But while, in the larger part of the lives of most men, observation of facts is controlled with reference to their practical bearings, observation may sometimes take place for its own sake. The glory of a sunset is not commonly prized for any good that may come of it; nobody but a general on a campaign or a fire warden looks out from a mountain peak upon the valley below for reasons other than the pleasure of the beholding. In the case of persons, also, we are not always interested in them for their uses; we are sometimes delighted with them in themselves. We pause to watch merry or quaint children, experts at tennis, beautiful faces, for their own sakes.
While even in nature and in social experience, we thus sometimes note specifically æsthetic values, the objects of fine art have no other justification than the immediate satisfactions they produce in their beholder. Those intrinsic pleasures which go by the general name of beauty are various and complicated. Our joy may be in the sheer delight of the senses, as in the hearing of a singularly lucid and sustained note of a clarinet, a flute, a voice, or a violin. It may be in the appreciation of form, as in the case of the symmetry of a temple, an arch, or an altar. It may be in the simultaneous stirring of the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, by the presentation of an idea suffused with music and emotion, as in the case of an ode by Wordsworth or a sonnet by Milton.
In all these instances we are not interested in anything beyond the experience itself. The objects of the fine arts are not drafts on the future, anticipations of future satisfactions eventually to be cashed in. They are immediate and intrinsic goods, absolute fulfillments. They are not signals to action; they are releases from it. A painting, a poem, a symphony, do not precipitate movement or change. They invite a restful absorption. It was this that made Schopenhauer regard art as a rest from reality. During these interludes, at least, we live amid perfections, and are content there to move and have our being.
Sense satisfaction. Appreciation of the arts begins in the senses. Sight and sound, these are unquestionably the chief avenues by which the imagination is stirred.[1]
[Footnote 1: The so-called lower senses are not regarded as yielding æsthetic values. Smell, taste, and touch are not generally, certainly in Occidental art, made much of.]
In the words of Santayana:
For if nothing not once in sense is to be found in the intellect, much less is such a thing to be found in the imagination. If the cedars of Lebanon did not spread a grateful shade, or the winds rustle through the maze of their branches, if Lebanon had never been beautiful to sense, it would not now be a fit or poetic subject of allusion.... Nor would Samarcand be anything but for the mystery of the desert, and the picturesqueness of caravans, nor would an argosy be poetic if the sea had no voices and no foam, the winds and oars no resistance, and the rudder and taut sheets no pull. From these real sensations imagination draws its life, and suggestion its power.[2]
[Footnote 2: Santayana: Sense of Beauty, p. 68.]
Satisfaction in sounds arises from the regular intervals of the vibrations of the air by which it is produced. The rapidity of these regular beats determines the pitch. But sounds also differ in timbre or quality, depending on the number of overtones which occur in different modes of production. This explains why a note on the scale played on the piano, differs from the same note played on the 'cello or the organ. From these fundamental sensuous elements of sound, elaborate symphonic compositions may be built up, but they remain primary nevertheless. Unless the sensuous elements of sound were themselves pleasing it is difficult to imagine that a musical composition could be. Music would then be like an orchestra whose members played in unison, but whose violins were raucous and whose trumpets hoarse.
Color again illustrates the æsthetic satisfactions that are found in certain kinds of sense stimulation, apart from the form they are given or the emotions or ideas they express. The elements of color, as color, may be reduced to three simple elements: First may be noted hue, as yellow or blue; second, value (or notan) dark or light red; and third intensity (or brightness to grayness), as vivid blue or dull blue. Specific vivid æsthetic combinations and variations are made possible by variations or combinations of these three elements of color. If a color scheme is displeasing, the fault may be in the wrong selection of hues, in weak values, in ill-matched intensities or all three.