Books: The Psychology of Beauty
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Ethel D. Puffer >> The Psychology of Beauty
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Thus we see that Fechner's reproach is unjustified. Those concepts
which are too general to apply to particular cases are not meant
to do so. If a general concept expresses, as it should, the place
of Beauty in the hierarchy of metaphysical values, it is for the
psychologist of aesthetics to develop the means by which that end
can be reached in the various realms in which works of art are
found.
Nor can we agree with Santayana's dictum<1> that philosophical
aesthetics confuses the import of an experience with the
explanation of its cause. It need not. The aesthetic experience
is indeed caused by the beautiful object, but the beautiful object
itself is caused by the possibility of the aesthetic experience,--
beauty as an end under the conditions of human perception. Thus
the Nature of Beauty is related to its import, or meaning, or
end, as means to that end; and therefore the import of an
experience may well point out to us the constitution of the cause
of that experience. A work of art, a piece of nature, is judged
by its degree of attainment to that end; the explanation of its
beauty--of its degree of attainment, that is--is found in the
effect of its elements, according to psychological laws, on the
aesthetic subject.
<1> The Sense of Beauty, 1898. Intro.
Such a psychological study of the means by which the end of
Beauty is attained is the only method by which we can come to
an explanation of the wealth of concrete beauty. The concept
of explanation, indeed, is valid only within the realm of
causes and effects. The aim of aesthetics being conceded, as
above, to be the determination of the Nature of Beauty and the
explanation of our feelings about it, it is evident at this
point that the Nature of Beauty must be determined by philosophy;
but the general definition having been fixed, the meaning of the
work of art having been made clear, the only possible explanation
of our feelings about it--the aesthetic experience, in other
words--must be gained from psychology. This method is not open
to the logical objections against the preceding. No longer need
we ask what has a right to be included in the aesthetic experience.
That has been fixed by the definition of Beauty. But how the
beautiful object brings about the aesthetic experience, the
boundaries of which are already known, is clearly matter for
psychology.
The first step must then be to win the philosophical definition
of Beauty. It was Kant, says Hegel, who spoke the first rational
word concerning Beauty. The study of his successors will reveal,
I believe, that the aesthetic of the great system of idealism
forms, on the whole, one identical doctrine. It is worth while
to dwell somewhat on this point, because the traditional view of
the relation of the aesthetic of Kant, Schiller, Schelling, and
Hegel is otherwise. Kant's starting-point was the discovery of
the normative, "over-individual" nature of Beauty, which we have
just found to be the secret of the contradictions of empirical
aesthetics. Yet he came to it at the bidding of quite other
motives.
Kant's aesthetics was meant to serve as the keystone of the
arch between sense and reason. The discovery of all that is
implicit in the experience of the senses had led him to deny
the possibility of knowledge beyond the matter of this experience.
Yet the reason has an inevitable tendency to press beyond this
limit, to seek all-embracing, absolute unities,--to conceive
an unconditioned totality. Thus the reason presents us with
the ideas--beyond all possibility of knowledge--of the Soul,
the World, and God. In the words of Kant, the Ideas of Reason
lead the understanding to the consideration of Nature according
to a principle of completeness, although it can never attain
to this. Can there be a bridge across this abyss between sense
and reason? then asks Kant; which bridge he believes himself
to have found in the aesthetic faculty. For on inquiring what
is involved in the judgment, "This is beautiful," he discovers
that such a judgment is "universal" and "necessary," inasmuch
as it implies that every normal spectator must acknowledge its
validity, that it is "disinterested" because it rests on the
"appearance of the object without demanding its actual
existence," and that it is "immediate" or "free," as it
acknowledges the object as beautiful without definite purpose,
as of adaptation to use. But how does this judgment constitute
the desired bond between sense and reason? Simply in that,
though applied to an object of the senses, it has yet all the
marks of the Idea of Reason,--it is universal, necessary, free,
unconditioned; it is judged as if it were perfect, and so
fulfills those demands of reason which elsewhere in the world
of sense are unsatisfied.
The two important factors, then, of Kant's aesthetics are its
reconciliation of sense and reason in beauty, and its reference
of the "purposiveness" of beauty to the cognitive faculty.
