The beautiful and the sublime; an analysis of these emotions and a determination of the objectivity of beauty

Preface

The object of the author of the following treatise has not been to furnish a new manual of the science of Esthetics, but to re-discuss the fundamental questions which underlie it ; to reach those postulates of the science which must have their justification in a Constructive Philosophy.

I have endeavored to stray no farther than was needful for my immediate purpose into the domain of Physical Science, Metaphysics, or Theology, and have avoided, as far as possible, using their technical terms.

As for the Psychology and Ethic implied in this treatise, I have to say that they are the result of my own thinking. I have received suggestions, of course, but what I have said I have verified in my own thought, or am prepared to justify ; and I am under no particular obligations which are not herein expressed.

In keeping strictly within these limits, it has been impossible not to make assumptions. AH sciences are in their roots interlaced, and no philosophy can justify itself which is not exhaustive. I have endeavored to approach the ultimate phiiv Preface,

losophy from the Esthetic position, which I have sought carefully to survey. From those who agree with me in my psychological definitions, and ethical postulates, I hope for a full sympathy.

I have avoided making application of the results I have reached to particular questions in Art, and Art-criticism, except so far as was necessary for illustration. It has always seemed to me a faulty method in most aesthetic treatises^ the mingling up prematurely the consideration of Art with the investigation into the prior questions of the Emotion of the Beautiful, and the definition of Beauty ; since these are pre-supposed as the origin of the art-impulse itself. Hence, I have endeavored to keep this branch of the science pure, I have been obliged, indeed, to speak of music, for the simple reason that nature herself utters beautiful sound, and the same principle must explain that as explains music which is the production of Art. It is obvious that if the results of my work are received as true, they may be carried into the whole work of appreciation and criticism in the several Arts of Landscape, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Literature, Oratory, Poetry, and Histrionics.

I have avoided, too, entering, more than a little, into the question of itisthetic culture, for the reason that that is k part of the question of culture in general ; and only after the question of ethical culture has been settled, can it find its just place, and determining principle.

Preface. v

While my treatise is intended, primarily, as a contribution to the philosophy of the science, I have endeavored to cast it in such form and style as to interest all intelligent readers, who, if they are patient over some parts of the work, may find it, elsewhere, and on the whole, compensatory.

The negative or critical part of my work is, for the most part, relegated to the two supplementary chapters. This I have sought not to make tedious. But the vindication of mine against opposing theories is to be found in the positive, or constructive part, which is an attempt at the unification, rather than the reconciliation of all theories hitherto, which have been predominantly subjective or objective.

Book I

The Beautiful and the Sublime as Subjective, CHAPTER I.

PAGE

Definition of Terms—Psychology— The Animal Consciousness, . . . . . i

CHAPTER H.

Development of Self-Consciousness— Feeling — Limitation — Longing — Symbols, . . 6

CHAPTER HL

Culture— Natural Endowment— Ideas— Insight —Imagination— The Actual and the Ideal, ii

CHAPTER IV.

The Physical a Necessary Element in all Ideals, . . , . . .19

CHAPTER V.

Imagination, . . . . . .24

CHAPTER VI.

Correspondence, . . . . .28 viii Contents.

CHAPTER VII.

PAGE

Thf Subjective Appreciation — The Straight Line — Curves — Grace, . . . .31

CHAPTER VIII.

Color— Gradation— Purity — Richness— Sound — The Lower Senses, . . . .36

CHAPTER IX Symmetry— Proportion, . . . .41

CHAPTER X.

Intellectual Beauty — Shelley's Hymn — Final Cause, . . . . . .46

CHAPTER XL The Sublime, Mathematical and Dynamical, . 54

CHAPTER XII.

The Beautiful and the Sublime in Alternation — Burke's Solution—Kant's Solution — Niagara, . . . . . .58

CHAPTER XIII.

The Sidereal Universe — Intellectual Sublimity, ......

CHAPTER XIV.

The Moral Idea— Moral Beauty, . . , (>(>

CHAPTER XV.

Character — Manners — The Human Countenance, . . . . . .72

Contents. ix

CHAPTER XVI.

