me agreeably.” It means that the rose has a general power of so affecting me (at different times) and others as well. The judgment is not the same as a logical one. It does not say or imply that as a matter of fact it always Logical judgment and judgment of value.does please—even if we add the limitation those who for, as we know, our varying mood and state of receptivity make a profound difference in the fulness of the aesthetic enjoyment. It is a “judgment of value” which claims for the rose aesthetic rank as an object properly qualified to please contemplative subjects. This value, it is plain, is relative to conscious subjects; yet since it is relative to all competent ones, it may be regarded as “objective”—that is to say, as belonging to the object.[1]
This slight preliminary inspection of the subject will prepare one for the circumstance that the scientific treatment of it has begun late, and is even now far from being complete. This slowness of development is in part explained by the detachment of aesthetic experience from the Late development
of the science.urgent needs of life. In a comparatively early stage of human progress some thought had to be bestowed on such pressing problems as to how to cope with the forces of nature and to turn them to useful account; how to secure in human communities obedience to custom and law. But the problem of throwing light on our aesthetic pleasures had no such urgency.[2] To this it must be added that aesthetic experience (in all but its simpler and cruder forms) has been, and still is confined to a small number of persons; so that the subject does not appeal to a wide popular interest; while, on the other hand, the subjects of this experience not infrequently have a strong sentimental dislike to the idea of introducing into the region of refined feeling the cold light of scientific investigation. Lastly, there are special difficulties inherent in the subject. One serious obstacle to a scientific theory of aesthetic experience is the illusive character of many of its finer elements—for example, the subtle differences of feeling-tone produced by the several colours as well as by their several tones and shades, by the several musical intervals, and so forth. Finally, there is the circumstance just touched on that much of this region of experience, instead of at once disclosing uniformity, seems to be rather the abode of caprice and uncertainty. The variations in taste at different levels of culture, among different races and nations and among the individual members of the same community are numerous and striking, and might at first seem to bar the way to a scientific treatment of the subject. These considerations suggest that an adequate theory of aesthetic experience could only be attempted after the requisite scientific skill had been developed in other and more pressing departments of inquiry.
If we glance at the modes of treating the subject up to a quite recent date we find but little of serious effort to apply to it a strictly scientific method of investigation. The whole extent of concrete experience has not been adequately recognized, still less adequately examined. For the Inadequate theories of subject.greater part thinkers have been in haste to reach some simple formula of beauty which might seem to cover the more obvious facts. This has commonly been derived deductively from some more comprehensive idea of experience or human life as a whole. Thus in German treatises on aesthetics which have been largely thought out under the influence of philosophic idealism the beautiful is subsumed under the idea, of which it is regarded as one special manifestation, and its place in human experience has been determined by defining its logical relations to the other great co-ordinate concepts, the good and the true. These attempts to reach a general conception of beauty have often led to one-sidedness of view. And this one-sidedness has sometimes characterized the theories of those who, like Alison, have made a wider survey of aesthetic facts.
Aesthetics, like Ethics, is a Normative Science, that is to say, concerned with determining the nature of a species of the desirable or the good (in the large sense). It seeks one or more regulative principles which may help us to distinguish a real from an apparent aesthetic value, Aesthetics as a normative science.and to set the higher and more perfect illustrations of beauty above the lower and less perfect. As a science it will seek to realize its normative function by the aid of a patient, methodical investigation of facts, and by processes of observation, analysis and induction similar to those carried out in the natural sciences. In speaking of aesthetics as a normative science we do not mean that it is a practical one in the sense that it supplies practical rules which may serve as definite guidance for the artist and the lover Aesthetics not a practical science.of beauty, in their particular problems of selecting and arranging elements of aesthetic value. It is no more a practical science than logic. The supposition that it is so is probably favoured by the idea that aesthetic theory has art for its special subject. But this is to confuse a general aesthetic theory—what the Germans call “General Aesthetics”—with a theory of art (Kunstwissenschaft). The former, with which we are here concerned, has to examine aesthetic experience as a whole; which, as we shall presently see, includes more than the enjoyment and appreciation of art.
We may now indicate with more fulness the main problems of our science, seeking to give them as precise a form as possible. At the outset we are confronted with an old and almost baffling question: “Is beauty a single quality inherent in objects of perception like form or colour?” Problems of the science.
Is beauty a single quality in objects?
Beauty not a physical quality.Common language certainly suggests that it is. Aesthetics, too, began its inquiry at the same point of view, and its history shows how much pains men have taken in trying to determine the nature of this attribute, as well as that of the faculty of the soul by which it is perceived. Yet a little examination of the facts suffices to show that the theory is beset with serious difficulties. Whatever beauty may be it is certainly not a quality of an object in the same way in which the colour or the form of it is a quality. These are physical qualities, known to us by specific modifications of our sensations. The beauty of a rose or of a peach is clearly not a physical quality. Nor do we in attributing beauty to some particular quality in an object, say colour, conceive of it as a phase of this quality, like depth or brilliance of colour, which, again, is known by a special modification of the sensations of colour. Hence we must say that beauty, though undoubtedly referred to a physical object, is extraneous to the group of qualities which makes it a physical object.
Beauty is frequently attributed to a concrete object as a whole—to a flower or shell, for example, as a visible whole. Our everyday aesthetic judgments are wont to leave the attributes thus vaguely referred to the concrete object. Yet it is equally certain that we not infrequently Beauty attributed to different qualities in objects.speak of the beauty of some definable aspect or quality of an object, as when we pronounce the contour of a mountain or of a vase to be beautiful. And it may be asked whether, in thus localizing beauty, so to speak, in one of the constituent qualities of an object, we always place it in the same quality. A mere glance at the facts will suffice to convince us that we do not. We call the façade of a Greek temple beautiful with special reference to its admirable form; whereas in predicating beauty of the ruin of a Norman castle we refer rather to what the ruin means—to the effect of an imagination of its past proud strength and slow vanquishment by the unrelenting strokes of time. This fact that beauty appertains now more to one quality, now more to another, helps us to understand why certain theorists, known as formalists, Formalists and expressionalists.regard all beauty as formal or residing in form, whereas others, the idealists or expressionalists, view it as residing in ideal content or expression. These theories. however, like other attempts to find an adequate single principle of beauty, are unsatisfactory. Form and ideal content are each a great source of aesthetic enjoyment, and
