PHYSIOLOGICAL JISTHETICS. LIBRAnv ♦ . PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. BY GBANT ALLEN, B.A. # A'- ' ' 'A" .^^-•-'--'^^ • tlBRARY , Henry S. King & Co., London. 1877. LONDON : BKADUUKY, ACiNliW, & CO., IRlNlliKS, WHITliFKIAKS. (The rlijlils ni fever or other depressing disease; nervous debility; and tliosc undefinable organic feelings Avhich result from general ill-health. This Avhole class is strongly marked olf from the preceding one both subjectively and objectively. On the psychical side, the vivid element of l*ain jtroper is Avanting, and there is present in its stead a vaguer feeling of distress. Indeed, the class might better be described as Discomforts than as Pains, only that unfortunately Ave liave no more comprehensive term under AA'hich to include 16 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. them both. On the physical side, they result ratlier from a want of efficiency in the tissues than from any actual disintegration. The Acute Pains, as a class, arise from the action of surrounding destructive agencies ; the Massive Pains as a class, from excessive function or insufficient nutriment. Of course, wounds and amjjutations cause loss of blood, and so give rise to Massive Pains ; while, on the other hand, many diseases are accompanied by Acute Pains : still, in each case, the sufferer is able easily to distinguish between the two sets of feelings, and to refer them ac- curately to their objective counterparts. Massive Pains are occasioned by a general state of in- nutrition, either in the body as a whole or in any of its component systems. The organism being perpetually dis- integrated by slow degrees, as its de-energized constituents are cast off and excreted, requires to be supplied with fresh integrable energy-yielding matter from time to time : and if it is not, the unpleasant feelings of inanition and faintness occur. When muscular toil has been pushed too far, a disintegration takes place beyond the regular repairing powers of the circulating fluids, and the result is the feel- ins: of fatisrue. In a wound, besides the Acute Pain of the disruption, there is loss of blood and waste of nerve tissue, both of which conspire to produce faintness. In febrile disorders, the energy-yielding tissues are wastefully con- sumed, and the loss gives rise to weakness and giddiness. In the special organs, over-use is followed by fatigue, as in reading too long, looking at a bright light or a mass of white, hearing a din or roar, and so forth. In the brain, PLEASURE AND PAIN. 17 excessive thought is followed hy depression. In short, Massive Discomforts occur whenever, in the whole or any part, waste of tissue largely outruns repair ; and this may happen alike from rapidity of waste or from insufficiency of repairing matter. It should also be noted that Massive Pains, when pusliod to an extreme, merge into the Acute class. For example, the gnawing feelings of inanition, the burning of thirst, and the excessive stimulation of the eye or ear, all reach a pitch of painfulness which may well be considered as Acute. Neuralgia is also attributed by most modern authorities to a general state of innutrition in the nervous system or a portion of it. Indeed, the two classes are rather indefinite in their limits, being simply a convenient working distinc- tion, not a natural division. In order to account for the nexus between these objective states and their subjective manifestations, the human or animal organism may be conveniently regarded as a com- plicated and delicate machine, speciidly constructed for self- conservation and the production of like organisms in the future. That it should be so constructed as to correspond with the environment is a condition-precedent of its existence at all. Hence every organism, in proportion to the com- pleteness of its adaptation, energetically resists any act which interferes with its efficiency as a working machine: and such interferences are known subjectively as Pains. Now nothing can more thoroughly militate against the efficiency of the mechanism than tlie loss of any one of its component parts : and we find accordingly that to deprive the body of 18 niYSIOLOGICAL .ESTHETICS. any one of its members is painful in a degree roughly l)roi)ortionate to the general value of such member to the organism as a whole. Take for example the relative painfiil- ness of severing from the body a leg, an arm, an eye, a finger- nail, a hair, or a piece of skin. Acute Pains are those which arise from any such dismemberment of the working machine : and, the organism being self-regulating, they naturally prompt to the most energetic efforts for the cessa- tion or suppression of the destructive action. Again, the body being a machine, and all machines being devices for the transference of potential into kinetic energy, it is necessary that the body should from time to time be supplied with matters possessing potential energy. It is accordingly fatal to the organism that it should not be suffi- ciently su})plied with the matters necessary for replacing the losses which it sustains in performing its functions. For when once the organism ceases entirely from the cycle of its functions, they are seldom if ever restored.* So, too, it is in a lesser degree undesirable that any part should be so rapidly disintegrated as to outrun the supply of energy-yielding matters afibrded it by the blood. Hence arise Massive Pains ; which, when caused by fatigue, partial or general, lead us to seek that repose which alone can give relief and restore the wasted tissues ; and, when caused by the lack of integrable matter, prompt us, through the feelings which we class as cravings or appetites^ to search after the needful objects of food and drink. * I make the exception in favour of recoveries from what is dogmatically ttriaud "suspended auiiuution." PLEASURE AND TAIN. 19 An illustration of an extreme sort will make this oleni-. If we suppose locomotive engines to have been evolved by natural selection, instead of having Leen consciously pro- duced by the art of man ; and if we imagine them to be in the habit of finding the coal for their own furnaces, and the water for their own boilers ; if we further conceive them to su})ply automatically, by circulating ducts, the losses through friction in their joints, and to spread oil over their bearings; and if, lastly, we crown the picture by supposing those grotes(pie and complicated monsters to be endowed with consciousness similar to our own : then, upon any atten)i)t to hack or destroy the piston or cylinder, to oxydise any portion of the fittings, or to pull asunder any of the joints, the engine would experience a feeling analogous to Acute Pain, and would make violent demonstrations of resistance ; upon any deficiency of water or coal, interfering with its proper Avorking, it would be the subject of a Massive Dis- comfort, in the shape of a craving, which would prompt it to seek