,note3 for this online edition ,i have moved the ,table of ,contents to the beginning of the text and slightly modified it to conform with the online format4 ,i have also made two spelling corrections3 chippendale to ,chippendale and closely interpendent to closely interdependent4 ,,the ,,beautiful ,,an ,,introduction ,,to ,,psychological ,,aesthetics ,,by ,,vernon ,,lee ,author of ,beauty and ,ugliness ,laurus ,nobilis etc4 ,cambridge3 at the ,university ,press ,new ,york3 ,g4,p4 ,putnam's ,sons #aiac ,illustration3 title page ,with the exception of the coat of arms at the foot1 the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known ,cambridge printer1 ,john ,siberch1 #aeba ,,contents ,preface and ,apology v ,i4 ,the ,adjective ,beautiful #a ,,ii4 ,contemplative ,satisfaction #h ,,iii4 ,aspects versus ,things #ad ,,iv4 ,sensations #bb ,v4 ,perception of ,relations #bi ,,vi4 ,elements of ,shape #ce ,,vii4 ,facility and ,difficulty of ,grasping #dh ,,viii4 ,subject and ,object1 or1 ,nominative and ,accusative #ee ,,ix4 ,empathy 7,einfhlung7 #fa ,x4 ,the ,movement of ,lines #gj ,,xi4 ,the ,character of ,shapes #gh ,,xii4 ,from the ,shape to the ,thing #hd ,,xiii4 ,from the ,thing to the ,shape #ij ,,xiv4 ,the ,aims of ,art #ih ,,xv4 ,attention to ,shapes #ajf ,,xvi4 ,information about ,things #aaa ,,xvii4 ,co-operation of ,things and ,shapes #aag ,,xviii4 ,aesthetic ,responsiveness #abh ,,xix4 ,the ,storage and ,transfer of ,emotion #aci ,,xx4 ,aesthetic ,irradiation and ,purification #adg ,,xxi4 ,conclusion 7,evolutional7 #aec ,bibliography #aef ,index #aeg ,,preface ,,and ,,apology ,i ,,have tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference1 particularly as regards visible shapes1 by the facts of mental science4 ,but my explanation is addressed to readers in whom ,i have no right to expect a previous knowledge of psychology1 particularly in its more modern developments4 ,i have therefore based my explanation of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts familiar1 or at all events easily intelligible1 to the lay reader4 ,now mental facts thus available are by no means the elementary processes with which analytical and1 especially experimental1 psychology has dealings4 ,they are1 on the contrary1 the everyday1 superficial and often extremely confused views which practical life and its wholly unscientific vocabulary present of those ascertained or hypothetical scientific facts4 ,i have indeed endeavoured 7for instance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from sensation7 to impart some rudiments of psychology in the course of my aesthetical explanation1 and ,i have avoided1 as much as possible1 misleading the reader about such fearful complexes and cruxes as memory1 association and imagination4 ,but ,i have been obliged to speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader1 and ,i am fully aware that these terms correspond only very approximately to what is1 or at present passes as1 psychological fact4 ,i would therefore beg the psychologist 7to whom ,i offer this little volume as a possible slight addition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses7 to understand that in speaking1 for instance1 of ,empathy as involving a thought of certain activities1 ,i mean merely that whatever happens has the same result as if we thought2 and that the processes1 whatever they may be 7also in the case of measuring1 comparing and co-ordinating71 translate themselves1 when they are detected1 into thoughts2 but that ,i do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the processes1 the thoughts1 the measuring1 comparing etc4 exist on subordinate planes of consciousness or whether they are mainly physiological and only occasionally abutting in conscious resultants4 ,similarly1 lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me to write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed process of ocular perception1 instead of being due1 as is doubtless most often the case1 to every kind of associative abbreviation and equivalence of processes4 ,,vernon ,,lee ,maiano near ,florence1 ,easter #aiac4 ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,adjective ,,beautiful ,,this little book1 like the great branch of mental science to which it is an introduction1 makes no attempt to form the taste of the public and still less to direct the doings of the artist4 ,it deals not with ought but with is1 leaving to ,criticism the inference from the latter to the former4 ,it does not pretend to tell how things can be made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things are beautiful4 ,it takes ,beauty as already existing and enjoyed1 and seeks to analyse and account for ,beauty's existence and enjoyment4 ,more strictly speaking1 it analyses and accounts for ,beauty not inasmuch as existing in certain objects and processes1 but rather as calling forth 7and being called forth by7 a particular group of mental activities and habits4 ,it does not ask3 ,what are the peculiarities of the things 7and the proceedings7 which we call ,beautiful8 but3 ,what are the peculiarities of our thinking and feeling when in the presence of a thing to which we apply this adjective8 ,the study of single beautiful things1 and even more1 the comparison of various categories thereof1 is indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics1 but only inasmuch as it adds to our knowledge of the particular mental activities which such ,beautiful 7and vice versa ,ugly7 things elicit in us4 ,for it is on the nature of this active response on our own part that depends the application of those terms ,beautiful and ,ugly in every single instance2 and indeed their application in any instances whatsoever1 their very existence in the human vocabulary4 ,in accordance with this programme ,i shall not start with a formal definition of the word ,beautiful1 but ask3 on what sort of occasions we make use of it4 ,evidently1 on occasions when we feel satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction1 satisfaction meaning willingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience which has called forth that word2 and meaning also that if it comes to a choice between two or several experiences1 we prefer the experience thus marked by the word ,beautiful4 ,beautiful1 we may therefore formulate1 implies on our part an attitude of satisfaction and preference4 ,but there are other words which imply that much2 first and foremost the words1 in reality synonyms1 ,,useful and ,,good4 ,i call these synonyms because good always implies good for1 or good in1 that is to say fitness for a purpose1 even though that purpose may be masked under conforming to a standard or obeying a commandment1 since the standard or commandment represents not the caprice of a community1 a race or a divinity1 but some 7real or imaginary7 utility of a less immediate kind4 ,so much for the meaning of good when implying standards and commandments2 ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is1 however1 no such implication1 and good means nothing more than satisfactory in the way of use and advantage4 ,thus a good road is a road we prefer because it takes us to our destination quickly and easily4 ,a good speech is one we prefer because it succeeds in explaining or persuading4 ,and a good character 7good friend1 father1 husband1 citizen7 is one that gives satisfaction by the fulfilment of moral obligations4 ,but note the difference when we come to ,beautiful4 ,a beautiful road is one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at2 its being devious and inconvenient will not prevent its being beautiful4 ,a beautiful speech is one we like to hear or remember1 although it may convince or persuade neither us nor anybody4 ,a beautiful character is one we like to think about but which may never practically help anyone1 if for instance1 it exists not in real life but in a novel4 ,thus the adjective ,beautiful implies an attitude of preference1 but not an attitude of present or future turning to our purposes4 ,there is even a significant lack of symmetry in the words employed 7at all events in ,english1 ,french and ,german7 to distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the way of weather4 ,for weather which makes us uncomfortable and hampers our comings and goings by rain1 wind or mud1 is described as bad2 while the opposite kind of weather is called beautiful1 fine1 or fair1 as if the greater comfort1 convenience1 usefulness of such days were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our mere contemplation4 ,our mere contemplation6 ,here we have struck upon the main difference between our attitude when we use the word good or useful1 and when we use the word beautiful4 ,and we can add to our partial formula beautiful implies satisfaction and preference--the distinguishing predicate--of a contemplative kind4 ,this general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our use of the word beautiful2 and the examination of this seeming exception will not only exemplify what ,i have said about our attitude when employing that word1 but add to this information the name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude3 the emotion of admiration4 ,for the selfsame object or proceeding may sometimes be called good and sometimes beautiful1 according as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative4 ,while we admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it good1 we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic coachman as beautiful1 anglic fine or splendid1 because there is no question of immediate use1 and the road's qualities are merely being contemplated with admiration4 ,similarly1 we have all of us heard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery1 and even a surgeon to an operation1 the apparently far-fetched adjective ,beautiful1 or one of the various equivalents1 fine1 splendid1 glorious 7even occasionally jolly67 by which ,englishmen express their admiration4 ,the change of word represents a change of attitude4 ,the engineer is no longer bent upon using the machine1 nor the surgeon estimating the advantages of the operation4 ,each of these highly practical persons has switched off his practicality1 if but for an imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical estimation or even of practice itself4 ,the machine or operation1 the skill1 the inventiveness1 the fitness for its purposes1 are being considered apart from action1 and advantage1 means and time1 to-day or yesterday2 platonically we may call it from the first great teacher of aesthetics4 ,they are being1 in one word1 contemplated with admiration4 ,and admiration is the rough and ready name for the mood1 however transient1 for the emotion1 however faint1 wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate1 because contemplation happens to give satisfaction4 ,the satisfaction may be a mere skeleton of the ,i'd rather than not description2 or it may be a massive alteration in our being1 radiating far beyond the present1 evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate it2 storing itself up for the future2 penetrating1 like the joy of a fine day1 into our animal spirits1 altering pulse1 breath1 gait1 glance and demeanour2 and transfiguring our whole momentary outlook on life4 ,but1 superficial or overwhelming1 this hind of satisfaction connected with1 the word ,beautiful is always of the ,contemplative order4 ,and upon the fact we have thus formulated depend1 as we shall see1 most of the other facts and formulae of our subject4 ,this essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the word ,beautiful has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous1 and ,i think1 quite misleading theories4 ,the first of these defines aesthetic appreciation as disinterested interest1 gratuitously identifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we have not yet got2 and overlooking the fact that such appreciation implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested4 ,the second philosophical theory 7originally ,schiller's1 and revived by ,herbert ,spencer7 takes advantage of the non-practical attitude connected with the word ,beautiful to define art and its enjoyment as a kind of play4 ,now although leisure and freedom from cares are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation1 the latter differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature4 ,for although it may be possible to watch other people playing football or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the deepest admiration1 even as the engineer or surgeon may contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation1 yet the concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part of the players themselves an eminently practical state of mind1 one diametrically opposed to contemplation1 as ,i hope to make evident in the next section4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,contemplative ,,satisfaction ,,we have thus defined the word ,beautiful as implying an attitude of contemplative satisfaction1 marked by a feeling1 sometimes amounting to an emotion1 of admiration2 and so far contrasted it with the practical attitude implied by the word good4 ,but we require to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of contemplation as such1 by which1 moreover1 it is distinguished not merely from the practical attitude1 but also from the scientific one4 ,let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching the behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary wayfarers in front of a view1 which they severally consider in the practical1 the scientific and the aesthetic manner4 ,the view was from a hill-top in the neighbourhood of ,rome or of ,edinburgh1 whichever the ,reader can best realise2 and in its presence the three travellers halted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts4 ,it will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot--began one of the three4 ,we might have been back for tea-time if only there had been a tram and a funicular4 ,and that makes me think3 ,why not start a joint-stock company to build them8 ,there must be water-power in these hills2 the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter to town4 ,also houses could be built for people whose work takes them to town1 but who want good air for their children2 the hire-purchase system1 you know4 ,it might prove a godsend and a capital investment1 though ,i suppose some people would say it spoilt the view4 ,the idea is quite a good one4 ,i shall get an expert-- ,these hills1 put in the second man--are said to be part of an ancient volcano4 ,i don't know whether that theory is true6 ,it would be interesting to examine whether the summits have been ground down in places by ice1 and whether there are traces of volcanic action at different geological epochs2 the plain1 ,i suppose1 has been under the sea at no very distant period4 ,it is also interesting to notice1 as we can up here1 how the situation of the town is explained by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural harbours2 moreover1 this has been the inevitable meeting-place of seafaring and pastoral populations4 ,these investigations would prove1 as ,i said1 remarkably full of interest4 ,i wish--complained the third wayfarer1 but probably only to himself--,i wish these men would hold their tongues and let one enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to what might be done or to how it all came about4 ,they don't seem to feel how beautiful it all is4 ,and he concentrated himself on contemplation of the landscape1 his delight brought home by a stab of reluctance to leave4 ,meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there really was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for both tramway and funicular1 and where the necessary capital could be borrowed2 and the other one hunted about for marks of stratification and upheaval1 and ransacked his memory for historical data about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country4 ,i suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your sketching materials8 said the scientific man1 always interested in the causes of phenomena1 even such trifling ones as a man remaining quiet before a landscape4 ,i reckon you are one of those literary fellows1 and are planning out where you can use up a description of this place--corrected the rapid insight of the practical man1 accustomed to weigh people's motives in case they may be turned to use4 ,i am not a painter1 and ,i'm not a writer--exclaimed the third traveller1 and ,i thank ,heaven ,i'm not6 ,for if ,i were ,i might be trying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives1 instead of merely enjoying all this beauty4 ,not but that ,i should like to have a sketch or a few words of description for when ,i've turned my back upon it4 ,and ,heaven help me1 ,i really believe that when we are all back in ,london ,i may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your tramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action1 because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me-- ,that's what it is to be aesthetic--said the two almost in the same breath4 ,and that1 ,i suppose--answered the third with some animosity--is what you mean by being practical or scientific4 ,now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of science1 though differing so obviously from one another 7the first bent upon producing new and advantageous results1 the second examining1 without thought of advantage1 into possible causes71 both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene4 ,they were1 as he complained1 thinking of what might be done and of how it had all come about4 ,that is to say they were both thinking away from that landscape4 ,the scientific man actually turned his back to it in examining first one rock1 then another4 ,the practical man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he was on1 since he judged that there was pasture and water-power1 and that the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a funicular4 ,but besides the different items of landscape1 and the same items under different angles1 which were thus offered to these two men's bodily eyes1 there was a far greater variety1 and rapider succession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their spirit3 the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills1 plain1 and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time1 but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress1 dairy-products1 pasture1 houses1 dynamos1 waterfalls1 offices1 advertisements1 cheques1 etc41 etc41 and the scientific man's inner vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and seas in various stages of geological existence1 besides minerals under the microscope1 inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb1 let alone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries4 ,moreover1 most1 if not all these mental images 7blocking out from attention the really existing landscape7 could be called images only by courtesy1 swished over by the mental eye as by an express train1 only just enough seen to know what it was1 or perhaps nothing seen at all1 mere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought4 ,so that what satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly scampered through items1 but to the very fact of getting to the next one1 and to a looming1 dominating goal1 an ultimate desired result1 to wit1 pounds1 shillings1 and pence in the one case1 and a coherent explanation in the other4 ,in both cases equally there was a kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects1 but of aspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed4 ,or1 more strictly speaking1 there was no interest whatever in aspects as such1 but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied2 whether actions future and personally profitable1 like building tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies1 or actions mainly past and quite impersonally interesting1 like those of extinct volcanoes or prehistoric civilisations4 ,now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man1 whom the two others had first mistaken for an artist or writer1 and then dismissed as an aesthetic person4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,aspects ,,versus ,,things ,,having settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked best1 he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded him4 ,had he descended another twenty minutes1 or looked through powerful glasses1 he would have seen the plain below as a juxtaposition of emerald green1 raw ,sienna1 and pale yellow1 whereas1 at the distance where he chose to remain1 its colours fused into indescribably lovely lilacs and russets4 ,had he moved freely about he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of sharply convergent lines1 tempting his eye to run rapidly into their various angles1 must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes1 hedges1 and roads1 dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate4 ,also that the foothills1 instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains behind them1 lay in a totally different plane and distracted the attention by their aggressive projection4 ,while1 as if to spoil the aspect still more1 he would have been forced to recognise 7as ,ruskin explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the ,matterhorn peak7 that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills1 picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests1 dropping down merely to rush up again in long concave curves1 was merely an illusion of perspective1 nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower1 let alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds4 ,but to how things might look from a balloon1 or under a microscope1 that man did not give one thought1 any more than to how they might look after a hundred years of tramways and funiculars or how they had looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial action4 ,he was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light and colour1 the pattern 7more and more detailed1 more and more co-ordinated with every additional exploring glance7 of keenly thrusting1 delicately yielding lines1 meeting as purposefully as if they had all been alive and executing some great1 intricate dance4 ,he did not concern himself whether what he was looking at was an aggregate of things2 still less what might be these things' other properties4 ,he was not concerned with things at all1 but only with a particular appearance 7he did not care whether it answered to reality71 only with one 7he did not want to know whether there might be any other7 aspect4 ,for1 odd as it may sound1 a ,thing is both much more and much less than an ,aspect4 ,much more1 because a ,thing really means not only qualities of its own and reactions of ours which are actual and present1 but a far greater number and variety thereof which are potential4 ,much less1 on the other hand1 because of these potential qualities and reactions constituting a ,thing only a minimum need be thought of at any given time2 instead of which1 an aspect is all there1 its qualities closely interdependent1 and our reactions entirely taken up in connecting them as whole and parts4 ,a rose1 for instance1 is not merely a certain assemblage of curves and straight lines and colours1 seen as the painter sees it1 at a certain angle1 petals masking part of stem1 leaf protruding above bud3 it is the possibility of other combinations of shapes1 including those seen when the rose 7or the person looking7 is placed head downwards4 ,similarly it is the possibility of certain sensations of resistance1 softness1 moisture1 pricking if we attempt to grasp it1 of a certain fragrance if we breathe in the air4 ,it is the possibility of turning into a particular fruit1 with the possibility of our finding that fruit bitter and non-edible2 of being developed from cuttings1 pressed in a book1 made a present of or cultivated for lucre4 ,only one of these groups of possibilities may occupy our thoughts1 the rest not glanced at1 or only glanced at subsequently2 but if1 on trial1 any of these grouped possibilities disappoint us1 we decide that this is not a real rose1 but a paper rose1 or a painted one1 or no rose at all1 but some other thing4 ,for1 so far as our consciousness is concerned1 things are merely groups of actual and potential reactions on our own part1 that is to say of expectations which experience has linked together in more or less stable groups4 ,the practical man and the man of science in my fable1 were both of them dealing with ,things3 passing from one group of potential reaction to another1 hurrying here1 dallying there1 till of the actual aspect of the landscape there remained nothing in their thoughts1 trams and funiculars in the future1 volcanoes and icecaps in the past1 having entirely altered all that2 only the material constituents and the geographical locality remaining as the unshifted item in those much pulled about bundles of thoughts of possibilities4 ,every thing may have a great number of very different ,aspects2 and some of these ,aspects may invite contemplation1 as that landscape invited the third man to contemplate it2 while other aspects 7say the same place after a proper course of tramways and funiculars and semi-detached residences1 or before the needful volcanic and glacial action7 may be such as are dismissed or slurred as fast as possible4 ,indeed1 with the exception of a very few cubes not in themselves especially attractive1 ,i cannot remember any things