Books: The Psychology of Beauty
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Ethel D. Puffer >> The Psychology of Beauty
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The contemplation of the One, however, is not the only type of
mystic ecstasy. That intoxication of emotion which seizes upon
the negro camp meeting of to-day, as it did upon the Delphic
priestesses two thousand years ago, seems at first glance to
have nothing in common psychologically with the blessed
nothingness of Gautama and Meister Eckhart. But the loss of
the feeling of personality and the sense of possession by a
divine spirit are the same. How, then, is this state reached?
By means, I believe, which recall the general formula for the
Disappearance of self-feeling. To repeat the monosyllable OM
(Brahm) ten thousand times; to circle interminably, chanting
the while, about a sacred ire; to listen to the monotonous
magic drum; to whirl the body about; to rock to and fro on the
knees, vociferating prayers, are methods which enable the
members of the respective sects in which they are practiced
either to enter, as they say, into the Eternal Being, or to
become informed with it through the negation of the self. The
sense of personality, at any rate, is more or less completely
lost, and the ecstasy takes a form more or less passionate,
according as the worshiper depends on the rapidity rather than
on the monotony of his excitations. Here, again, the self-
background drops, inasmuch as every rhythmical movement tends
to become automatic, and then unconscious. Thus what we are
wont to call the inspired madness of the Delphic priestesses
was less the expression of ecstasy than the means of its
excitation. Perpetual motion, as well as eternal rest, may
bring about the engulfment of the self in the object. The
most diverse types of religious emotions, IN SO FAR AS THEY
PRESENT VARIATIONS IN THE DEGREE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, are
thus seen to be reducible to the same psychological basis.
The circle, no less than the point, is the symbol of the One,
and the "devouring unity" that lays hold on consciousness
from the loss of the feeling of transition comes in the
unrest of enthusiasm no less than in the blissful nothing of
Nirvana.
At this point, I am sure, the reader will interpose a protest.
Is, then, the mystery of self-abandonment to the highest to
be shared with the meanest of fanatics? Are the rapture of
Dante and the trance of the Omphalopsychi sprung from the
same root? There is no occasion, however, for the revolt of
sentiment because we fail to emphasize here the important
differences in the emotional character and value of the states
in question. What interests us is only one aspect which they
have in common, the surrender of the sense of personality.
That is based on formal relations of the elements of
consciousness, and the explanation of its disappearance
applies as well to the whirling dervish as to the converts
of a revivalist preacher.
The mystic, then, need only shut his senses to the world, and
contemplate the One. Subject fuses with object, and he feels
himself melt into the Infinite. But each experience is not
the exclusive property of the religious enthusiast. The
worshiper of beauty has given evidence of the same feelings.
And yet, in his aesthetic rapture, the latter dwells with
deliberation on his delights, and while luxuriating in the
infinite labyrinths of beauty can scarcely be described as
musing on an undifferentiated Unity. So far, at least, it
does not appear that our formula applies to aesthetic feeling.
Aesthetic feeling arises in the contemplation of a beautiful
object. But what makes an object beautiful? To go still
further back, just what, psychologically, does contemplation
mean? To contemplate an object is to dwell on the idea or
image of it, and to dwell upon an idea means to carry it out
incipiently. We may go even further, and say it is the
carrying out by virtue of which we grasp the idea. How do
we think of a tall pine-tree? By sweeping our eyes up and
down its length, and out to the ends of its branches; and if
we are forbidden to use our eye muscles even infinitesimally,
then we cannot think of the visual image. In short, we
perceive an object in space by carrying out its motor
suggestions; more technically expressed, by virtue of a
complex of motor impulses aroused by it; more briefly, by
incipiently imitating it. Contemplation is inner imitation.
Now a beautiful object is first of all a unified object; why
this must be so has been considered in the preceding chapter.
