E. No reference to center in making judgments; hurries over center. All portions of simple line of equal interest; but in unequal division the short gets a non-apparent importance, for the line is then a scheme for the representation of materials of different interest values. When the division is too short, the imagination refuses to give it the proportionally greater importance that it would demand. When too long it is too near equality. In enjoying line, the division point is fixed, with shifts of attention from side to side. An underlying intellectual assignment of more value to short side, and then the sense-pleasure comes; the two sides have then an equality.
F. Middle vulgar, common, prosaic; unequal lively. Prefers the lively. Eyes rest on division point, moving to the end of long and then of short. Ease, simplicity and restfulness are proper to the long part of complex figures. Short part of simple line looks wider, brighter and more important than long.
G. Unequal better than equal. Eye likes movement over long and then over short. Subject interested only in division point. Short part gives the æsthetic quality to the line.
H. Center not wanted. Division point the center of interest. (No further noteworthy introspection from H, but concerning complex figures he said that he wanted simple or the compact on the short, and the interesting on the long.)
These introspective notes were given at different times, and any repetitions serve only to show constancy. The subjects were usually very certain of their introspection. In general it appears to me to warrant these three statements: (1) That the center of interest is the division point, whence eye-movements, or innervations involving, perhaps, the whole motor system, are made to either side. (2) That there is some sort of balance or equivalence obtained (a bilateral symmetry), which is not, however, a vertical balance—that is, one of weights pulling downwards, according to the principle of the lever. All the subjects repudiated the suggestion of vertical balance. (3) That the long side means ease and simplicity, and represents graphically exactly what it means; that the short side means greater intensity, concentration, or complexity, and that this is substituted by the subject; the short division, unlike the long, means something that it does not graphically represent.
So much for the relation between what is objectively given and the significance subjectively attributed to it. There remains still the translation into psychophysical terms. The results on the complex figures (showing that a division may be shortened by making the innervations on that side increasingly more involved) lend plausibility to the interpretation that the additional significance is, in visual terms, a greater intricacy or difficulty of eye-movement, actual or reproduced; or, in more general terms, a greater tension of the entire motor system. In such figures the psychophysical conditions for our pleasure in the unequal division of the simple horizontal line are merely graphically symbolized, not necessarily duplicated. On page 553 I roughly suggested what occurs in regarding the unequally divided line. More exactly, this: the long section of the line gives a free sweep of the eyes from the division point, the center, to the end; or again, a free innervation of the motor system. The sweep the subject makes sure of. Then, with that as standard, the æsthetic impulse is to secure an equal and similar movement, from the center, in the opposite direction. It is checked, however, by the end point of the short side. The result is the innervation of antagonistic muscles, by which the impression is intensified. For any given subject, then, the pleasing unequal division is at that point which causes quantitatively equal physiological discharges, consisting of the simple movement, on one hand, and, on the other, the same kind of movement, compounded with the additional innervation of the antagonists resulting from the resistance of the end point. Since, when the characteristic movements are being made for one side, the other is always in simultaneous vision, the sweep receives, by contrast, further accentuation, and the innervation of antagonists doubtless begins as soon as movement on the short side is begun. The whole of the short movement is, therefore, really a resultant of the tendency to sweep and this necessary innervation of antagonists. The correlate of the equivalent innervations is equal sensations of energy of movement coming from the two sides. Hence the feeling of balance. Hence (from the lack of unimpeded movement on the short side) the feeling there of 'intensity,' or 'concentration,' or 'greater significance.' Hence, too, the 'ease,' the 'simplicity,' the 'placidity' of the long side.
As in traditional symmetry, the element of unity or identity, in unequal division, is a repetition, in quantitative terms, on one side, of what is given on the other. In the simple line the equal division gives us obviously exact objective repetition, so that the psychophysical correlates are more easily inferred, while the unequal offers apparently no compensation. But the psychophysical contribution of energies is not gratuitous. The function of the increment of length on one side, which in the centrally divided line makes the divisions equal, is assumed in unequal division by the end point of the short side; the uniform motor innervations in the former become, in the latter, the additional innervation of antagonists, which gives the equality. The two are separated only in degree. The latter may truly be called, however, a symmetry of a higher order, because objectively the disposition of its elements is not graphically obvious, and psychophysically, the quantitative unity is attained through a greater variety of processes. Thus, in complex works of art, what at first appears to be an unsymmetrical composition, is, if beautiful, only a subtle symmetry. There is present, of course, an arithmetically unequal division of horizontal extent, aside from the filling. But our pleasure in this, without filling, has been seen to be also a pleasure in symmetry. We have, then, the symmetry of equally divided extents and of unequally divided extents. They have in common bilateral equivalence of psychophysical processes; the nature of these differs. In both the principle of unity is the same. The variety through which it works is different.
FOOTNOTES.
[1] Witmer, Lightner: 'Zur experimentellen Aesthetik einfacher räumlicher Formverhältnisse,' Phil. Studien, 1893, IX., S. 96-144, 209-263.
[2] op. cit., 212-215.