which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects as pleasing ones4 ,the most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood on its head2 the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at through a microscope or from too far off2 the most beautiful melody is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end4 4 4 4 ,here the ,reader may interrupt3 ,what nonsense6 ,of course the building is a building only when right side up2 the picture isn't a picture any longer under a microscope2 the melody isn't a melody except begun at the beginning--all which means that when we speak of a building1 a picture1 or a melody1 we are already implicitly speaking1 no longer of a ,thing1 but of one of the possible ,aspects of a thing2 and that when we say that a thing is beautiful1 we mean that it affords one or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction4 ,but if a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be contemplated1 if the mountain could not also be climbed or tunnelled1 if the woman could not also get married1 bear children and have 7or not have67 a vote1 we should say that the mountain and the woman were not real things4 ,hence we come to the conclusion1 paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking about1 that what we contemplate as beautiful is an ,aspect of a ,thing1 but never a ,thing itself4 ,in other words3 ,beautiful is an adjective applicable to ,aspects not to ,things1 or to ,things only1 inasmuch as we consider them as possessing 7among other potentialities7 beautiful ,aspects4 ,so that we can now formulate3 ,the word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the contemplation not of things but of aspects4 ,this summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject2 and ,i should wish the ,reader to get it by heart1 until he grow familiarised therewith in the course of our further examinations4 ,before proceeding upon these1 ,i would1 however1 ask him to reflect how this last formula of ours bears upon the old1 seemingly endless1 squabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth1 and whether art1 as certain moralists contend1 is a school of lying4 ,for true or false is a judgment of existence2 it refers to ,things2 it implies that besides the qualities and reactions shown or described1 our further action or analysis will call forth certain other groups of qualities and reactions constituting the thing which is said to exist4 ,but aspects1 in the case in which ,i have used that word1 are what they are and do not necessarily imply anything beyond their own peculiarities4 ,the words true or false can be applied to them only with the meaning of aspects truly existing or not truly existing2 i4e4 aspects of which it is true or not to say that they exist4 ,but as to an aspect being true or false in the sense of misleading1 that question refers not to the aspect itself1 but to the thing of which the aspect is taken as a part and a sign4 ,now the contemplation of the mere aspect1 the beauty 7or ugliness7 of the aspect1 does not itself necessitate or imply any such reference to a thing4 ,our contemplation of the beauty of a statue representing a ,centaur may indeed be disturbed by the reflexion that a creature with two sets of lungs and digestive organs would be a monster and not likely to grow to the age of having a beard4 ,but this disturbing thought need not take place4 ,and when it takes place it is not part of our contemplation of the aspect of that statue2 it is1 on the contrary1 outside it1 an excursion away from it due to our inveterate 7and very necessary7 habit of interrupting the contemplation of ,aspects by the thinking and testing of ,things4 ,the ,aspect never implied the existence of a ,thing beyond itself2 it did not affirm that anything was true1 i4e4 that anything could or would happen besides the fact of our contemplation4 ,in other words the formula that beautiful is an adjective applying only to aspects1 shows us that art can be truthful or untruthful only in so far as art 7as is often the case7 deliberately sets to making statements about the existence and nature of ,things4 ,if ,art says ,centaurs can be born and grow up to man's estate with two sets of respiratory and digestive organs--then ,art is telling lies4 ,only1 before accusing it of being a liar1 better make sure that the statement about the possibility of centaurs has been intended by the ,art1 and not merely read into it by ourselves4 ,but more of this when we come to the examination of ,subject and ,form4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,sensations ,,in the contemplation of the ,aspect before him1 what gave that aesthetic man the most immediate and undoubted pleasure was its colour1 or1 more correctly speaking1 its colours4 ,psycho-,physiologists have not yet told us why colours1 taken singly and apart from their juxtaposition1 should possess so extraordinary a power over what used to be called our animal spirits1 and through them over our moods2 and we can only guess from analogy with what is observed in plants1 as well as from the nature of the phenomenon itself1 that various kinds of luminous stimulation must have some deep chemical repercussion throughout the human organism4 ,the same applies1 though in lesser degree1 to sounds1 quite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies4 ,as there are colours which feel1 i4e4 make us feel1 more or less warm or cool1 colours which are refreshing or stifling1 depressing or exhilarating quite independent of any associations1 so also there are qualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the trumpet1 or harrow us like the quaver of the accordion4 ,similarly with regard to immediacy of effect3 the first chords of an organ will change our whole mode of being like the change of light and colour on first entering a church1 although the music which that organ is playing may1 after a few seconds of listening1 bore us beyond endurance2 and the architecture of that church1 once we begin to take stock of it1 entirely dispel that first impression made by the church's light and colour4 ,it is on account of this doubtless physiological power of colour and sound1 this way which they have of invading and subjugating us with or without our consent and long before our conscious co-operation1 that the ,man-on-the-,hill's pleasure in the aspect before him was1 as ,i have said1 first of all1 pleasure in colour4 ,also1 because pleasure in colour1 like pleasure in mere sound-quality or timbre1 is accessible to people who never go any further in their aesthetic preference4 ,children1 as every one knows1 are sensitive to colours1 long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes4 ,and the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents1 just as the subtle orchestral blendings of ,wagner entrance hearers incapable of distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of following a modulation4 ,the ,man on the ,hill1 therefore1 received immediate pleasure from the colours of the landscape4 ,received pleasure1 rather than took it1 since colours1 like smells1 seem1 as ,i have said1 to invade us1 and insist upon pleasing whether we want to be pleased or not4 ,in this meaning of the word we may be said to be passive to sound and colour quality3 our share in the effects of these sensations1 as in the effect of agreeable temperatures1 contacts and tastes1 is a question of bodily and mental reflexes in which our conscious activity1 our voluntary attention1 play no part3 we are not doing1 but done to by those stimulations from without2 and the pleasure or displeasure which they set up in us is therefore one which we receive1 as distinguished from one which we take4 ,before passing on to the pleasure which the ,man on the ,hill did take1 as distinguished from thus passively receiving1 from the aspect before him1 before investigating into the activities to which this other kind of pleasure1 pleasure taken1 not received1 is due1 we must dwell a little longer on the colours which delighted him1 and upon the importance or unimportance of those colours with regard to that ,aspect he was contemplating4 ,these colours--particularly a certain rain-washed blue1 a pale lilac and a faded russet--gave him1 as ,i said1 immediate and massive pleasure like that of certain delicious tastes and smells1 indeed anyone who had watched him attentively might have noticed that he was making rather the same face as a person rolling1 as ,meredith says1 a fine vintage against his palate1 or drawing in deeper draughts of exquisitely scented air2 he himself1 if not too engaged in looking1 might have noticed the accompanying sensations in his mouth1 throat and nostrils2 all of which1 his only active response to the colour1 was merely the attempt to receive more of the already received sensation4 ,but this pleasure which he received from the mere colours of the landscape was the same pleasure which they would have given him if he had met them in so many skeins of silk2 the more complex pleasure due to their juxtaposition1 was the pleasure he might have had if those skeins1 instead of being on separate leaves of a pattern-book1 had been lying tangled together in an untidy work-basket4 ,he might then probably have said1 ,those are exactly the colours1 and in much the same combination1 as in that landscape we saw such and such a day1 at such and such a season and hour1 from the top of that hill4 ,but he would never have said 7or been crazy if he had7 ,those skeins of silk are the landscape we saw in that particular place and oh that particular occasion4 ,now the odd thing is that he would have used that precise form of words1 that is the landscape1 etc4 etc41 if you had shown him a pencil drawing or a photograph taken from that particular place and point of view4 ,and similarly if you had made him look through stained glass which changed the pale blue1 pale lilac and faded russet into emerald green and blood red4 ,he would have exclaimed at the loss of those exquisite colours when you showed him the monochrome1 and perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when you forced him to look through that atrocious glass4 ,but he would have identified the aspect as the one he had seen before2 just as even the least musical person would identify ,god save the ,king whether played with three sharps on the flute or with four flats on the trombone4 ,there is therefore in an ,aspect something over and above the quality of the colours 7or in a piece of music1 of the sounds7 in which that aspect is1 at any particular moment1 embodied for your senses2 something which can be detached from the particular colours or sounds and re-embodied in other colours or sounds1 existing meanwhile in a curious potential schematic condition in our memory4 ,that something is ,shape4 ,it is ,shape which we contemplate2 and it is only because they enter into shapes that colours and sounds1 as distinguished from temperatures1 textures1 tastes and smells1 can be said to be contemplated at all4 ,indeed if we apply to single isolated colour or sound-qualities 7that blue or russet1 or the mere timbre of a voice or an orchestra7 the adjective beautiful while we express our liking for smells1 tastes1 temperatures and textures merely by the adjectives agreeable1 delicious2 this difference in our speech is doubtless due to the fact that colours or sounds are more often than not connected each with other colours or other sounds into a ,shape and thereby become subject to contemplation more frequently than temperatures1 textures1 smells and tastes which cannot themselves be grouped into shapes1 and are therefore objects of contemplation only when associated with colours and sounds1 as for instance1 the smell of burning weeds in a description of autumnal sights1 or the cool wetness of a grotto in the perception of its darkness and its murmur of waters4 ,on dismissing the practical and the scientific man because they were thinking away from aspects to things1 ,i attempted to inventory the aspect in whose contemplation their aesthetic companion had remained absorbed4 ,there were the colours1 that delicious recently-washed blue1 that lilac and russet1 which gave the man his immediate shock of passive and 7as much as smell and taste7 bodily pleasure4 ,but besides these my inventory contained another kind of item3 what ,i described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills1 picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down merely to rush up again in long rapid concave curves4 ,and besides all this1 there was the outline of a distant mountain1 rising flamelike against the sky4 ,it was all these items made up of lines 7skyline1 outline1 and lines of perspective67 which remained unchanged when the colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass1 and unchanged also when the colouring was reduced to the barest monochrome of a photograph or a pencil drawing2 nay remained the same despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless presentment of them4 ,those items of the aspect were1 as we all know1 ,shapes4 ,and with altered colours1 and colours diminished to just enough for each line to detach itself from its ground1 those ,shapes could be contemplated and called beautiful4 ,,chapter ,v ,,perception ,,of ,,relations ,,why should this be the case8 ,briefly1 because colours 7and sounds7 as such are forced upon us by external stimulation of our organs of sight and hearing1 neither more nor less than various temperatures1 textures1 tastes and smells are forced upon us from without through the nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin1 muscle1 palate and nose4 ,whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly willy seen or heard1 are1 at least until we know them1 looked at or listened to1 that is to say taken in or grasped1 by mental and bodily activities which meet1 but may also refuse to meet1 those sense stimulations4 ,moreover1 because these mental and bodily activities1 being our own1 can be rehearsed in what we call our memory without the repetition of the sensory stimulations which originally started them1 and even in the presence of different ones4 ,in terms of mental science1 colour and sound1 like temperature1 texture1 taste and smell1 are sensations2 while shape is1 in the most complete sense1 a perception4 ,this distinction between sensation and perception is a technicality of psychology2 but upon it rests the whole question why shapes can be contemplated and afford the satisfaction connected with the word beautiful1 while colours and sounds1 except as grouped or groupable into shapes1 cannot4 ,moreover this distinction will prepare us for understanding the main fact of all psychological aesthetics3 namely that the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction which we get from shapes is satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what are1 directly or indirectly1 activities of our own4 ,etymologically and literally1 perception means the act of grasping or taking in1 and also the result of that action4 ,but when we thus perceive a shape1 what is it precisely that we grasp or take in8 ,at first it might seem to be the sensations in which that form is embodied4 ,but a moment's reflection will show that this cannot be the case1 since the sensations are furnished us simply without our performing any act of perception1 thrust on us from outside1 and1 unless our sensory apparatus and its correlated brain centre were out of order1 received by us passively1 nilly willy1 the ,man on the ,hill being invaded by the sense of that blue1 that lilac and that russet exactly as he might have been invaded by the smell of the hay in the fields below4 ,no3 what we grasp or take in thus actively are not the sensations themselves1 but the relations between these sensations1 and it is of these relations1 more truly than of the sensations themselves1 that a shape is1 in the most literal sense1 made up4 ,and it is this making up of shapes1 this grasping or taking in of their constituent relations1 which is an active process on our part1 and one which we can either perform or not perform4 ,when1 instead of merely seeing a colour1 we look at a shape1 our eye ceases to be merely passive to the action of the various light-waves1 and becomes active1 and active in a more or less complicated way2 turning its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the stimulus1 adjusting its focus like that of an opera glass1 and like an opera glass1 turning it to the right or left1 higher or lower4 ,moreover1 except in dealing with very small surfaces1 our eye moves about in our head and moves our head1 and sometimes our whole body1 along with it4 ,an analogous active process undoubtedly distinguishes listening from mere hearing2 and although psycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments of the inner ear corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye1 it is generally recognised that auditive attention is accompanied by adjustments of the vocal parts1 or preparations for such adjustments1 which account for the impression of following a sequence of notes as we follow the appearance of colours and light1 but as we do not follow1 in the sense of connecting by our activity1 consecutive sensations of taste or smell4 ,besides such obvious or presumable bodily activities requisite for looking and listening as distinguished from mere seeing and hearing1 there is moreover in all perception of shape1 as in all grasping of meaning1 a mental activity involving what are called attention and memory4 ,a primer of aesthetics is no place for expounding any of the various psychological definitions of either of these1 let us call them1 faculties4 ,besides ,i should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental facts as can be found in the ,reader's everyday 7however unnoticed7 experience1 instead of requiring for their detection the artificial conditions of specialised introspection or laboratory experiment4 ,so ,i shall give to those much fought over words attention and memory merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are familiar in everyday language1 and only beg the ,reader to notice that1 whatever psychologists may eventually prove or disprove attention and memory to be1 these two1 let us unscientifically call them faculties1 are what chiefly distinguishes perception from sensation4 ,for instance1 in grasping or taking stock of a visible or an audible shape we are doing something with our attention1 or our attention is doing something in us3 a travelling about1 a returning to starting points1 a summing up4 ,and a travelling about not merely between what is given simultaneously in the present1 but1 even more1 between what has been given in an immediately proximate past1 and what we expect to be given in an immediately proximate future2 both of which1 the past which is put behind us as past1 and the past which is projected forwards as future1 necessitate the activity of memory4 ,there is an adjustment of our feelings as well as our muscles not merely to the present sensation1 but to the future one1 and a buzz of continuing adjustment to the past4 ,there is a holding over and a holding on1 a reacting backwards and forwards of our attention1 and quite a little drama of expectation1 fulfilment and disappointment1 or as psychologists call them1 of tensions and relaxations4 ,and this little drama involved in all looking or listening1 particularly in all taking stock of visible or audible 7and ,i may add intellectual or verbal7 shape1 has its appropriate accompaniment of emotional changes3 the ease or difficulty of understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat which we shall deal with later4 ,and although the various perceptive activities remain unnoticed in themselves 7so long as easy and uninterrupted71 we become aware of a lapse1 a gap1 whenever our mind's eye 7if not our bodily one67 neglects to sweep from side to side of a geometrical figure1 or from centre to circumference1 or again whenever our mind's ear omits following from some particular note to another1 just as when we fall asleep for a second during a lecture or sermon3 we have1 in common parlance1 missed the hang of some detail or passage4 ,what we have missed1 in that lapse of attention1 is a relation1 the length and direction of a line1 or the span of a musical interval1 or1 in the case of words1 the references of noun and verb1 the co-ordination of tenses of a verb4 ,and it is such relations1 more or less intricate and hierarchic1 which transform what would otherwise be meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of sensations into the significant entities which can be remembered and recognised even when their constituent sensations are completely altered1 namely shapes4 ,to our previous formula that beautiful denotes satisfaction in contemplating an aspect1 we can now add that an aspect consists of sensations grouped together into relations by our active1 our remembering and foreseeing1 perception4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,elements ,,of ,,shape ,,let us now examine some of these relations1 not in the genealogical or hierarchic order assigned to them by experimental psychology1 but in so far as they constitute the elements of shape1 and more especially as they illustrate the general principle which ,i want to impress on the ,reader1 namely3 ,that the perception of ,shape depends primarily upon movements which we make1 and the measurements and comparisons which we institute4 ,and first we must examine mere extension as such1 which distinguishes our active dealings with visual and audible sensations from our passive reception of the sensations of taste and smell4 ,for while in the case of the latter a succession of similar stimulations affects us as more taste of strawberry or more smell of rose when intermittent1 or as a vague there is a strong or faint taste of strawberry and a there is a smell of lemon flower--when continuous2 our organ of sight being mobile1 reports not more black on white but so many inches of black line on a white ground1 that is to say reports a certain extension answering to its own movement4 ,this quality of extension exists also in our sound-perceptions1 although the explanation is less evident4 ,notes do not indeed exist 7but only sounding bodies and air-vibrations7 in the space which we call real because our eye and our locomotion coincide in their accounts of it2 but notes are experienced1 that is thought and felt1 as existing in a sort of imitation space of their own4 ,this musical space1 as ,m4 ,dauriac has rightly called it1 has limits corresponding with those of our power of hearing or reproducing notes1 and a central region corresponding with our habitual experience of the human voice2 and in this musical space notes are experienced as moving up and down and with a centrifugal and centripetal direction1 and also as existing at definite spans or intervals from one another2 all of which probably on account of presumable muscular adjustments of the inner and auditive apparatus1 as well as obvious sensations in the vocal parts when we ourselves produce1 and often when we merely think of1 them4 ,in visual perception the sweep of the glance1 that is the adjustment of the muscles of the inner eye1 the outer eye and of the head1 is susceptible of being either interrupted or continuous like any other muscular process2 and its continuity is what unites the mere successive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension1 so that the same successive colour-and-light-sensations can be experienced either as one extension1 or as two or more1 according as the glance is continuous or interrupted2 the eye's sweep1 when not excessive1 tending to continuity unless a new direction requires a new muscular adjustment4 ,and1 except in the case of an extension exceeding any single movement of eye and head1 a new adjustment answers to what we call a change of direction4 ,extension therefore1 as we have forestalled with regard to sound1 has various modes1 corresponding to something belonging to ourselves3 a middle1 answering to the middle not of our field of vision1 since that itself can be raised or lowered by a movement of the head1 but to the middle of our body2 and an above and below1 a right and a left referable to our body also1 or rather to the adjustments made by eye and head in the attempt to see our own extremities2 for1 as every primer of psychology will teach you1 mere sight and its muscular adjustments account only for the dimensions of height 7up and down7 and of breadth 7right and left7 while the third or cubic dimension of depth is a highly complex result of locomotion in which ,i include prehension4 ,and inasmuch as we are dealing with aspects and not with things1 we have as yet nothing to do with this cubic or third dimension1 but are confining ourselves to the two dimensions of extension in height and breadth1 which are sufficient for the existence1 the identity1 or more correctly the quiddity1 of visible shapes4 ,such a shape is therefore1 primarily1 a series of longer or shorter extensions1 given by a separate glance towards1 or away from1 our own centre or extremities1 and at some definite angle to our own axis and to the ground on which we stand4 ,but these acts of extension and orientation cease to be thought of as measured and orientated1 and indeed as accomplished1 by ourselves1 and are translated into objective terms whenever our attention is turned outwards3 thus we say that each line is of a given length and direction1 so or so much off the horizontal or vertical4 ,so far we have established relations only to ourselves4 ,we now compare the acts of extension one against the