Schiller has been given the credit of transcending Kant's
"subjective" aesthetic through his emphasis on the significance
of the beautiful object. It is not bound by a conception to
which it must attain, so that it is perceived as if it were
free. Nor do we desire the reality of it to use for ourselves
or for others; so that we are free in relation to it. It, the
object, is thus "the vindication of freedom in the world of
phenomena," that world which is otherwise a binding necessity.
But it would seem that this had been already taught by Kant
himself, and that Schiller has but enlivened the subject by
his two illuminating phrases, "aesthetic semblance" and the
"play-impulse," to denote the real object of the aesthetic
desire and the true nature of that desire; form instead of
material existence, and a free attitude instead of serious
purpose. Still, his insistence on Beauty as the realization
of freedom may be said to have paved the way for Schelling's
theory, in which the aesthetic reaches its maximum of
importance.
The central thought of the Absolute Idealism of Schelling is
the underlying identity of Nature and the Self. In Nature,
from matter up to the organism, the objective factor
predominates, or, in Schelling's phrase, the conscious self
is determined by the unconscious. In morality, science, the
subjective factor predominates, or the unconscious is
determined by the conscious. But the work of art is a natural
appearance and so unconscious, and is yet the product of a
conscious activity. It gives, then, the equilibrium of the
real and ideal factors,--just that repose of reconciliation
or "indifference" which alone can show the Absolute. But--
and this is of immense importance for our theory--in order
to explain the identity of subject and object, the Ego must
have an intuition, through which, in one and the same
appearance, it is in itself at once conscious and unconscious,
and this condition is given in the aesthetic experience. The
beautiful is thus the solution of the riddle of the universe,
for it is the possibility of the explicit consciousness of
the unity of Nature and the Self--or the Absolute.
So Beauty is again the pivot on which a system turns. Its
place is not essentially different from that which it held
in the systems of Kant and Schiller. As the objective
possibility for the bridge between sense and reason, as the
vindication of freedom in the phenomenal world, and as
vindication of the possible unity of the real and the ideal,
or nature and self, the world-elements, its philosophical
significance is nearly the same.
With Hegel Beauty loses little of its commanding position.
The universe is in its nature rational; Thought and Being
are one. The world-process is a logical process; and nature
and history, in which spirit of the world realizes itself,
are but applied logic. The completely fulfilled or expressed
Truth is then the concrete world-system; at the same time the
life or self of the universe; the Absolute. This Hegel calls
the Idea, and he defines Beauty as the expression of the Idea
to sense.
This definition would seem to be as to the letter in accord
with the general tendency as have already outlined. It might
be said that it is but another phrasing of Schelling's thought
of the Absolute as presented to the Ego in Beauty. But not
so. For Schelling, the aesthetic is a schema or form,--that
is, the form of balance, equilibrium, reconciliation of the
rational ideal,--not a content. But Hegel's Beauty expresses
the Idea by the way of information or association. That this
is true any one of his traditional examples makes evident.
Correggio's Madonna of the St. Sebastian is found by him
inferior to the Sistine Madonna. Why? "In the first picture
we have the dearest and loveliest of human relations consecrated
by contrast with what is Divine. In the second picture we have
the Divine relation itself, showing itself under the limitations
of the human."<1> Dutch painting, he tells us, ought not to
be despised; "for it is this fresh and wakeful freedom and
vitality of mind in apprehension and presentation that forms
the highest aspect of these pictures." And a commentator adds,
"The spontaneous joy of the perfect life is figured to this
lower sphere." His whole treatment of Art as a symbol confirms
this view, as do all his criticisms. Art or Beauty shall
reveal to our understanding the eternal Ideal.
<1> Kedney's Hegel's _Aesthetics_, 1892, p. 158.
On comparing this with what we have won from Kant, Schiller,
and Schelling, the divergence becomes apparent. I have tried
to show that there is no essential difference between these
three either in their general view of the aesthetic experience,
or in the degree of objectivity of their doctrine of Beauty.