the missing element; while, lastly, upon any con- siderable waste of its substance or extra friction from want of oil, it would suffer from the other variety of Massive i'ain, known as fatigue, which would produce an inaction, analogous to sleep, until the automatic circulation had repaired the wasted parts and supplied the lost lubricat- hig matter. Such self-conserving machines are ail living- organisms; and, unless they were so, they would necessarily cease to exist themselves, and Avould be unable to produce similar beings for the future. Finally, it may be added, without entering into the c 2 20 niYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. ultimate question of the connexion between pliyr.ical and psychical states, that there seems a certain concinnit y and fit- ness in the correspondence between these feelings and their olijef'tive counterparts : in other words, the consciousness of Pain or Discomfort bears somewhat tlie same relation to other conscious states as the physical fact which underlies it bears to other conditions of the system. § 3. Pleasure. "We may now leave Pains for the present, and pass on to the consideration of Pleasures, returning to the former subject in a general summing up, which we shall be better able to understand when we have looked at both sides of our emotional nature. Professor Bain has formulated the connexion of emotional feelings with physical states in the following law : " States of pleasure are concomitant with an increase, and states of pain with an abatement, of some, or all, of the vital func- tions." Now with regard to Pains, the reader will have already seen that this law is both too vague and too general, but is otherwise correct, as far as it goes. As regards Pleasures, however, it seems open to more serious objection. In the endeavour to be antithetical it misses the real relationship between the two states. If Pleasures were the l)sycliical concomitants of an increase of some of the vital functions, then our two greatest, if not our only Pleasures ought to be digestion, and repose after exertion : whereas these are really only minor and very indefinite Pleasures. Mr. Bain has sighted this difiiculty, but, not ai)preciating PLEASURE AND TAIN. '_>1 its full force, has entleavoured to avoid it by a supi)leineiitaiy theory of " stimulation," wliich appears to me for more important than his main law. I believe the true principle of connexion to be this : Pleasure is the concomitant of the healthy action of any or all of the organs or meml)ers supplied with afferent cerebro-spinal nerves, to an extent not exceeding the ordinary powers of reparation possessed by the system. And just as the two laws are not exactly antithetical, so, too, the feelings themselves are not directly and absolutely oi)posed to one another, as will be seen in the sequel. To begin, as before, with the most obvious manifestations, Pleasure on the whole is chiefly referable to a healthy state of the organism generally, one in which every part is enabled to perform its i)roper functions unimpeded, and no undue call is made upon any single organ or member. It is true that in such a state of the organism we are not conscious of any special or acute Pleasure, particularly if we are not engaged in the active* exercise of our limbs, or of the alimentary and si^xual organs : but we are conscious (in the absence of any pain-giving causes) of a subdued undercurrent of pleasur- able feeling which forms the background of our emotional state. And if, in such a condition of body, we give free play to all the activities of the system, nervous and muscu- lar, — as in taking a morning walk on a sunny day in spring, after a good night's rest, and a hearty breakfast, — we receive a massive impression of Pleasure which corresponds partially to the massive discomfort of fatigue, inanition, or antemia. Kow, in the first of these cases, the faint background of 22 niYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. Plonsnre is npparcntly referaLle to the due and uniTn|icded l>i'rforinanoe of tlie automatic energies, such as the circula- tory, respiratory, and digestive functions, which here as elsewliere add only a vague and unlocalised element to consciousness : while in the second case it is due to the voluntary activity of the muscular system, and to the stimu- lation of the freshly- repaired end-organs of nerves. Again, wlien we apply the proper stimulus to those organs whoso action is most intermittent (as those connected with ali- mentation and re|iroduction), we are conscious of an acute imi)ression of Pleasure, resulting from the strong hut normal excitation of fully-nurtured nervous structures. In short, it will be seen that while Professor Bain refers Pleasure to an increase in the efficiency of the organism, it may l)etter bo regarded as the concomitant of a normal amount of acHmty in any portion or the whole of the organism. Or, to employ once more our metaphor of the steam-engine^ we may say that Pleasure results, not from the act of coaling, watering, or oiling, but from the harmonious working of all the parts. And, as all activity implies a waste of tissue (since it is dynamically equivalent to the passage of potential into kinetic energy), Pleasure is to a certain extent concomitant with a decrease of vital func- tion. The limit at which such waste of tissue ceases to be pleasurable and begins to be painful is, I believe, the point where the waste exceeds the ordinary powers of repair. A single concrete instance will help to explain this. In the muscular sensibility we see at once that Pleasure is the PLEASUEE AND 1>AIX. 23 resultant of activity after repose. As soon, liowever, as the exercise has been continued to a point beyond the re})airing powers of the system, Massive Pain, known as fatigue, sets in. It is true, as ^Ir. J. S. jMill objected, that we only know when this point has been reached by the consciousness of fatigue itself: but that does not destroy the objective character of tlie fact. Viewed on its physiological side, the subject may be thus stated. Our nerves and muscles are supplied with a certain relatively-fixed amount of energy- yielding matters. After every active employment of the tissue, a certain amount of these matters, etj[uivalent to the strength of the activity, is deprived of its energy, and is cast otf into the blood as a decomposition product. The quantity of energy-yielding matters contained in each tissue is, of course, greatest after the integrative periods of ingestion, sleep or repose ; and least after continued exercise of the tissue, or long intermission of ingestion or reparation. The amount of energy-yielding matters available for ordinary activities lies between these two extremes. So long as a particular organ or member is called upon to yield up only so much of its energy as can be repaired within the normal period so as to restore it to its average condition, the resulting feeling