Part 2 (2/2)
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses.
But, for their beauty only is their show, They live unwooed and unrespected fade; Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so: Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
One added ornament, we see, turns the deep dye, which was but show and mere sensation before, into an element of beauty and reality, and as truth is here the co-operation of perceptions, so beauty is the co-operation of pleasures. If colour, form, and motion are hardly beautiful without the sweetness of the odour, how much more necessary would they be for the sweetness itself to become a beauty! If we had the perfume in a flask, no one would think of calling it beautiful: it would give us too detached and controllable a sensation. There would be no object in which it could be easily incorporated. But let it float from the garden, and it will add another sensuous charm to objects simultaneously recognized, and help to make them beautiful. Thus beauty is const.i.tuted by the objectification of pleasure. It is pleasure objectified.
PART II
THE MATERIALS OF BEAUTY
_All human functions may contribute to the sense of beauty._
- 12. Our task will now be to pa.s.s in review the various elements of our consciousness, and see what each contributes to the beauty of the world. We shall find that they do so whenever they are inextricably a.s.sociated with the objectifying activity of the understanding. Whenever the golden thread of pleasure enters that web of things which our intelligence is always busily spinning, it lends to the visible world that mysterious and subtle charm which we call beauty.
There is no function of our nature which cannot contribute something to this effect, but one function differs very much from another in the amount and directness of its contribution. The pleasures of the eye and ear, of the imagination and memory, are the most easily objectified and merged in ideas; but it would betray inexcusable haste and slight appreciation of the principle involved, if we called them the only materials of beauty. Our effort will rather be to discover its other sources, which have been more generally ignored, and point out their importance. For the five senses and the three powers of the soul, which play so large a part in traditional psychology, are by no means the only sources or factors of consciousness; they are more or less external divisions of its content, and not even exhaustive of that. The nature and changes of our life have deeper roots, and are controlled by less obvious processes.
The human body is a machine that holds together by virtue of certain vital functions, on the cessation of which it is dissolved.
Some of these, like the circulation of the blood, the growth and decay of the tissues, are at first sight unconscious. Yet any important disturbance of these fundamental processes at once produces great and painful changes in consciousness. Slight alterations are not without their conscious echo: and the whole temper and tone of our mind, the strength of our pa.s.sions, the grip and concatenation of our habits, our power of attention, and the liveliness of our fancy and affections are due to the influence of these vital forces. They do not, perhaps, const.i.tute the whole basis of any one idea or emotion: but they are the conditions of the existence and character of all.
Particularly important are they for the _value_ of our experience.
They const.i.tute health, without which no pleasure can be pure.
They determine our impulses in leisure, and furnish that surplus energy which we spend in play, in art, and in speculation. The attraction of these pursuits, and the very existence of an aesthetic sphere, is due to the efficiency and perfection of our vital processes.
The pleasures which they involve are not exclusively bound to any particular object, and therefore do not account for the relative beauty of things. They are loose and unlocalized, having no special organ, or one which is internal and hidden within the body. They therefore remain undiscriminated in consciousness, and can serve to add interest to any object, or to cast a general glamour over the world, very favourable to its interest and beauty.
The aesthetic value of vital functions differs according to their physiological concomitants: those that are favourable to ideation are of course more apt to extend something of their intimate warmth to the pleasures of contemplation, and thus to intensify the sense of beauty and the interest of thought. Those, on the other hand, that for physiological reasons tend to inhibit ideation, and to drown the attention in dumb and unrepresentable feelings, are less favourable to aesthetic activity. The double effect of drowsiness and reverie will ill.u.s.trate this difference. The heaviness of sleep seems to fall first on the outer senses, and of course makes them incapable of acute impressions; but if it goes no further, it leaves the imagination all the freer, and by heightening the colours of the fancy, often suggests and reveals beautiful images. There is a kind of poetry and invention that comes only in such moments. In them many lovely melodies must first have been heard, and centaurs and angels originally imagined.
If, however, the lethargy is more complete, or if the cause of it is such that the imagination is r.e.t.a.r.ded while the senses remain awake, -- as is the case with an over-fed or over-exercised body, -- we have a state of aesthetic insensibility. The exhilaration which comes with pure and refres.h.i.+ng air has a marked influence on our appreciations. To it is largely due the beauty of the morning, and the entirely different charm it has from the evening. The opposite state of all the functions here adds an opposite emotion to externally similar scenes, making both infinitely but differently beautiful.