PAGE

Music — Time— Symbolism, . . . .79

CHAPTER XVn.

Moral Sublimity — Spiritual Sublimity, . . 85

CHAPTER XVni.

Symbols of Moral Beauty and Sublimity— Subjective Ideals — Taste — Emotion as Conditioning Truth, . . . . .92

CHAPTER XIX.

Wordsworth's Ode —Diminution of the Sense of Beauty— How Retained — The Constructive Imagination as Determined by Subjective Ideals, . . . . .99

CHAPTER XX.

Deformity— Ugliness— Evil, . . . .106

Chapter II

Kant— Schiller— Hegel— Prof. H. N. Day. . 202

BOOK I.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUB- LIME AS SUBJECTIVE.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

DEFINITION OF TERMS, — PSYCHOLOGY, — THE ANI- MAL CONSCIOUSNESS.

In order to fix the meaning of the terms used in the following Treatise, as much of the Psychology implied as is required for that purpose is given in this introductory chapter.

I use the word '^ soul,'' meaning that the soul is the true concrete. It is spirit as related to the realm of ideas, or of thought. It is body as related to the physical universe. The notion '* mind '* is reached by abstraction. It is the soul regarded as knowing or thinking; as "will" is the soul regarded as acting, concentrating itself for a purpose, governing, regulating, adapting its own movement.

It belongs to the soul to feel, by virtue of its relation to either realm. It feels because of nature, and by virtue of the sensitive organism. It feels because of spirit, by virtue of the attraction and repulsion of ideas. It belongs to both realms, which meet in it. We know it only as the synthesis of the two, and not as pure nature, nor pure spirit. It is the subjective unity of the two, which may make itself objective in the idea, " man," of which it is the concrete manifestation, even though it be determined by its heredity and environment to an idiosyncrasy.

The human soul is called a " self" because in its consciousness, it distinguishes and relates the two realms, or materiel therefrom ; and all of its states are determinations from both sources, amid which it determines itself, and out of which it constructs its own world.

As related to the two realms thus in it penetrating each other, it has susceptibilities^ (modes of passivity), — Sensation, Registration (before perception), Memory (after perception), on the one side ; and on the other, Emotion. And it has also Faculties^ (modes of activity), — Perception, Recollection (including Representation), Fancy, Insight, Understanding, Judgmeiit, Reason, Imagination. In the concrete activity several or all of these coalesce. The list may or may not be complete, nor is it needful that it should be, as any change in relation, or in object matter, may %vjq rise to a special active process, to which a name might be given.

** Reason ** is used, too, to mean not only a faculty, but a Light, — as the sum of the special human elements, superadded to the animal soul, hence, as our common possession, as nature is, the impersonal element, the bond of spiritual union, the testimony to consciousness that we belong to a world above nature, or which may be abstracted from nature, or which is nature^ own dialectic.

Definition of Terms. 3

There are other uses of the word *' will " into which I may be betrayed. Sometimes it is used to mean mere wish or desire, which may be the consciousness of a spontaneous impulse, or of the attraction of an ideal end or aim. Sometimes it is used to mean, the prevailing bent or tendency of the soul, — /. e. — character, — in which case it represents the entire humanity of the individual, as it found itself, as it has made itself, as it is.

As a faculty. Will shows itself in Attention, But its first attention was not the souls own act. It had to be acted upon before it could re-act. It was quickened from without. Till then there could be no memory. And consciousness, blind, vague, diffused over the entire organism, is then drawn to a physiological centre, — the psychological history commences, and consciousness shows itself as a perpetually flowing state. Hence consciousness is not a faculty, but the description of the existing, changing movement and condition of the totality of the susceptibilities and faculties.