They do not contradict one another. They merely emphasize
now the unity, now the reconciliation of opposites, in the
aesthetic experience. The experience of the beautiful
constitutes a reconciliation of the warring elements of
experience, in a world in which the demands of Reason seem
to conflict with the logic of events, and the beautiful object
is such that it constitutes the permanent possibility for this
reconciliation.
But the attempt to include Hegel within this circle reveals
at once the need of further delimitation. The beautiful is
to reveal, and to vindicate in revealing, the union of the
world-elements, that is, the spirit of the world. On Hegel's
own principles, the Idea should be "expressed to sense." Now
if this expression is not, after all, directly to sense, but
the sense gives merely the occasion for passing over to the
thought of the Divine, it would seem that the Beauty is not
after all in the work of art, but out of it. The Infinite,
or the Idea, or the fusion of real and ideal, must be shown
to sense.
Is there any way in which this is conceivable? We cannot
completely express to sense Niagara Falls or the Jungfrau,
for they are infinitely beyond the possibilities of imitation.
Yet the particular contour of the Jungfrau is never mistaken
in the smallest picture. In making a model of Niagara we
should have to reproduce the relation between body of water,
width of stream, and height of fall, and we might succeed in
getting the peculiar effect of voluminousness which marks
that wonder of Nature. The soaring of a lark is not like
the pointing upward of a slender Gothic spire, yet there is
a likeness in the attitudes with which we follow them. All
these cases have certain form-qualities in common, by virtue
of which they resemble each other. Now it is these very
form-qualities which Kant is using when he takes the aesthetic
judgment as representative of reason in the world of sense
because it shows the qualities of the ideas of reason,--that
is, unconditional totality or freedom. And we might, indeed,
hope to "express the Idea to sense" if we could find for it
a form-quality, or subjectively, in the phrase of Kant, a
form of reflection.
What is the form of reflection for the Absolute, the Idea?
It would appear to be a combination of Unity and Totality--
self-completeness. An object, then, which should be self-
complete from all possible points of view, to which could
be applied the "form of reflection" for the Absolute, would,
therefore, alone truly express it, and so alone fulfill the
end of Beauty. The Idea would be there in its form; it
would be shown to sense, and so first full expressed.
With this important modification of Hegel's definition of
Beauty, which brings it into line with the point of view
already won, I believe the way is at last opened from the
traditional philosophy of aesthetics to a healthy and concrete
psychological theory.
But must every self-complete object give rise to the aesthetic
experience? An object is absolutely self-complete only for
the perceiving subject; it is so, in other words, only when
it produces a self-complete experience for that subject. If
reconciliation of the warring elements of the universe is the
end of Beauty it must take place not for, but in, the human
personality; it must not be understood, but immediately,
completely experienced; it should be realized in the subject
of the aesthetic experience, the lover of beauty. The
beautiful object would be not that which should show in
outline form, or remind of, this Unity of the World, but
which should create for the subject the moment of self-
completeness; which should inform the aesthetic subject with
that unity and self-completeness which are the "forms of
reflection" of the Infinite. The subject should be not a
mirror of perfection, but a state of perfection. Only in
this sense does the concept of reconciliation come to its
full meaning. Not because I see freedom, but because I am
free; not because I think of God, or the Infinite, or the
one, but because I am for the moment complete, at the
highest point of energy and unity, does the aesthetic
experience constitute such a reconciliation.
Not because I behold the Infinite, but because I have, myself,
a moment of perfection. Herein it is that our theory constitutes
a complete contradiction to all "expression" or "significant"
theories of the Beautiful, and does away with the necessity those
theories are under of reading sermons into stones. The yellow
primrose needs not to remind us of the harmony of the universe,
or to have ulterior significance whatever, if it gives by its
own direct simple stimulation a moment of Unity and Self-
completeness. That immediate experience indeed contains in
itself the "form of reflection" of the Absolute, and it is
through this that we so often pass, in the enjoyment of Beauty,
to the thought of the divine. But that thought is a corollary,
a secondary effect, not an essential part of the aesthetic
moment. There is a wonderful bit of unconscious aesthetics in
the following passage from Senancour, touching the "secret of
relation" we have just analyzed.
