27.
+REVESZ, GEZA. Tonpsychologie, 1913.
+SPENCER, H. The Origin and Function of Music.
+BOLTON. Rhythm, in _American Journal of Psychology_, Vol. 6.
+MEUMANN, E. Untersuchungen zur Psy. u. Aest. d. Rhythmus,
+ in _Philosophische Studien_, X.
+STETSON, R. H. A Motor Theory of Rhythm and Discrete Succession,
+ in _Psychological Review_, Vol. 12.
+
+_Chapter Nine_.--_Poetry_.
+
+ARISTOTLE. Poetics.
+SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP. Defense of Poesy, 1581.
+WORDSWORTH, WM. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1800.
+SHELLEY, P. B. A Defense of Poetry, 1821.
+BRADLEY, A. C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909.
+SCOTT, F. N. The Most Fundamental Differentia of Poetry and
+ Prose, _Modern Language Association Publications_, V. 19, pp. 250-269,
+MILL, J. S. Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties, in _Dissertations
+ and Discussions_, Vol. 1.
+SANTAYANA, G. Elements of Poetry, in _Poetry and Religion_, 1900.
+LANIER, S. Science of English Verse, 1880.
+EASTMAN, MAX. The Enjoyment of Poetry.
+SOURIAU, P. La Reverie esthetique, 1906.
+LIDDELL, MARK H. An Introduction to the Study of Poetry, 1902.
+WERNER, R. M. Lyrik und Lyriker, 1890.
+LOWELL, AMY. Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, 1917.
+GUMMERE, F. B. A Handbook of Poetics, 1895.
+ROETTEKEN. Poetik, 1911.
+BURKE, EDMUND. A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the
+ Sublime and Beautiful, Part 4, 1756.
+MACKAIL, J. W. Lectures on Poetry, 1911.
+POE, E. A. The Philosophy of Composition; The Poetic Principle.
+OMOND, T. S. A Study of Meter, 1903.
+VERRIER, P. Metrique anglaise, 1909.
+DILTHEY, W. Das Erlebnis und Die Dichtung, 1907.
+STETSON, R. H. Rhythm and Rhyme, in _Harvard Psychological Studies_,
+ Vol. 1.
+
+_Chapter Ten.--Prose Literature._
+
+SCHOPENHAUER, A. The Art of Literature.
+GOETHE AND SCHILLER. Correspondence, passim.
+GREEN, T. H. The Value and Influence of Works of Fiction, 1862.
+LEWES, G. H. Principles of Success in Literature, 1892.
+ARNOLD, M. Essays in Criticism, 1869.
+ZOLA, E. The Experimental Novel and Other Essays, translated by
+ B. M. Sherman, 1893.
+BESANT, W., and JAMES, H. The Art of Fiction, 1885.
+PATER, W. Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, 1889.
+STEVENSON, R. L. On Style in Literature, in _Contemporary
+ Review_, 47:548.
+BOURGET, P. Etudes et Portraits, 1911.
+FLAUBERT, G. Correspondance, published 1887.
+ELSTER, E. Prinzipien der Literaturwissenschaft, 1897, 1911.
+FREITAG, G. Technique of the Drama, English translation, 1895.
+MATTHEWS, J. B. A Study of the Drama, 1910.
+JONES, H. A. The Foundations of a National Drama, 1913.
+WOODBRIDGE, E. The Drama: Its Laws and Its Technique, 1898.
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY. Le Roman, in Pierre et Jean.
+
+For additional references on Poetry and Prose, consult _An
+Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism_,
+by C. M. Gayley and F. N. Scott, 1899.
+
+_Chapter Eleven.--Painting._
+
+MEIER-GRAEFE, J. Modern Art, English translation, 1908.
+ROSS, DENMON. A Theory of Pure Design, 1907; On Drawing and
+ Painting, 1912.
+BERENSON, B. Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance.
+POORE, H. R. Pictorial Composition, 1903.
