knowledge of the practices of art would lead to inductions of the type “objects in so far as they possess such and such characteristics are aesthetically valuable.”[1]Aesthetic inductions. This preliminary work of aesthetic science in collecting and analysing facts may be extended in two directions: by an examination (a) of the earlier and simpler forms of aesthetic experience, and (b) of the fuller and more complex experiences of those specially trained in the perception and enjoyment of beauty.Germs of aesthetic preference in children, etc. (a) The former would be illustrated by a more methodical investigation into the rudimentary aesthetic likings of children and of the lower races. Such inquiries may be expected to add to our knowledge of the simpler and more universal forms of aesthetic enjoyment. Some attention has been paid by Darwin and others to germs of taste in birds and other animals. Yet this line of inquiry, though of some value for a theory of the evolution of taste, seems to throw but little light on aesthetic preferences as found in man.[2] An important feature in this new investigation into simpler modes of aesthetic preference is that it proceeds by way of experiment, that is to say, a methodical testing of the aesthetic preferences of a number of Aesthetic experiment.individuals. Fechner introduced the method of experiment into aesthetics in his researches on the preferability (according to Zeising) of the proportion known as the “golden section.”[3] Since his time other experimental inquiries have been made, both as to what forms (e.g. what variety of rectangle) and what combinations of colours are most pleasing. The results of these experiments are distinctly promising, though they have not yet been carried far enough to be made the basis of perfectly trustworthy generalizations.[4] Experience and judgments of experts. (b) A valuable portion of the data for a science of aesthetics lies in the recorded experiences of artists, art critics, and others who have specially developed their tastes; This source of information has certainly never been made use of in a complete and methodical manner by theorists, a quotation now and again from writers like Goethe and Ruskin having been deemed sufficient. Yet it is safe to say that an adequate understanding of the finer effects of beauty, both in nature and in art, presupposes the assimilation of what is best in these records. And this not only because they commonly supply us with new and valuable varieties of experience of the more refined kind, but because the aesthetic judgments on nature and art of men in whom the feeling of beauty has been specially cultivated have a greater value than those of others.[5] It may be added that these records are wont to contain reflexions which, though wanting in scientific precision, can be utilized by science.
We now come to the work of scientific construction proper. The finer analysis of the objects which please aesthetically as well as of the agreeable type of consciousness to which they minister belongs to the psychologist, and it is noteworthy that the best recent contributions to the Psychological analysis of material.science have been made by men who were either known as psychologists or at least had trained themselves in psychological analysis. A word or two must suffice to indicate the more important directions of the theoretic interpretation. We may in illustrating this set out from the convenient triple division of the factors in aesthetic experience: (A) the sensuous, (B) the perceptual or formal, (C) the imaginative, including all that is suggested by the aesthetic presentation, its meaning and expressiveness.
(A) In dealing with the sensuous factor the psychologist is materially aided by the physiologist. It is sufficient to point to the contribution made to the analysis of musical sensations by the classical researches of Helmholtz (see below). Yet the application of a knowledge of The sensuous factor. Physiological aesthetics.
Psychological problems.physiological conditions seems as yet to be of little service when we come to the finer aspects of this sensuous experience, to the subtle effects of colour combination, for example, and to the nuances of feeling-tone attaching to different tints. In the finer analysis of the sensuous material of aesthetic enjoyment it is the psychologist who counts.[6] Among the valuable contributions recently made in this domain one may instance the careful determination of the aesthetically important characteristics of the sensations of sight and hearing, such as the finely graduated variety of their qualities (colour and tone), their capability of entering into combinations in which they preserve their individuality, including the important combinations of time and space form. With these are to be included the distinguishing characteristics of the concomitant feeling-tones, e.g. their comparative calmness and their clear separation from the sensations which they accompany. These characteristics help us to understand the greater refinement of these senses and also the more prolonged as well as varying enjoyment which they contribute, as well as the extension of this enjoyment by imaginative reproduction.[7] Next to this determination of important aesthetic characteristics of the two senses may be named a finer probing of the nuances of pleasurable tone exhibited by the several colours and tones. A point still needing special investigation is extent of the sensuous factor in aesthetic enjoyment. There has been a tendency in aesthetic theory to over-intellectualize aesthetic experience and to find the value even of the sensuous factor in some intellectual principle, as when it is said (by Plato and Hegel among others) that a smooth or level tone and a uniform mass of colour owe their value to the principle of unity. But such prolongation (within obvious limits) in time or space is a condition of the full enjoyment of the distinctive quality of an individual tone or colour, and as such has a sensuous value. Aesthetics has to prove the sensuous value, the pleasure which is due not only to the feeling-tones of the several sensations but to those of their various combinations. Spite of a tendency of late to disparage the co-operation of the “motor sensations” connected with movements of the eye in the aesthetic appreciation of linear form, e.g. curves, evidence suggests that certain curves, like fine gradations of colour, may owe a considerable part of their value to a mode of varying the sensuous experience which is in a peculiar manner agreeable. On the other hand, this theoretic investigation of sense-material will need to determine with care the added value due to the action of experience in giving something of meaning to particular colours and tones and their combinations, e.g. warmth of colour, height of tone.
(B) Under the scientific treatment of the perceptual or formal factor in aesthetic experience we have many special problems, of which only a few can be touched on here. Taking this factor to include all combinations of elements in which there is a more or less distinct perception of The perceptual factor.pleasing relations, we meet here with such work as that of C. Stumpf (Ton-psychologie) in determining the way in which tones combine and tend to fuse. Later experiments have added to our knowledge of the obscure subject of colour harmony, enabling us to distinguish pleasing contrasts of colour from the more restful combinations of nearly allied tints. Our knowledge of pleasing form in the narrower sense, that is to say, space and time form, has been advanced by a number of recent inquiries. The value of symmetry, the meaning of proportion and the aesthetic value to be set on certain proportions, the forms of rhythm—these are some of the points dealt with in more general
- ↑ Kant, stopping short of an analysis of the beauty of a concrete object, said there were no aesthetic judgments of this universal form (see below). On the importance of these inductions see K. H. von Stein, Vorlesungen über Ästhetik (Einleitung).
- ↑ Curiously enough Thomas Reid recognized a germ of aesthetic taste in animals. Essays, Of Taste, ch. v. The aesthetic importance of the observations made on animals is dealt with by L. Bray, Du Beau, pp. 233 ff.
- ↑ See below, and Bosanquet, op. cit. pp. 382 ff.
- ↑ On the value of the judgments of experts see K. Groos, Der ästh. Genuss, p. 149.
- ↑ The chief lines of experimental aesthetics are indicated by W. Wundt in his Physiol. Psychologie (5e Auflage), Bd. iii. pp. 142 ff. and 147 ff.
- ↑ Examples of a forcina of the physiological method in aesthetics may be found in the Physiological Aesthetics of Grant Allen, and the Aufgabe der Kunstphysiologie, by Georg Hirsch.
- ↑ These aesthetic prerogatives of the sensations of hearing and sight have been well brought out in the article by J. Volkelt, already referred to.