"It was dark and rather cold. I was gloomy, and walked because
I had nothing to do. I passed by some flowers placed breast-
high upon a wall. A jonquil in bloom was there. It is the
strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of
the year. I felt all the happiness destined for man. This
unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world,
arose in me complete. I never felt anything so great or so
instantaneous. I know not what shape, what analogy, what
secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a
limitless beauty.... I shall never inclose in a conception this
power, this immensity that nothing will express; this form that
nothing will contain; this ideal of a better world which one
feels, but which it would seem that nature has not made."<1>
<1> Translation by Carleton Noyes: _The Enjoyment of Art_, 1903,
p. 65.
Our philosophical definition of Beauty has thus taken final
shape. The beautiful object possesses those qualities which
bring the personality into a state of unity and self-completeness.
Lightly to case aside such a definition as abstract, vague,
Empty, is no less short sighted than to treat the idea of the
Absolute Will, of the Transcendental Reason, of the Eternal
Love, as mere intellectual factors in the aesthetic experience.
It should not be criticised as giving "no objective account of
the nature and origin of Beauty." The nature of Beauty is
indicated in the definition; the origin of Beauty may be studied
in its historical development; its reason for being is simply
the desire of the human heart for the perfect moment.
Beauty is to bring unity and self-completeness into the
personality. By what means? What causes can bring about this
effect? When we enter the realm of causes and effects, however,
we have already left the ground of philosophy, and it is fitting
that the concepts which we have to use should be adapted to the
empirical point of view. The personality, as dealt with in
psychology, is but the psychophysical organism; and we need to
know only how to translate unity and self-completeness into
psychological terms.
The psychological organism is in a state of unity either when
it is in a state of virtual congealment or emptiness, as in a
trance or ecstasy; or when it is in a state of repose, without
tendency to change. Secondly, the organism is self-complete when
it is at the highest possible point of tone, of functional
efficiency, of enhanced life. Then a combination of favorable
stimulation and repose would characterize the aesthetic feeling.
But it may be said that stimulation and repose are contradictory
concepts, and we must indeed admit that the absolute repose of
the hypnotic trance is not aesthetic, because empty of stimulus.
The only aesthetic repose is that in which stimulation resulting
in impulse to movement or action is checked or compensated for
by its antagonistic impulse; inhibition of action, or action
returning upon itself, combined with heightening of tone. But
this is TENSION, EQUILIBRIUM, or BALANCE OF FORCES, which is thus
seen to be A GENERAL CONDITION OF ALL AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. The
concept is familiar in pictorial composition and to some extent
also in music and poetry, but here first appears as grounded in
the very demand for the union of repose with activity.
Moreover, this requirement, which we have derived from the
logical concepts of unity and totality, as translated into
psychological terms, receives confirmation from the nature of
organic life. It was the perfect moment that we sought, and we
found it in the immediate experience of unity and self-completeness;
and unity for a living being CAN only be equilibrium. Now it
appears that an authoritative definition of the general nature of
an organism makes it "so built, whether on mechanical principles
or not, that every deviation from the equilibrium point sets up
a tendency to return to it."<1> Equilibrium, in greater or less
excursions from the centre, is thus the ultimate nature of
organic life. The perfect equilibrium, that is, equilibrium with
heightened tone, will then give the perfect moment.
<1> L.T. Hobhouse, _Mind in Evolution_.
The further steps of aesthetics are then toward analysis of the
psychological effect of all the elements which enter into a
work of art, with reference to their effect in producing
stimulation or repose. What colors, forms, tones, emotions,
ideas, favorably stimulate? What combinations of these bring
to repose? All the modern studies in so-called physiological
aesthetics, into the emotional and other--especially motor--
effects of color, tone-sensation, melodic sequence, simple
forms, etc., find here there proper place.
