Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

The economic theory of style in fine art plainly implies at bottom physiological economy, for all psychological economy can only be effected on this basis. The psychology of style must rest on a physiology of style. We know that the pleasures of form and colour in sculpture and painting are the reflex of physiological functions as easily and completely performed. The curve of beauty is such because the eye follows it more easily than other lines; the pleasing colour is such because the physiological stimulus is accomplished in a normal and facile way. And as visibility is the test for the arts which appeal to the eye, so audibility is for the fine art which appeals to the ear. Pleasure from music is the reflex of aural functioning accomplishing the most with least strain. Now the pleasure which comes from literary style must similarly be sought in some physiological mode. While plain print and good paper are incidental pleasures in reading, they are not primarily due to the stylist, who does, however, appeal to the eye by the due proportioning of long and short words, sentences and paragraphs. Though there is no conscious intent by the stylist, yet it may be believed that the use of certain letters and certain successions of letters as more or less easy for the eye is a matter of some importance. Some letters and some combinations are ocularly more pleasing than others, and this is clearly founded on economic physiological conditions. It is greatly to be desired that physiologists would invent new alphabetical forms which should be most adapted to the eye. It is scarcely to be supposed that our present A B C's are the simplest and easiest line-combinations for the eye. When the visual side of reading is made as easy as possible, the general reflex sense of facility and pleasure therewith is certainly increased. The artificial languages now being exploited, as Volapuk, ought and would effect a great physiological saving, as would also be accomplished by a phonetic spelling.

But the direct visible function of style is certainly far inferior to the indirect. The power of style is very largely in stimulating pleasing visual images. The main element in literature we are told is vision and imagination, which is but a restimulation and recombination of ocular experiences. Sensation is the source and strong basis for all those faint revivals which are so aptly and pleasantly called up by the literary artist, and hence when the poet speaks of “the light which never was on sea or land,” this is really meaningless, since all our light impressions are terrestrial in their nature. To the blind man the whole visual effect, direct and indirect, of style is lost; his imaging power must be in some other sense.

Literature is then, like sculpture and painting, largely a visual art, and its pleasure-giving quality is the reflex of visibility. Mere form and colour may in a sense constitute a picture; though in general we demand that it mean something, suggest something. A picture is such as depicting something, and so being more than a study in form or colour. The mere direct pleasure of ocular sensation plays a large part in graphic and glyptic art, yet it is commonly conceived that some measure of imagination, that is, some indirect visible function, is necessary even here. Sculpture and painting depend like literature on both direct and indirect vision as physiological and psychological basis of æsthetic pleasure.

But in a secondary way literary style depends for its effect upon auditory sensations both direct and revival. We mentally, and often orally, pronounce as we read, and so appreciate sonorous quality and onomatopoetic force. Alliteration, rhyme, euphony, and rhythm play certainly a considerable part in the charm of style, and literature on this side approaches and passes gradually into music. Euphony answers to melody, and rhyme and rhythm to harmony. Literature may become for us merely a succession of pleasing sounds, as when we hum over some favourite lines of poetry, or when, ignorant of the Italian language, we listen to an opera. Some of Milton’s lists of names in such lines as these,—

“Of Cambalu, seat of Cathayan Can,

And Samarchand by Oxus, Temer’s throne”—

charm merely by the flow and fulness of sound. But the stylist aims, not merely at formal sensuous beauty in tone and cadence of language, he aims to suggest pleasing sounds, and to awaken the auditory imagination, and to harmonize sense with sound as is done so successfully by poets like Tennyson and prosaists like Sir Thomas Browne. All this auditory side of literary style is lost on the deaf, as the visual is lost on the blind. Literature as an art is neither blind like music nor deaf like painting, but it is a compound art, visual-auditory, and thus, by virtue of its range, is the greatest of the arts. It is true that indirectly and in a very limited way painting can suggest sounds, and music sights, but literature, both directly and indirectly, can freely and fully give both. Word-music and word-painting are both methods of literary style. In short, the explanation of the pleasure of style is pleasing sight or sound directly or indirectly given, and the explanation of the pleasing character of the sight or sound is as the reflex of easy economical physiological functioning as basis of easy economical psychic function.

But we have now to ask whether economy of attention is the sole psychological secret of style, and whether, indeed, it is always necessary to style. Is style, like grammar or orthography, merely a more or less conventionalized device to make intelligibility certain and easy? Is our reading always the more pleasurable as it is the more effortless? The pleasure of facility certainly bears a large part in much of our literary enjoyment, but there is another and opposite law of pleasure which, I think, often determines pleasure in style. To accomplish much with no exertion, to slide down a long hill, gives pleasure, but there is also a pleasure in exertion, in climbing hills as well as sliding down. The pleasures of strenuous activity of attention form a certain element in literary effect. The writer may do too much for the reader, may make everything so simple and easy that the reader has nothing to do, but is carried along without volition and curiosity, losing all joy of attainment and grasp. For my own part, I often find authors too fluent and facile, especially among the French, and sometimes among the English, as, for instance, in some of John Stuart Mill’s writings. These do not leave enough for me to do, and led skilfully along so smooth a road that I am not conscious of moving, I lose the pleasure of achievement, of the sense of enlargement of conscious powers. Easy got, easy goes, is the law here as elsewhere. The pleasure of acquirement is directly as the amount of attention exercised.

Mr. Spencer in discussing this matter remarks that, as “language is the vehicle of thought, we may say that in all cases the friction and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency, and that in composition the chief thing to be done is, to reduce the friction and inertia to the smallest amounts.” But it must be remembered that motion is not only against friction but by friction. The rail may be too smooth as well as too rough. Every locomotive, for a given piece of track with a given gradient, has a certain co-efficient of friction for its most effective working, above and below which there is alike decrease of efficiency; and in engineering it is equally a problem to keep friction up as to reduce it. So I say of style, that it may be too smooth and facile, and may reduce mental friction to so low a point that there is no grasp and no real progress. A sentence of Hooker or Milton, magnificent stylists though they are, can, as an affair of economy of attention, be greatly improved by breaking it up into a number of simple plain sentences after the primer fashion, The cat mews, The dog barks, etc.; but this process certainly is not an improvement of their style. But if economy of attention were the sole secret of style, certainly the more economy we introduce the greater and better should be the style. Professor Sherman, of the University of Nebraska, in a recent article shows that heaviness—that which requires “constant effort in reading”—is due to the number of words per sentence, which has been reduced in the course of the history of English prose from an average of fifty words a sentence in Chaucer and Spenser to five in the columns of a modern, low-grade, popular story-paper; but it obviously cannot be maintained that the style of the story-paper is ten times better than that of Spenser’s State of Ireland.

We might then set up with plausibility an exactly opposite theory to the economic, and maintain that the secret of style is in exciting us to the greatest attentive effort, and that the best style is that which rouses us to the severest mental exertion. However, I believe that these two opposite methods of style are complementary. The great stylist is he who strikes the exact mean between over facility and over difficulty, and touches the exact co-efficient of mental friction in the reader, at which his whole power of mind comes into highest and most harmonious and effective exercise. The accomplished stylist most cleverly throws in questions, suggests doubts, and defers answers. To read his book is not a toboggan slide, but an obstacle race. What is plot interest but a skilful putting of obstacles in the reader’s way, deferring and thwarting his expectations, putting him on the qui vive of attention? By the development of plot the novelist and dramatist plays hide and seek with the reader. No cunning artist reveals at once his whole thought in a blaze of light, but he mystifies and draws in half-tones, thus to stir you to reach out and grasp his meaning.