Simple sensuous æsthetic is no doubt the beginning of æsthetic activity, but there speedily enters much complication. It often happens that single elements which separately do not excite us æsthetically will produce a marked effect in conjunction, as complementary colours, for instance. Indeed, relation plays so large a place in our æsthetic experience that such principles as variety and contrast, or, on the other hand, unity, order, proportion, and harmony, have been made fundamental to the æsthetic feeling. Æsthetic effect certainly here becomes a complex of two or more reinforcing sensations or perceptions. Where the sensuous elements of a perception are in themselves pleasing we may expect the unison in perception to be doubly pleasing. However, we may also conceive that æsthetic pleasure arises as a reflex of perceptive activity in and for itself as a co-ordinating of impressions.
Fechner has made some experiments on what combinations are pleasing; but experiment in this direction is extremely difficult because so few people are willing to speak frankly of their æsthetic feelings, being very sensitive about compromising themselves on matters of taste. There is also the great difficulty of isolation, of making sure that association does not creep in and add unforeseen elements. If Fechner expected to get any judgments of value on such a matter as the golden section rectangle, he should have consulted only trained artists who are used to taking up the æsthetic activity with reference to any material and expressing themselves with freedom. If this rectangle has the æsthetic quality Fechner’s experiments suggest, it seems strange it was not adopted by the symmetry-loving Greeks in their temples, like the Parthenon.
To the spheres of simple and relational sense beauty we have to add a third—representative beauty. A colour, or two or more in combination which give æsthetic satisfaction, will also please in hallucinatory vision and in representation proper where the revival is recognised in its unreality and representative nature, and also in recollection where the memory is willed. The mere imaging these colours without any definite time relation also gives æsthetic pleasure. It is, indeed, a pleonasm to say that æsthetic revivals are æsthetic. However, imagination is productive as well as reproductive, hence the ideal achieves a fuller beauty than the real. Where the mind, prompted by æsthetic desire, determines its own object, this object can more fully satisfy it than reality, which is always imperfect. Thus art surpasses nature, or more strictly is a higher nature. Idealism then is a mode of realism, and realism is but the ideal of actuality. But the imaging activity may, like the perceptive, be considered as in itself a source of æsthetic pleasure. Imaging is primarily used in the service of life, as when walking in a forest I hear a peculiar cry, imagine a wolf, and flee. When imaging has been largely developed thus, it may often act as a mere vent to energy; but this kind of activity has here, no more than elsewhere, real æsthetic quality. At the animistic stage children imagine in this way long before they æsthetically image. When we consciously and with some self-direction enjoy imaging for its own sake, we attain the æsthetic sphere. The æsthetic pleasures which are suggested by such a phrase as—
“Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sails the placid ocean plains”—
are not merely the sum of the original sense pleasures, but perceptive and imaginative pleasure per se is added, the image is more beautiful than the real vision, and this perception than some sense element, as the light sensation implied in “placid.”
Æsthetic pleasure, even in sense, and much more in perceiving and imagining, is a delight, that is, æsthetic quality is an emotion quality, it is not a mere feeling from an object, but a feeling about it. Now emotion may be enacted for emotion’s sake and so an æsthetic pleasure wave be generated. This is the pleasure we take in the pathetic—pity, the sublime, fear as awe, the tragic-horror. These emotions are realized for themselves as a mode of pleasurable activity. Æsthetic emotion is also very largely emotion at emotion, as a feeling for the expressive, still here the emotion is for its own sake.
Æsthetic activity may then be described as an independent self-activity of some sense, or of perception, or imagination, or emotion as impelled by a pleasure, this pleasure being a distinct and new form we term æsthetic. It is probable this pleasure first arose in connection with the exercise of the sense as a vent for spontaneous energy, and pleasure once somehow being taken in a mere activity per se, it is thenceforth conducted therefor. This is the plainest path of conjecture thus far. If the first æsthetic pleasure were taken in some quiet moment of venting energy in sensing red, then red will continue to be sensed, impelled by the pleasure involved in the act. Granted such an origin, the development of æsthetic psychosis can be traced in the way we have noted.
Æsthetic psychosis is commonly regarded as passive, and it is indeed true that the first moment of the pleasure comes as result of an activity impelled by other motives. New psychoses are not consciously formed but are rather hit upon in natural development; but once a new pleasure is felt its conditions will be attained and kept to by conscious effort, and the pleasure itself will receive its development only through effortful activity. It is by supreme effort the great artist attains the vision of beauty, it is by supreme effort he expresses this vision, it is by supreme effort the critic appreciates this expression. He who has no appreciation of sculpture may by patiently and earnestly observing statuary reach at length some æsthetic pleasure. Thus the æsthetic, like all mental modes, so far as progressive, is effortful; and it seems certain that the æsthetic pleasures that come to us so easily are race acquirements, a heritage of culture. From its first germ onwards æsthetic, like intellectual, like moral, like all mental activity, is the achievement of intense struggle.
With the rise of beauty we have a new utility. Here is a new pleasure which once experienced is sought and sought again, is developed, and with some natures becomes absorbing passion, the life. Objects fitted to give this pleasure are desired, are bought and sold. The beautiful is used to effect all kinds of ends. The lover adorns himself to make himself attractive, the advertiser distributes his bills in artistic shape, the real estate dealer ornaments his houses and grounds. Whatever will afford æsthetic pleasure we are willing to pay for and pay high. In fact, in the person of a Patti the æsthetic thrill becomes the most expensive taste which humanity can indulge. Art then is a utility—a something which satisfies desire—and as such it is not free or shareable. But one at a time can observe a picture from the best point of view. Rich men buy the most sightly spots in nature, the places of magnificent vistas and open to beautiful sunsets. Beautiful things are then desirables just like edible things or warm things, and as such they are not shareable. The feeling for beauty, just because it is self-contained, is far from being disinterested. It is essentially selfish.