is pleasurable, or at least neutral. But if it be called upon to expend so much energy as will depress it below its average condition, massive discomfort results, and increases in pro- portion to the extent to which the tissues are wasted. It is the same if, after the average amount of waste, new energy- yielding matters are not integrated. A starving sheep, as Professor Huxley forcibly puts it, is in the truest sense a 24 niYSIOLUGICAL iESTIIETlCS. carnivore ; for it is using up, in tlie performance of its l)iiy8iolo^ical functions, energy derived from the permanent tissues of its own organism. To borrow a metaphor from Political Economy, we may regard every tissue as pos- sessing a normal quantity of energy-yielding matters, as a reserve fund or fixed capital, and also another quantity as wages-fund or working cajjital. So long as it only employs the working capital, which from day to day and from minute to minute renews itself, without ever trenching ujjon the reserve-fund, all goes well, and the concern works easily. But as soon as it passes this limit and begins to draw ui)on its reserve or spend its fixed capital, there results the con- sciousness of bad working in the concern which we know as Pain or discomfort. Put it is only occasionally that the general exercise of the muscles or of the sense-organs yields us a distinct feeling of Pleasure. For the most part, our activities aiford us merely a neutral consciousness of the intellectual sort, without emo- tional diti'erentiation. Very seldom do they rise to the intensity of recognizable Pleasures. And this is explicable enough. Doubtless, every activity, when not excessive nor of a sort to prove destructive to the tissues, is in itself ftuntly pleasurable ; — indeed, we generally recognise this fact in our ordinary language ; — but owing to the com- monness and faintness of the feeling, we habitually disregard it. There are, however, two sets of occasions upon which the feeling aroused is sufficiently vivid to be recognised as distinctly pleasurable. The first is when, in a healthy state of the whole organism, under the influence of abundant food TLEASUEE AND TAIN. 25 and <,''oocl rest, the general stimulation of the nerves produces u consciousness of Massive Tleasuru ; the second is wlien the special stimulation of a single organ, whose periods of acti- vity are long intermittent, and which is at the culminating point of its nutrition, produces the consciousness of Acute Pleasure. As the Pleasures of the special senses will form the sub- ject-matter of our future chapters, we need not enter into them fully here. It will be sufficient to point out a few minor i)eculiarities. The strongest Pleasures result from the stimidation of the largest nervous organs, whose activi- ties are most intermitted, as in the case of the alimentary and re[)roductive senses. These Pleasures are greatest after the longest intermissions, and arc scarcely felt at all if stimulations are too frequently repeated. The weakest Plea- sures are those of the most universally stimulated organs, as in the tactual and thermal senses. Intermediate between these come the Pleasures of sight and hearing, which are comparatively intermittent in their activities, and whose stimulations are pleasurable in proportion to the infrequency of their occurrence. In short, the amount of Pleasure is probably in the direct ratio of the number of nerve fibres involved, and in the inverse ratio of the natural frequency of excitation. And here we see wherein the feeling of Pleasure fails to be exactly antithetical to the feeling of Pain, just as their objective antecedents similarly fail. Massive Pleasure can seldom or never attain the intensity of Massive Pain, because the organism can be brought down to almost any 26 PnYSIOLOGICAL 2ESTUETICS. point of innutrition or exhaustion, Lut its efficient working cannot be raised very high above tlie average. Similarly, any special organ or plexus of nerves can undergo any amount of violent disruption or wasting away, giving rise to extremely Acute Pains ; but organs are very seldom so highly nurtured and so long deprived of their appropriate stimulant as to give rise to very Acute Pleasure. Hence the common experience that our greatest Pleasures fall far short in intensity of our greatest Pains. It is in such a rare instance alone as that of the sexual organs, where stimulation only takes place (in normal cases) after long intervals of rest and nutrition, that Pleasure rises to the same pitch of monopolising consciousness which is so ordinary a result of excessive Pain. § 4. Invariability of the Relation between Pleasures or Pains and their Objective Concomitants. There is one final question, of great importance, which must be settled before we leave this part of our subject. It may be asked, — If Pleasure and Pain have the objective origin here assigned to them, how comes it that some deleterious acts are pleasant and some useful ones painful ? Paradoxical as it may seem, the simple answer is, they are not. There are no such cases. Every act, so long as it is pleasurable, is in so far a healthy and useful one ; and conversely, so long as it is painful, a morbid and destructive one. The fallacy lies in the proleptic employment of the words " deleterious" and " useful" To put it in a simple form, the nervous system is not prophetic. It informs us TLEASURE AND PAIX. 27 of what is its actual state at the moment, not what the after effects of that state will be. If we take sugar of lead, we receive at first a pleasant sensation of sweetness, because the immediate effect upon the nerves of taste is that of a healthy stimulation. Later on, when the poison begins to work, we are conscious of a painful sensation of griping, because the nerves of the intestines are then being actually disintegrated by the direct or indirect action of the irritant. In the process of evolution the higher organisms have gone on establishing a consensus between the various organs of the body, so that at last, for the most part, whatever will prove deleterious to any organ proves deleterious also to the first nerves of the organism which it affects; and such a harmony between the organs, once partially established, is continued and strengthened by the survival of the fittest. Naturally, however, this can only be the case when the deleterious objo^t is found sufficiently often in the environ- ment to give an additional point of advantage to any species which is so adapted as to discriminate and reject it. Now, acetate of lead does not occur at all frequently in nature, and moreover it closely resembles in its action upon the nerves of taste a commonly diffused and highly nutritious substance, sugar. Consequently, our nerves of taste, which have been so developed as to be normally stimulated by sugar, are similarly stimulated by the poisonous acetate. It is only when the internal nerves are acted upon that the difference begins to be