The Psychology of Beauty

by Ethel Puffer Howes

One school asserts that the real pleasure in perception comes only from form. The given object is beautiful, through its original qualities of line, color, or sound, which strike the special senses in a way that is pleasing to them; and through its combinations of these qualities, which affect the whole human organism in a directly pleasurable way. What is outside of the given object of art—is meant, suggested, or recalled by it—belongs, it is said, to absolutely unaesthetic processes, as is shown by the fact that many things, which we are the first to acknowledge as ugly, are the exciting cause of great thoughts and delightful associations. The opposed school maintains that the meanings of a work of art are all that it exists for. The presentation of an idea, by whatever sensuous means, so only that they be transparent, and the joy of the soul in contemplating this idea, must be the object and the end of art. The later idealists admit value to the form only in so far a it may express, convey, symbolize, or suggest the content, whether as pure idea, or as a shadowing forth of the Divine World-Meaning.

These theories are certainly intelligible; but the results of applying them with logical consistency are rather terrifying. Andrew Lang says somewhere that the logical consequence of the formal theory of art in all its nakedness would make Tennyson the youth, Swinburne, and Edgar Poe the greatest poets of the world, and those delicious effusions of Edward Lear, "The Jumblies" and "On the Coast of Coromandel," masterpieces. Yet if we allow the idealists to pass sentence, what shall become of our treasures in "Kubla Khan," or "Ueber allen Gipfeln," or "La Nuit de Decembre"? The results of such a judgment day would be even more appalling to the true lover of poetry. Moreover, if the idea, the end of art, need not reside in the object itself, but may arise therefrom by subtle suggestion, the complications of poetry or painting are unnecessary. A geometric figure may remind us of the constitution of the world of space, a sundial, of the transitoriness of human existence, and with a "chorus-ending from Euripedes," the whole sweep of the cosmic meanings is upon us. In the words of Fra Lippo Lippi:—

"Why, for this,
What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or what's best,
A bell to chime the hours with, does as well."

II

In spite of this, however, a place for ideas must clearly be found in our definition of beauty; and yet it must be so limited and bound to the beautiful form that corollaries such as we have just drawn will be impossible. An interesting attempt to reconcile these two points of view—to establish an organic relation between form and idea—is found in "The Sense of Beauty" by Professor George Santayana. The central point of this writer's theory is his definition of beauty as the objectification of pleasure. Aesthetic experience, he says, is based partly on form, partly on expression, but the pleasure felt is always projected into the object, and is felt as a quality of it. All kinds of external associations may connect themselves with the work of art, but so long as they remain external, and keep, so to speak, their values for themselves, they cannot be said to add beauty to the object. But when they are present only in their effect,— a diffused feeling of pleasure,—that diffused feeling is attributed directly to the object, is felt as if it inheres therein, and so the object becomes more beautiful, for beauty is objectified pleasure. Professor Santayana designates form as beauty in the first term, and expression as beauty in the second term. Beauty in the first term can exist alone,—not so beauty in the second term. It must have a little beauty of the first term to graft itself upon. "A map, for instance, is not usually thought of as an aesthetic object, and yet, let the tints of it be a little subtle, let the lines be a little delicate, and the masses of land and sea somewhat balanced, and we really have a beautiful thing, the charm of which consists almost entirely in its meaning.

Now here, it seems to me, is a weak point in Professor Santanaya's armor. If such wonderful elements of beauty can be projected into a fairly colorless object by virtue of its fringe of suggestiveness, why should not beauty of the second term be felt in objects without that little bit of intrinsic worth of form? Is not such indeed the fact? What else is the meaning of the story of "Beauty and the Beast"? The squat and hideous Indian idol, the scarabaeus, the bit of Aztec pottery, become attractive and desired for themselves by virtue of their halo of pleasure from dim associations. And all these values are felt as completely OBJECTIFIED, and so fulfill the requirements for "beauty in the second term." That small amount of intrinsic beauty on which to graft the beauty of the second term is, therefore, not a necessary condition, so that we are left, on Professor Santayana's theory, with the strange paradox of so-called beautiful objects which are, nevertheless, confessedly ugly.

What, then, is the flaw in this definition? While we concede the objectification of pleasure in all these cases, we cannot, it would seem, admit a corresponding change from non-aesthetic to aesthetic feelings. The personal attitude towards an object, based on sentiments objectified in it, and the aesthetic attitude are two different things. The truth is, that all this objectified tone-feeling is directly dependent on the original real existence of the object that calls it up, and on our practical personal relation to it, and is thus, by universal agreement, definitely non-aesthetic. I enjoy the cast of the great Venus very nearly as much as the original,—but who cares for casts of the Aztec gods, or of the prehistoric carvings of the reindeer period? Who wants an imitation scarabaeus? To have the real thing, to see it, to touch it, to know that it has had real experiences that would fill me with wonder and with awe, "to love it for the danger it has passed,"—to feel that I myself am through it actually linked with its mysterious history,—that is the value it has for me; not a pleasure of perception at all, but a very definite, practical interest in my own personality. If the pleasure lay only in disinterested perception, any representation of the object ought to have the same value.

What, then, the author of "The Sense of Beauty" calls "the beauty of the second term,"—the power to suggest feeling through the medium of associated ideas,—we may deny to impart any aesthetic character whatever. Professor Santayana has, indeed, mediated between the formalists and the idealists; but his theory would lead us to attributions of beauty from which common sense revolts; and we have seen the secret of its deficiency to lie in the confusion of the personal with the aesthetic attitude. If now we amend his definition, "Beauty is objectified pleasure," to "Beauty is objectified aesthetic pleasure," we are advanced no further.

III

The problem stands, then: how to provide for the presence of ideas in the work of art, and the definite emotions aroused by it, either by bringing them somehow into the definition of beauty in itself, or by showing how their presence is related to the full aesthetic experience. But, first of all, we have to ask how the aesthetic pleasure even in formal beauty is constituted, and to what extent expression belongs to the beauty of pure form. Form is impressive, or directly beautiful, through its harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and through the harmony of its combinations of suggestions and impulses with the entire organism. I enjoy a well-composed picture like Titian's "Sacred and Profane Love," because the good composition means such a balanced relation of impulses of attention, of incipient movements, as harmonizes with such an organism as mine, tending to move toward both sides, and yet unified and stable; and because the combination of colors is at once stimulating and soothing to my eyes. So much for IMPRESSION, beauty of the first term. But it is not only that harmonious state of my visual and motor functions that I get out of the form of a picture. No, I have, besides all this pleasure, a real exhilaration or emotion, a definite mood of repose or gayety or triumph, without any fringe of association, which yet certainly contributes to my feeling of the beauty of the experience, and so of the work of art. How did it come out of the form?