Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/527

IV. SUGGESTIONS ON AESTHETIC. 1 BY E. H. DONKIN. MOST of the modern writing upon .ZEsthetic which I have read seems to me to present great difficulties. The aim of the following suggestions is to offer a few lines of thought and points of view which might possibly help towards clear- ness and thoroughness in dealing with this subject. I am able to understand and accept " the general formula of unity in variety " (Bosanquet, Hist, of ./Esthetic, p. 4). The beauty revealed to the eye in a kaleidoscope is eminently a case of unity in variety. But I would wish to have some reason assigned why unity in variety should commend itself to me as it does. I offer the following account. Imagine that a consciousness could be made perfectly homogeneous in itself : imagine sameness as lording it com- pletely in consciousness. Then that consciousness must shrivel up to a point. Ego would shrink to an atom; to zero. But now imagine a difference, a heterogeneity, intro- duced, in any form or any degree, and you necessarily expand the atom ; it has parts ; there are conscious states (not one state only) ; Ego begins to appear. But even as Ego appears, Ego is contradicted, thwarted : the duality in consciousness conflicts with the unity of Ego. Now minimise the differ- ence in consciousness to the utmost extent consistently with keeping a difference : and the Ego realises its ideal of unity with the least possible opposition, the least possible jarring of the duality on its unity. Such an effect, I would suggest, is what we call a " beautiful " one. It must, however, be at once pointed out that the difference in consciousness must not be diminished to within certain limits. To gaze on and on at a single colour and let consciousness be differentiated merely by the temporal transition as moment succeeds J The writer is indebted to Mr. J. H. Muirhead for criticisms and suggestions.