perceived : and then the Pain gives an unfailing indication of disintegrative action. Indeed, the whole development of the special senses is a 28 rnYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. continuous adaptation of the organism to the environment, one of whose phases necessarily consists in the establish- ment of a consensus between the external peripheral nerves and those of the internal organs. Just as sight is a '' premonitory touch," and smell a premonitory taste, so taste itself is premonitory of the effect which the food will produce upon the digestive and assimilative systems. How- ever, such adaptation can only be approximate, at least until that final future equilibration when the organism has in every way adapt'^d itself to every possible modification of the environment. At any point short of that ideal goal, numerous failures of adaptation must naturally occur. Amongst mankind, the intellect has to fill up the gaps in the adaptation of the senses. For instance, the child who lights upon sugar of lead will trust only to the taste as a guide to its desirability as food ; the ordinary educated man will look for a label on the phial ; and the instructed chemist will recognise and avoid it by observing its peculiar properties. But in every case the nerves actually stimulated faithfully reflect their existing state at the moment of observation, by the feelings of Pleasure or Pain which they yield. § 5. Recapitulation. And now let us briefly sum up the general conclusions at which we have arrived. The human organism is a highly complex but not absolutely perfect self-regulating machine. It difters from nuichines of human construction in pos- sessing the mysterious attribute of consciousness. This consciousness is specially connected with and definitely PLEASURE AND TAIN. 29 related to a certain portion of the organism, known as tlio cerebro-spinal nervous system: or ratlier with particular members of tliat system. Every state of consciousness is a reflex or outcome of their physical states. The various sense-impressions are the reflex or outcome of tlieir states viewed from the aspect of tlie various portions differentially affected. Pleasure and Pain are the reflex or outcome of their states viewed from the aspect of efficiency ; that is to say, so far as regards their effects on the functions of the organism, considered as a self-regulating machine. ]*ain is the subjective concomitant of destructive action or insufH- cient nutrition in any sentient tissue. Pleasure is the subjective concomitant of the normal amoimt of function in any such tissue. But Pleasure and Pain are only the reflex of the actual state of the nerves, and do not neces- sarily yield any indications of their future state. Hence, actions which will ultimately yield painful sensations may in their earlier stages be pleasurable, and vice ve?\^d. How- ever, in the vast mnjority of cases, the consensus between the organs, produced by natural selection, is such, that whatever is prejudicial or beneficial to the organism as a whole, is generally painful or pleasurable respectively to the separate organs which it is likely to affect. Sucli are, briefly stated, the main princi[)les upon which we must base our S5'stem of Esthetics. CHAPTEE III. THE DIFFEKENTIA OF AESTHETICS. § 1. Work and Play. Havikg thus arrive.d at a physiological conception of Pleasure and Pain in general, we have next to consider wherein that class of pleasures and pains known as aesthetic difi'er from the remainder of their respective genera. And here I can do little else than repeat and expand the defini- tion given by Mr. Herbert Spencer; which, however, I shall try to express in more popular language, besides bringing it into closer connexion with my own plan of treat- ment. From the principles laid down in the last chapter, it will naturally follow that the greater part of our pleasures and pains are immediately and directly connected with necessary vital functions. The severest pains are those which result from actual violent dismemberment of any sentient tissue : which action has an obvious importance with reference to the general economy of the body, viewed as a self-conser- ving mechanism. The greatest physical })leasure8 are those which result from the normal amount of function in the most essential organic processes ; that is, in such processes TEE DIFFEEEXTIA OF iESTHETICS. 31 as are most directly concerned in the maintenance of life botb in the individual and in the species. Of these, the two most important are the ingestion of food, that is of fresh energy-yielding matters, which is the necessary con- dition for maintaining the life of the individual ; and the act of procreation, which is the necessary condition for maintaining the life of the species. Hence we might naturally conclude that the processes of eating and drink- ing and of sexual connexion would be the two greatest })hysical pleasures of which our nature is capable ; and if we take the unsophisticated suiFrages of humanity generally, we shall find that these are frankly recognised as such. Furthermore, on mentally running through the list of our chief pleasures and pains, we shall see that they are mostly connected with similar essential life-serving functions. Now the greater portion of our daily life, taking the average condition of man, is spent in directly or indirectly })roviding for these necessary physical wants. Work is the ordinary lot of human beings ; and to jirocure food, clothing, shelter, firing, and other necessities of life, is the main object of Work. We may either grow our own food-stuffs, spin and weave our own clothing, build our own hut, and cut our own firewood; or we may fulfil some more specialized function, and so indirectly obtain from others these com- modities and services. But in either case the main part of our lives is usually spent in ministering to the wants of our own organisms and those of our offspring, as working machines whose conservation in an efficient state 32 niYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. is of prime importance. Every action wliicli conduces to thi.s result may be roughly classed as Work. The activities thus originated may incidentally produce the pleasures of exercise, though they may equally produce the pains of fatigue. But the immediate pleasure is not the object for which they are undertaken. It is the vital function which they subserve that forms the spring of action, and the gratification, if any, is merely incidental to the pursuit. Work ultimately ministers to the stronger organic pleasures ; but it is undertaken for the most part without any immediate agreeable result. There is, however, another class of activities which are entered upon not for any ulterior object, but merely for the gratification which the activity affords. All such comparatively purposeless exercises may be roughly classed as Play. Let us see how these arise. Every nervous structure in its intervals of repose is perpetually undergoing repair. When repair has continued for a considerable period without fresh discharge, the structure reaches a state of high efficiency, and possesses an unusual quantity of potential energy. Any slight incident energy will then be sufficient to disturb the potential energy stored up in the nervous plexus, so that it will assume the kinetic form. If the consequent activity results in an integra- tion of external matter required by the organism, or in any other life-serving function, the process will belong to that kind of actions which we have roughly classed as AVork. But in a certain number of instances the organism will not as a whole require the particular discharge in question, nor will THE DIFFERENTIA OF ESTHETICS. 