A further important question, as to the fitting psychological
designation of the aesthetic state, is now suggested. Some
authorities speak of the aesthetic attitude or activity,
describing it as "sympathetic imitation" or "absorption;"
others of the aesthetic pleasure. But, according to our
definition of the aesthetic experience as a combination of
favorable stimulation with repose, this state, as involving
"a distinctive feeling-tone and a characteristic trend of
activity aroused by a certain situation,"<1> can be no other
than an emotion. This view is confirmed by introspection; we
speak of aesthetic activity and aesthetic pleasure, but we
are conscious of a complete arrest, and sometimes of a very
distinct divergence from pure pleasure. The experience is
unique, it seems to defy description, to be intense, vivid,
and yet--like itself alone. Any attempt to disengage special,
already known emotions, even at the play or in hearing music,
is often in vain, in just those moments when our excitement is
most intense. But the hypothesis of a unique emotion, parallel
to those of joy, fear, etc., and with a psychological basis as
outlined, would account for these facts. The positive toning
of the experience--what we call aesthetic pleasure--is due not
only to the favorable stimulation, but also to the fact that
the very antagonism of impulses which constitutes repose
heightens tone while it inhibits action. Thus the conditions
of both factors of aesthetic emotion tend to induct pleasure.
<1> Baldwin's _Dict. Of Phil. And Psychol._ Art. "Emotion."
It is, then, clear that no specific aesthetic pleasure need be
sought. The very phrase, indeed, is a misnomer, since all
pleasure is qualitatively the same, and differentiated only
by the specific activities which it accompanies. It is also
to be noted that those writers on aesthetics who have dwelt
most on aesthetic pleasure have come in conclusion only to
specific activities, like the "imitation" of Groos, for instance.
In the light of the just-won definition of aesthetic emotion,
it is interesting to examine some of the well-known modern
aesthetic theories.
Lipps defines the aesthetic experience as a "thrill of sympathetic
feeling," Groos as "sympathetic imitation," evidently assuming
that pleasure accompanies this. But there are many feelings of
sympathy, and joyful ones, which do not belong to the aesthetic
realm. In the same way, not all "imitation" is accompanied by
pleasure, and not all of that falls within the generally accepted
aesthetic field. If these definitions were accepted as they
stand, all our rejoicings with friends, all our inspiration from
a healthy, magnetic presence must be included in it. It is clear
that further limitation is necessary; but if to this sympathetic
imitation, this living through in sympathy, we add the demand
for repose, the necessary limitation is made. Physical exercise
in general, or the instinctive imitation of energetic, or easy
(in general FAVORABLE) movements, is pleasurable, indeed, but
the experience is not aesthetic,--as is quite clear, indeed, to
common sense,--and it is not aesthetic because it is the
contradiction of repose. A particular case of the transformation
of pleasurable physical exercise into an aesthetic activity is
seen in the experience of symmetrical or balanced form; any
moderate, smooth exercise of the eye is pleasurable, but this
alone induces a state of the whole organism combining repose with
stimulation.
The theories of Kulpe and Santayana, while they definitely mark
out the ground, seem to me in need of addition. "Absorption in
the object in respect to its bare quality and conformation" does
not, of course, give the needed information, for objective beauty,
of the character of this conformation or form. But yet, it might
be said that the content of beauty might conceivably be deduced
from the psychological conditions of absorption. In the same
way, Santayana's "Beauty as objectified pleasure," or pleasure as
the quality of a thing, is neither a determination of objective
beauty nor a sufficient description of the psychological state.
Yet analysis of those qualities in the thing that cause us to
make our pleasure a quality of it would supplement the definition
sufficiently and completely in the sense of our own formula. Why
do we regard pleasure as the quality of a thing? Because there
is something in the thing that makes us spread, as it were, our
pleasure upon it. This is that which fixates us, arrests us,
upon it,--which can be only the elements that make for repose.
Guyau, however, comes nearest to our point of view. "The beautiful
is a perception or an action which stimulates life within us under
its three forms simultaneously (i.e., sensibility, intelligence,
and will) and produces pleasure by the swift consciousness of this
general stimulation."<1> It is from this general stimulation that
Guyau explains the aesthetic effect of his famous drink of milk
among mountain scenes. But such general stimulation might
accompany successful action of any kind, and thus the moral and
the aesthetic would fall together. That M. Guyau is so successful
in his analysis is due rather to the fact that just this diffused
stimulation is likely to come from such exercise as is
characterized by the mutual checking of antagonistic impulses
producing an equilibrium. The diffusion of stimulation would be
our formula for the aesthetic state only if interpreted as
stimulation arresting action.
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