Consciousness belongs to the animal as such, and is to be distinguished from human self-consciousness, which exists because of Reason, enabling the soul to vibrate between the two attractions, and out of them to form its own third attraction. The animal feels, enjoys, suffers ; and the higher animal also remembers, associates, fancies, dreams, communicates by symbolic sound or touch. There is more than an iteration of disconnected irritations and reflections. There is a continuous, yet varying

4 The Beautiful ajid the Sublifne.

feeling of complacency, interrupted sometimes and changing into uneasiness, yet resuming its normal character again, and by which it. is impelled. And the higher animal is capable of connecting the past with the present, and of anticipation. For this fluctuating continuity there is no better name than consciousness. In the lowest stage of development it is more than irritation, it is enjoyment, which may not transcend the bounds of the immediate present, but which with more complex structure, expands in both directions, and links past and future with the present. Thus consciousness is unfol'ded, and requires new descriptions, as it mounts, in the ascending concretions of the life-principle.

There is no evidence that the plant enjoys. Its history gives no hint that happiness is possible for it. Here is an absolutely new element, and an hiatus for human understanding that can never be bridged over. The idea of the plant is to be studied in the most complex specimen, which alone exhibits the complete development, and the display of the full round of its potentialities. The apparent and the structural resemblance between the lowest animal and the lowest plant is very great ; but the ideas are essentially different, as we see when each is^ developed. Enjoyment in the lowest form marks the lowest animal as higher in the scale of dignity than the highest plant. The apparent and the structural resemblance between the lowest man and the lowest animal is a minimum, yet they possess a common property not possessed by the

Definition of Terms, 5

plant, which shows man to be an animal still. As before, the ideas can only be compared by studying them as developed in the highest brute, and the highest man. If a difference radical can be detected in this case, as in the other, it shows that there is an hiatus between the animal and man, likewise not passable for understanding.^

* In speaking of the animal consciousness I am not wedded to the word, if a better one can be found, so only the condition be recognized as justly described, and as distinguished from the irritability of the plant on the one hand and the human self-consciousness on the other. The etymology of the word does not forbid this use, for, as a continuous state of feeling, not arithmetically divisible, it has a unity of its own, legitimating the prefix " con^' — and as feeling is the rudimental form of knowing, the " scions " is not illegitimate.

The positions above are not affected by the fact of the existence of a common physical basis — protoplasm, nor oi protista, intermediate or transitional forms. There must be a point where the idea of the animal is recognized, no matter where it shall settle ; — and the idea cannot be recognized by the mind as implicit, till it is known as explicit.

CHAPTER 11.

DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS,— FEEL- ING,— LIMITATION, — LONGING,— SYMBOLS.

The human being is a sensitive organism, having the capacity of enjoyment. No doubt, in the healthy infant enjoyment exists, and is the rudimental form of consciousness: and in his rapid development, he becomes so related to his environment that a variety of agreeable sensations is possible. Each sense brings its own pleasure. The eye and the apparatus behind it are so constructed, that gratification comes from a particular color, and a lesser gratification, or a disagreeable irritation from another color. One sound is pleasing, another harsh ; and the same distinction pertains in the other senses. Thus, existence in the child is a round of agreeable relations, mingled with many that are disagreeable.

Sooner or later certain sets of sensations are gathered to a focus, and sensations become perception of individual objects. It is a wondrous step, implying activity in the awakening soul, though started by impact from without. Experience begins, and we have the second form of consciousness. In relating its sensations to itself, and

Development of Self-Conscionsness. 7

by that to each other, the soul becomes self-conscious ; for these relations are discovered, in an after examination, to be such as to imply that there is another element than the physical in the soul, that it has its own structure, and supplies the forms oi its own knowing; and because of this, we call it a spiritual or rational soul, hence a self-conscious soul, for in unifying its sensations, it has distinguished the duality implied by that unity.

The analyzing and synthesising processes go on, after the various modes of association, the horizon of experience widens, new implications are discovered, and objects come to be seen in their essential ideas, and thus is reached the third form of consciousness. But every perception, and every recognition of an idea* is enveloped in the consciousness of enjoyment, not, it may be, untroubled, but dim or vivid, and becoming more varied as the life of experience expands. Thus while physical sensation or mental activity can in thought be abstracted from the feeling of enjoyment, or its opposite, in fact they never exist apart, and hence we might conclude that they never can be separate.