It would be curious and probably surprising to discover how much the pleasure of breathing has to do with our highest and most transcendental ideals. It is not merely a metaphor that makes us couple airiness with exquisiteness and breathlessness with awe; it is the actual recurrence of a sensation in the throat and lungs that gives those impressions an immediate power, prior to all reflection upon their significance. It is, therefore, to this vital sensation of deep or arrested respiration that the impressiveness of those objects is immediately due.
_The influence of the pa.s.sion of love._
- 13. Half-way between vital and social functions, lies the s.e.xual instinct. If nature had solved the problem of reproduction without the differentiation of s.e.x, our emotional life would have been radically different. So profound and, especially in woman, so pervasive an influence does this function exert, that we should betray an entirely unreal view of human nature if we did not inquire into the relations of s.e.x with our aesthetic susceptibility.
We must not expect, however, any great difference between man and woman in the scope or objects of aesthetic interest: what is important in emotional life is not which s.e.x an animal has, but that it has s.e.x at all. For if we consider the difficult problem which nature had to solve in s.e.xual reproduction, and the nice adjustment of instinct which it demands, we shall see that the reactions and susceptibilities which must be implanted in the individual are for the most part identical in both s.e.xes, as the s.e.xual organization is itself fundamentally similar in both. Indeed, individuals of various species and the whole animal kingdom have the same s.e.xual disposition, although, of course, the particular object destined to call forth the complete s.e.xual reaction, differs with every species, and with each s.e.x.
If we were dealing with the philosophy of love, and not with that of beauty, our problem would be to find out by what machinery this fundamental susceptibility, common to all animals of both s.e.xes, is gradually directed to more and more definite objects: first, to one species and one s.e.x, and ultimately to one individual. It is not enough that s.e.xual organs should be differentiated: the connexion must be established between them and the outer senses, so that the animal may recognize and pursue the proper object.
The case of lifelong fidelity to one mate -- perhaps even to an unsatisfied and hopeless love -- is the maximum of differentiation, which even overleaps the utility which gave it a foothold in nature, and defeats its own object. For the differentiation of the instinct in respect to s.e.x, age, and species is obviously necessary to its success as a device for reproduction. While this differentiation is not complete, -- and it often is not, -- there is a great deal of groping and waste; and the force and constancy of the instinct must make up for its lack of precision. A great deal of vital energy is thus absorbed by this ill-adjusted function. The most economical arrangement which can be conceived, would be one by which only the one female best fitted to bear offspring to a male should arouse his desire, and only so many times as it was well she should grow pregnant, thus leaving his energy and attention free at all other times to exercise the other faculties of his nature.
If this ideal had been reached, the instinct, like all those perfectly adjusted, would tend to become unconscious; and we should miss those secondary effects with which we are exclusively concerned in aesthetics. For it is precisely from the waste, from the radiation of the s.e.xual pa.s.sion, that I beauty borrows warmth. As a harp, made to vibrate to the fingers, gives some music to every wind, so the nature of man, necessarily susceptible to woman, becomes simultaneously sensitive to other influences, and capable of tenderness toward every object. The capacity to love gives our contemplation that glow without which it might often fail to manifest beauty; and the whole sentimental side of our aesthetic sensibility -- without which it would be perceptive and mathematical rather than aesthetic -- is due to our s.e.xual organization remotely stirred.
The attraction of s.e.x could not become efficient unless the senses were first attracted. The eye must be fascinated and the ear charmed by the object which nature intends should be pursued.
Both s.e.xes for this reason develope secondary s.e.xual characteristics; and the s.e.xual emotions are simultaneously extended to various secondary objects. The colour, the grace, the form, which become the stimuli of s.e.xual pa.s.sion, and the guides of s.e.xual selection, acquire, before they can fulfil that office, a certain intrinsic charm. This charm is not only present for reasons which, in an admissible sense, we may call teleological, on account, that is, of its past utility in reproduction, but its intensity and power are due to the simultaneous stirring of profound s.e.xual impulses.
Not, of course, that any specifically s.e.xual ideas are connected with these feelings: such ideas are absent in a modest and inexperienced mind even in the obviously s.e.xual pa.s.sions of love and jealousy.
These secondary objects of interest, which are some of the most conspicuous elements of beauty, are to be called s.e.xual for these two reasons: because the contingencies of the s.e.xual function hare helped to establish them in our race, and because they owe their fascination in a great measure to the partic.i.p.ation of our s.e.xual life in the reaction which they cause.
If any one were desirous to produce a being with a great susceptibility to beauty, he could not invent an instrument better designed for that object than s.e.x. Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation, might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But s.e.x endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another; makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solitude an eternal melancholy.
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