3;} the appropriate object be present ; and it will then result in a comparatively purposeless activity, which does not sub- serve any life-giving process, but which, nevertheless, being a normal manifestation of function in a fully-supplied nervous structure, will have as its subjective concomitant a slight feeling of pleasure. When this pleasure becomes the volitional stimulus to action, the resulting exercise is Play. Whenever, then, a fully-nourished organ does not obtain its proper amount of function in connexion with the neces- sary processes of life, there arises a spontaneous tendency for it to exercise itself on any appropriate object which it can discover. This tendency depends upon the existence of leisure (a spare period beyond that required for neces- sary activity and that required for sleep or repose), which is available for the exercise of activities other than those which contribute to the maintenance of ] '^ Hence arise two classes of impulses, those which give nse to Play, and those which give rise to Art and the ^Esthetic Pleasures. What is common to these two classes is their remoteness from life-serving function and their having pleasure alone as their immediate end. We have next to see wherein they differ from one another. § 2. ^^sthetic Pleasure differentiated from Flay Proper, Man, like every other organism, lives perpetually sur- rounded by an environment. The environment acts upon the organism, and the organism re-acts upon the environ- ment. Hence arise the two fundamental portions of our 34 niYSrOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. jisyohical nature, the passive and tlie active : a difference incorporated in the nervous system by tlie sensory and motor fibres and their central organs. Connected witli the passive side of our nature, are the organs and faculties of sight, hearing, toucli, taste, smell, and organic sensibility generally. Connected with the active side are the muscular system and the nerves which govern it. In this primordial distinction we see the root of the difference which we recognise between Play and the ^Esthetic Feelings. The first is active, the second are passive, "NVlien we exercise our limbs and muscles, not for any ulterior life-serving object, but merely for the sake of the pleasure which the exercise affords us, the amusement is called Play. "When we similarly exercise our eyes or ears, tlie resulting pleasure is called an ^Esthetic Feeling. In both cases the i)leasure is a concomitant of the activity of a well-fed and under-worked organ ; but in the latter instance it is on the receptive side, in the former on the re-active. So that -3^sthetic Pleasure may be provisionally defined as the subjective concomitant of the normal amount of activity, not directly connected with life- serving function, in the l)eripheral end-organs of the cerebro-spinal nervous system. What iEsthetic Pain (or rather disagreeable ^Esthetic Feel- ing) may be we shall see hereafter. For the present it will be necessary to turn aside for a moment to a collateral issue. Jn the lower senses almost every activity has a direct bearing upon life-giving functions. But in the two higher and specially fi3Sthetic senses, sight and hearing, no activity bears directly upon these functions, and comparatively few THE DIFFEREXTLY OF AESTHETICS. 33 even indirectly. Altliough without sight and liearing we shonhl not be able equally to guide ourselves in search of food, shelter, warmth, and so forth, nor to escape danger, nor to perform many necessary acts ; and although we ai-e constantly availing ourselves of these senses for such purposes, which indeed constitute their original intention, yet we incidentally and necessarily see and hear at the same time thousands of sights and sounds which do not so aid us. Now it may be objected that the vast majority of these sights and sounds add no appreciable emotional element to the total of consciousness. This is perfectly true, and the foct throws much light upon the real nature of pleasure and pain. It was noted above that while pleasure is the concomitant of a normal amount of function in sentient tissues, yet for the most part such normal function is not distinctly cognised as pleasurable, but simply remains at the neutral point ; because it does not do more than effect the discharge from time to time of the ordinary amount of potential energy which is being perpetually renewed : while all strong pleasures result from the escape of stored-up potential energy which has been hoarded for a considerable period. In the sense of taste, where the organs are only supplied with their appropriate objects at comparatively rare intervals, the nerves are usually so fully nurtured that every stimulant produces a considerable emotional effect, and is distinctly cognised as pleasurable or the reverse. Not till that point of satiety is reached at which we say that the taste is palled or glutted dojs the feeling become neutral. But in the case of sight and hearing, the organs D 2 36 PHYSIOLOGICAL -aJSTIIETICS. are so continually undergoing stimulation that very seklora, comparatively, are the nerves nurtured to the extent which gives rise to distinctly pleasurable feelings. For the most part, sights and sounds are only subjects of intellectual dis- crimination, without yielding appreciable emotional results. Occasionally, however, certain over-fed and under-worked nerves are specially stimulated, and then a ftiint feeling of j)leasure arises ; or, on the contrary, certain nerves are called upon to perform an excess of work, beyond their normal func- tions, and then a faint feeling of pain arises.