Part 3 (2/2)

The loss of the sense of personality is an integral part of the aesthetic experience; and we have seen how it is a necessary psychological effect of the unity of the object

From another point of view it may be said that the unity of the object is constituted just by the inhibition of all tendency to ested by it In other words, the balance of impulses makes us feel the object a unity And this balance of i to unity, is e know as aesthetic repose Thus the conditions of aesthetic repose and of the loss of self-feeling are the saht be said that, within this realm, the two conceptions are identical The true aesthetic repose is just that perfect rest in the beautiful object which is the essence of the loss of the sense of personality

Subtler and rarer, again, than the raptures of mysticism and of beauty worshi+p is the ecstasy of intellectual production; yet the ”clean, clear joy of creation,” as Kipling narouped with those precious experiences in which the self is sloughed away, and the soul at one with its content I speak, of course, of intellectual production in full swing, in the momentum of success The travail of soul over apparently hopeless difficulties or in the working out of indifferent details takes place not only in full self- consciousness, but in self-disgust; there we can take Carlyle to witness But in the higher stages the fixation of truth and the appreciation of beauty are acco of individuality Of testies with confessions and anecdotes of the ecstatical state in which all great deeds of art and science are done The question is rather to understand and explain it on the basis of the forious and the aesthetic attitudes to conform

Jean Paul says soreat work, its conception came as a whole,--in one flash

We remember the drea ,--formless, undirected, out of which his poem shaped itself; the half-somnambulic state of Goethe and his frantic haste in fixation of the vision, in which he dared not even stop to put his paper straight, but wrote over the corners quite ruthlessly Henner once said to a painter whoon his picture for the Salon, though he saw it before him, ”What! You see your picture! Then it is done You can paint it in an hour”

If all these traditions be true, they are significant; and the necessary conditions of such coous to those of the aesthetic emotion We have, first of all, a lack of outward stiround How arret than in a boudoir! Goethe's bare little rooarden house at Weienius found necessary Tranquillity of the background is the condition of self-absorption, or-- and this point see--a closed circle of outer activities I have never believed, for instance, in the case of the old tale of Walter Scott and the button, that it was the surprise of his loss that tied the tongue of the future author's rival The poor head scholar had simply made for hi button, and could then sink his consciousness in its object,-- at that moment the master's questions It is withable to think unless in constant ical scheme, the efficiency of thesecircles,”--the background of continuous movement sensations, which finally dropped out of consciousness, and the foreground of continuous thought,--the first protected, so to speak, the second, since they were mutually exclusive, and what broke the one destroyed the other

But to return froness, either as rest or as a closed circle of automatic movements, is the first condition of the ecstasy of iven in the character of its object The object of high intellectual creation is a unity,-- a perfect whole, revealed, as Jean Paul says, in a single enius Within the enchanted circle of his creation, the thinker is absorbed, because here too all his i else exists

I am aware that many will see a sharp distinction here between the work of the creator or discoverer in science and the artist

They may maintain, in Schopenhauer's phrase, that the aim and end of science is just the connection of objects in the service of the will of the individual, and hence transition between the various terms is constant; while art, on the other hand, indeed isolates its object, and so drops transitions But I think where we speak of ”connection” thus, we er sweep of law If the thinker looks beyond his special problem at all, it is, like Buddha, to ”fix his eyes upon the chain of causation” The scientist of iination sees his work under the form of eternity, as one link of that endless chain, one atohty purposes, which science will need all time to reveal For him it is either one question, closed within itself by its own answer, or it is the Infinite Law of the Universe,--the point or the circle From all points of view, then, the object of creation in art or science is a girdle of impulses from which the mind iven: a term which disappears, and one which is a perfect whole Transition between background and foreground has dropped Between the objects of attention in the foreground it has no round is an indissoluble unity With that object the selfhas disappeared with the opportunity for transition

We have thus swung around the circle of mystical, aesthetic, and creative ele forle explanation to avail for the loss of personality The conditions of such experiences bring about the disappearance of one ternable unity of the other Without transition between two terms in consciousness, two objects of attention, the loss of the feeling of personality takes place according to natural psychological laws It is no longer aof personality dissolves

One point, however, does remain still unexplained,--the bliss of self-abandonious and aesthetic emotions? The surrender of the sense of personality, it seems, is based on purely formal relations of the eleroups of the analyzed e that intensity and definiteness deepen

But how can different and ele formal process? How can the worshi+p of God becoh the loss of personality? The solution of this apparent paradox is deic, but also by those ould wish to see the religious trance distinguished also in its origin from those of baser content

But it is, after all, the forht If variation in the degree of self-feeling is the co its cause, then the lowesttakes place with mathematical completeness, must be included That is the hypnotic trance