In it all impulses of soul and sense are bound to react upon
one another, and to lead back to one another. And all the
elements, which in contemplation we reproduce in the form of
motor impulses, are bound to make a closed circle of these
suggested energies. The symmetrical picture calls out a set
of motor impulses which "balance,"--a system of energies
reacting on one centre; the sonnet takes us out on one wave
of rhythm and of thought, to bring us back on another to the
same point; the sonata does the same in melody. In the
"whirling circle" of the drama, not a word or an act that is
not indissolubly linked with before and after. Thus the unity
of a work of art makes of the system of suggested energies
which form the foreground of attention an impregnable, an
invulnerable circle.
Not only, however, are we held in equilibrium in the object
of attention; we cannot connect with it our self-background,
for the will cannot act on the object of aesthetic feeling.
We cannot eat the grapes of Apelles or embrace the Galatea of
Pygmalion; we cannot rescue Ophelia or enlighten Juliet; and
of impulse to interfere, to connect the scene with ourselves,
we have none. But this is a less important factor in the
situation. That the house is dark, the audience silent, and
all motor impulses outside of the aesthetic circle stifled, is,
too, only a superficial, and, so to speak, a negative condition.
The real ground of the possibility of a momentary self-
annihilation lies in the fact that all incitements to motor
impulse--except those which belong to the indissoluble ring
of the object itself--have been shut out by the perfection of
unity to which the aesthetic object (here the drama) has been
brought. The background fades; the foreground satisfies,
incites no movement; and with the disappearance of the
possibility of action which would connect the two, fades also
that which dwells in this feeling of transition,--the sense
of personality. The depth of aesthetic feeling lies not in
the worthy countryman who interrupts the play with cries for
justice on the villain, but in him who creates the drama again
with the poet, who lives over again in himself each of the
thrills of emotion passing before him, and loses himself in
their web. The object is a unity or our whirling circle of
impulses, as you like to phrase it. At any rate, out of that
unity the soul does not return upon itself; it remains one
with it in the truest sense.
The loss of the sense of personality is an integral part of
the aesthetic experience; and we have seen how it is a
necessary psychological effect of the unity of the object.
From another point of view it may be said that the unity of
the object is constituted just by the inhibition of all
tendency to movement through the balance or centrality of
impulses suggested by it. In other words, the balance of
impulses makes us feel the object a unity. And this balance
of impulses, this inhibition of movement, corresponding to
unity, is what we know as aesthetic repose. Thus the conditions
of aesthetic repose and of the loss of self-feeling are the
same. In fact, it might be said that, within this realm,
the two conceptions are identical. The true aesthetic repose
is just that perfect rest in the beautiful object which is
the essence of the loss of the sense of personality.
Subtler and rarer, again, than the raptures of mysticism and
of beauty worship is the ecstasy of intellectual production;
yet the "clean, clear joy of creation," as Kipling names it,
is not less to be grouped with those precious experiences in
which the self is sloughed away, and the soul at one with its
content. I speak, of course, of intellectual production in
full swing, in the momentum of success. The travail of soul
over apparently hopeless difficulties or in the working out
of indifferent details takes place not only in full self-
consciousness, but in self-disgust; there we can take Carlyle
to witness. But in the higher stages the fixation of truth
and the appreciation of beauty are accompanied by the same
extinction of the feeling of individuality. Of testimony we
have enough and to spare. I need not fill these pages with
confessions and anecdotes of the ecstatical state in which
all great deeds of art and science are done. The question is
rather to understand and explain it on the basis of the formal
scheme to which we have found the religious and the aesthetic
attitudes to conform.
Jean Paul says somewhere that, however laborious the completion
of a great work, its conception came as a whole,--in one flash.
We remember the dreams of Schiller in front of his red curtain
and the resulting musikalische Stimmung,--formless, undirected,
out of which his poem shaped itself; the half-somnambulic
state of Goethe and his frantic haste in fixation of the vision,
in which he dared not even stop to put his paper straight, but
wrote over the corners quite ruthlessly. Henner once said to
a painter who mourned that he had done nothing on his picture
for the Salon, though he saw it before him, "What! You see
your picture! Then it is done. You can paint it in an hour."