This consciousness of enjoyment, or of the deprivation of that once had, or of pain, is the first spring, and always a chief spring of all human activity ; nor can any concrete form of being, involving self-consciousness, be conceived as without this accompaniment of feeling, penetrating it through-

* I say *' recognition " because an idea is implied in any object perceived.

out. We infer, therefore, that it must be essential to the idea of self-conscious, self-determined being in its highest form, and hence we argue blessedness in God.

Nor can enjoyment be thought as pertaining to an utterly solitary self-conscious being. It evidently comes only from relation, and if it is an element in the definition of the absolute Being, if it belongs to God Himself, such relation must be possible for Him, and must exist as a part of His definition. No blind principle, which does not enjoy, which does not love, can then explain the universe. Delight could never come from such a source, — be reflected from such an origin. Reciprocity of some sort, — blessedness therefore, is an essential element of the idea of the Highest and First Concrete.

As self-conscious concretes, related to the physical universe, we are, then, necessarily capable of enjoyment from such relation. But pain cannot, then, be needless, since it is possible, and since it exists. How it comes to be possible for animal life, and whence the want of concord and correspondence between the physical universe, of which men are a part, and their ideal requirements, — out of which other suffering comes, — these are speculative enquiries I shall not enter into now.

In the flow of the consciousness of the child there soon arises an experience which overshadows all the others, namely, that of limitatioUy — wherein, the self, and the not-self are set in sharper contrast and each acquires a new distinctness. The envir-

Development of Self -Consciousness. 9

onment is repressing, obstacles surround him at every turn, his desires are crossed, his actions meet with resistance. He discovers that he is restrained, that he is not absolute nor independent, but only a fragment in a sphere whose vastness widens as his experience increases. But all this is accompanied by, or followed by the discovery of his own power to modify his environment. He is not utterly fettered by it, but can control it within bounds. He desires to dominate it as far as he can, but never loses the sense of contradiction. His ideal of a possible, or desirable life, or state of conscious enjoyment, enlarges and enriches itself with his constantly growing knowledge ; but the appreciation of his imperfection becomes more vivid, with the discovery of the elements of such larger life, — a life less restrained and richer in content ; and the longing for such life is a constant stimulus to activity, inward and outward.

In the world around him he beholds resemblances to this object of his perennial and ruling desire, — suggestions of a freer life than his own, with fewer restraints, and richer from manifold relations. Motions are noted which resemble his own internal movement when struggling against his limitations. The motion of a bird, for instance, reveals to him the possibility of a mode of being freed from one restraint under which he finds himself. The fitness of a plaything to produce agreeable feeling suggests the possibility of ampler experience, of which more and more agreeable feelings shall be constituents. Thus, all things surrounding him, suggesting other capabilities of existence, become types or symbols of such freer and ampler mode of being. These resemblances and suggestions fascinate him, and grow upon him perpetually. The enjoying, yet longing soul is quickened to seek them. It analyzes, separates, and then associates itself with what it seeks. Objects, movements, which have this common quality stimulate the soul afresh to live in this self-constructed ideal which measures its present apprehension of the perfect life, — but which is ever expanding and becoming enriched. As an elastic force the soul strives to fill the periphery* of the sphere it has evolved.

And this activity is never without feeling, the feeling of delight, sometimes merging into that of uneasiness. Wherever the soul recognizes an element of the object-matter of its own desire, that desire receives new food, and the delight which accompanies it a new increment. I shall give names by and by to this soul-activity, to the delight which . envelopes it, to the quality which external objects have to elicit it, and to the underlying harmony which makes this correspondence between the soul and the worid possible.

* It has always seemed to me that we needed a word distinguishing the bounding superficies of a globe, from the bounding line of a circle. Hence I take the liberty of calling the latter *' circumference," and the former " periphery."

Chapter III

CULTURE,— NATURAL ENDOWMENT,— IDEAS, — IN- SIGHT, — IMAGINATION,— THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL.