It is not necessary at this place to emphasize the fact that our theory, if accepted, would constitute a theory and a definition also of hypnotism Of interest to our inquiry is merely a characteristic estibility Why is this? Our theory would answer that all iestion has thus no rivals Whatever the cause, this last is at any rate the fact All suggestions seem to double in e up the Rhine, and the azes in heart-felt devotion if it is a pretty girl he is bid to look at; he quaffs a glass of water with livelier delight than he would show for the draught of Chateau Yqueious and aesthetic experience there is brought about the saous loss of self-feeling But it is afact that the FORM of the contemplated object is the cause of this arrest and repose God, the circle of the Infinite, the Eternal One, enter into play as ”unity”

alone What, then, of the content? After the analogy of the extreme case, the content--that is, emotional value and definite eestion Under just the conditions of the religious trance, the element of reverence, of joyous sentiment, is able suddenly to take on a reater, but it now holds the field It may not be that it is more intense, but the intensity of concentration which takes on its colorcaught up into union with the highest; the joy of the rapture is the joy of every thought of God, here left free to brighten into ecstasy; and its ”revelation-value” is again the sense of i the intellectual concept of whom is immensely vivified

So may be analyzed the aesthetic ecstasy The tension of those onistic impulses which make balance, and so unity, and so the conditions for loss of sense of self, clears the way for tasting the full savor of pleasure in bright color, flowing line, exquisite tone-sequence, ht Many a commonplace experience, says M Souriau, suddenly takes on a charm when seen in the arrested aesthetic vision ”Every one can have observed that an object in itself agreeable to look on, like a bouquet of flowers, or the fresh face of a young girl, takes on a sort of ard itto music”<1> The intensity of concentration caused by the unity of for from content and material, and the whole is felt as intensity of aesthetic emotion The Sistine Madonna would not strike so deep in feeling were it less crystalline in its unity, less trance-like in its repose, and so less enchanting in its suggestion

<1> P Souriau, _La Suggestion en l'Art_

So it is not only theat a time To enter intensely into any ideal experience means to be blind to all others One ain the world, and none who enter and return froained It may be that personality is a hindrance and a barrier, and that we are only truly in harmony with the secret of our own existence e cease to set ourselves over against the world

Nevertheless, the sense of individuality is a possession for which the most of mankind would pay the price, if itThe delicious hour of fusion with the universe is precious, so it seems to us now, just because we can return from it to our own nest, and, close and war of the sense of selfhood, and we e to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled”

IV THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART

IV A THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM

I

IN what consists the Beauty of Visual Form? The older writers onknow as the science of art did not ask theh we are accustomed to hear that order, symmetry, unity in variety, was the Greek, and in particular the Platonic, fores cited in evidence, that it is rather theto these characteristics that determines them as beautiful; sy order and self-restraint Aristotle's single pronouncement in the sense of our question is the dictu, in his ”Laocoon,” really the first modern treatise in aesthetics, discusses the excellences of painting and poetry, but deals with visible beauty as if it were a fixed quality, understood when referred to, like color This is undoubtedly due to his unconscious reference of beauty to the human form alone; a reference which he would have denied, but which influences his whole aesthetic theory In speaking of a beautiful picture, for instance, he would have meant first of all the representation of beautiful persons in it, hardly at all that essential beauty of the picture as painting, to which every inch of the canvas is alike precious It is clear to us noever, that the beauty of the human form is the most obscure of all possible cases, complex in itself, and overlaid and involved as it is with innumerable interests and motives of extra-aesthetic character Beauty in sireat credit is due to Hogarth for having propounded in his ”analysis of Beauty” the simple question,--what makes the quality of beauty to the eye?

But in visible beauty, the aesthetic value of pure form is not the only element involved: or at least is must be settled whether or not it is the only eles to its excellence belongs to its beauty, we may not applaud one painter, for instance, for his marvelous color-schemes, another for his expression of emotion, another for his delineation of character, without acknowledging that expression of character and emotion come within our concept of visible beauty Franz von Lenbach was once asked what he thought likely to be the fate of his oork ”As for that,” he replied, ”I think I ; but ONLY if Individualization or Characterization be deemed to constitute a quality of permanent value in a picture This, however, I shall never know, for it can only be adjudged by posterity

If that verdict should prove unfavorable, then my work, too, will perish with the rest,--for it cannot coreat masters of the past” That this is indeed an issue is shown by the contrasting opinion of the critic who exclaimed before a portrait, ”Think away the head and face, and you will have a wonderful effect of color!”

The analysis of visible beauty accordingly resolves itself into the explanation of the beauty of for in relation thereto of other factors

The most difficult part of our task is indeed behind us We have already defined Beauty in general: we have outlined in a preceding essay the abstract aesthetic deical means these demands can be and are in fact met In other words we have to show that e intensely feel as Beauty can and does exeh them is explained and accounted for Beauty has been defined as that cos about a union of stimulation and repose in the enjoyer How must this be interpreted with reference to the particular facts of visual form?

The an itself; and the first question is therefore as to the favorable stieneral, does the eye demand of its object?