If all these traditions be true, they are significant; and
the necessary conditions of such composition seem to be highly
analogous to those of the aesthetic emotion. We have, first
of all, a lack of outward stimulation, and therefore possible
disappearance of the background. How much better have most
poets written in a garret than in a boudoir! Goethe's bare
little room in the garden house at Weimar testifies to the
severe conditions his genius found necessary. Tranquillity
of the background is the condition of self-absorption, or--
and this point seems to me worth emphasizing--a closed circle
of outer activities. I have never believed, for instance, in
the case of the old tale of Walter Scott and the button, that
it was the surprise of his loss that tied the tongue of the
future author's rival. The poor head scholar had simply made
for himself a transitionless experience with that twirling
button, and could then sink his consciousness in its object,--
at that moment the master's questions. It is with many of
us a familiar experience, that of not being able to think
unless in constant motion. Translated into our psychological
scheme, the efficiency of these movements would be explained
thus: Given the "whirling circles,"--the background of
continuous movement sensations, which finally dropped out of
consciousness, and the foreground of continuous thought,--the
first protected, so to speak, the second, since they were
mutually exclusive, and what broke the one destroyed the other.
But to return from this digression, a background fading into
nothingness, either as rest or as a closed circle of automatic
movements, is the first condition of the ecstasy of mental
production. The second is given in the character of its
object. The object of high intellectual creation is a unity,--
a perfect whole, revealed, as Jean Paul says, in a single
movement of genius. Within the enchanted circle of his
creation, the thinker is absorbed, because here too all his
impulses are turned to one end, in relation to which nothing
else exists.
I am aware that many will see a sharp distinction here between
the work of the creator or discoverer in science and the artist.
They may maintain, in Schopenhauer's phrase, that the aim and
end of science is just the connection of objects in the service
of the will of the individual, and hence transition between the
various terms is constant; while art, on the other hand, indeed
isolates its object, and so drops transitions. But I think
where we speak of "connection" thus, we mean the larger sweep
of law. If the thinker looks beyond his special problem at
all, it is, like Buddha, to "fix his eyes upon the chain of
causation." The scientist of imagination sees his work under
the form of eternity, as one link of that endless chain, one
atom in that vortex of almighty purposes, which science will
need all time to reveal. For him it is either one question,
closed within itself by its own answer, or it is the Infinite
Law of the Universe,--the point or the circle. From all points
of view, then, the object of creation in art or science is a
girdle of impulses from which the mind may not stray. The two
conditions of our formal scheme are given: a term which
disappears, and one which is a perfect whole. Transition
between background and foreground has dropped. Between the
objects of attention in the foreground it has no meaning,
because the foreground is an indissoluble unity. With that
object the self must feel itself one, since the distinctive
self-feeling has disappeared with the opportunity for transition.
We have thus swung around the circle of mystical, aesthetic,
and creative emotion, and we have found a single formula to
apply, and a single explanation to avail for the loss of
personality. The conditions of such experiences bring about
the disappearance of one term, and the impregnable unity of
the other. Without transition between two terms in consciousness,
two objects of attention, the loss of the feeling of personality
takes place according to natural psychological laws. It is no
longer a mystery that in intense experience the feeling of
personality dissolves.
One point, however, does remain still unexplained,--the bliss
of self-abandonment. Whence are the definiteness and intensity
of the religious and aesthetic emotions? The surrender of the
sense of personality, it seems, is based on purely formal
relations of the elements of consciousness, common to all three
groups of the analyzed emotions. Yet it is precisely with a
fading of self-feeling that intensity and definiteness deepen.
But how can different and emotionally significant feelings
arise from a single formal process? How can the worship of
God become ecstatic joy through the loss of personality? The
solution of this apparent paradox is demanded not only in
logic, but also by those who would wish to see the religious
trance distinguished also in its origin from those of baser
content.
But it is, after all, the formal nature of the phenomenon that
gives us light. If variation in the degree of self-feeling is
the common factor, and the disappearance of the transition-
feeling its cause, then the lowest member of the scale, in
which the loss of self-feeling takes place with mathematical
completeness, must be included. That is the hypnotic trance.