other1 and we also measure the adjustment requisite to pass from one to another1 continuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre2 in everyday speech1 we perceive that the various lines are similar and dissimilar in length1 direction and orientation4 ,we compare2 and comparing we combine them in the unity of our intention3 thought of together they are thought of as belonging together4 ,meanwhile the process of such comparison of the relation of each line with us to the analogous relation to us of its fellows1 produces yet further acts of measurement and comparison4 ,for in going from one of our lines to another we become aware of the presence of--how shall ,i express it8--well of a nothing between them1 what we call blank space1 because we experience a blank of the particular sensations1 say red and black1 with which we are engaged in those lines4 ,between the red and black sensations of the lines we are looking at1 there will be a possibility of other colour sensations1 say the white of the paper1 and these white sensations we shall duly receive1 for1 except by shutting our eyes1 we could not avoid receiving them4 ,but though received these white sensations will not be attended to1 because they are not what we are busied with4 ,we shall be passive towards the white sensations while we are active towards the black and red ones2 we shall not measure the white2 not sweep our glance along it as we do along the red and the black4 ,and as ceteris paribus our tense awareness of active states always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched between them2 so1 bent as we are upon our red and black extensions1 and their comparative lengths and directions1 we shall treat the uninteresting white extensions as a blank1 a gap1 as that which separates the objects of our active interest1 and takes what existence it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those interesting actively measured and compared lines4 ,thus the difference between our active perception and our merely passive sensation accounts for the fact that every visible shape is composed of lines 7or bands7 measured and compared with reference to our own ocular adjustments and our axis and centre2 lines existing1 as we express it1 in blank space1 that is to say space not similarly measured2 lines1 moreover1 enclosing between each other more of this blank space1 which is not measured in itself but subjected to the measurement of its enclosing lines4 ,and similarly1 every audible ,shape consists not merely of sounds enclosing silence1 but of heard tones between which we are aware of the intervening blank interval which might have been occupied by the intermediary tones and semitones4 ,in other words1 visible and audible ,shape is composed of alternations between active1 that is moving1 measuring1 referring1 comparing1 attention2 and passive1 that is comparatively sluggish reception of mere sensation4 ,this fact implies another and very important one1 which ,i have indeed already hinted at4 ,if perceiving shape means comparing lines 7they may be bands1 but we will call them lines71 and the lines are measured only by consecutive eye movements1 then the act of comparison evidently includes the co-operation1 however infinitesimally brief1 of memory4 ,the two halves of this ,chippendale chair-back exist simultaneously in front of my eyes1 but ,i cannot take stock simultaneously of the lengths and orientation of the curves to the right and the curves of the left4 ,i must hold over the image of one half1 and unite it1 somewhere in what we call the mind--with the other2 nay1 ,i must do this even with the separate curves constituting the patterns each of which is measured by a sweep of the glance1 even as ,i should measure them successively by applying a tape and then remembering and comparing their various lengths1 although the ocular process may stand to the tape-process as a minute of our time to several hundreds of years4 ,this comes to saying that the perception of visible shapes1 even like that of audible ones1 takes place in time1 and requires therefore the co-operation of memory4 ,now memory1 paradoxical as it may sound1 practically implies expectation3 the use of the past1 to so speak1 is to become that visionary thing we call the future4 ,hence1 while we are measuring the extension and direction of one line1 we are not only remembering the extent and direction of another previously measured line1 but we are also expecting a similar1 or somewhat similar1 act of measurement of the next line2 even as in following a melody we not only remember the preceding tone1 but expect the succeeding ones4 ,such interplay of present1 past and future is requisite for every kind of meaning1 for every unit of thought2 and among others1 of the meaning1 the thought1 which we contemplate under the name of shape4 ,it is on account of this interplay of present1 past and future1 that ,wundt counts feelings of tension and relaxation among the elements of form-perception4 ,and the mention of such feelings1 i4e4 rudiments of emotion1 brings us to recognise that the remembering and foreseeing of our acts of measurement and orientation constitutes a microscopic psychological drama--shall we call it the drama of the ,,soul ,,molecules8--whose first familiar examples are those two peculiarities of visible and audible shape called ,symmetry and ,rythm4 ,both of these mean that a measurement has been made1 and that the degree of its span is kept in memory to the extent of our expecting that the next act of measurement will be similar4 ,symmetry exists quite as much in ,time 7hence in shapes made up of sound-relations7 as in ,space2 and ,rythm1 which is commonly thought of as an especially musical relation1 exists as much in ,space as in ,time2 because the perception of shape requires ,time and movement equally whether the relations are between objectively co-existent and durable marks on stone or paper1 or between objectively successive and fleeting sound-waves4 ,also because1 while the single relations of lines and of sounds require to be ascertained successively1 the combination of those various single relations1 their relations with one another as whole and parts1 require to be grasped by an intellectual synthesis2 as much in the case of notes as in the case of lines4 ,if1 in either case1 we did not remember the first measurement when we obtained the second1 there would be no perception of shape however elementary2 which is the same as saying that for an utterly oblivious mind there could be no relationships1 and therefore no meaning4 ,in the case of ,symmetry the relations are not merely the lengths and directions of the single lines1 that is to say their relations to ourselves1 and the relation established by comparison between these single lines2 there is now also the relation of both to a third1 itself of course related to ourselves1 indeed1 as regards visible shape1 usually answering to our own axis4 ,the expectation which is liable to fulfilling or balking is therefore that of a repetition of this double relationship remembered between the lengths and directions on one side1 by the lengths and directions on the other2 and the repetition of a common relation to a central item4 ,the case of ,,rythm is more complex4 ,for1 although we usually think of ,rythm as a relation of two items1 it is in reality a relation of four 7or more 72 because what we remember and expect is a mixture of similarity with dissimilarity between lengths1 directions or impacts4 ,,or ,,impacts4 ,for with ,rythm we come to another point illustrative of the fact that all shape-elements depend upon our own activity and its modes4 ,a rythmical arrangement is not necessarily one between objectively alternated elements like objectively longer or shorter lines of a pattern1 or objectively higher or lower or longer and shorter notes4 ,rythm exists equally where the objective data1 the sense stimulations1 are uniform1 as is the case with the ticks of a clock4 ,these ticks would be registered as exactly similar by appropriate instruments4 ,but our mind is not such an impassive instrument3 our mind 7whatever our mind may really be7 is subject to an alternation of more and less1 of vivid and less vivid1 important and less important1 of strong and weak2 and the objectively similar stimulations from outside1 of sound or colour or light1 are perceived as vivid or less vivid1 important or less important1 according to the beat of this mutual alternation with which they coincide3 thus the uniform1 ticking of the clock will be perceived by us as a succession in which the stress1 that is the importance1 is thrown upon the first or the second member of a group2 and the recollection and expectation are therefore of a unity of dissimilar importance4 ,we hear ,,strong-,,weak2 and remembering strong-weak1 we make a new strong-weak out of that objective uniformity4 ,here there is no objective reason for one rythm more than another2 and we express this by saying that the tickings of a clock have no intrinsic form4 ,for ,form1 or as ,i prefer to call it1 ,shape1 although it exists only in the mind capable of establishing and correlating its constituent relationships1 takes an objective existence when the material stimulations from the outer world are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same series and combinations of perceptive acts2 a fact which explains why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective stimulations1 say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations in time1 so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which would1 ceteris paribus1 have been provoked in himself if that shape had not existed first of all only in his mind4 ,a further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a combination of active measurements and comparisons1 and of remembrance and expectations1 is found in a fact which has very great importance in all artistic dealings with shapes4 ,i have spoken1 for simplicity's1 sake1 as if the patches of colour on a blank 7i4e4 uninteresting7 ground along which the glance sweeps1 were invariably contiguous and continuous4 ,but these colour patches1 and the sensations they afford us1 are just as often1 discontinuous in the highest degree2 and the lines constituting a shape may1 as for instance in constellations1 be entirely imaginary4 ,the fact is that what we feel as a line is not an objective continuity of colour-or-light-patches1 but the continuity of our glance's sweep which may either accompany this objective continuity or replace it4 ,indeed such imaginary lines thus established between isolated colour patches1 are sometimes felt as more vividly existing than real ones1 because the glance is not obliged to take stock of their parts1 but can rush freely from extreme point to extreme point4 ,moreover not only half the effectiveness of design1 but more than half the efficiency of practical life1 is due to our establishing such imaginary lines4 ,we are inevitably and perpetually dividing visual space 7and something of the sort happens also with musical space7 by objectively non-existent lines answering to our own bodily orientation4 ,every course1 every trajectory1 is of this sort4 ,and every drawing executed by an artist1 every landscape1 offered us by ,nature1 is felt1 because it is measured1 with reference to a set of imaginary horizontals or perpendiculars4 ,while1 as ,i remember the late ,mr ,g4 ,f4 ,watts showing me1 every curve which we look at is felt as being part of an imaginary circle into which it could be prolonged4 ,our sum of measuring and comparing activities1 and also our dramas of remembrance and expectation1 are therefore multiplied by these imaginary lines1 whether they connect1 constellation-wise1 a few isolated colour indications1 or whether they are established as standards of reference 7horizontals1 verticals1 etc47 for other really existing lines2 or whether again they be thought of1 like those circles1 as wholes of which objectively perceived series of colour patches might possibly be parts4 ,in all these cases imaginary lines are felt1 as existing1 inasmuch as we feel the movement by which we bring them into existence1 and even feel that such a movement might be made by us when it is not4 ,so far1 however1 ,i have dealt with these imaginary lines only as an additional proof that shape-perception is an establishment of two dimensional relationships1 through our own activities1 and an active remembering1 foreseeing and combining thereof4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,facility ,,and ,,difficulty ,,of ,,grasping ,,of this we get further proof when we proceed to another and less elementary relationship implied in the perception of shape3 the relation of ,whole and ,parts4 ,in dealing with the ground upon which we perceive our red and black patches to be extended1 ,i have already pointed out that our operations of measuring and comparing are not applied to all the patches of colour which we actually see1 but only to such as we look at2 an observation equally applicable to sounds4 ,in other words our attention selects certain sensations1 and limits to these all that establishing of relations1 all that measuring and comparing1 all that remembering and expecting2 the other sensations being excluded4 ,now1 while whatever is thus merely seen1 but not looked at1 is excluded as so much blank or otherness2 whatever is1 on the contrary1 included is thereby credited with the quality of belonging1 that is to say being included1 together4 ,and the more the attention alternates between the measuring of included extensions and directions and the expectation of equivalent 7symmetrical or rythmical7 extensions or directions or stresses1 the closer will become the relation of these items included by our attention and the more foreign will become the excluded otherness from which1 as we feel1 they detach themselves4 ,but--by an amusing paradox--these lines measured and compared by our attention1 are themselvesnot only excluding so much otherness or blank2 they also tend1 so soon as referred to one another1 to include some of this uninteresting blankness2 and it is across this more or less completely included blankness that the eye 7and the imagination67 draw such imaginary lines as ,i have pointed out with reference to the constellations4 ,thus a circle1 say of red patches1 excludes some of the white paper on which it is drawn2 but it includes or encloses the rest4 ,place a red patch somewhere on that enclosed blank2 our glance and attention will now play not merely along the red circumference1 but to and fro between the red circumference and the red patch1 thereby establishing imaginary but thoroughly measured and compared lines between the two4 ,draw a red line from the red patch to the red circumference2 you will begin expecting similar lengths on the other sides of the red patch1 and you will become aware that these imaginary lines are1 or are not1 equal2 in other words1 that the red patch is1 or is not1 equidistant from every point of the red circumference4 ,and if the red patch is not thus in the middle1 you will expect1 and imagine another patch which is2 and from this imaginary centre you will draw imaginary lines1 that is you will make by no means imaginary glance-sweeps1 to the red circumference4 ,thus you may go on adding real red lines and imaginary lines connecting them with the circumference2 and the more you do so the more you will feel that all these real lines and imaginary lines and all the blank space which the latter measure1 are connected1 or susceptible of being connected1 closer and closer1 every occasional excursion beyond the boundary only bringing you back with an increased feeling of this interconnexion1 and an increased expectation of realising it in further details4 ,but if on one of these glance-flickings beyond the circumference1 your attention is caught by some colour patch or series of colour patches outside of it1 you will either cease being interested in the circle and wander away to the new colour patches2 or more probably1 try to connect that outlying colour with the circle and its radii2 or again failing that1 you will overlook it1 as1 in a pattern of concentric circles you overlook a colour band which1 as you express it has nothing to do with it1 that is with what you are looking at4 ,or again listening to4 ,for if a church-bell mixes its tones and rythm with that of a symphony you are listening to1 you may try and bring them in1 make a place for them1 expect them among the other tones or rythms4 ,failing which you will1 after a second or two1 cease to notice those bells1 cease to listen to them1 giving all your attention once more to the sonorous whole whence you have expelled those intruders2 or else1 again1 the intrusion will become an interruption1 and the bells1 once listened to1 will prevent your listening adequately to the symphony4 ,moreover1 if the number of extensions1 directions1 real or imaginary lines or musical intervals1 alternations of something and nothing1 prove too great for your powers of measurement and comparison1 particularly if it all surpass your habitual interplay of recollection and expectation1 you will say 7as before an over intricate pattern or a piece of music of unfamiliar harmonies and rythm7 that you can't grasp it--that you miss the hang of it4 ,and what you will feel is that you cannot keep the parts within the whole1 that the boundary vanishes1 that what has been included unites with the excluded1 in fact that all shape welters into chaos4 ,and as if to prove once more the truth of our general principle1 you will have a hateful feeling of having been trifled with4 ,what has been balked and wasted are all your various activities of measuring1 comparing and co-ordinating2 what has been trifled with are your expectations4 ,and so far from contemplating with satisfaction the objective cause of all this vexation and disappointment1 you will avoid contemplating it at all1 and explain your avoidance by calling that chaotic or futile assemblage of lines or of notes ugly4 ,we seem thus to have got a good way in our explanation2 and indeed the older psychology1 for instance of the late ,grant ,allen1 did not get any further4 ,but to explain why a shape difficult to perceive should be disliked and called ugly1 by no means amounts to explaining why some other shape should be liked and called beautiful1 particularly as some ugly shapes happen to be far easier to grasp than some beautiful ones4 ,the ,reader will indeed remember that there is a special pleasure attached to all overcoming of difficulty1 and to all understanding4 ,but this double pleasure is shared with form-perception by every other successful grasping of meaning2 and there is no reason why that pleasure should be repeated in the one case more than in the other2 nor why we should repeat looking at 7which is what we mean by contemplating7 a shape once we have grasped it1 any more than we continue to dwell on1 to reiterate the mental processes by which we have worked out a geometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux4 ,the sense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty overcome2 the sense of illumination ends with the acquisition of a piece of information2 and we pass on to some new obstacle and some new riddle4 ,but it is different in the case of what we call ,beautiful4 ,beautiful means satisfactory for contemplation1 i4e4 for reiterated perception2 and the very essence of contemplative satisfaction is its desire for such reiteration4 ,the older psychology would perhaps have explained this reiterative tendency by the pleasurableness of the sensory elements1 the mere colours and sounds of which the easily perceived shape is made up4 ,but this does not explain why1 given that other shapes are made up of equally agreeable sensory elements1 we should not pass on from a once perceived shape or combination of shapes to a new one1 thus obtaining1 in addition to the sensory agreeableness of colour or sound1 a constantly new output of that feeling of victory and illumination attendant on every successful intellectual effort4 ,or1 in other words1 seeing that painting and music employ sensory elements already selected as agreeable1 we ought never to wish to see the same picture twice1 or to continue looking at it2 we ought never to wish to repeat the same piece of music or its separate phrases2 still less to cherish that picture or piece of music in our memory1 going over and over again as much of its shape as had become our permanent possession4 ,we return therefore to the fact that although balked perception is enough to make us reject a shape as ugly1 i4e4 such that we avoid entering into contemplation of it1 easy perception is by no means sufficient to make us cherish a shape as beautiful1 i4e4 such that the reiteration of our drama of perception becomes desirable4 ,and we shall have to examine whether there may not be some other factor of shape-perception wherewith to account for this preference of reiterated looking at the same to looking at something else4 ,meanwhile we may add to our set of formulae3 difficulty in shape-perception makes contemplation disagreeable and impossible1 and hence earns for aspects the adjective ugly4 ,but facility in perception1 like agreeableness of sensation by no means suffices for satisfied contemplation1 and hence for the use of the adjective ,beautiful4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,subject ,,and ,,object ,,but before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception1 namely that of ,empathic ,interpretation1 ,i require to forestall an objection which my ,reader has doubtless been making throughout my last chapters2 more particularly that in clearing away the ground of this objection ,i shall be able to lay the foundations of my further edifice of explanation4 ,the objection is this3 if the man on the hill was aware of performing any1 let alone all1 of the various operations described as constituting shape-perception1 neither that man nor any other human being would be able to enjoy the shapes thus perceived4 ,my answer is3 ,when did ,i say or imply that he was aware of doing any of it8 ,it is not only possible1 but extremely common1 to perform processes without being aware of performing them4 ,the man was not aware1 for instance1 of making eye adjustments and eye movements1 unless indeed his sight was out of order4 ,yet his eye movements could have been cinematographed1 and his eye adjustments have been described minutely in a dozen treatises4 ,he was no more aware of doing any measuring or comparing than we are aware of doing our digestion or circulation1 except when we do them badly4 ,but just as we are aware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of being aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate performance1 so he was aware of his measuring and comparing1 inasmuch as he was aware that the line ,a--,b was longer than the line ,c--,d1 or that the point ,e was half an inch to the left of the point ,f4 ,for so long as we are neither examining into ourselves1 nor called upon to make a choice between two possible proceedings1 nor forced to do or suffer something difficult or distressing1 in fact so long as we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our processes of attending1 those processes are replaced in our awareness by the very facts--for instance the proportions and relations of lines--resulting from their activity4 ,that these results should not resemble their cause1 that mental elements 7as they are called7 should appear and disappear1 and also combine into unaccountable compounds 7,browning's not a third sound1 but a star7 according as we attend to them1 is indeed the besetting difficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it studies4 ,but it is so because it is one of ,psychology's basic facts4 ,and1 so far as we are at present concerned1 this difference between mental processes and their results is the fact upon which psychological aesthetics are based4 ,and it is not in order to convert the ,man on the ,hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception1 nor even to explain why he was not aware of them1 that ,i am insisting upon this point4 ,the principle ,i have been expounding1 let us call it that of the merging of the perceptive activities of the subject in the qualities of the object of perception1 explains another and quite as important mental process which was going on in that unsuspecting man4 ,but before proceeding to that ,i must make it clearer how that man stood in the matter of awareness of himself4 ,he was1 indeed1 aware of himself whenever1 during his contemplation of that landscape1 the thought arose1 well1 ,i must be going away1 and perhaps ,i shan't see this place again--or some infinitely abbreviated form1 perhaps a mere sketched out gesture of turning away1 accompanied by a slight feeling of clinging1 he couldn't for the life of him say in what part of his body4 ,he was at that moment acutely aware that he did not want to do something which it was optional to do4 ,or1 if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of going away1 aware that he wanted to come back1 or at all events wanted to carry off as much as possible of what he had seen4 ,in short he was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing himself away1 or1 if some other person or mere habit1 saved him this effort1 he was aware of himself making another effort to impress that landscape on his memory1 and aware of a future self making an effort to return to it4 ,i call it effort2 you may1 if you prefer1 call it will2 at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a verb to cling to1 7in the