In the special soul-activity alluded to in the previous chapter, and therefore in the delight accompanying it, there are all degrees and differences among children and among men. This must depend to some extent upon differences in culture or education. The detection of resemblance or correspondence will have a narrow or wide range according as external opportunities are supplied, and as self-education, or use of time and direction of energies, differs. Every individual human being is a new synthesis of the essential constituents of humanity, and therefore has a peculiar environment, is a particular evolving power, and has his own appropriate ideals. But still the resemblances among men are more numerous and more essential than their differences, and I have described in the foregoing chapter their common history, and the universal form of the growth of consciousness. It is possible, however, that one with a limited experience, and living in a smaller circle, and who has found fewer resemblances to his ideal, or enrichments of the same, may yet have a more intense appreciation of that resemblance, and hence a greater delight in its contemplation. This must depend, therefore, on the possession in higher degree of some faculty, — on greater quickness, and strength, and persistence in this mode of mental activity. And the reward of such activity is greater where it is strongly directed upon few objects than in the other case where it is feebler and dissipated among many. This particular faculty it is needful, therefore, that I should more fully describe, and give to it a name.

But on the other hand, it must be noticed, that when the soul thus acting is stimulated and gratified by the supply of many objects in a larger experience, the ability and the facility to detect such resemblances are increased, and that the delight accompanying it becomes a stimulus of increasing power, whereby attention is more easily aroused, becomes firmer in its concentration, and keener in its vision.

The conditions for this sharp-sightedness, in which men differ so widely must be both physical and psychical, producing all degrees in the fineness of the sensory, (using this word here in the large sense of — the souls capacity to feel.) — To be able to see or to hear what others cannot, however, makes greater pleasure possible, but greater pain likewise. The fine musical ear, which may be rapt into the seventh heaven by an intricate harmony, may also be plunged into an abyss of torture by a discord.

Culture and Endowment, 13

Only the fine musical ear, which knows by its unique experience the capabilities of sound, can build up the lofty edifices of music. The same is true in other arts, — as of the poetic ear, with its delicate perception of rhythm, assonance, melody and harmony ; and of the appreciation of purity, tone and harmony m color. The mental power to make superb structures in the arts of music, poetry and painting, does not necessarily accompany this special fineness of the sensory ; but the latter is absolutely needed to be superadded to the former to constitute the perfect artist. These facts indicate that the conditions for the special activity which detects the correspondence between the actual and the ideal are both physical and psychical ; and that the degrees of delight in these resemblances require for explanation, antecedents in which the man may be regarded as passive, but such also \xv which he must be active. Again am I brought to the need of examining and naming this special soul-activity.

I have said that in the history of consciousness the self is brought face to face with Ideas. In the pure sensation the self knows itself only as acted upon, but in perception it knows also its own activity. But perceptions as such have no fixedness, since exactly the same synthesis of sensations never recurs. Though registered in the brain, they are hardly yet food for memory. But when the self not only imparts to any such synthesis its own unity, but correlates its parts as well as relates them to itself, we have more than a perception, we have an idea, — whose constituents are interdependent, whose centre and circumference are the same. It becomes a sort of organism of the self's own creation, to which it is thenceforward allied as a modification of itself, in which it lives and finds itself, which becomes its own mode of being for the time, which is thus inextricably linked with the life of the soul, and which can be recalled. Memory has thus more substantial food, and the understanding fixed ingredients to assimilate.

The universe is thus sown with ideas.* They are not necessarily full growths, but susceptible of amplification with an enlarging experience. For this attention is required, always voluntary, yet with degrees of deliberation, — sometimes so faint as that

* It seems hardly necessary to say, here, that by 'ideas* I do not mean mental images of objects, — ^but that the idea is the object, and the object is the idea itself, in the subjective form that we have it. If the idea is amplified by the discovery of a new implication, the object itself is amplified. Thus, two persons, seeming to see the same object, do not, because the idea, or the sum of implications is larger in the one case. Hence all objects, as ideas, are imperfectly seen, yet not on that account untruly. We agree, as having so far the same, yet disagree, as having more or less. But the idea, though subjectively apprehended, implies objectivity, since we are determined from without. It is the form, growing in completeness and distinctness, which the thought in the universe takes for our apprehension. Ideas then, are relatively true, though incompletely seized. They are reflections in us of the external universe, — rather, reproductions of its intelligence. Hence as every idea is a. sum of relations, no idea has absolute truth, but only that idea which is the synthesis of ideas, and as the totality is yet in flux for our apprehension, we have not yet seized the absolute.