* And it is just because the eye and the ear are so little connected with vitality that theirs are especially the aesthetic senses. It is the busi- ness of Art to combine as many as possible of their pleasurable sensations, and to exclude, so far as lies in its power, all their painful ones ; thus producing that synthetic result which we know as the aesthetic thrill. It may be noted as an illustration that what is thus asserted of the receptive side of our nature is equally true of the active. Most muscular action is neither pleasurable nor painful. Not only is Work proper usually neutral, though it may sometimes prove agreeable to fresh and active nerves and muscles, but even most of our leisure acts — altering the position of our limbs, walking from room to room, taking a constitutional, — are emotionally colourless. But occasionally we consciously undertake certain leisure activi- ties expressly for the pleasure which the exercise will give us ; and these leisure activities are what we strictly call * I say faint advisedly, because, as I shall afterwards show, the aesthetic wave is a cumulative effect of many infiuitesimal factors. THE DIFEEEENTIA OF iESTHETICS. 37 Play. Similarly when we arrange certain colours or musical notes in certain orders, expressly for the pleasure which their percei)tion will give us, we call the result, Art. So that what Play is to the active faculties, Art and the ^Esthetic Pleasures are to the passive. Finally, just as pleasure in the muscular sense is not necessarily limited to Play, but may incidentally arise from the ordinary exercise of the limbs, so pleasure in the higher senses is not necessarily limited lo Art or to consciously- sought aesthetic objects, but may incidentally arise in the contemplation of nature generally. § 3. Further Characteristics of ^'Esthetic Feelings. We have now arrived at some idea of the ^Esthetic Feel- ings. But this idea is incomplete until we have added one or two further limitations. These we can gradually attain by noticing the imperfections of our present conception. We have seen above that the mass of sights and sounds are emotionally neutral. This is true enough as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned : and, since pleasures and pains, being facts of consciousness, can only exist when consciously perceived, it is also true absolutely, within certain limits. Yet if we direct our attention to any sight or sound, in order consciously to appraise its assthetic value, or, in other words, to decide whether it is beautiful or ugly, we shall find that in almost every case it inclines slightly in one direction or the other. The reader can test this for himself by noticing the ftices, voices, and clothing of people whom he passes in the street, as well as the buildings and other 3P I'lIYSIoLOGICAL iESTIIETICS, Mirroiiruliiiga on citlior side. ])iit wc iilso find tluit wliile wu think of tliose various olfjccts as beautiful or u^nly, we do not usually think of the ticnsations tliev afford us as either l)leasant or the reverse. From this apparent paradox, which seems nt first sight to contradict our main jjrinciple, wo can uather two or three additional facts about /Esthetic Feelings. In the first place, we notice that in ordinary cases the fi'sthetic quality of objects is so slightly marked that only an exercise of attention can bring it definitely into conscious- ness. (T speak, of course, about the average of humanity; for men of the spetually aesthetic temperament instinctively notice these faint impressions without any conscious adjust- ment of attention.) So we may conclude that in those cases where pleasure is distinctly felt, the total amount of faintly pleasurable sensations must be considerable, and that the effect must be cumulative : which actual observation shows us to be the case. Of this, however, more will be said when we come to examine the senses severally. Again, since the pleasure or i)ain afforded by separate elements of sight and sound is so slight, and requires for its perception an exercise of attention, a faculty of our intellec- tual and volitional nature, it results that in most cases the objects affording the sensations are merely intellectually discriminated as beautiful or ugly, without seeming to any noticeable extent pleasant or painful. Only when the total amount of the emotional wave is very great — as in a fine landscape, a noble painting, a piece of grand music, a lovely woman, on the one hand ; or a miserable street, a wretched THE DIFFEEEXTIA OF .^.STIIETIC.% ;3'J strumming, a dirty and loatlisomuly ugly person, on the other — does the emotional element get the better in con- sciousness of the intellectual. Hence arises the apparent objectivity of beauty and ugliness. The feeling is too little emotional to be referred to a purely internal origin. And now we see our way clearly to that final prinf'ii)le which forms the ultimate differentia of yEsthetic Feelings. The aesthetically beautiful is that which affords the IMaxinuun of Stimulation with the Minimum of Fatigue or Waste, in processes not directly connected with vital functions. The testhetically ugly is that which conspicuously fails to do so ; which gives little stimulation, or makes excessive and wasteful demands upon certain portions of the organs. 13 ut as in either case the emotional element is weak, it is mainly cognised only as an intellectual discrimination. And so we get the idea of the Esthetic Feelings as something noble and elevated, because they are not distinctly traceable to any life-serving function. Observe, too, that the aesthetic senses, contrary to the ordinary rule, yield us considerable amounts of appreciable pleasure, but very little appreciable pain. The reason of this is not far to seek. In proportion to the directness of contact with external objects is the liability to violent disruptive actions. Now, the organs of the lower senses, taste and smell, and much more the limbs and muscles o-enerally, are at all times exposed to close contact with destructive agencies in the environment, which give rise to lacerations, burns, bruises, bitter and disagreeable tastes, bad odours, and other similar pains and discomforts. But 40 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. the eye and ear are specially protected from direct contact witli the environment, which they only cognise through the medium of aerial or sethereal undulations. It is true that the nerves of touch distributed to the conjimctica, which lines the eyelid and the outer portion of the eye, are sus- ceptible of ordinary disintegrative action, as when we get a pungent or acid substance under the eyelid : but the optic and auditory nerves proper are so protected as only to be susceptible of stimulation (in normal cases) by their appro- l)riate stimulant. Hence the sole disintegrative action to which they can, under ordinary circumstances, be subjected, is that which arises from excess of the normal activity, not from abnormal destructive excitation. In extreme cases, as wlien we look at the sun, or hear a loud explosion, the feel- ing so aroused rises to the intensity of acute pain : but in average cases it is the analogue of that glut or satiety which results in taste or smell from cloying oneself with honey, or with strong perfumes, such as magnolia, stephanotis, and tube-rose. Accordingly, while the normal exercise of the organs yields us pleasure which occasionally rises to the acute pitch, that excessive or inharmonious action which is implied in ugliness does not reach the Iteight of pain. Note, further, that as the connexion with necessary vital functions decreases, so also does the painfulness of undue stimulation decrease, and sink into mere discomfort, be- coming at last that matter of simple intellectual discri- mination which marks off the Esthetic Feelings from the stronger physical pleasures and pains. In organic sensi- bility the pains felt are violent ; in taste, they are rather THE DIFFERENTIA OF -ESTHETICS. 