future tense7 return to1 to choose as against some other alternative2 as nominative of a verb briefly1 to like or love4 ,and the accusative of these verbs would be the landscape4 ,but unless the man's contemplation was thus shot with similar ideas of some action or choice of his own1 he would express the situation by saying this landscape is awfully beautiful4 ,this ,,is4 ,i want you to notice the formula1 by which the landscape1 ceasing to be the accusative of the man's looking and thinking1 becomes the nominative of a verb to be so-and-so4 ,that grammatical transformation is the sign of what ,i have designated1 in philosophical language1 as the merging of the activities of the subject in the object4 ,it takes place already in the domain of simple sensation whenever1 instead of saying ,i taste or ,i smell something nice or nasty we say--this thing tastes or smells nice or nasty4 ,and ,i have now shown you how this tendency to put the cart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex and active processes called perception2 turning ,i measure this line--,i compare these two angles into this line extends from ,a to ,b--these two angles are equal to two right angles4 ,but before getting to the final inversion--this landscape is beautiful instead of ,i like this landscape--there is yet another1 and far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the qualities of the object4 ,this further putting of the cart before the horse 7and1 you will see1 attributing to the cart what only the horse can be doing67 falls under the head of what ,german psychologists call ,einfhlung1 or ,infeeling--which ,prof4 ,titchener has translated ,empathy4 ,now this new1 and comparatively newly discovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which1 leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound sensations as such1 we probably owe the bulk of whatever satisfaction we connect with the word ,beautiful4 ,and ,i have already given the ,reader an example of such ,empathy when ,i described the landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves2 to which ,i might have added that there was also a plain which extended1 a valley which wound along1 paths which climbed and roads which followed the undulations of the land4 ,but the best example was when ,i said that opposite to the man there was a distant mountain rising against the sky4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,empathy ,,the mountain rises4 ,what do we mean when we employ this form of words8 ,some mountains1 we are told1 have originated in an upheaval4 ,but even if this particular mountain did1 we never saw it and geologists are still disputing about ,,how and ,,whether4 ,so the rising we are talking about is evidently not that probable or improbable upheaval4 ,on the other hand all geologists tell us that every mountain is undergoing a steady lowering through its particles being weathered away and washed down2 and our knowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain1 so far from rising1 is descending4 ,of course we all know that1 objects the ,reader1 and of course nobody imagines that the rock and the earth of the mountain is rising1 or that the mountain is getting up or growing taller6 ,all we mean is that the mountain looks as if it were rising4 ,the mountain looks6 ,surely here is a case of putting the cart before the horse4 ,no2 we cannot explain the mountain rising by the mountain looking1 for the only looking in the business is our looking at the mountain4 ,and if the ,reader objects again that these are all figures of speech1 ,i shall answer that ,empathy is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all1 and occasionally employ them1 as in the case of this rising mountain1 when we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth4 ,very well2 then1 7says the ,reader7 we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely3 when we look at the mountain we somehow or other think of the action of rising4 ,is that sufficiently literal and indisputable8 ,so literal and indisputable a statement of the case1 ,i answer1 that it explains1 when we come to examine it1 why we have said that the mountain rises4 ,for if the ,reader remembers my chapter on shape-perception1 he will have no difficulty in answering why we should have a thought of rising when we look at the mountain1 since we cannot look at the mountain1 nor at a tree1 a tower or anything of which we similarly say that it rises1 without lifting our glance1 raising our eye and probably raising our head and neck1 all of which raising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something rising4 ,the rising of which we are aware is going on in us4 ,but1 as the ,reader will remember also1 when we are engrossed by something outside ourselves1 as we are engrossed in looking at the shape 7for we can look at only the shape1 not the substance7 of that mountain we cease thinking about ourselves1 and cease thinking about ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the mountain's shape4 ,what becomes therefore of our awareness of raising or lifting or rising8 ,what can become of it 7so long as it continues to be there67 except that it coalesces with the shape we are looking at2 in short that the rising continuing to be thought1 but no longer to be thought of with reference to ourselves 7since we aren't thinking of ourselves71 is thought of in reference to what we are thinking about1 namely the mountain1 or rather the mountain's shape1 which is1 so to speak1 responsible for any thought of rising1 since it obliges us to lift1 raise or rise ourselves in order to take stock of it4 ,it is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done by our eye to the line of which we say that it extends from ,a to ,b1 when in reality the only extending has been the extending of our glance4 ,it is a case of what ,i have called the tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object4 ,indeed if ,i insisted so much upon this tendency of our mind1 ,i did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the phenomenon of ,empathy1 as we have just seen it exemplified in the mountain which rises4 ,if this is ,empathy1 says the ,reader 7relieved and reassured71 am ,i to understand that ,empathy is nothing beyond attributing what goes on in us when we look at a shape to the shape itself8 ,i am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple6 ,if what we attributed to each single shape was only the precise action which we happen to be accomplishing in the process of looking at it1 ,empathy would indeed be a simple business1 but it would also be a comparatively poor one4 ,no4 ,the rising of the mountain is an idea started by the awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes1 head or neck1 and it is an idea containing the awareness of that lifting or raising4 ,but it is far more than the idea merely of that lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present moment and in connexion with this particular mountain4 ,that present and particular raising and lifting is merely the nucleus to which gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of raising1 or rising4 which we have ever accomplished or seen accomplished1 raising or rising not only of our eyes and head1 but of every other part of our body1 and of every part of every other body which we ever perceived to be rising4 ,and not merely the thought of past rising but the thought also of future rising4 ,all these risings1 done by ourselves or watched in others1 actually experienced or merely imagined1 have long since united together in our mind1 constituting a sort of composite photograph whence all differences are eliminated and wherein all similarities are fused and intensified3 the general idea of rising1 not ,i rise1 rose1 will rise1 it rises1 has risen or will rise but merely rising as such1 rising as it is expressed not in any particular tense or person of the verb to rise1 but in that verb's infinitive4 ,it is this universally applicable notion of rising1 which is started in our mind by the awareness of the particular present acts of raising or rising involved in our looking at that mountain1 and it is this general idea of rising1 i4e4 of upward movement1 which gets transferred to the mountain along with our own particular present activity of raising some part of us1 and which thickens and enriches and marks that poor little thought of a definite raising with the interest1 the emotional fullness gathered and stored up in its long manifold existence4 ,in other words3 what we are transferring 7owing to that tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object7 from ourselves to the looked at shape of the mountain1 is not merely the thought of the rising which is really being done by us at that moment1 but the thought and emotion1 the idea of rising as such which had been accumulating in our mind long before we ever came into the presence of that particular mountain4 ,and it is this complex mental process1 by which we 7all unsuspectingly7 invest that inert mountain1 that bodiless shape1 with the stored up and averaged and essential modes of our activity--it is this process whereby we make the mountain raise itself1 which constitutes what1 accepting ,prof4 ,titchener's translation99 of the ,german word ,einfhlung1 ,i have called ,empathy4 99 ,from en and pascho1 epathon4 ,the ,german word ,einfhlung feeling into--derived from a verb to feel oneself into something 7sich in ,etwas ein fhlen7 was in current use even before ,lotze and ,viscber applied it to aesthetics1 and some years before ,lipps 7#ahig7 and ,wundt 7#aijc7 adopted it into psychological terminology2 and as it is now consecrated1 and no better occurs to me1 ,i have had to adopt it1 although the literal connotations of the ,german word have surrounded its central meaning 7as ,i have just defined it7 with several mischievous misinterpretations4 ,against two of these ,i think it worth while to warn the ,reader1 especially as1 while so doing1 ,i can1 in showing what it is not1 make it even clearer what ,empathy really is4 ,the first of these two main misinterpretations is based upon the reflexive form of the ,german verb sich einfhlen 7to feel oneself into7 and it defines1 or rather does not define1 ,empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the ego into the object or shape under observation2 a notion incompatible with the fact that ,empathy1 being only another of those various mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already dealt1 depends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought of an ego2 if we became aware that it is we who are thinking the rising1 we who are feeling the rising1 we should not think or feel that the mountain did the rising4 ,the other 7and as we shall later see7 more justifiable misinterpretation of the word ,empathy is based on its analogy with sympathy1 and turns it into a kind of sympathetic1 or as it has been called1 inner1 i4e4 merely felt1 mimicry of1 for instance1 the mountain's rising4 ,such mimicry1 not only inner and felt1 but outwardly manifold1 does undoubtedly often result from very lively empathic imagination4 ,but as it is the mimicking1 inner or outer1 of movements and actions which1 like the rising of the mountain1 take place only in our imagination1 it presupposes such previous animation of the inanimate1 and cannot therefore be taken either as constituting or explaining ,empathy itself4 ,such as ,i have defined and exemplified it in our ,rising ,mountain1 ,empathy is1 together with mere ,sensation1 probably the chief factor of preference1 that is of an alternative of satisfaction and dissatisfaction1 in aesthetic contemplation1 the muscular adjustments and the measuring1 comparing and coordinating activities by which ,empathy is started1 being indeed occasionally difficult and distressing1 but giving in themselves little more than a negative satisfaction1 at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense relieved4 ,but although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation of shapes1 ,empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental life4 ,it is1 indeed1 one of our simpler1 though far from absolutely elementary1 psychological processes1 entering into what is called imagination1 sympathy1 and also into that inference from our own inner experience which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer world1 and given to the intermittent and heterogeneous sensations received from without the framework of our constant and highly unified inner experience1 that is to say1 of our own activities and aims4 ,empathy can be traced in all of modes of speech and thought1 particularly in the universal attribution of doing and having and tending where all we can really assert is successive and varied being4 ,science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic implications of ,force and ,energy1 ,attraction and ,repulsion2 and philosophy has reduced ,cause and ,effect from implying intention and effort to meaning mere constant succession4 ,but ,empathy still helps us to many valuable analogies2 and it is possible that without its constantly checked but constantly renewed action1 human thought would be without logical cogency1 as it certainly would be without poetical charm4 ,indeed if ,empathy is so recent a discovery1 this may be due to its being part and parcel of our thinking2 so that we are surprised to learn its existence1 as ,molire's good man was to hear that be talked prose4 ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,movement ,,of ,,lines ,,any tendency to ,empathy is perpetually being checked by the need for practical thinking4 ,we are made to think in the most summary fashion from one to another of those grouped possibilities1 past1 present and future1 which we call a ,thing2 and in such discursive thinking we not only leave far behind the aspect1 the shape1 which has started a given scheme of ,empathy1 a given movement of lines1 but we are often faced by facts which utterly contradict it4 ,when1 instead of looking at a particular aspect of that mountain1 we set to climbing it ourselves1 the mountain ceases to rise2 it becomes passive to the activity which our muscular sensations and our difficulty of breathing locate most unmistakably in ourselves4 ,besides which1 in thus dealing with the mountain as a thing1 we are presented with a series of totally different aspects or shapes1 some of which suggest empathic activities totally different from that of rising4 ,and the mountain in question1 seen from one double its height1 will suggest the empathic activity of spreading itself out4 ,moreover practical life hustles us into a succession of more and more summary perceptions2 we do not actually see more than is necessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with and the adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is1 as to what it is likely to become4 ,and this which is true of seeing with the bodily eye1 is even more so of seeing1 or rather not seeing but recognising1 with the eye of the spirit4 ,the practical man on the hill1 and his scientific companion1 7who is merely1 so to speak1 a man unpractically concerned with practical causes and changes7 do not thoroughly see the shapes of the landscape before them2 and still less do they see the precise shape of the funiculars1 tramways1 offices1 cheques1 volcanoes1 ice-caps and prehistoric inhabitants of their thoughts4 ,there is not much chance of ,empathy and ,empathy's pleasures and pains in their lightning-speed1 touch-and-go visions6 ,but now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically contemplative fellow-traveller4 ,and1 for simplicity's sake1 let us imagine him contemplating more especially one shape in that landscape1 the shape of that distant mountain1 the one whose rising--came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it4 ,the mountain is so far off that its detail is entirely lost2 all we can see is a narrow and pointed cone1 perhaps a little toppling to one side1 of uniform hyacinth blue detaching itself from the clear evening sky1 into which1 from the paler misty blue of the plain1 it rises1 a mere bodiless shape4 ,it rises4 ,there is at present no doubt about its rising4 ,it rises and keeps on rising1 never stopping unless we stop looking at it4 ,it rises and never has risen4 ,its drama of two lines striving 7one with more suddenness of energy and purpose than the other7 to arrive at a particular imaginary point in the sky1 arresting each other's progress as they meet in their endeavour1 this simplest empathic action of an irregular and by no means rectilinear triangle1 goes on repeating itself1 like the parabola of a steadily spirting fountain3 for ever accomplishing itself anew and for ever accompanied by the same effect on the feelings of the beholder4 ,it is this reiterative nature which1 joined to its schematic definiteness1 gives ,empathy its extraordinary power over us4 ,empathy1 as ,i have tried to make clear to the ,reader1 is due not only to the movements which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception1 to present movements with their various modes of speed1 intensity and facility and their accompanying intentions2 it is due at least as much to our accumulated and averaged past experience of movements of the same kind1 also with their cognate various modes of speed1 intensity1 facility1 and their accompanying intentions4 ,and being thus residual averaged1 and essential1 this empathic movement1 this movement attributed to the lines of a shape1 is not clogged and inhibited by whatever clogs and inhibits each separate concrete experience of the kind2 still less is it overshadowed in our awareness by the result which we foresee as goal of our real active proceedings4 ,for unless they involve bodily or mental strain1 our real and therefore transient movements do not affect us as pleasant or unpleasant1 because our attention is always outrunning them to some momentary goal2 and the faint awareness of them is usually mixed up with other items1 sensations and perceptions1 of wholly different characters4 ,thus1 in themselves and apart from their aims1 our bodily movements are never interesting except inasmuch as requiring new and difficult adjustments1 or again as producing perceptible repercussions in our circulatory1 breathing and balancing apparatus3 a waltz1 or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly exciting1 thanks to its resultant organic perturbations and its concomitants of overcome difficulty and danger1 but even a dancing dervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the specific interest of movement as movement4 ,yet every movement which we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of vital economy1 a change in our balance of bodily and mental expenditure and replenishment2 and this1 if brought to our awareness1 is not only interesting1 but interesting in the sense either of pleasure or displeasure1 since it implies the more or less furtherance or hindrance of our life-processes4 ,now it is this complete awareness1 this brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes1 in our various and variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as energy and intention1 it is this sense of the values of movement which ,empathy1 by its schematic simplicity and its reiteration1 is able to reinstate4 ,the contemplation1 that is to say the isolating and reiterating perception1 of shapes and in so far of the qualities and relations of movement which ,empathy invests them with1 therefore shields our dynamic sense from all competing interests1 clears it from all varying and irrelevant concomitants1 gives it1 as ,faust would have done to the instant of happiness1 a sufficient duration2 and reinstating it in the centre of our consciousness1 allows it to add the utmost it can to our satisfaction or dissatisfaction4 ,hence the mysterious importance1 the attraction or repulsion1 possessed by shapes1 audible as well as visible1 according to their empathic character2 movement and energy1 all that we feel as being life1 is furnished by them in its essence and allowed to fill our consciousness4 ,this fact explains also another phenomenon1 which in its turn greatly adds to the power of that very ,empathy of which it is a result4 ,i am speaking once more of that phenomenon called ,inner ,mimicry which certain observers1 themselves highly subject to it1 have indeed considered as ,empathy's explanation1 rather than its result4 ,in the light of all ,i have said about the latter1 it becomes intelligible that when empathic imagination 7itself varying from individual to individual7 happens to be united to a high degree of 7also individually very varying7 muscular responsiveness1 there may be set up reactions1 actual or incipient1 e4g4 alterations of bodily attitude or muscular tension which 7unless indeed they withdraw attention from the contemplated object to our own body7 will necessarily add to the sum of activity empathically attributed to the contemplated object4 ,there are moreover individuals in whom such mimetic accompaniment consists 7as is so frequently the case in listening to music7 in changes of the bodily balance1 the breathing and heart-beats1 in which cases additional doses of satisfaction or dissatisfaction result from the participation of bodily functions themselves so provocative of comfort or discomfort4 ,now it is obvious that such mimetic accompaniments1 and every other associative repercussion into the seat of what our fathers correctly called animal spirits1 would be impossible unless reiteration1 the reiteration of repeated acts of attention1 had allowed the various empathic significance1 the various dynamic values1 of given shapes to sink so deeply into us1 to become so habitual1 that even a rapid glance 7as when we perceive the upspringing lines of a mountain from the window of an express train7 may suffice to evoke their familiar dynamic associations4 ,thus contemplation explains1 so to speak1 why contemplation may be so brief as to seem no contemplation at all3 past repetition has made present repetition unnecessary1 and the empathic1 the dynamic scheme of any particular shape may go on working long after the eye is fixed on something else1 or be started by what is scarcely a perception at all2 we feel joy at the mere foot-fall of some beloved person1 but we do so because he is already beloved4 ,thus does the reiterative character essential to ,empathy explain how our contemplative satisfaction in shapes1 our pleasure in the variously combined movements of lines1 irradiates even the most practical1 the apparently least contemplative1 moments and occupations of our existence4 ,but this is not all4 ,this reiterative character of ,empathy1 this fact that the mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or adding a single cubit to its stature1 joined to the abstract 7the infinitive of the verb7 nature of the suggested activity1 together account for art's high impersonality and its existing1 in a manner1 sub specie aeternitatis4 ,the drama of lines and curves presented by the humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the strange immortality of the youths and maidens on the ,grecian ,urn1 to whom ,keats1 as you remember1 says3-- ,fond lover1 never1 never canst thou kiss1 ,though winning near the goal4 ,yet1 do not grieve2 ,she cannot fade2 though thou hast not thy bliss1 ,for ever wilt thou love1 and she be fair4 ,and thus1 in considering the process of ,aesthetic ,empathy1 we find ourselves suddenly back at our original formula3 ,beautiful means satisfactory in contemplation1 and contemplation not of ,things but of ,shapes which are only ,aspects of them4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,the ,,character ,,of ,,shapes ,,in my example of the ,rising ,mountain1 ,i have been speaking as if ,empathy invested the shapes we look at with only one mode of activity at a time4 ,this1 which ,i have assumed for the simplicity of exposition1 is undoubtedly true in the case either of extremely simple shapes requiring few and homogeneous perceptive activities4 ,it is true also in the case of shapes of which familiarity 7as explained on p4 #gf7 has made the actual perception very summary2 for instance when1 walking quickly among trees1 we notice only what ,i may call their dominant empathic gesture of thrusting or drooping their branches1 because habit allows us to pick out the most characteristic outlines4 ,but1 except in these and similar cases1 the movement with which ,empathy invests shapes is a great deal more complex1 indeed we should speak more correctly of movements than of movement of lines4 ,thus the mountain rises1 and does nothing but rise so long as we are taking stock only of the relation of its top with the plain1 referring its lines solely to real or imaginary horizontals4 ,but if1 instead of our glance making a single swish upwards1 we look at the two sides of the mountain successively and compare each with the other as well as with the plain1 our impression 7and our verbal description7 will be that one slope goes up while the other goes down4 ,when the empathic scheme of the mountain thus ceases to be mere rising and becomes rising plus descending1 the two movements with which we have thus invested that shape will be felt as being interdependent2 one side goes down because the other has gone up1 or the movement rises in order to descend4 ,and if we look at a mountain chain we get a still more complex and co-ordinated empathic scheme1 the peaks and valleys 7as in my description of what the ,man saw from his ,hillside7 appearing to us as a sequence of risings and sinkings with correlated intensities2 a slope springing up in