It is not necessary at this place to emphasize the fact that
our theory, if accepted, would constitute a theory and a
definition also of hypnotism. Of interest to our inquiry is
merely a characteristic mark of the hypnotic state,--its
tremendous suggestibility. Why is this? Our theory would
answer that all impulses are held in equilibrium, and that an
external suggestion has thus no rivals. Whatever the cause,
this last is at any rate the fact. All suggestions seem to
double in emotional value. Tell the hypnotic subject that
he is sailing up the Rhine, and the most vivid admiration is
in his aspect; he gazes in heart-felt devotion if it is a
pretty girl he is bid to look at; he quaffs a glass of water
with livelier delight than he would show for the draught of
Chateau Yquem of which he is led to think.
Now in religious and aesthetic experience there is brought
about the same equilibrium or unity of impulses, resulting
in analogous loss of self-feeling. But it is a most
interesting fact that the FORM of the contemplated object
is the cause of this arrest and repose. God, the circle of
the Infinite, the Eternal One, enter into play as "unity"
alone. What, then, of the content? After the analogy of
the extreme case, the content--that is, emotional value
and definite emotional tone--takes the place of the external
suggestion. Under just the conditions of the religious
trance, the element of reverence, of joyous sentiment, is
able suddenly to take on a more vivid aspect. It may not
be that the emotion itself is greater, but it now holds the
field. It may not be that it is more intense, but the
intensity of concentration which takes on its color makes
it seem so. The "rapture" is just the sense of being caught
up into union with the highest; the joy of the rapture is
the joy of every thought of God, here left free to brighten
into ecstasy; and its "revelation-value" is again the sense
of immediate union with a Being the intellectual concept of
whom is immensely vivified.
So may be analyzed the aesthetic ecstasy. The tension of
those mutually antagonistic impulses which make balance, and
so unity, and so the conditions for loss of sense of self,
clears the way for tasting the full savor of pleasure in
bright color, flowing line, exquisite tone-sequence, moving
thought. Many a commonplace experience, says M. Souriau,
suddenly takes on a charm when seen in the arrested aesthetic
vision. "Every one can have observed that an object in itself
agreeable to look on, like a bouquet of flowers, or the fresh
face of a young girl, takes on a sort of magic and supernatural
beauty if we regard it mechanically while listening to music."<1>
The intensity of concentration caused by the unity of form
fuses with this suggested vividness of feeling from content
and material, and the whole is felt as intensity of aesthetic
emotion. The Sistine Madonna would not strike so deep in
feeling were it less crystalline in its unity, less trance-like
in its repose, and so less enchanting in its suggestion.
<1> P. Souriau, _La Suggestion en l'Art._
So it is not only the man of achievement who sees but one thing
at a time. To enter intensely into any ideal experience means
to be blind to all others. One must lose one's own soul to
gain the world, and none who enter and return from the paradise
of selfless ecstasy will question that it is gained. It may
be that personality is a hindrance and a barrier, and that we
are only truly in harmony with the secret of our own existence
when we cease to set ourselves over against the world.
Nevertheless, the sense of individuality is a possession for
which the most of mankind would pay the price, if it must be
paid, even of eternal suffering. The delicious hour of fusion
with the universe is precious, so it seems to us now, just
because we can return from it to our own nest, and, close and
warm there, count up our happiness. The fragmentariness and
multiplicity of life are, then, the saving of the sense of
selfhood, and we must indeed
"Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled."
