Contemporary phraseology and convention are just as eloquent in the matter. There is common agreement that some of the senses, in their exercise or consequences, are ennobling, dignified, pure, and worthy; others, either in their exercise or consequences, are felt to be degrading, debasing, vile, and iniquitous. An individual who revels in impressions of sight and sound, and indulges to the utmost the raptures afforded by the tones, melodies, concords, the colors and their harmonies, and the elements of form, design, and arrangement, we are likely to find classified by his associates as “sensitive,” “temperamental,” “artistic.” But one who revels to the same or even much less degree in the unholy impressions of contact, temperature, smell, and taste is held to be “sensuous” rather than “sensitive,” “gluttonous” rather than “temperamental,” and “vicious” rather than “artistic.” The former pleasures minister to a “divine fire,” the latter only to “lust” and “appetite.”
Similarly, we esteem in quite distinctive manner the workman whose craft consists in the preparation and arrangement of sights and sounds in pleasing elements, orders, and compositions. He is held to have “acquired merit,” however unsuccessful his labors, and receives warm social approbation. He is an “artist.” But the workman whose craft consists in the preparation and presentation of acceptable sensations of taste, smell, touch, and temperature, what of him? He is neither held to have “acquired merit” nor to deserve any enviable amount of social recognition. He is only a “cook,” a “chef,” or, at the most, a “chemist” or a “dietitian.” Only in the comic supplements is he ever an “artist.” Painting, for instance, is held to be an “art”; but cooking is only a “service.” The one is rewarded by distinction and eminence, the other, when rewarded at all, by wages.
In the field of æsthetics the distinction between the “higher” and the “lower” senses is no less clear. Museums and galleries we have in abundance in which are preserved and displayed the treasures of light and shade, color and form, line and arrangement. Private and public funds are appropriated in order that these impressions may have the widest possible circulation. Visitors and classes throng the corridors of these storehouses; teachers and schools flourish on the profits derived from the communication and publication of the principles concerned in their manufacture; statues are erected to the most deserving craftsmen; and earnest apprentices starve in foreign garrets in order that their handicraft may in time adorn these walls. Much the same thing is true of pleasing arrangements of sound impressions. All possible pains are taken to record the scheme and plan of their production, and the heartiest welcome is accorded any device, instrument, or organization which will facilitate their being stored up and poured out again for the delectation of remote or future audiences.
But to what museum or gallery shall one go who longs to experience the glorious array of pleasing contacts, textures and pressures, odors, tastes, and temperatures? Where shall one find stored up representatives of the most satisfying and thrilling touch impressions that experience has ever yielded, the whole gamut of delectable odors, with all the offensive ones left out; all the aromas and savors and flavors in which the gustatory and olfactory world is so rich? And all the organic thrills, the kinæsthetic whirls and starts, and the delicious dizzinesses of static experiences? Coney Island and its brood are the only institutions that even pretend to minister to those whose nature yearns for these satisfactions, and Coney Island is supported neither by philanthropic endowment nor by public appropriations. It is even said that its joys are thought to be “vulgar” among certain classes of people, whose passions run mainly toward sights and sounds.
There can be no doubt about it. Certain of the senses are more æsthetic than others, if by this we mean that special arts have been built up which busy themselves with the materials afforded by them. Certain of the senses, again, are unæsthetic, in the sense that the materials afforded by them have not yielded to that sort of structural manipulation which constitutes the procedure of one of the “fine arts.” And, furthermore, such manipulation as they do submit to is not only not considered “fine,” but is designated by the negative term “unæsthetic”; the materials themselves, as well as those who busy themselves with them, are quite likely to be esteemed “coarse” and “nasty.”
Bounty of Nature and Ecclesiastical Censorship
One may well inquire into the reasons for such a curious state of affairs. Does it merely signify that agreeable sights and sounds are so rare in nature that special social encouragement has come to be given for their production, while pleasing contacts, pressures, tastes, smells, etc., are so abundantly provided in the natural course of experience that no such sanction is called for? Even if this were true, does it follow that the sanction of the one group need necessarily involve the taboo of the other? Does it perhaps merely indicate that early in the history of art the Church and its leaders learned that the original tendency of men and women to indulge themselves in the voluptuous impressions of certain of the senses was so strong that the immediate joys of earth promised to outweigh the promised blessings of heaven? Such a discovery might well have resulted in an authoritative denunciation of these types of experience and in an artificial exaltation of the tamer and milder senses, whose objects could be perceived at a remote distance and by many observers, and could be, therefore, more minutely scrutinized by the ecclesiastic censors. Or does it perhaps mean that some of these sense impressions from their very nature are either unsuitable as materials for that sort of manipulation and craftsmanship which we call artistic, or, from their very nature or consequences, are inimical to and destructive of those endeavors which we have come, on other grounds, to conceive to be the most worthy and valuable tendencies of men and women? The bounty of nature and the ecclesiastical censorship we may dismiss from the present consideration, however worthy they may be of reflection, and confine our present inquiry to the question of whether or not the impressions afforded by some of the senses, such as taste, for example, are, by their very nature, inadequate as raw materials of æsthetic manipulation and artistic creation.
The Psychophysical Attributes
It may be well to begin our inquiry with a consideration of certain of the technical psychological characteristics and properties of the different senses, properties which can be measured and expressed in quantitative terms. We may then observe whether their order, when arranged on these bases, shows any correspondence to their order in the scale of æsthetic value, and where, in such a scale, the sense of taste belongs. The following table brings together the facts concerning four of these characteristics. In the first column the senses are arranged in the commonly accepted order of æsthetic value, and the degree of correspondence can be easily made out by comparing this column with those in which the various other properties are indicated.