41 strong discomforts ; in smell they are slighter discomforts ; while in sight and hearing they are scarcely more than perceptions of ugliness. Finally, before we pass on to the next division of our subject, we may notice one last mark of the iEsthetic Feelings which Professor Bain considers as one of their main differentiae, but which should rather, perhaps, be treated as a projjevty, directly deducible from our general principle — I mean their disinterestedness and freedom from monopoly. As they are only remotely connected with life-serving func- tions, it follows that they can give pleasure to thousands without detracting from the enjoyment of each. As Professor Bain observes, " The olyects of Fine Art, and all objects called aesthetic, are such as may be enjoyed by a great number ; some, indeed, are open to the whole human race. They are exem})t from the fatal taint of rivalry and contest attaching to other agreeables ; they draw men together in mutual sympathy ; and are thus eminently social and humanising. A picture or a statue can be seen by millions; a great poem reaches all that understand its language : a fine melody may spread pleasure over the habitable globe. The sunset and the stars are veiled only from the prisoner and the blind." As a general remark, qualifying each of the special characteristics noticed in this section, it should be added that the testhetic quality is given to a feeling rather by the con- currence of many such characteristics than by the necessary presence of all or of any particular one. It is consequently somewhat indefinite, and any attempt to define it with strict 42 niYSlOLOCilCAL yT.STIIKTlCS. rigtnir would ho sure o'iIIilm- to oxt-hulo soiuo true yKstliotic Feelings, or to iuchulo some which couUl hiinlly elaini the title. At this point in our exposition we ure met by fi dinieulty whieh has had the etlect of making many thiidvers reject as impossible all scientilic treatment of ^^sthctics ; the diilicultv, namely, arising from that intinite variety of opinion in .Tsthetic matters which we call Taste. It may plausibly be asked. How can we account for feelings whieh are seldom or never exactly alike in any two [)ers()ns ? And again it may be objected to the explanation so far fore- shadtnved that if the percci)tions of beauty and ugliness had the phvsiolouical origin here sketched out, they ought to be the same in all indivitluals. Yet we may reasonably conclude Ci priori that, as nervous constitution ditfers iniinitely with regard to minute details in dilferent persons, and as ^Esthetic Feelings arc the cunudative elfect of many inlinitesinnxl physiological factors, the perceptions of beauty and ugliness would ditVer in various cases to an extent depending upon the structural variations of the nervous system. And this d priori inference we find to be borne out by well-known facts. We will first conline ourselves to the purely sensuous element of /Esthetics, leaving for later consideration the more complex emotional and intellectual factors. And here, to take the most extreme cases first, of course the deaf and the blind cannot possibly experience any kind of ^Esthetic Feeling from sounds or visible objects. It may seem absurd to notice such an obvious fact, yet it is worth TTIE DIFFJORENTTA OF Jl^STIIETIOS. 43 inonfi(>nin<;ii,s bcinf; ilio ultimate illiislnitioii of tlio jji-iiiciplc tluit (lifroreiioos of perception deperul upon (iinV'reiiee.s of striieture. Dcsecndinii: to wisch of slighter variations, tlio colour-blind cannot derive the same pleasure as others from judicious combinations of tints ; and those utterly destitute of musical ear cannot be <]^ratified or ofi'eiided by hiirniony or discord. It is hardly necessary to point out that these differences depend u[)on abnormal nervous structure. Pro- ceeding to nuitters of greater detail, all the senses yield us instances of varieties of Taste which are similarly referablo to slight morphological peculiarities. In the gustatory sense everybody has his own likes and dislikes. Children, with delicate organs and nervous centres not blunted by use, are olfended by curry, mustard, cayemie, and similar pungent condiments; while those adults whose palate is spoilt require such violent stimulants in order to arouse jaded sensation. Persons of strong digestion and healthy livers enjoy ])utter, oil, fat, and rich dishes ; whereas those of opposite diathesis are disgusted by them, owing to the sympathy which exists between the stomach and the entrance of the alimentary canal. Like varieties are found in the sense of smell. Musk, which is a pleasing stimulant to coarse or voluptuous natures, is an overpowering odour to the delicately or austerely constituted. Some people are unable to bear the perfume of strongly-scented flowers, such as jasmine : others are not offended even by caviare, ambergris, or patchouli. In the sense of hearing, savages and children, whose nerves are fresh and strong, are pleased by the violent stimulation of beating a tom-tom or a tin kettle, shouting an unvaried 44 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. note, or blowing a penny whistle : wliile most civilised adults are annoyed by such noises, and valetudinarians cannot endure the creaking' of a door or the noise of wind round the eaves. Monotony, which obviously makes excessive demands upon certain nervous structures, is intensely disagreeable to the musically cultivated, but seems rather pleasing to the less discriminative nervous centres of the utterly untutored ear. In a less degree of antithesis (involving certain complex emotional factors), the audience at a classical concert are gratified by the complex harmony of Bach's fugues ; while the public of a music-hall admire a chorus of Offenbach, and the street boys derive greater pleasure from the rollicking and boisterous melody of a comic song. In sight (omitting the phenomena of long and short sight, whose effects are rather intellectual than emotional) the vulgar are pleased by great masses of colour, especially red, orange, and purple, which give their coarse nervous organisation the requisite stimulus : the refined, with nerves of less calibre but greater discriminativeness, require delicate combinations of complementaries, and prefer neutral tints to the glare of primary hues. Children and savages love to dress in all the colours of the rainbow ; a Parisian costume is rather noticeable for its graceful outline, its rich trimmings, and the effects of harmony or contrast in its arrangement. Compare an Egyptian painting, staring in red, green, and yellow, with a water-colour by David Cox; or the scarlet and blue porcelain figures in a tap-room with Gibson's tinted Venus ; and recollect that each has its own circle of admirers. So that everywhere we see minor THE DIFFERENTIA OF AESTHETICS. 