IV
THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART
IV
A. THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM
I
IN what consists the Beauty of Visual Form? The older writers
on what we now know as the science of art did not ask themselves
this question. Although we are accustomed to hear that order,
symmetry, unity in variety, was the Greek, and in particular
the Platonic, formula for beauty, we observe, on examining the
passages cited in evidence, that it is rather the moral quality
appertaining to these characteristics that determines them as
beautiful; symmetry is beautiful, because harmonious, and
inducing order and self-restraint. Aristotle's single
pronouncement in the sense of our question is the dictum: there
is no beauty without a certain magnitude. Lessing, in his
"Laocoon," really the first modern treatise in aesthetics,
discusses the excellences of painting and poetry, but deals
with visible beauty as if it were a fixed quality, understood
when referred to, like color. This is undoubtedly due to his
unconscious reference of beauty to the human form alone; a
reference which he would have denied, but which influences his
whole aesthetic theory. In speaking of a beautiful picture, for
instance, he would have meant first of all the representation
of beautiful persons in it, hardly at all that essential beauty
of the picture as painting, to which every inch of the canvas
is alike precious. It is clear to us now, however, that the
beauty of the human form is the most obscure of all possible
cases, complex in itself, and overlaid and involved as it is
with innumerable interests and motives of extra-aesthetic
character. Beauty in simple forms must be our first study;
and great credit is due to Hogarth for having propounded in
his "Analysis of Beauty" the simple question,--what makes the
quality of beauty to the eye?
But in visible beauty, the aesthetic value of pure form is
not the only element involved: or at least is must be
settled whether or not it is the only element involved. If
in a work of art, as we believe, what belongs to its excellence
belongs to its beauty, we may not applaud one painter, for
instance, for his marvelous color-schemes, another for his
expression of emotion, another for his delineation of
character, without acknowledging that expression of character
and emotion come within our concept of visible beauty. Franz
von Lenbach was once asked what he thought likely to be the
fate of his own work. "As for that," he replied, "I think I
may possibly have a chance of living; but ONLY if
Individualization or Characterization be deemed to constitute
a quality of permanent value in a picture. This, however, I
shall never know, for it can only be adjudged by posterity.
If that verdict should prove unfavorable, then my work, too,
will perish with the rest,--for it cannot compare on their
lines with the great masters of the past." That this is
indeed an issue is shown by the contrasting opinion of the
critic who exclaimed before a portrait, "Think away the
head and face, and you will have a wonderful effect of color!"
The analysis of visible beauty accordingly resolves itself
into the explanation of the beauty of form (including shape
and color) and the fixing in relation thereto of other
factors.
The most difficult part of our task is indeed behind us. We
have already defined Beauty in general: we have outlined
in a preceding essay the abstract aesthetic demands, and we
have now only to ask through what psychological means these
demands can be and are in fact met. In other words we have
to show that what we intensely feel as Beauty can and does
exemplify these principles, and through them is explained and
accounted for. Beauty has been defined as that combination
of qualities in the object which brings about a union of
stimulation and repose in the enjoyer. How must this be
interpreted with reference to the particular facts of visual
form?
The most immediate reference is naturally to the sense organ
itself; and the first question is therefore as to the
favorable stimulations of the eye. What, in general, does
the eye demand of its object?
II
The simplest element of visual experience is of course found
in light and color, the sensation of the eye as such. Yet
there is no branch of aesthetic which is so incomplete. We
know that the sensation of light or color, if not too weak
or too violent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the
glittering, shining object, so long as it is not painful,
is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer, polish,
testify to this taste, from the most primitive to the most
civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright,
nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing. The
single colors have been the object of comparatively little
study. Experiment seems to show that the colors containing
most brightness--white, red, and yellow--are preferred.
Baldwin, in his "dynamogenic" experiments,<1> based on "the
view that the infant's hand movements in reaching or
grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of
its sensory experiences," finds that the colors range
themselves in order of attractiveness, blue, white, red,
green, brown. Further corrections lay more emphasis upon
the white. Yellow was not included in the experiments.
Cohn's results, which show a relative dislike of yellow,
are contradicted by other observers, notably Major and
Baker,<2> and (unpublished) experiments of my own, including
the aesthetic preferences of seven or eight different sets
of students at Radcliffe and Wellesley colleges. Experiments
of this kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the
material, usually colored paper, varies considerably from
the spectral color, and differences in saturation, hue, and
brightness make great differences in the results, while the
feeling-tone of association, individual or racial, very
often intrudes. But other things being equal, the bright,
the clear, the saturated color is relatively more pleasing,
and white, red, and yellow seem especially preferred.
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