proportion as the previously seen one rushed down2 the movements of the eye1 slight and sketchy in themselves1 awakening the composite dynamic memory of all our experience of the impetus gained by switch-back descent4 ,moreover this sequence1 being a sequence1 will awaken expectation of repetition1 hence sense of rythm2 the long chain of peaks will seem to perform a dance1 they will furl and unfurl like waves4 ,thus as soon as we get a combination of empathic forces 7for that is how they affect us7 these will henceforth be in definite relation to one another4 ,but the relation need not be that of mere give and take and rythmical cooperation4 ,lines meeting one another may conflict1 check1 deflect one another2 or again resist each other's effort as the steady determination of a circumference resists1 opposes a ,quos ego6 to the rushing impact of the spokes of a wheel-pattern4 ,and1 along with the empathic suggestion of the mechanical forces experienced in ourselves1 will come the empathic suggestion of spiritual characteristics3 the lines will have aims1 intentions1 desires1 moods2 their various little dramas of endeavour1 victory1 defeat or peacemaking1 will1 according to their dominant empathic suggestion1 be lighthearted or languid1 serious or futile1 gentle or brutal2 inexorable1 forgiving1 hopeful1 despairing1 plaintive or proud1 vulgar or dignified2 in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief dynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music4 ,but on the other hand there will remain innumerable emphatic combinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal classification because1 as must be clearly understood1 ,empathy deals not directly with mood and emotion1 but with dynamic conditions which enter into moods and emotions and take their names from them4 ,be this as it may1 and definable or not in terms of human feeling1 these various and variously combined 7into coordinate scenes and acts7 dramas enacted by lines and curves and angles1 take place not in the marble or pigment embodying those contemplated shapes1 but solely in ourselves1 in what we call our memory1 imagination and feeling4 ,ours are the energy1 the effort1 the victory or the peace and cooperation2 and all the manifold modes of swiftness or gravity1 arduousness or ease1 with which their every minutest dynamic detail is fraught4 ,and since we are their only real actors1 these empathic dramas of lines are bound to affect us1 either as corroborating or as thwarting our vital needs and habits2 either as making our felt life easier or more difficult1 that is to say as bringing us peace and joy1 or depression and exasperation4 ,quite apart therefore from the convenience or not of the adjustments requisite for their ocular measurement1 and apart even from the facility or difficulty of comparing and coordinating these measurements1 certain shapes and elements of shape are made welcome to us1 and other ones made unwelcome1 by the sole working of ,empathy1 which identifies the modes of being and moving of lines with our own4 ,for this reason meetings of lines which affect us as neither victory nor honourable submission nor willing cooperation are felt to be ineffectual and foolish4 ,lines also 7like those of insufficiently tapered ,doric columns7 which do not rise with enough impetus because they do not seem to start with sufficient pressure at the base2 oblique lines 7as in certain imitation ,gothic7 which lose their balance for lack of a countervailing thrust against them1 all these1 and alas many hundreds of other possible combinations1 are detestable to our feelings4 ,and similarly we are fussed and bored by the tentative lines1 the uncoordinated directions and impacts1 of inferior1 even if technically expert and realistically learned draughtsmen1 of artists whose work may charm at first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion1 but reveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as movement1 their utter empathic nullity4 ,indeed1 if we analyse the censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of material instability1 or on wrong perspective or anatomical out of drawing we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really that of empathic un-satisfactoriness1 which escapes verbal detection but is revealed by the finger following1 as we say 7and that is itself an instance of empathy7 the movement1 the development of1 boring or fussing lines4 ,empathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with regard to shape1 but also those particular degrees of liking which are matters of personal temperament and even of momentary mood 7cf4 p4 #aca74 ,thus ,mantegna1 with his preponderance of horizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and reassuring1 but repel another beholder 7or the same in a different mood7 as dull and lifeless2 while the unstable equilibrium and syncopated rythm of ,botticelli may either fascinate or repel as morbidly excited4 ,and ,leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced circles will merely baffle 7the enigmatic quality we hear so much of7 the perfunctory beholder1 while rewarding more adequate empathic imagination by allowing us to live1 for a while1 in the modes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious energy4 ,intensity and purposefulness and harmony4 ,these are what everyday life affords but rarely to our longings4 ,and this is what1 thanks to this strange process of ,empathy1 a few inches of painted canvas1 will sometimes allow us to realise completely and uninterruptedly4 ,and it is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment1 but mere psychological fact1 to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles of a ,byzantine floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation1 this is because the modes of being which we are obliged to invest them with are such as we vainly seek1 or experience only to lose1 in our scattered or hustled existence4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,from ,,the ,,shape ,,to ,,the ,,thing ,,such are the satisfactions and dissatisfactions1 impersonal and unpractical1 we can receive1 or in reality1 give ourselves1 in the contemplation of shape4 ,but life has little leisure for contemplation2 it demands recognition1 inference and readiness for active adaptation4 ,or rather life forces us to deal with shapes mainly inasmuch as they indicate the actual or possible existence of other groups of qualities which may help or hurt us4 ,life hurries us into recognising ,things4 ,now the first peculiarity distinguishing things from shapes is that they can occupy more or less cubic space3 we can hit up against them1 displace them or be displaced by them1 and in such process of displacing or resisting displacement1 we become aware of two other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes3 they have weight in varying degrees and texture of various sorts4 ,otherwise expressed1 things have body1 they exist in three dimensional space2 while shapes although they are often aspects of things 7say statues or vases7 having body and cubic existence1 shapes as shapes are two dimensional and bodiless4 ,so many of the critical applications of aesthetic1 as well as of the historical problems of art-evolution are connected with this fact or rather the continued misunderstanding of it1 that it is well to remind the ,reader of what general ,psychology can teach us of the perception of the ,third ,dimension4 ,a very slight knowledge of cubic existence1 in the sense of relief1 is undoubtedly furnished as the stereoscope furnishes it1 by the inevitable slight divergence between the two eyes2 an even more infinitesimal dose of such knowledge is claimed for the surfaces of each eye separately4 ,but whatever notions of three-dimensional space might have been developed from such rudiments1 the perception of cubic existence which we actually possess and employ1 is undeniably based upon the incomparably more important data afforded by locomotion1 under which term ,i include even the tiny pressure of a finger against a surface1 and the exploration of a hollow tooth by the tip of the tongue4 ,the muscular adjustments made in such locomotion become associated by repetition with the two-dimensional arrangements of colour and light revealed by the eye1 the two-dimensional being thus turned into the three-dimensional in our everyday experience4 ,but the mistakes we occasionally make1 for instance taking a road seen from above for a church-tower projecting out of the plain1 or the perspective of a mountain range for its cubic shape1 occasionally reveal that we do not really see three-dimensional objects1 but merely infer them by connecting visual data with the result of locomotor experience4 ,the truth of this commonplace of psychology can be tested by the experiment of making now one1 now the other1 colour of a floor pattern seem convex or concave according as we think of it as a light flower on a dark ground1 or as a white cavity banked in by a dark ridge4 ,and when the philistine 7who may be you or me67 exclaims against the out of drawing and false perspective of unfamiliar styles of painting1 he is1 nine times out of ten1 merely expressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as representing three-dimensional things2 so far proving that we do not decipher the cubic relations of a picture until we have guessed what that picture is supposed to stand for4 ,and this is my reason for saying that visible shapes1 though they may be aspects of cubic objects1 have no body2 and that the thought of their volume1 their weight and their texture1 is due to an interruption of our contemplation of shape by an excursion among the recollections of qualities which shapes1 as shapes1 cannot possess4 ,and here ,i would forestall the ,reader's objection that the feeling of effort and resistance1 essential to all our empathic dealings with two-dimensional shapes1 must1 after all1 be due to weight1 which we have just described as a quality shapes cannot possess4 ,my answer is that ,empathy has extracted and schematised effort and resistance by the elimination of the thought of weight1 as by the elimination of the awareness of our bodily tensions2 and that it is just this elimination of all incompatible qualities which allows us to attribute activities to those two-dimensional shapes1 and to feel these activities1 with a vividness undiminished by the thought of any other circumstances4 ,with cubic existence 7and its correlative three-dimensional space71 with weight and texture we have therefore got from the contemplated shape to a thought alien to that shape and its contemplation4 ,the thought1 to which life and its needs and dangers has given precedence over every other3 ,what ,thing is behind this shape1 what qualities must be inferred from this aspect8 ,after the possibility of occupying so much space1 the most important quality which things can have for our hopes and fears1 is the possibility of altering their occupation of space2 not our locomotion1 but theirs4 ,i call it locomotion rather than movement1 because we have direct experience only of our own movements1 and infer similar movement in other beings and objects because of their change of place either across our motionless eye or across some other object whose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged4 ,i call it locomotion also to accentuate its difference from the movement attributed to the shape of the ,rising ,mountain1 movement felt by us to be going on but not expected to result in any change of the mountain's space relations1 which are precisely what would be altered by the mountain's locomotion4 ,the practical question about a shape is therefore3 ,does it warrant the inference of a thing able to change its position in three-dimensional space8 to advance or recede from us8 ,and if so in what manner8 ,will it1 like a loose stone1 fall upon us8 like flame1 rise towards us8 like water1 spread over us8 ,or will it change its place only if we supply the necessary locomotion8 ,briefly3 is the thing of which we see the shape inert or active8 ,and if this shape belongs to a thing possessing activity of its own1 is its locomotion of that slow regular kind we call the growth and spreading of plants8 ,or of the sudden1 wilful kind we know in animals and men8 ,what does this shape tell us of such more formidable locomotion8 ,are these details of curve and colour to be interpreted into jointed limbs1 can the thing fling out laterally1 run after us1 can it catch and swallow us8 ,or is it such that we can do thus by it8 ,does this shape suggest the thing's possession of desires and purposes which we can deal with8 ,and if so1 why is it where it is8 ,whence does it come8 ,what is it going to do8 ,what is it thinking of 7if it can think78 ,how will it feel towards us 7if it can feel78 ,what would it say 7if it could speak78 ,what will be its future and what may have been its past8 ,to sum all up3 ,what does the presence of this shape lead us to think and do and feel8 ,such are a few of the thoughts started by that shape and the possibility of its belonging to a thing4 ,and even when1 as we shall sometimes find1 they continually return back to the shape and play round and round it in centrifugal and centripetal alternations1 yet all these thoughts are excursions1 however brief1 from the world of definite unchanging shapes into that of various and ever varying things2 interruptions1 even if 7as we shall later see7 intensifying interruptions1 of that concentrated and coordinated contemplation of shapes1 with which we have hitherto dealt4 ,and these excursions1 and a great many more1 from the world of shapes into that of things1 are what we shall deal with1 when we come to ,art1 under the heading of representation and suggestion1 or1 as is usually said1 of subject and expression as opposed to form4 ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,from ,,the ,,thing ,,to ,,the ,,shape ,,the necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the ,shape to the ,thing1 from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and practical thinking4 ,but1 as the foregoing chapter itself suggests1 the real order of precedence1 both for the individual and the race1 is inevitably the reverse1 since without a primary and dominant interest in things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in shapes4 ,indeed1 considering the imperative need for an ever abbreviated and often automatic system of human reactions to sense data1 it is by no means easy to understand 7and the problem has therefore been utterly neglected7 how mankind ever came to evolve any process as lengthy and complicated as that form-contemplation upon which all aesthetic preference depends4 ,i will hazard the suggestion that familiarity with shapes took its original evolutional utility1 as well as its origin1 from the dangers of over rapid and uncritical inference concerning the qualities of things and man's proper reactions towards them4 ,it was necessary1 no doubt1 that the roughest suggestion of a bear's growl and a bear's outline should send our earliest ancestors into their sheltering caves4 ,but the occasional discovery that the bear was not a bear but some more harmless and edible animal must have brought about a comparison1 a discrimination between the visible aspects of the two beasts1 and a mental storage of their difference in shape1 gait and colour4 ,similarly the deluding resemblance between poisonous and nutritious fruits and roots1 would result1 as the resemblance between the nurse's finger and nipple results with the infant1 in attention to visible details1 until the acquisition of vivid mental images became the chief item of the savage man's education1 as it still is of the self-education of the modern child4 ,this evolution of interest in visible aspects would of course increase tenfold as soon as mankind took to making things whose usefulness 7i4e4 their still non-existent qualities7 might be jeopardised by a mistake concerning their shape4 ,for long after over and under1 straight and oblique1 right and left1 had become habitual perceptions in dealing with food and fuel1 the effective aim of a stone1 the satisfactory flight of an arrow1 would be discovered to depend upon more or less of what we call horizontals and perpendiculars1 curves and angles2 and the stability of a fibrous tissue upon the intervals of crossing and recrossing1 the rythmical or symmetrical arrangements revealed by the hand or eye4 ,in short1 making1 being inevitably shaping1 would have developed a more and more accurate perception and recollection of every detail of shape4 ,and not only would there arise a comparison between one shape and another shape1 but between the shape actually under one's eyes and the shape no longer present1 between the shape as it really was and the shape as it ought to be4 ,thus in the very course of practical making of things there would come to be little interludes1 recognised as useful1 first of more and more careful looking and comparing1 and then of real contemplation3 contemplation of the arrow-head you were chipping1 of the mat you were weaving1 of the pot you were rubbing into shape2 contemplation also of the other arrow-head or mat or pot existing only in your wishes2 of the shape you were trying to obtain with a premonitory emotion of the effect which its peculiarities would produce when once made visible to your eye6 ,for the man cutting the arrow-head1 the woman plaiting the mat1 becoming familiar with the appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual arrow-heads or mats of the same type1 would become aware of the different effect which such shapes had on the person who looked at them4 ,some of these shapes would be so dull1 increasing the tediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand2 others so alert1 entertaining and likeable1 as if they were helping in the work2 others1 although equally compatible with utility1 fussing or distressing one1 never doing what one expected their lines and curves to do4 ,to these suppositions ,i would add a few more suggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of man's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of ,things4 ,the handicraftsman1 armourer1 weaver1 or potter1 benefits by his own and his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more adapted for use and wear1 and which way to set about producing it2 his technical skill becomes half automatic1 so that his eye and mind1 acting as mere overseers to his muscles1 have plenty of time for contemplation so long as everything goes right and no new moves have to be made4 ,and once the handicraftsman contemplates the shape as it issues from his fingers1 his mind will be gripped by that liking or disliking expressed by the words beautiful and ugly4 ,neither is this all4 ,the owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of tissue1 is not always intent upon employing it2 in proportion to its usefulness and durability and to the amount of time1 good luck1 skill or strength required to make or to obtain it1 this chattel will turn from a slave into a comrade4 ,it is furbished or mended1 displayed to others1 boasted over1 perhaps sung over as ,alan ,breck sang over his sword4 ,the owner's eye 7and not less that of the man envious of the owner67 caresses its shape2 and its shape1 all its well-known ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs1 haunts the memory1 ready to start into vividness whenever similar objects come under comparison4 ,now what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of civilized1 perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and easily replaced properties4 ,the shape of the things we make and use offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention which are half of the rythm of all healthful work4 ,and it is this normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease1 which explains how art has come to be a part of life1 how mere aspects have acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling that of things4 ,i therefore commend to the ,reader the now somewhat unfashionable hypothesis of ,semper and his school1 according to which the first preference for beauty of shape must be sought for in those arts like stone and metal work1 pottery and weaving1 which give opportunities for repetition1 reduplication1 hence rythm and symmetry1 and whose material and technique produce what are called geometric patterns1 meaning such as exist in two dimensions and do not imitate the shapes of real objects4 ,this theory has been discredited by the discovery that very primitive and savage mankind possessed a kind of art of totally different nature1 and which analogy with that of children suggests as earlier than that of pattern3 the art which the ingenious hypothesis of ,mr ,henry ,balfour derives from recognition of accidental resemblances between the shapes and stains of wood or stone and such creatures and objects as happen to be uppermost in the mind of the observer1 who cuts or paints whatever may be needed to complete the likeness and enable others to perceive the suggestion4 ,whether or not this was its origin1 there seems to have existed in earliest times such an art of a strictly representative kind1 serving 7like the spontaneous art of children7 to evoke the idea of whatever was interesting to the craftsman and his clients1 and doubtless practically to have some desirable magic effect upon the realities of things4 ,but 7to return to the hypothesis of the aesthetic primacy of geometric and non-representative art7 it is certain that although such early representations occasionally attain marvellous life-likeness and anatomical correctness1 yet they do not at first show any corresponding care for symmetrical and rythmical arrangement4 ,the bisons and wild boars1 for instance1 of the ,altamira cave frescoes1 do indeed display vigour and beauty in the lines constituting them1 proving that successful dealing with shape1 even if appealing only to practical interest1 inevitably calls forth the empathic imagination of the more gifted artists2 but these marvellously drawn figures are all huddled together or scattered as out of a rag-bag2 and1 what is still more significant1 they lack that insistence on the feet which not only suggests ground beneath them but1 in so doing1 furnishes a horizontal by which to start1 measure and take the bearings of all other lines4 ,these astonishing palaeolithic artists 7and indeed the very earliest ,egyptian and ,greek ones7 seem to have thought only of the living models and their present and future movements1 and to have cared as little for lines and angles as the modern children whose drawings have been instructively compared with theirs by ,levinstein and others4 ,i therefore venture to suggest that such aesthetically essential attention to direction and composition must have been applied to representative art when its realistic figures were gradually incorporated into the patterns of the weaver and the potter4 ,such stylisation is still described by art historians as a degeneration due to unintelligent repetition2 but it was on the contrary the integrating process by which the representative element was subjected to such aesthetic preferences as had been established in the manufacture of objects whose usefulness or whose production involved accurate measurement and equilibrium as in the case of pottery or weapons1 or rythmical reduplication as in that of textiles4 ,be this question as it may 7and the increasing study of the origin and evolution of human faculties will some day settle it67 we already know enough to affirm that while in the very earliest art the shape-element and the element of representation are usually separate1 the two get gradually combined as civilisation advances1 and the shapes originally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions 7hence as magical equivalents7 or things1 and employed for religious1 recording1 or self-expressive purposes1 become subjected to selection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable perceptive and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to agreeable ones4 ,nay the whole subsequent history of painting and sculpture could be formulated as the perpetual starting up of new representative interests1 new interests in things1 their spatial existence1 locomotion1 anatomy1 their reaction to light1 and also their psychological and dramatic possibilities2 and the subordination of these ever-changing interests in things to the unchanging habit of arranging visible shapes so as to diminish opportunities for the contemplative dissatisfaction and increase opportunities for the contemplative satisfaction to which we attach the respective names of ugly and beautiful4 ,,chapter ,,xiv ,,the ,,aims ,,of ,,art ,,we have thus at last got to ,art1 which the ,reader may have expected to be dealt with at the outset of a primer on the ,beautiful4 ,why this could not be the case1 will be more and more apparent in my remaining chapters4 ,and1 in order to make those coming chapters easier to grasp1 ,i may as well forestall and tabulate the views they embody upon the relation between the ,beautiful and ,art4 ,these generalisations are as follows3 ,although it is historically probable that the habit of avoiding ugliness and seeking beauty of shape may have been originally established by utilitarian attention to the non-imitative 7geometrical7 shapes of weaving1 pottery and implement-making1 and transferred from these crafts to the shapes intended to represent or imitate natural objects1 yet the distinction between ,beautiful and ,ugly does not belong either solely or necessarily to what we call ,art4 ,therefore the satisfaction of the shape-perceptive or aesthetic preferences must not be confused with any of the many and various other aims and activities to which art is due and by which it is carried on4 ,conversely3 although in its more developed phases1 and after the attainment of technical facility1 art has been differentiated from other human employment by its foreseeing the possibility of shape-contemplation and therefore submitting itself to what ,i have elsewhere called the aesthetic imperative1 yet art has invariably started from some desire other than that of affording satisfactory shape-contemplation1 with the one exception of cases where it has been used to keep or reproduce opportunities of such shape contemplation already accidentally afforded by natural shapes1 say1 those of flowers or animals or landscapes1 or even occasionally of human beings1 which had already been enjoyed as beautiful4 ,all art therefore1 except that of children1 savages1 ignoramuses and extreme innovators1 invariably avoids ugly shapes and seeks for beautiful ones2 but art does this while pursuing all manner of different aims4 ,these non-aesthetic aims of art may be roughly divided into 7,a7 the making of useful objects ranging from clothes to weapons and from a pitcher to a temple2 7,b7 the registering or transmitting of facts and their visualising1 as in portraits1 historical pictures or literature1 and book illustration2 and 7,c7 the awakening1 intensifying or maintaining of definite emotional states1 as especially by music and literature1 but also by painting and architecture when employed as aids to devotion4 ,and these large classes may again be subdivided and connected1 if the ,reader has a mind to1 into utilitarian1 social1 ritual1 sentimental1 scientific and other aims1 some of them not countenanced or not avowed by contemporary morality4 ,how the aesthetic imperative1 i4e4 the necessities of satisfactory shape-contemplation1 qualifies and deflects the pursuit of such non-aesthetic aims of art can be shown by comparing1 for instance1 the mere audible devices for conveying conventional meaning and producing and keeping up emotional conditions1 viz4 the hootings and screechings of modern industrialism no less than the ritual noises of savages1 with the arrangements of well constituted pitch1 rythm1 tonality and harmony in which military1 religious or dance music has disguised its non-aesthetic functions of conveying signals or acting on the nerves4 ,whatever is unnecessary for either of these motives 7or any others7 for making a noise1 can be put to the account of the desire to avoid ugliness and enjoy beauty4 ,but the workings of the aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the ,art of the visual-representative group1 and especially in painting1 which allows us to follow the interplay of the desire to be told 7or tell7 facts about things with the desire to contemplate shapes1 and to contemplate them 7otherwise we should not contemplate67 with sensuous1 intellectual and empathic satisfaction4 ,this brings us back to the ,third ,dimension1 of which the possession is1 as have we seen1 the chief difference between ,things1 which can alter their aspect in the course of their own and our actions1 and ,shapes1 which can only be contemplated by our bodily and mental eye1 and neither altered nor thought of as altered without more or less jeopardising their identity4 ,i daresay the ,reader may not have been satisfied with the reference to the locomotor nature of cubic perception as sufficient justification of my thus connecting cubic existence with ,things rather than with ,shapes1 and my implying that aesthetic preference1 due to the sensory1 intellectual and empathic factors of perception1 is applicable only to the two other dimensions4 ,and the ,reader's incredulity and surprise will have been all the greater1 because recent art-criticism has sedulously inculcated that the suggestion of cubic existence is the chief function of pictorial genius1 and the realisation of such cubic existence the highest delight which pictures can afford to their worthy beholder4 ,this particular notion1 entirely opposed to the facts of visual perception and visual empathy1 will repay discussion1 inasmuch as it accidentally affords an easy entrance into a subject which has hitherto presented inextricable confusion1 namely the relations of ,form and ,subject1 or1 as ,i have accustomed the ,reader to consider them1 the contemplated ,shape and the thought-of ,thing4 ,let us therefore examine why art-criticism should lay so great a stress on the suggestion and the acceptance of that suggestion1 of three-dimensional existence in paintings4 ,in paintings4 ,for this alleged aesthetic desideratum ceases to be a criterion of merit when we come to sculpture1 about which critics are more and more persistently teaching 7and with a degree of reason7 that one of the greatest merits of the artist1 and of the greatest desiderata of the beholder1 is precisely the reduction of real cubic existence by avoiding all projection beyond a unified level1 that is to say by making a solid block of stone look as if it were a representation on a flat surface4 ,this contradiction explains the origin of the theory giving supreme pictorial importance to the ,third ,dimension4 ,for art criticism though at length 7thanks especially to the sculptor ,hildebrand7 busying itself also with plastic art1 has grown up mainly in connexion with painting4 ,now in painting the greatest scientific problem1 and technical difficulty1 has been the suggestion of three-dimensional existences by pigments applied to a two-dimensional surface2 and this problem has naturally been most successfully handled by the artists possessing most energy and imagination1 and equally naturally shirked or bungled or treated parrot-wise by the artists of less energy and imagination4 ,and1 as energy and imagination also show themselves in finer perception1 more vivid empathy and more complex dealings with shapes which are only two-dimensional1 it has come about that the efficient and original solutions of the cubic problem have coincided1 ceteris paribus1 with the production of pictures whose two-dimensional qualities have called forth the adjective beautiful1 and beautiful in the most intense and complicated manner4 ,hence successful treatment of cubic suggestion has become an habitual 7and threatens to become a rule-of-thumb7 criterion of pictorial merit2 the more so that qualities of two-dimensional shape1 being intrinsic and specific1 are difficult to run to ground and describe2 whereas the quality of three-dimensional suggestion is ascertainable by mere comparison between the shapes in the picture and the shapes afforded by real things when seen in the same perspective and lighting4 ,most people can judge whether an apple in a picture looks as if it were solid1 round1 heavy and likely to roll off a sideboard in the same picture2 and some people may even1 when the picture has no other claims on their interest1 experience incipient muscular contractions such as would eventually interfere with a real apple rolling off a real sideboard4 ,apples and sideboards offer themselves to the meanest experience and can be dealt with adequately in everyday language1 whereas the precise curves and angles1 the precise relations of directions and impacts1 of parts to whole1 which together make up the identity of a two-dimensional shape1 are indeed perceived and felt by the attentive beholder1 but not habitually analysed or set forth in words4 ,moreover the creation of two-dimensional shapes satisfying to contemplation depends upon two very different factors3 on traditional experience with regard to the more general arrangements of lines1 and on individual energy and sensitiveness1 i4e4 on genius in carrying out1 and ringing changes on1 such traditional arrangements4 ,and the possession of tradition or genius1 although no doubt the most important advantage of an artist1 happens not to be one to which he can apply himself as to a problem4 ,on the other hand a problem to be solved is eternally being pressed upon every artist2 pressed on him by his clients1 by the fashion of his time and also by his own self inasmuch as he is a man interested not only in shapes but in things4 ,and thus we are back at the fact that the problem given to the painter to solve by means of lines and colours on a flat surface1 is the problem of telling us something new or something important about things3 what things are made of1 how they will react to our doings1 how they move1 what they feel and think2 and above all1 ,i repeat it1 what amount of space they occupy with reference to the space similarly occupied1 in present or future1 by other things including ourselves4 ,our enquiry into the excessive importance attributed by critics to pictorial suggestion of cubic existence has thus led us back to the conclusion contained in previous chapters1 namely that beauty depending negatively on ease of visual perception1 and positively upon emphatic corroboration of our dynamic habits1 is a quality of aspects1 independent of cubic existence and every other possible quality of things2 except in so far as the thought of three-dimensional1 and other1 qualities of things may interfere with the freedom and readiness of mind requisite for such highly active and sensitive processes as those of empathic form interpretation4 ,but the following chapter will1 ,i trust1 make it clear that such interference of the ,thought about ,things with the ,contemplation of ,shapes is essential to the rythm of our mental life1 and therefore a chief factor in all artistic production and appreciation4 ,,chapter ,,xv ,,attention ,,to ,,shapes ,,to explain how art in general1 and any art in particular1 succeeds in reconciling these contradictory demands1 ,i must remind the ,reader of what ,i said 7p4 #ic7 about the satisfactory or unsatisfactory possibilities of shapes having begun to be noticed in the moments of slackened attention to the processes of manufacturing the objects embodying those shapes1 and in the intervals between practical employment of these more or less shapely objects4 ,and ,i must ask him to connect with these remarks a previous passage 7p4 #dd7 concerning the intermittent nature of normal acts of attention1 and their alternation as constituting on-and-off beats4 ,the deduction from these two converging statements is that1 contrary to the a-priori theories making aesthetic contemplation an exception1 a kind of bank holiday1 to daily life1 it is in reality one-half of daily life's natural and healthy rythm4 ,that the real state of affairs1 as revealed by psychological experiment and observation1 should have escaped the notice of so many aestheticians1 is probably due to their theories starting from artistic production rather than from aesthetic appreciation1 without which art would after all probably never have come into existence4 ,the production of the simplest work of art cannot indeed be thought of as one of the alternations of everyday attention1 because it is a long1 complex and repeatedly resumed process1 a whole piece of life1 including in itself hundreds and thousands of alternations of doing and looking1 of discursive thinking of aims and ways and means and of contemplation of aesthetic results4 ,for even the humblest artist has to think of whatever objects or processes his work aims at representing1 conveying or facilitating2 and to think also of the objects1 marble1 wood1 paints1 voices1 and of the processes1 drawing1 cutting1 harmonic combining1 by which he attempts to compass one of the above-mentioned results4 ,the artist is not only an aesthetically appreciative person2 he is1 in his own way1 a man of science and a man of practical devices1 an expert1 a craftsman and an engineer4 ,to produce a work of art is not an interlude in his life1 but his life's main business2 and he therefore stands apart1 as every busy specialist must1 from the business of other specialists1 of those ministering to mankind's scientific and practical interests4 ,but while it takes days1 months1 sometimes years to produce a work of art1 it may require 7the process has been submitted to exact measurement by the stop-watch7 not minutes but seconds1 to take stock of that work of art in such manner as to carry away its every detail of shape1 and to continue dealing with it in memory4 ,the unsuspected part played by memory explains why aesthetic contemplation can be and normally is1 an intermittent function alternating with practical doing and thinking4 ,it is in memory1 though memory dealing with what we call the present1 that we gather up parts into wholes and turn consecutive measurements into simultaneous relations2 and it is probably in memory that we deal empathically with shapes1 investing their already perceived directions and relations with the remembered qualities of our own activities1 aims and moods4 ,and similarly it is thanks to memory that the brief and intermittent acts of aesthetic appreciation are combined into a network of contemplation which intermeshes with our other thoughts and doings1 and yet remains different from them1 as the restorative functions of life remain different from life's expenditure1 although interwoven with them4 ,every ,reader with any habit of self-observation knows how poignant an impression of beauty may be got1 as through the window of an express train1 in the intermittence of practical business or abstract thinking1 nay even in what ,i have called the off-beat of deepest personal emotion1 the very stress of the practical1 intellectual or personal instant 7for the great happenings of life are measured in seconds67 apparently driving in by contrast1 or conveying on its excitement1 that irrelevant aesthetic contents of the off-beat of attention4 ,and while the practical or intellectual interest changes1 while the personal emotion subsides1 that aesthetic impression remains2 remains or recurs1 united1 through every intermittence1 by the feeling of identity1 that identity which1 like the rising of the mountain1 is due to the reiterative nature of shape-contemplation3 the fragments of melody may be interrupted in our memory by all manner of other thoughts1 but they will recur and coalesce1 and recurring and coalescing1 bring with them the particular mood which their rythms and intervals have awakened in us and awaken once more4 ,that diagrammatic ,man on the ,hill in reality thought away from the landscape quite as much as his practical and scientific companions2 what he did1 and they did not1 was to think back to it2 and think back to it always with the same references of lines and angles1 the same relations of directions and impacts1 of parts and wholes4 ,and perhaps the restorative1 the healing quality of aesthetic contemplation is due1 in large part1 to the fact that1 in the perpetual flux of action and thought1 it represents reiteration and therefore stability4 ,be that as it may1 the intermittent but recurrent character of shape contemplation1 the fact that it is inconceivably brief and amazingly repetitive1 that it has the essential quality of identity because of reiteration1 all this explains also two chief points of our subject4 ,first3 how an aesthetic impression1 intentionally or accidentally conveyed in the course of wholly different interests1 can become a constant accompaniment to the shifting preoccupations of existence1 like the remembered songs which sing themselves silently in our mind and the remembered landscapes becoming an intangible background to our ever-varying thoughts4 ,and1 secondly1 it explains how art can fulfil the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things while satisfying the imperious unchanging demands of the contemplated preference for beautiful aspects4 ,and thus we return to my starting-point in dealing with art3 that art is conditioned by the desire for beauty while pursuing entirely different aims1 and executing any one of a variety of wholly independent non-aesthetic tasks4 ,,chapter ,,xvi ,,information ,,about ,,things ,,among the facts which ,painting is set to tell us about things1 the most important1 after cubic existence1 is ,locomotion4 ,indeed in the development of the race as well as in that of the individual1 pictorial attention to locomotion seems to precede attention to cubic existence4 ,for when the palaeolithic1 or the ,egyptian draughtsman1 or even the ,sixth ,century ,greek1 unites profile legs and head with a full-face chest2 and when the modern child supplements the insufficiently projecting full-face nose by a profile nose tacked on where we expect the ear1 we are apt to think that these mistakes are due to indifference to the cubic nature of things4 ,the reverse is1 however1 the case4 ,the primitive draughtsman and the child are recording impressions received in the course of the locomotion either of the thing looked at or of the spectator4 ,when they unite whatever consecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest to copy1 they are in the clutches of their cubic experience1 and what they are indifferent about1 perhaps unconscious of1 is the two-dimensional appearance which a body presents when its parts are seen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view4 ,the progress of painting is always from representing the ,consecutive to representing the ,simultaneous2 perspective1 foreshortening1 and later1 light and shade1 being the scientific and technical means towards this end4 ,upon our knowledge of the precise stage of such pictorial development depends our correct recognition of what things1 and particularly what spatial relations and locomotion1 of things1 the painter is intended to represent4 ,thus when a ,byzantine draughtsman puts his figures in what look to us as superposed tiers1 he is merely trying to convey their existence behind one another on a common level4 ,and what we take for the elaborate contortions of athletes and ,athenas on ,sixth ,century vases turns out to be nothing but an archaic representation of ordinary walking and running4 ,the suggestion of locomotion depends furthermore on anatomy4 ,what the figures of a painting are intended to be doing1 what they are intended to have just done and to be going to do1 in fact all questions about their action and business1 are answered by reference to their bodily structure and its real or supposed possibilities4 ,the same applies to expression of mood4 ,the impassiveness of archaic ,apollos is more likely to be due to anatomical difficulties in displacing arms and legs1 than to lack of emotion on the part of artists who were1 after all1 contemporaries either of ,sappho or ,pindar4 ,and it is more probable that the sculptors of ,aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of lips and cheeks than that1 having ,homer by heart1 they imagined his heroes to die silently and with a smirk4 ,i have entered into this question of perspective and anatomy1 and given the above examples1 because they will bring home to the reader one of the chief principles deduced from our previous examination into the psychology of our subject1 namely that all thinking about things is thinking away from the ,shapes suggesting those things1 since it involves knowledge which the ,shapes in themselves do not afford4 ,and ,i have insisted particularly upon the dependence of representations of locomotion upon knowledge of three-dimensional existence1 because1 before proceeding to the relations of ,subject and ,form in painting1 ,i want to impress once more upon the reader the distinction between the locomotion of things 7locomotion active or passive7 and what1 in my example of the mountain which rises1 ,i have called the empathic movement of lines4 ,such movement of lines we have seen to be a scheme of activity suggested by our own activity in taking stock of a two-dimensional-shape2 an idea1 or feeling of activity which we1 being normally unaware of its origin in ourselves1 project into the shape which has suggested it1 precisely as we project our sensation of red from our own eye and mind into the object which has deflected the rays of light in such a way as to give us that red sensation4 ,such empathic1 attributed1 movements of lines are therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception has called them forth in our imagination and feeling2 and being qualities of the shapes1 they inevitably change with every alteration which a shape undergoes1 every shape1 actively perceived1 having its own special movement of lines2 and every movement of lines1 or combination of movements of lines existing in proportion as we go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a quality4 ,the case is absolutely reversed when we perceive or think of1 the locomotion of things4 ,the thought of a thing's locomotion1 whether locomotion done by itself or inflicted by something else1 necessitates our thinking away from the particular shape before us to another shape more or less different4 ,in other words locomotion necessarily alters what we are looking at or thinking of4 ,if we think of ,michel ,angelo's seated ,moses as getting up1 we think away from the approximately pyramidal shape of the statue to the elongated oblong of a standing figure4 ,if we think of the horse of ,marcus ,aurelius as taking the next step1 we think of a straightened leg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended in the air4 ,and if we think of the ,myronian ,discobolus as letting go his quoit and recovering1 we think of the matchless spiral composition as unwinding and straightening itself into a shape as different as that of a tree is different from that of a shell4 ,the pictorial representation of locomotion affords therefore the extreme example of the difference between discursive thinking about things and contemplation of shape4 ,bearing this example in mind we cannot fail to understand that1 just as the thought of locomotion is opposed to the thought of movement of lines1 so1 in more or less degree1 the thought of the objects and actions represented by a picture or statue1 is likely to divert the mind from the pictorial and plastic shapes which do the representing4 ,and we can also understand that the problem unconsciously dealt with by all art 7though by no means consciously by every artist7 is to execute the order of suggesting interesting facts about things in a manner such as to satisfy at the same time the aesthetic demand for shapes which shall be satisfactory to contemplate4 ,unless this demand for sensorially1 intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be complied with a work of art may be interesting as a diagram1 a record or an illustration1 but once the facts have been conveyed and assimilated with the rest of our knowledge1 there will remain a shape which we shall never want to lay eyes upon4 ,i cannot repeat too often that the differentiating characteristic of art is that it gives its works a value for contemplation independent of their value for fact-transmission1 their value as nerve-and-emotion-excitant and of their value for immediate1 for practical1 utility4 ,this aesthetic value1 depending upon the unchanging processes of perception and empathy1 asserts itself in answer to every act of contemplative attention1 and is as enduring and intrinsic as the other values are apt to be momentary and relative4 ,a ,greek vase with its bottom knocked out and with a scarce intelligible incident of obsolete mythology portrayed upon it1 has claims upon our feelings which the most useful modern mechanism ceases to have even in the intervals of its use1 and which the newspaper1 crammed full of the most important tidings1 loses as soon as we have taken in its contents4 ,,chapter ,,xvii ,,the ,,co-,,operation ,,of ,,things ,,and ,,shapes ,,during the ,middle ,ages and up to recent times the chief task of painting has been1 ostensibly1 the telling and re-telling of the same ,scripture stories2 and1 incidentally1 the telling them with the addition of constantly new items of information about things3 their volume1 position1 structure1 locomotion1 light and shade and interactions of texture and atmosphere2 to which items must be added others of psychological or 7pseudo7-historical kind1 how it all came about1 in what surroundings and dresses1 and accompanied by what feelings4 ,this task1 official and unofficial1 is in no way different from those fulfilled by the man of science and the practical man1 both of whom are perpetually dealing with additional items of information4 ,but mark the difference in the artist's way of accomplishing this task3 a scientific fact is embodied in the progressive mass of knowledge1 assimilated1 corrected2 a practical fact is taken in consideration1 built upon2 but the treatise1 the newspaper or letter1 once it has conveyed these facts1 is forgotten or discarded4 ,the work of art on the contrary is remembered and cherished2 or at all events it is made with the intention of being remembered and cherished4 ,in other words and as ,i shall never tire of repeating1 the differentiating characteristic of art is that it makes you think back to the shape once that shape has conveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention or exciting your emotions4 ,and the first and foremost problem1 for instance of painting1 is that of preventing the beholder's eye from being carried1 by lines of perspective1 outside the frame and even persistently out of the centre of the picture2 the sculptor 7and this is the real reason of the sculptor ,hildebrand's rules for plastic composition7 obeying a similar necessity of keeping the beholder's eye upon the main masses of his statue1 instead of diverting it1 by projections at different distances1 like the sticking out