Culture and Endowment, 15

it seems spontaneous, — and aroused by stimuli either external or internal. But beneath this fixed gaze the idea is illumined, its interior relations grow more distinct, and new implications are detected, yet it never loses its outness or objectivity. It is the property of the self, yet the property of the universe. As we know ourselves only in and through consciousness, it is legitimate to say, that the soul lives in its ideas, and has the power of transfusing itself into them. In all contemplation of external things there is a going out of one's self, as much as there is a bringing in to one's self. The knowledge of one's self as otherwise determined can almost be lost in the abandonment of one's self to an idea by which it is at the time utterly determined. It is for the time being the form of the soul's life, and shows in the soul a wonderful power of transfusion, and to become that which it contemplates, which may be still only itself, but is itself modified by that which it has not itself supplied.

It is then one fact that it can apprehend the idea, another that it can recall it, another that it can infuse itself into it, and make its mode of being its own. By what names shall we call these modes of soul-activity, or faculties of the mind. There is no name for the first upon which psychologists are as yet entirely agreed, and I shall call it for my purpose, — Insight. The name of the second is Recollection, or Representation, implying Memory, which becomes when the materiel supplied is arbitrarily or sportively arranged, — Fancy. And for the third soul-activity, the most wonderful one that man possesses, I know no better word, (though it is often degraded to lower uses,) than Imagination."^

We may notice also, that ideas not only multiply in number, but that vaster ones are reached, and that there is a constantly ascending hierarchy. Thus what was at first ^^prehension becomes comprehension. The idea of a particular plant leads us to the idea of vegetable life, which brings out new implications in the idea of the plant ; and in an order not invariable, are attained the idea of the animal, of our earth, of the solar system, of the stellar universe, of man, the microcosm, the reflected universe ; — and at length, the idea of the First Principle, which gives unity to the totality.f Into each and all of these the soul may transfuse itself, or may make the attempt, and find itself in a larger mode of being, — in this endeavor sharpening the contrast with its actual. It finds high gratification in this activity. Even though compelled to descend from the height which it sometimes reaches, it has felt delight in its residence there, which haunts it, and which it is indisposed to forget. It yields to the fascination, when it can, courts it often when it

* I am aware that I do not use the word Imagination in the sense in which Kant and others do, i. e. th e faculty of Representation of perceptions. The latter word is sufficient for this, and we need the former, or some other, to express the activity sui generis whereby consciousness finds itself in the idea, and makes the life of the object or motion regarded its own.

f See Note A. in Appendix.

Culture and Endowment. 17

can, and reluctantly, at first, recedes, when recalled by the necessities of its actual existence. These necessities are imperious, and it subsides into the actual, and contents itself with the attainable. It must work, and repress the play-impulse. An end possible to be reached, an ideal attainable it sets for itself sooner or later. But the ideal desirable^ which it has been enabled to construct from these manifold suggestions, solicits it still, and into that it escapes seldom or often, and with variant degrees of gladness, yet ever drawn back, as by an elastic cord, into the actual.

Thus arise the differences among men, — in the ability or the disposition to live in the attainable ideal, or in that which is desirable. No one utterly escapes the fascination of the latter, as no one misses the pleasure of success, or the pain of failure in the former. Completer identification with the attainable makes briefer and briefer one's residence in the desirable. Hence the ability to live in the desirable is ruled by the disposition to live in it ; and that ability may diminish from disuse, yet never quite expire. Delight in the one or the other, increasing, or lessening, thus measures the special soul-activity which I have named Imagination. One can come to live so entirely in the actual life, and be ruled by an ideal which seems attainable, as to be only occasionally and faintly stirred by the attractiveness of the seemingly unattainable : and, conversely, one can live so entirely in the latter, and feed one's Ufe by its types or i8 The Beautiful and the Sublime,