+VAN DYKE, J. C. Art for Art's Sake, 1895.
+UTITZ, E. Grundzuege der Aesthetischen Farbenlehre, 1908.
+WAETZOLDT, WM. Die Kunst des Portraets, 1908.
+WEIGHT, WM. H. Modern Painting, 1915.
+LIPPS, T. Aesthetik, Bd. 1, 5ter Abschnitt, Bd. 2, 7tes Kapitel.
+GOETHE. Farbenlehre.
+SOURIATJ, P. L'Estetique du mouvement, 1889.
+STRATTON, G. M. Eye Movement, and the Aesthetics of Visual
+ Form, in Philosophische Studien, XX.
+COHN, J. Experimented Untersuchungen ueber die Gefuehls-betonung
+ der Farben, in Philosophische Studien, 10: 522.
+BAKER and CHOWN. Experiments on Color, in the University of
+ Toronto Studies.
+LEE and THOMPSON. Beauty and Ugliness, in Contemporary Review, 1897.
+CHEVREUL, M. E. The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors, 1855.
+
+_Chapter Twelve.--Sculpture._
+
+HILDEBRAND, A. The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture,
+ English translation, 1907.
+RODIN, A. Art, English translation, 1912.
+HERDER, J. G. Plastik, 1778.
+LIPPS, T. Aesthetik, Bd. 2, 5tes u. etes Kapitel.
+LESSING. Laocoon, 1766.
+CORNELIUS, H. Elementargesetze der bildenden Kunst, 1908.
+
+_Chapter Thirteen.--Architecture._
+
+LIPPS, T. Raumaesthetik, 1897; Aesthetik, Bd. 1, 1903.
+SCOTT, G. The Architecture of Humanism, 1914.
+ROBINSON, J. B. Architectural Composition, 1908.
+VAN PELT, J. V. Essentials of Composition, 1913.
+GUADET, J. Elements et theorie de l'architecture, 1909.
+VIOLLET-LE-DUC, E. E. Entretiens sur l'architecture, 1863-72.
+RUSKIN, J. Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1857.
+FRANKL, P. Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst, 1914.
+WORRINGER, W. Formprobleme der Gothik, 1912.
+WOELFFUN, H. Renaissance und Barock, 1888.
+
+_Chapter Fourteen.--Art and Morality._
+
+PLATO. Republic, Ion, Phaedrus, Symposium, Gorgias.
+TOLSTOY, L. What is Art? English translation, 1899.
+SCHILLER, F. Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1793-1795.
+MORRIS, WM. Hopes and Fears for Art, 1882.
+WILDE, O., MORRIS, WM., and OWEN, W. C. The Soul of Man,
+ The Socialist Ideal--Art, and The Coming Solidarity.
+RUSKIN, J. Lectures on Art, 1900.
+SYMONDS, J. A. Essays, Speculative and Suggestive, 1890.
+PAULHAN, FR. Le Mensonge de l'Art, 1907.
+WHISTLER, J. McN. Ten o'Clock, 1888.
+GUYAU, J. M. L'Art au point de vue sociologique, 1889.
+CASSAGNE, A. La theorie de l'art pour l'art en France, 1906.
+
+_Chapter Fifteen.--Art and Religion._
+
+LANG, A. Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 1913.
+DELLA SETA, A. Religion and Art, 1914.
+HARRISON, J. Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.
+MURRAY, G. Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912.
+REINACH, S. Orpheus, 1909.
+SANTAYANA, G. Poetry and Religion, 1900.
+FRAZER, J. G. The Golden Bough.
+HEGEL, G. W. F. Introduction to the Philosophy of Fine Art,
+ translated by Bosanquet, 1886.
+MUENSTERBERG, H. Philosophie der Werte, 1908.
+WUNDT, WM. Volkerpsychologie, 1911.
+SANTAYANA, G. Three Philosophical Poets, 1910.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Principles Of Aesthetics, by Dewitt H. Parker
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