arms and hands of ,roman figures4 ,so much for the eye of the body3 the beholder's curiosity must similarly not be carried outside the work of art by1 for instance1 an incomplete figure 7legs without a body67 or an unfinished gesture1 this being1 it seems to roe1 the only real reason against the representation of extremely rapid action and transitory positions4 ,but when the task of conveying information implies that the beholder's thoughts be deliberately led from what is represented to what is not1 then this centrifugal action is dealt with so as to produce a centripetal one back to the work of art3 the painter suggests questions of how and why which get their answers in some item obliging you to take fresh stock of the picture4 ,what ,is the meaning of the angels and evidently supernatural horseman in the foreground of ,raphael's ,heliodorus8 ,your mind flies to the praying ,high ,priest in the central recess of the temple1 and in going backwards and forwards between him1 the main group and the scattered astonished bystanders1 you are effectually enclosed within the arches of that marvellous composition1 and induced to explore every detail of its lovely and noble constituent shapes4 ,the methods employed thus to keep the beholder's attention inside the work of art while suggesting things beyond it1 naturally vary with the exact nature of the non-aesthetic task which has been set to the artist2 and with the artist's individual endowment and even more with the traditional artistic formulae of his country and time3 ,raphael's devices in ,heliodorus could not have been compassed by ,giotto2 and1 on the other hand1 would have been rejected as academic by ,manet4 ,but whatever the methods employed1 and however obviously they reveal that satisfactory form-contemplation is the one and invariable condition as distinguished from the innumerable varying aims1 of all works of art1 the ,reader will find them discussed not as methods for securing attention to the shape1 but as methods of employing that shape for some non-aesthetic purpose2 whether that purpose be inducing you to drink out of a cup by making its shape convenient or suggestive2 or inducing you to buy a particular commodity by branding its name and virtues on your mind2 or fixing your thoughts on the ,madonna's sorrows2 or awaking your sympathy for ,isolde's love tragedy4 ,and yet it is evident that the artist who shaped the cup or designed the poster would be horribly disappointed if you thought only of drinking or of shopping and never gave another look to the cup or the poster2 and that ,perugino or ,wagner would have died of despair if his suggestion of the ,madonna's sorrows or of ,isolde's love-agonies had been so efficacious as to prevent anybody from looking twice at the fresco or listening to the end of the opera4 ,this inversion of the question is worth inquiring into1 because1 like the analogous paradox about the pictorial realisation of cubic existence1 it affords an illustration of some of the psychological intricacies of the relation between ,art and the ,beautiful4 ,this is how ,i propose to explain it4 ,the task to which an artist is set varies from one work to another1 while the shapes employed for the purpose are1 as already said1 limited by his powers and especially by the precise moment in artistic evolution4 ,the artist therefore thinks of his available shapes as something given1 as means1 and the subject he is ordered to represent 7or the emotion he is commissioned to elicit7 as the all-important aim4 ,thus he thinks of himself 7and makes the critic think of him7 not as preventing the represented subject or expressed emotion from withdrawing the beholder from the artistic shapes1 but1 on the contrary1 as employing these artistic shapes for the sole purpose of that representation or emotional expression4 ,and this most explicable inversion of the real state of affairs ends by making the beholder believe that what he cares for in a masterpiece is not the beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have1 but the efficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which could be just as efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest daub or the wretchedest barrel organ6 ,this inevitable1 and ,i believe1 salutary illusion of the artist1 is further in creased by the fact that while the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and diminishing opportunities for ugliness1 the actual beauty of the shapes he is creating arises from the depths of his unreasoned1 traditional and organised consciousness1 from activities which might be called automatic if they were not accompanied by a critical feeling that what is produced thus spontaneously and inevitably is either turning out as it must and should1 or1 contrariwise1 insists upon turning out exactly as it should not4 ,the particular system of curves and angles1 of directions and impacts of lines1 the particular whole-and-part scheme of1 let us say1 ,michelangelo1 is due to his modes of aesthetic perceiving1 feeling1 living1 added to those of all the other artists whose peculiarities have been averaged in what we call the school whence ,michelangelo issued4 ,he can no more depart from these shapes than he can paint ,rembrandt's ,pilgrims of ,emmaus without ,rembrandt's science of light and shade and ,rembrandt's oil-and-canvas technique4 ,there is no alternative1 hence no choice1 hence no feeling of a problem to resolve1 in this question of shapes to employ4 ,but there are dozens of alternatives and of acts of choice1 there is a whole series of problems when ,michelangelo sets to employing these inevitable shapes to telling the ,parting of the ,light from the ,darkness1 or the ,creation of ,adam on the ,vault of the ,sixtine1 and to surrounding the stories from ,genesis with ,prophets and ,sibyls and ,ancestors of ,christ4 ,is the ceiling to remain a unity1 or be broken up into irrelevant compositions8 ,here comes in1 alongside of his almost automatic genius for shapes1 the man's superhuman constructive ingenuity4 ,see how he divides that ceiling in such a way that the frames of the separate compositions combine into a huge structure of painted rafters and brackets1 nay the ,prophets and ,sibyls1 the ,ancestors and ,ancestresses themselves1 and the naked antique genii1 turn into architectural members1 holding that imaginary roof together1 securing its seeming stability1 increasing1 by their gesture its upspring and its weightiness1 and at the same time determining the tracks along which the eye is forced to travel4 ,backwards and forwards the eye is driven by that living architecture1 round and round in its search now for completion of visible pattern1 now for symbolic and narrative meaning4 ,and ever back to the tale of the ,creation1 so that the remote historic incidents of the ,ancestors1 the tremendous and tremendously present lyric excitement and despair of the prophetic men and women1 the pagan suggestion of the athletic genii1 all unite like the simultaneous and consecutive harmonies of a titanic symphony1 round the recurrent and dominant phrases of those central stories of how the universe and man were made1 so that the beholder has the emotion of hearing not one part of the ,old ,testament1 but the whole of it4 ,but meanwhile1 and similarly interchanging and multiplying their imaginative and emotional appeal1 the thought of those most memorable of all written stories unites with the perception and empathy of those marvellous systems of living lines and curves and angles1 throbbing with their immortal impacts and speeds and directions in a great coordinated movement that always begins and never ends1 until it seems to the beholder as if those painted shapes were themselves the crowning work of some eighth day of ,creation1 gathering up in reposeful visible synthesis the whole of ,creation's ineffable energy and harmony and splendour4 ,this example of ,michelangelo's ceiling shows how1 thanks to the rythmical nature of perception1 art fulfils the mission of making us think from ,shapes to ,things and from ,things back to ,shapes4 ,and it allows us to see the workings of that psychological law1 already manifest in the elementary relations of line to line and dot to dot1 by which whatever can be thought and felt in continuous alternation tends to be turned into a whole by such reiteration of common activities4 ,and this means that ,art adds to its processes of selection and exclusion a process of inclusion1 safeguarding aesthetic contemplation by drawing whatever is not wholly refractory into that contemplation's orbit4 ,this turning of non-aesthetic interests from possible competitors and invaders into co-operating allies is an incomparable multiplying factor of aesthetic satisfaction1 enlarging the sphere of aesthetic emotion and increasing that emotion's volume and stability by inclusion of just those elements which would have competed to diminish them4 ,the typical instance of such a possible competitor turned into an ally1 is that of the cubic element1 which ,i have described 7p4 #he7 as the first and most constant intruder from the thought of ,things into the contemplation of ,shapes4 ,for the introduction into a picture of a suggested third dimension is what prevents our thinking away from a merely two-dimensional aspect by supplying subsidiary imaginary aspects susceptible of being co-ordinated to it4 ,so perspective and modelling in light and shade satisfy our habit of locomotion by allowing us1 as the phrase is1 to go into a picture2 and going into1 we remain there and establish on its imaginary planes schemes of horizontals and verticals besides those already existing on the real two-dimensional surface4 ,this addition of shapes due to perspective increases the already existing dramas of empathy1 instead of interrupting them by our looking away from the picture1 which we should infallibly do if our exploring and so to speak cubic-locomotor tendencies were not thus employed inside the picture's limits4 ,this alliance of aesthetic contemplation with our interest in cubic existence and our constant thought of locomotion1 does more however than merely safeguard and multiply our chances of empathic activity4 ,it also increases the sensory discrimination1 and hence pleasureableness1 of colour1 inasmuch as colour becomes1 considered as light and shade and values1 a suggestion of three-dimensional ,things instead of merely a constituent of two-dimensional ,shapes4 ,moreover1 one easily tires of following verticals and horizontals and their intermediate directions2 while empathic imagination1 with its dynamic feelings and frequent semi-mimetic accompaniments1 requires sufficient intervals of repose2 and such repose1 such alternation of different mental functions1 isprecisely afforded by thinking in terms of cubic existence4 ,art-critics have often pointed out what may be called the thinness1 the lack of staying power1 of pictures deficient in the cubic element2 they ought also to have drawn attention to the fatiguing1 the almost hallucinatory excitement1 resulting from uninterrupted attention to two-dimensional pattern and architectural outlines1 which were1 indeed1 intended to be incidentally looked at in the course of taking stock of the cubic qualities of furniture and buildings4 ,and since the limits of this volume have restricted me to painting as a type of aesthetic contemplation1 ,i must ask the ,reader to accept on my authority and if possible verify for himself1 the fact that what ,i have been saying applies1 mutatis mutandis1 to the other arts4 ,as we have already noticed1 something analogous to a third dimension exists also in music2 and even1 as ,i have elsewhere shown199 in literature4 ,the harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our tendency to think of other notes and particularly of other allied tonalities2 while as to literature1 the whole handling of words1 indeed the whole of logical thinking1 is but a cubic working backwards and forwards between what and how1 a co-ordinating of items and themes1 keeping the mind enclosed in one scheme of ideas by forestalling answers to the questions which would otherwise divert the attention4 ,and if the realisation of the third dimension has come to be mistaken for the chief factor of aesthetic satisfaction1 this error is due not merely to the already noticed coincidence between cubic imagination and artistic genius1 but even more to the fact that cubic imagination is the type of the various multiplying factors by which the empathic1 that is to say the essentially aesthetic1 activity1 can increase its sphere of operations1 its staying power and its intensity4 99 ,the ,handling of ,words1 ,english ,review1 #aiaa-ab4 ,,chapter ,,xviii ,,aesthetic ,,responsiveness ,,our examination has thus proceeded from aesthetic contemplation to the work of ,art1 which seeks to secure and satisfy it while furthering some of life's various other claims4 ,we must now go back to aesthetic contemplation and find out how the beholder meets these efforts made to secure and satisfy his contemplative attention4 ,for the ,reader will by this time have grasped that art can do nothing without the collaboration of the beholder or listener2 and that this collaboration1 so far from consisting in the passive being impressed by beauty which unscientific aestheticians imagined as analogous to being impressed by sensuous qualities1 by hot or cold or sweet or sour1 is in reality a combination of higher activities1 second in complexity and intensity only to that of the artist himself4 ,we have seen in the immediately preceding chapter that the most deliberate1 though not the essential1 part of the artist's business is to provide against any possible disturbance of the beholder's responsive activity1 and of course also to increase by every means that output of responsive activity4 ,but the sources of it are in the beholder1 and beyond the control of the most ingenious artistic devices and the most violent artistic appeals4 ,there is indeed no better proof of the active nature of aesthetic appreciation than the fact that such appreciation is so often not forthcoming4 ,even mere sensations1 those impressions of single qualities to which we are most unresistingly passive1 are not pleasurable without a favourable reaction of the body's chemistry3 the same taste or smell will be attractive or repulsive according as we have recently eaten4 ,and however indomitably colour- and sound-sensations force themselves upon us1 our submission to them will not be accompanied by even the most passive pleasure if we are bodily or mentally out of sorts4 ,how much more frequent must be lack of receptiveness when1 instead of dealing with sensations whose intensity depends after all two thirds upon the strength of the outer stimulation1 we deal with perceptions which include the bodily and mental activities of exploring a shape and establishing among its constituent sensations relationships both to each other and to ourselves2 activities without which there would be for the beholder no shape at all1 but mere ragbag chaos6--,and in calculating the likelihood of a perceptive empathic response we must remember that such active shape-perception1 however instantaneous as compared with the cumbrous processes of locomotion1 nevertheless requires a perfectly measurable time1 and requires therefore that its constituent processes be held in memory for comparison and coordination1 quite as much as the similar processes by which we take stock of the relations of sequence of sounds4 ,all this mental activity1 less explicit but not less intense or complex than that of logically following an argument1 is therefore such that we are by no means always able or willing to furnish it4 ,not able1 because the need for practical decisions hurries us into that rapid inference from a minimum of perception to a minimum of associated experience which we call recognising things1 and thus out of the presence of the perfunctorily dealt with shapes4 ,not willing1 because our nervous condition may be unable for the strain of shape perception2 and our emotional bias 7what we call our interest7 may be favourable to some incompatible kind of activity4 ,until quite recently 7and despite ,fechner's famous introductory experiments7 aesthetics have been little more than a branch of metaphysical speculation1 and it is only nowadays that the bare fact of aesthetic responsiveness is beginning to be studied4 ,so far as ,i have myself succeeded in doing so1 ,i think ,i can assure the ,reader that if he will note down1 day by day1 the amount of pleasure he has been able to take in works of art1 he will soon recognise the existence of aesthetic responsiveness and its highly variable nature4 ,should the same ,reader develop an interest in such 7often humiliating7 examination into his own aesthetic experience1 he will discover varieties of it which will illustrate some of the chief principles contained in this little book4 ,his diary will report days when aesthetic appreciation has begun with the instant of entering a collection of pictures or statues1 indeed sometimes pre-existed as he went through the streets noticing the unwonted charm of familiar objects2 other days when enjoyment has come only after an effort of attention2 others when1 to paraphrase ,coleridge1 he saw1 not felt1 how beautiful things are2 and finally1 through other varieties of aesthetic experience1 days upon which only shortcomings and absurdities have laid hold of his attention4 ,in the course of such aesthetical self-examination and confession1 the ,reader might also become acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never sufficiently repeated distinction between contemplating ,shapes and thinking about ,things2 or1 in ordinary aesthetic terminology between form and subject4 ,for there are days when pictures or statues will indeed afford pleasurable interest1 but interest in the things represented1 not in the shapes2 a picture appealing even forcibly to our dramatic or religious or romantic side2 or contrariwise1 to our scientific one4 ,there are days when he may be deeply moved by a ,guido ,reni martyrdom1 or absorbed in the ,marriage la ,mode2 days when even ,giorgione's ,pastoral may 7as in ,rossetti's sonnet7 mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments2 the same thought and emotion1 the same interest and pleasure1 being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph4 ,then1 as regards scientific interest and pleasure1 there may be days when the diarist will be quite delighted with a hideous picture1 because it affords some chronological clue1 or new point of comparison4 ,this dates such or such a style--,plein ,air already attempted by a ,giottesque6 ,degas forestalled by a ,cave ,dweller6 etc4 etc4 ,and finally days when the ,diarist is haunted by the thought of what the represented person will do next3 ,would ,michelangelo's ,jeremiah knock his head if he got up8--,how will the ,discobolus recover when he has let go the quoit8--or haunted by thoughts even more frivolous 7though not any less aesthetically irrelevant67 like ,how wonderfully like ,mrs ,so and ,so6 ,the living image of ,major ,blank6--,how ,i detest auburn people with sealing-wax lips6 ad lib4 ,such different thinkings away from the shapes are often traceable to previous orientation of the thoughts or to special states of body and feelings4 ,but explicable or not in the particular case1 these varieties of one's own aesthetic responsiveness will persuade the ,reader who has verified their existence1 that contemplative satisfaction in shapes and its specific emotion cannot be given by the greatest artist or the finest tradition1 unless the beholder meets their efforts more than half way4 ,the spontaneous collaboration of the beholder is especially indispensable for ,aesthetic ,empathy4 ,as we have seen1 empathic modes of movement and energy and intention are attributed to shapes and to shape elements1 in consequence of the modes of movement and energy involved in mere shape perception2 but shape perception does not necessarily call forth empathic imagination4 ,and the larger or smaller dynamic dramas of effort1 resistance1 reconciliation1 cooperation which constitute the most poignant interest of a pictorial or plastic composition1 are inhibited by bodily or mental states of a contrary character4 ,we cease to feel 7although we may continue1 like ,coleridge1 to see7 that the lines of a mountain or a statue are rising1 if we ourselves happen to feel as if our feet were of lead and our joints turning to water4 ,the coordinated interplay of empathic movement which makes certain mediaeval floor patterns1 and also ,leonardo's compositions1 into whirling harmonies as of a planetary system1 cannot take place in our imagination on days of restlessness and lack of concentration4 ,nay it may happen that arrangements of lines which would flutter and flurry us on days of quiet appreciativeness1 will become in every sense sympathetic on days when we ourselves feel fluttered and flurried4 ,but lack of responsiveness may be due to other causes4 ,as there are combinations of lines which take longer to perceive because their elements or their coordinating principles are unfamiliar1 so1 and even more so1 are there empathic schemes 7or dramas7 which baffle dynamic imagination when accustomed to something else and when it therefore meets the new demand with an unsuitable empathic response4 ,empathy is1 even more than mere perception1 a question of our activities and therefore of our habits2 and the aesthetic sensitiveness of a time and country 7say the ,florentine fourteenth century7 with a habit of round arch and horizontals like that of ,pisan architecture1 could never take with enthusiasm to the pointed ogeeval ellipse1 the oblique directions and unstable equilibrium1 the drama of touch and go strain and resistance1 of ,french ,gothic2 whence a constant readmission of the round arched shapes into the imported style1 and a speedy return to the familiar empathic schemes in the architecture of the early ,renaissance4 ,on the other hand the persistence of ,gothic detail in ,northern architecture of the sixteenth and occasionally the seventeenth century1 shows how insipid the round arch and straight entablature must have felt to people accustomed to the empathy of ,gothic shapes4 ,nothing is so routinist as imagination and emotion2 and empathy1 which partakes of both1 is therefore more dependent on familiarity than is the perception by which it is started3 ,spohr1 and the other professional contemporaries of ,beethoven1 probably heard and technically understood all the peculiarities of his last quartets2 but they liked them none the better4 ,on the other hand continued repetition notoriously begets indifference4 ,we cease to look at a shape which we know by heart and we cease to interpret in terms of our own activities and intentions when curiosity and expectation no longer let loose our dynamic imagination4 ,hence while utter unfamiliarity baffles aesthetic responsiveness1 excessive familiarity prevents its starting at all4 ,indeed both perceptive clearness and empathic intensity reach their climax in the case of shapes which afford the excitement of tracking familiarity in novelty1 the stimulation of acute comparison1 the emotional ups and downs of expectation and partial recognition1 or of recognition when unexpected1 the latter having1 as we know when we notice that a stranger has the trick of speech or gesture of an acquaintance1 a very penetrating emotional warmth4 ,such discovery of the novel in the familiar1 and of the familiar in the new1 will he frequent in proportion to the definiteness and complexity of the shapes1 and in proportion also to the sensitiveness and steadiness of the beholder's attention2 while on the contrary obvious qualities of shape and superficial attention both tend to exhaust interest and demand change4 ,this exhaustion of interest and consequent demand for change unites with the changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on art1 together producing innovation4 ,and the more superficial the aesthetic attention given by the beholders1 the quicker will style succeed style1 and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by exaggeration or left in the lurch before their maturity2 a state of affairs especially noticeable in our own day4 ,the above is a series of illustrations of the fact that aesthetic pleasure depends as much on the activities of the beholder as on those of the artist4 ,unfamiliarity or over-familiarity explain a large part of the aesthetic non-responsiveness summed up in the saying that there is no disputing of tastes4 ,and even within the circle of habitual responsiveness to some particular style1 or master1 there are1 as we have just seen1 days and hours when an individual beholder's perception and empathic imagination do not act in such manner as to afford the usual pleasure4 ,but these occasional1 even frequent1 lapses must not diminish our belief either in the power of art or in the deeply organised and inevitable nature of aesthetic preference as a whole4 ,what the knowledge of such fluctuations ought to bring home is that beauty of shape is most spontaneously and completely appreciated when the attention1 instead of being called upon1 as in galleries and concerts1 for the mere purpose of aesthetic enjoyment1 is on the contrary1 directed to the artistic or natural beauty of shapes1 in consequence of some other already existing interest4 ,no one except an art-critic sees a new picture or statue without first asking ,what does it represent82 shape-perception and aesthetic empathy arising incidentally in the examination which this question leads to4 ,the truth is that even the art-critic is oftenest brought into enforced contemplation of the artistic shape by some other question which arises from his particular bias3 ,by whom8 of what precise date8 ,even such technical questions as where and when restored or repainted8 will elicit the necessary output of attention4 ,it is possible and legitimate to be interested in a work of art for a dozen reasons besides aesthetic appreciation2 each of these interests has its own sentimental1 scientific1 dramatic or even moneymaking emotion2 and there is no loss for art1 but rather a gain1 if we fall back upon one of them when the specific aesthetic response is slow or not forthcoming4 ,art has other aims besides aesthetic satisfaction2 and aesthetic satisfaction will not come any the quicker for turning our backs upon these non-aesthetic aims4 ,the very worst attitude towards art is that of the holiday-maker who comes into its presence with no ulterior interest or business1 and nothing but the hope of an aesthetic emotion which is most often denied him4 ,indeed such seeking of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake would lead to even more of the blank despondency characteristic of so many gallery goers1 were it not for another peculiarity of aesthetic responsiveness1 which is responsible for very puzzling effects4 ,this saving grace of the tourist1 and 7as we shall see7 this pitfall of the art-expert1 is what ,i propose to call the ,transferability of ,aesthetic ,emotion4 ,,chapter ,,xix ,,the ,,storage ,,and ,,transfer ,,of ,,emotion ,,in dealing with familiarity as a multiplying factor of aesthetic appreciation1 ,i have laid stress on its effect in facilitating the perception and the empathic interpretation of shapes4 ,but repetition directly affects the emotion which may result from these processes2 and when any emotion has become habitual1 it tends to be stored in what we call memory1 and to be called forth not merely by the processes in which it originated1 but also independently of the whole of them1 or in answer to some common or equivalent factor4 ,we are so accustomed to this psychological fact that we do not usually seem to recognise its existence4 ,it is the explanation of the power of words1 which1 apart from any images they awaken1 are often irresistibly evocative of emotion4 ,and among other emotions words can evoke the one due to the easy perception and to the life-corroborating empathic interpretation of shapes4 ,the word ,beautiful1 and its various quasi synonyms1 are among the most emotionally suggestive in our vocabulary1 carrying perhaps a vague but potent remembrance of our own bodily reaction to the emotion of admiration2 nay even eliciting an incipient rehearsal of the half-parted lips and slightly thrown-back head1 the drawn-in breath and wide-opened eyes1 with which we are wont to meet opportunities of aesthetic satisfaction4 ,be this last as it may1 it is certain that the emotion connected with the word ,beautiful can be evoked by that word alone1 and without an accompanying act of visual or auditive perception4 ,indeed beautiful shapes would lose much of their importance in our life1 if they did not leave behind them such emotional traces1 capable of revival under emotionally appropriate1 though outwardly very dissimilar1 circumstances2 and thereby enormously increasing some of our safest1 perhaps because our most purely subjective1 happiness4 ,instead therefore of despising the raptures which the presence of a ,venus of ,milo or a ,sixtine ,madonna can inspire in people manifestly incapable of appreciating a masterpiece1 and sometimes barely glancing at it1 we critical persons ought to recognise in this funny1 but consoling1 phenomenon an additional proof of the power of ,beauty1 whose specific emotion can thus be evoked by a mere name and so transferred from some past experience of aesthetic admiration to a4 present occasion which would otherwise be mere void and disappointment4 ,putting aside these kind of cases1 the transfer 7usually accomplished by a word7 of the aesthetic emotion1 or at least of a willingness for aesthetic emotion1 is probably one of the explanations of the spread of aesthetic interest from one art to another1 as it is the explanation of some phases of aesthetic development in the individual4 ,the present writer can vouch for the case of at least one real child in whom the possibility of aesthetic emotion1 and subsequently of aesthetic appreciation1 was extended from music and natural scenery to pictures and statues1 by the application of the word ,beautiful to each of these different categories4 ,and something analogous probably helped on the primaeval recognition that the empathic pleasures hitherto attached to geometrical shapes might be got from realistic shapes1 say of bisons and reindeer1 which had hitherto been admired for their lifelikeness and skill1 but not yet subjected to any aesthetic discrimination 7cf4 p4 #if74 ,similarly1 in our own times1 the delight in natural scenery is being furthered by the development of landscape painting1 rather than furthering it4 ,nay ,i venture to suggest that it was the habit of the aesthetic emotion such as mediaeval men received from the proportions1 directions1 and coordination of lines in their cathedrals of stone or brick which set their musicians to build up1 like ,browning's ,abt ,vogler1 the soul's first balanced and coordinated dwellings made of sounds4 ,be this last as it may1 it is desirable that the ,reader should accept1 and possibly verify for himself1 the psychological fact of the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion4 ,besides1 the points already mentioned1 it helps to explain several of the cruxes and paradoxes of aesthetics4 ,first and foremost that dictum ,de ,gustibus non est disputandum which some philosophers and even aestheticians develop into an explicit denial of all intrinsic shape-preferences1 and an assertion that beautiful and ugly are merely other names for fashionable and unfashionable1 original and unoriginal1 or suitable and unsuitable4 ,as ,i have already pointed out1 differences of taste are started by the perceptive and empathic habits1 schematically various1 of given times and places1 and also by those1 especially the empathic habits1 connected with individual nervous condition3 people accustomed to the round arch finding the ,gothic one unstable and eccentric2 and1 on the other hand1 a person taking keen pleasure in the sudden and lurching lines of ,lotto finding those of ,titian tame and humdrum4 ,but such intrinsically existing preferences and incompatibility are quite enormously increased by an emotional bias for or against a particular kind of art2 by which ,i mean a bias not due to that art's peculiarities1 but preventing our coming in real contact with them4 ,aesthetic perception and especially aesthetic empathy1 like other intellectual and emotional activities1 are at the mercy of a hostile mental attitude1 just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of the limbs4 ,i do not hesitate to say that we are perpetually refusing to look at certain kinds of art because1 for one reason or another1 we are emotionally prepossessed against them4 ,on the other hand1 once the favourable emotional condition is supplied to us1 often by means of words1 our perceptive and empathic activities follow with twice the ease they would if the business had begun with them4 ,it is quite probable that a good deal of the enhancement of aesthetic appreciation by fashion or sympathy should be put to the account1 not merely of gregarious imitativeness1 but of the knowledge that a favourable or unfavourable feeling is in the air4 ,the emotion precedes the appreciation1 and both are genuine4 ,a more personally humiliating aesthetic experience may be similarly explained4 ,unless we are very unobservant or very self-deluded1 we are all familiar with the sudden checking 7often almost physically painful7 of our aesthetic emotion by the hostile criticism of a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert3 ,dreadfully old-fashioned1 ,archi-connu1second-rate school work1 completely painted over1 utterly hashed in the performance 7of a piece of music71 mere prettiness--etc4 etc4 ,how often has not a sentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment2 and transformed us1 from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality 7even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness1 symmetry1 euphony or pleasant colour67 into shrivelled cavillers at everything save brand-new formulae and tip-top genius6 ,indeed1 while teaching a few privileged persons to taste the special quality which ,botticelli has and ,botticelli's pupils have not1 and thus occasionally intensifying aesthetic enjoyment by distinguishing whatever differentiates the finer artistic products from the commoner1 modern art-criticism has probably wasted much honest but shamefaced capacity for appreciating the qualities common1 because indispensable1 to1 all good art4 ,it is therefore not without a certain retributive malignity that ,i end these examples of the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion1 and of the consequent bias to artistic appreciation1 with that of the ,nemesis dogging the steps of the connoisseur4 ,we have all heard of some purchase1 or all-but-purchase1 of a wonderful masterpiece on the authority of some famous expert2 and of the masterpiece proving to be a mere school imitation1 and occasionally even a certified modern forgery4 ,the foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion1 joined with what we have learned about shape-perception and empathy1 will enable the ,reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly owned up to4 ,for a school imitation1 or a forgery1 must possess enough elements in common with a masterpiece1 otherwise it could never suggest any connexion with it4 ,given a favourable emotional attitude and the absence of obvious extrinsic 7technical or historical7 reasons for scepticism1 these elements of resemblance must awaken the vague idea1 especially the empathic scheme1 of the particular master's work1 and his name--shall we say ,leonardo's8--will rise to the lips4 ,but ,leonardo is a name to conjure with1 and in this case to destroy the conjurer himself3 the word ,leonardo implies an emotion1 distilled from a number of highly prized and purposely repeated experiences1 kept to gather strength in respectful isolation1 and further heightened by a thrill of initiate veneration whenever it is mentioned4 ,this ,leonardo-emotion1 once set on foot1 checks all unworthy doubts1 sweeps out of consciousness all thoughts of inferior work 7inferiority and ,leonardo being emotionally incompatible671 respectfully holds the candle while the elements common to the imitation and the masterpiece are gone over and over1 and the differentiating elements exclusively belonging to ,leonardo evoked in the expert's memory1 until at last the objective work of art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces which impart to it their emotionally communicable virtue4 ,and when the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule1 the ,philistine shrewdly decides that a sham ,leonardo is just as good as a genuine one1 that these are all matters of fashion1 and that there is really no disputing of tastes6 ,,chapter ,,xx ,,aesthetic ,,irradiation ,,and ,,purification ,,the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another fact1 with which indeed ,i began this little book3 namely that the word ,beautiful has been extended from whatever is satisfactory in our contemplation of shapes1 to a great number of cases where there can be no question of shapes at all1 as in speaking of a beautiful character and a fine moral attitude2 or else1 as in the case of a beautiful bit of machinery1 a fine scientific demonstration or a splendid surgical operation where the shapes involved are not at all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction4 ,in such cases the word ,beautiful has been brought over with the emotion of satisfied contemplation4 ,and could we examine microscopically the minds of those who are thus applying it1 we might perhaps detect1 round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise shapely thing or person or proceeding1 the shadowy traces of half-forgotten shapes1 visible or audible1 forming a halo of real aesthetic experience1 and evoked by that word ,beautiful whose application they partially justify4 ,nor is this all4 ,recent psychology teaches that1 odd as it at first appears1 our more or less definite images1 auditive as well as visual1 and whether actually perceived or merely remembered1 are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's contents1 coming and going and weaving themselves on to a constant woof of our own activities and feelings4 ,it is precisely such activities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply the words ,beautiful and ,ugly4 ,thus everything which has come in connexion with occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation1 will meet with somewhat of the same reception as that shape-contemplation originally elicited4 ,and even the merest items of information which the painter conveys concerning the visible universe2 the merest detail of human character conveyed by the poet2 nay even the mere nervous intoxication furnished by the musician1 will all be irradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been conveyed in1 and will therefore be felt as beautiful4 ,moreover1 as the beautiful character and splendid operation have taught us1 rare and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a platonic way4 ,and even objects of bodily desire1 so long as that desire is not acute and pressing1 may give rise to merely contemplative longings4 ,all this1 added to what has previously been said1 sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which are irradiated by the word ,beautiful and the emotion originally arising from the satisfied contemplation of mere shapes4 ,and that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so life-corroborating and so strangely impersonal1 and that its special emotion should be so susceptible of radiation and transfer1 is sufficient explanation of the elevating and purifying influence which1 ever since ,plato1 philosophers have usually ascribed to the ,beautiful4 ,other moralists however have not failed to point out that art has1 occasionally and even frequently1 effects of the very opposite kind4 ,the ever-recurrent discussion of this seeming contradiction is1 however1 made an end of1 once we recognise that art has many aims besides its distinguishing one of increasing our contemplation of the beautiful4 ,indeed some of art's many non-aesthetic aims may themselves be foreign to elevation and purification1 or even1 as for instance the lewd or brutal subjects of some painting and poetry1 and the nervous intoxication of certain music1 exert a debasing or enervating influence4 ,but1 as the whole of this book has tried to establish1 the contemplation of beautiful shapes involves perceptive processes in themselves mentally invigorating and refining1 and a play of empathic feelings which realise the greatest desiderata of spiritual life1 viz4 intensity1 purposefulness and harmony2 and such perceptive and empathic activities cannot fail to raise the present level of existence and to leave behind them a higher standard for future experience4 ,this exclusively elevating effect of beautiful shape as such1 is of course proportioned to the attention it receives and the exclusion of other1 and possibly baser1 interests connected with the work of art4 ,on the other hand the purifying effects of beautiful shapes depend upon the attention oscillating to and fro between them and those other interests1 e4g4 subject in the representative arts1 fitness in the applied ones1 and expression in music2 all of which non-aesthetic interests benefit 7enhanced if noble1 redeemed if base7 by irradiation of the nobler feelings wherewith they are thus associated4 ,for we must not forget that where opposed groups of feeling are elicited1 whichever happens to be more active and complex will neutralise its opponent4 ,thus1 while an even higher intensity and complexity of aesthetic feelings is obtained when the subject of a picture1 the use of a building or a chattel1 or the expression of a piece of music1 is in itself noble2 and a ,degas ballet girl can never have the dignity of a ,phidian goddess1 nor a gambling casino that of a cathedral1 nor the music to ,wilde's ,salome that of ,brahms' ,german ,requiem1 yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion4 ,we do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in ,correggio's ,dana1 or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences1 of the ,earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky4 ,similarly it is a common observation that while unmusical ,bayreuth-goers often attribute demoralising effects to some of ,wagner's music1 the genuinely musical listeners are unaware1 and usually incredulous1 of any such evil possibilities4 ,this question of the purifying power of the ,beautiful has brought us back to our starting-point4 ,it illustrates the distinction between contemplating an aspect and thinking about things1 and this distinction's corollary that shape as such is yon-side of real and unreal1 taking on the character of reality and unreality only inasmuch as it is thought of in connexion with a thing4 ,as regards the possibility of being good or evil1 it is evident from all the foregoing that shape as shape1 and without the suggestion of things1 can be evil only in the sense of being ugly1 ugliness diminishing its own drawbacks by being1 ipso facto1 difficult to dwell upon1 inasmuch as it goes against the grain of our perceptive and empathic activities4 ,the contemplation of beautiful shape is1 on the other hand1 favoured by its pleasurableness1 and such contemplation of beautiful shape lifts our perceptive and empathic activities1 that is to say a large part of our intellectual and emotional life1 on to a level which can only be spiritually1 organically1 and in so far1 morally beneficial4 ,,chapter ,,xxi ,,conclusion 7,,evolutional7 ,,some of my ,readers1 not satisfied by the answer implicit in the last chapter and indeed in the whole of this little book1 may ask a final question concerning our subject4 ,not3 ,what is the use of ,art8 since1 as we have seen1 ,art has many and various uses both to the individual and to the community1 each of which uses is independent of the attainment of ,beauty4 ,the remaining question concerns the usefulness of the very demand for ,beauty1 of that ,aesthetic ,imperative by which the other uses of art are more or less qualified or dominated4 ,in what way1 the ,reader may ask1 has sensitiveness to ,beauty contributed to the survival of mankind1 that it should not only have been preserved and established by evolutional selection1 but invested with the tremendous power of the pleasure and pain alternative8 ,the late ,william ,james1 as some readers may remember1 placed musical pleasure between sentimental love and sea-sickness as phenomena unaccountable by any value for human survival1 in fact masteries1 if not paradoxes1 of evolution4 ,the riddle1 though not necessarily the mystery1 does not consist in the survival of the aesthetic instinct of which the musical one is a mere sub-category1 but in the origin and selectional establishment of its elementary constituents1 say for instance space-perception and empathy1 both of which exist equally outside that instinct which is a mere compound of them and other primary tendencies4 ,for given space-perception and empathy and their capacity of being felt as satisfactory or unsatisfactory1 the aesthetic imperative is not only intelligible but inevitable4 ,instead therefore of asking3 ,why is there a preference for what we call ,beauty8 we should have to ask3 why has perception1 feeling1 logic1 imagination1 come to be just what it is8 ,indeed why are our sense-organs1 our bodily structure and chemical composition1 what they are2 and why do they exist at all in contradistinction to the ways of being of other living or other inanimate things8 ,so long as these elementary facts continue shrouded in darkness or taken for granted1 the genesis and evolutional reason of the particular compound which we call aesthetic preference must remain only one degree less mysterious than the genesis and evolutional reason of its psychological components4 ,meanwhile all we can venture to say is that as satisfaction derived from shapes we call beautiful1 undoubtedly involves intense1 complex1 and reiterative mental activities1 as it has an undeniable power for happiness and hence for spiritual refreshment1 and as it moreover tends to inhibit most of the instincts whose superabundance can jeopardise individual and social existence1 the capacity for such aesthetic satisfaction1 once arisen1 would be fostered in virtue of a mass of evolutional advantages which are as complex and difficult to analyse1 but also as deep-seated and undeniable1 as itself4 ,,bibliography ,i4 ,lipps4 ,raumaesthetik1 ,leipzig1 #ahig4 ,aesthetik1 vol4 ,i4 part ii41 ,leipzig1 #aijf4 ,,ii4 ,karl ,groos4 ,aesthetik1 ,giessen1 #ahib4 ,der ,aesthetische ,genuss1 ,giessen1 #aijb4 ,,iii4 ,wundt4 ,physiologische ,psychologie 7#eth ,edition1 #aijc71 vol4 ,,iii4 pg4 #ajg to #bji4 ,but the whole volume is full of indirect suggestion on aesthetics4 ,,iv4 ,mnsterberg4 ,the ,principles of ,art ,education1 ,new ,york1 #aije4 7,statement of ,lipps' theory in physiological terms47 ,v4 ,klpe4 ,der gegenwrtige ,stand der experimentellen ,aesthetik1 #aijg4 ,,vi4 ,vernon ,lee and ,anstruther-,thomson4 ,beauty and ,ugliness1 #aiab 7contains abundant quotations from most of the above works and other sources74 ,,vii4 ,ribot4 ,le ,rle latent des ,images ,motrices4 ,revue ,philosophique1 ,march #aiab4 ,,viii4 ,witasek4 ,psychologie der ,raumwahrnehmung des ,auges 7#aiaj74 ,these two last named are only indirectly connected with visual aesthetics4 ,for art-evolutional questions consult3 ,,ix4 ,haddon4 ,evolution in ,art1 #ahie4 ,x4 ,yrj ,hirn4 ,origins of ,art1 ,macmillan1 #aijj4 ,,xi4 ,levinstein4 ,kinderzeichnungen1 ,leipzig1 #aije4 ,,xii4 ,loewy4 ,nature in early ,greek ,art 7translation71 ,duckworth1 #aijg4 ,,xiii4 ,delia ,seta4 ,religione e ,arte ,figurata1 ,rome1 #aiab4 ,,xiv4 ,spearing4 ,the ,childhood of ,art1 #aiac4 ,,xv4 ,jane ,harrison4 ,ancient ,art and ,ritual1 #aiac4 ,,index ,aesthetic3 aridity1 #acf-g2 imperative1 #ii-ajj2 irradiation1 #adg-eb2 purification1 #adi-eb2 responsiveness1 active nature of1 #abh-cf2 habit and familiarity affecting1 #acd-f ,altamira cave frescoes1 #ie ,art3 differential characteristic of1 #aaf-ah2 non-aesthetic aims of1 #ii-ajj1 #acg-h2 utility of1 #aec-e ,aspect3 aesthetics concerned with1 #ae1 #ba1 #aje2 shape the determining feature of1 #bf-h ,attention1 a factor distinguishing perception from sensation1 #cb ,balfour1 ,h41 #ie ,beautiful3 aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective1 #adg-h2 attitude implied by use of adjective1 #b-g1 #ah-ai2 empathy the chief factor of preference1 #fg-h2 implies desire for reiterated perception1 #ec-d ,botticelli1 #hc ,brahms' ,german ,requiem1 #aej ,browning's ,abt ,vogler1 #ada ,coleridge's ,ode to ,dejection1 #aca ,colour1 passive reception of1 #bc-d1 #bi ,contemplative satisfaction marking aesthetic attitude1 #h-ae ,correggio's ,danae1 #aea ,cubic ,existence3 perception of1 #he2 pictorial suggestion of1 importance attached to1 discussed1 #aja-e ,discobolus1 #aae ,einfhlung1 #ei2 misinterpretations of1 #ff-g ,emotion1 storage and transfer of1 #aci-df ,empathy1 #fa-fi2 complexity of movements of lines1 #gh-hc2 movements of lines1 #gj-gg2 second element of shape-perception1 #ei-fj ,extension existing in perception1 #ce-h ,fechner1 #acj ,hildebrand1 #ajb1 #aah ,inner ,mimicry1 #gd-e ,james1 ,w41 #aec ,keats' ,grecian ,urn1 #gg ,levinstein1 #if ,lipps1 #ff ,locomotion of ,things1 distinction between1 and empathic movement of lines1 #aaa-af ,lotze1 #ff ,mantegna1 #hb ,memory3 a factor distinguishing perception from sensation1 #cb2 in perception1 #dj-a ,michel ,angelo1 #aad1 #abb ,movement of ,lines1 distinction between1 and locomotion of ,things1 #aaa-af2 see also ,empathy ,object of ,perception1 subject's activities merged in1 #eg1 #eh ,perception3 active process involved in1 #bi-cd1 #abh-i2 distinguished from sensation1 #cb2 subject and object of1 #ee-fj ,raphael's ,heliodorus1 #aai ,relaxation an element of form-perception1 #db ,rembrandt1 #abb ,rythm1 #db-e ,semper1 hypothesis regarding shape-preference1 #id ,sensations3 distinguished from perceptions1 #cb2 perception of relation between1 #bi-cj ,shape3 character of1 #gh-hc2 contemplation of1 its intermittent but recurrent character1 #ajf-aj2 determines contemplation of an aspect1 #bf-h2 elements of1 #ce-dg2 ,empathy an element of perception of1 #ei2 facility and difficulty of grasping1 #dh-ed2 a perception1 #bi-cd2 practical causes regarding evolution of1 #ij-d2 preference1 its evolution1 #id-g2 and ,things1 their co-operation1 #aag-bg2 thinking away from1 to ,things1 #aca-b1 #hd-i ,sound1 passive reception of1 #bc-d1 #bi ,subject of perception1 extent of awareness of self1 #eg-i ,symmetry1 #db-c ,tension1 an element of form-perception1 #db ,things and ,shapes1 their cooperation1 #aag-bg2 thoughts about1 entering into shape-contemplation1 #hd-i ,third ,dimension1 locomotor nature of knowledge of1 #he-f1 #aja ,titchener1 #ei ,vinci1 ,leonardo da1 #hc1 #ade-f ,vischer1 #ff ,watts1 ,g4 ,f41 #df ,whole and ,parts1 perception of relation of1 #dh-ed ,wilde's ,salome1 #aej ,wundt1 #db1 #ff