45 varieties of structure — central or peripheral — entailing minor variations in Esthetic Feeling, of which we ordinarily speak as Taste. If we examine these various cases, how do we find them reconcilable with the notion of a science of Esthetics ? Simply thus. — In spite of the minor variations here described, the vast majority of feelings are pleasurable or painful, as the case may be, to the vast majority of men alike. With every average individual, sweets are agreeable and bitters disagreeable; fresh meat allures and putrescent meat repels ; perfumes are pleasant and stenches noisome ; notwithstanding certain slight variations in cer- tain unimportant details. And similarly with sights and sounds : setting aside very abnormal cases, all alike enjoy the sunset and the rainbow, butterflies and flowers, moun- tains and waterfalls, the song of birds and simi)le melodies ; though by no means all equally with one another. "Were it not so. Art, which trades upon these common tastes, would be impossible. But just as the confectioner and the perfumer can judge what is likely to please the palate and the nose of their customers, so the artist can discover what will please the taste of his public* Nay, even such trades as those of the dyer, the house-painter, and the stone-cutter point to the same truth ; for every one of the operations which they perform is intended simply to enhance the beauty of the goods in which they deal. It will be seen hereafter (indeed it is clear enough to any one who chooses to run through the various cases for himself) that in the * A qualification of tliia statement is given on page 49. 46 niYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. civilised state tlicre is scarcely a manufactured article in daily use on which some attempt is not made to give ajsthetic additions. Let the reader cast his eye about his room and notice the pattern and colours of the wall-paper, the carpet, and the hearth-rug ; the mouldings of the cornice, the fender, and the gas-hangings; the polish on the chairs, the table, and the coal-scuttle ; the gilding on the curtain-rings, the mirror, the binding of the books ; the very bevelling on the doors, the mantel-piece, and the wainscot; and he will see that every one of them has a decorative purpose. I omit the pictures, the vases, the statuettes, the Japanese fans, which are there for ornament alone, and the piano, which subserves a purely aesthetic function ; but if the reader merely examines the grate and the fire-irons, he will see how universally even in the most utilitarian articles care is taken to gratify the aesthetic sentiment. The veriest savage carves a grotesque head upon his club, and adorns his calabash with circles and crosses. Now all that any science need primarily account for is the normal and usual phenomena of its subject-matter ; when those are fully understood, it may pass on to the abnormal and unusual. Our first object must be, not to explain the iEsthetic Feelings of a llaphael, a IMozart, or a Milton, but those of the average human being with whom we come in daily contact. Indeed, it seems to me that one of the greatest errors in disquisitions on Esthetics is this, that they take for the most part only the very highest develop- ments of the sentiment, and endeavour to explain them without previous reference to the simpler cases. I shall be THE DIFFEEENTIA OF iESTUETICS. 47 satisfied, on the otlier Land, if I can account physiologically for the common pleasure in bright coloured objects, elemen- tary paintings, easy melodies, and popular poetry : only touching slightly upon the more involved phenomena of kindred origin. To apply a meta})hor drawn from another science. Taste may be regarded as the personal equation of Esthetics, for which allowance must in each case be made, but which does not detract from the objective truth of the general result. Only, in ^Esthetics, where we are dealing with plienomena of the nervous system itself, the personal equa- tion rises into such great importance as to form one of the main departments of the subject. So we must always endeavour to account, not merely for the most usual form of Taste, but also for the structural peculiarities which give rise to the principal variations. And especially must we do so in treating of those varieties which differentiate the artistically-minded few from the inartistic masses. Again, we have only looked so far at the sensuous or preseutative elements of iEsthetic Feeling. But when we remember that it includes, beside, a vast body of emotional and intellectual — that is, representative — elements, the difficulty of accounting for these varieties in Taste is still further decreased. As men and women differ infinitely in emotions and intellect, they must differ infinitely in their appreciation of that which calls up emotional and intellec- tual activities of various orders in various combinations. We cannot expect a child or a savage to admire the poetry of Wordsworth, the landscapes of Turner, the sonatas of 48 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. Beethoven, the duomo of Milan. Yet even here we see this community of feeling, that what is at once simi)le and beautiful is pleasing to the highest and lowest intelligences alike: — instance a daisy or a butterfly, an old English melody, or a Homeric ballad. And here, too, as before, we need only account for those feelings which are most common and universal, knowing that the special and higher ones are merely more complicated and more representative combinations of the same elements. Nor must we suppose, because ^Esthetic Feelings are simply relative to the nervous organisation of the indivi- dual, that an absolute a3sthetic standard is impossible, and that good and bad Taste are mere matters of convention. On the contrary, it follows from what has been said above that bad Taste is the concomitant of a coarse and indis- criminative nervous organisation, an untrained attention, a low emotional nature, and an imperfect intelligence ; while 'jood Taste is the progressive product of progressing fineness and discrimination in the nerves, educated attention, high and noble emotional constitution, and increasing intellectual faculties. Though it is obviously impossible for us at our present point of development, confessedly imperfect, to set up a final and absolute standard of Taste, we are yet bound to accept as a relative and temporary standard, the judg- ment of the finest-nurtured and most discriminative, the purest and most cultivated of our contemporaries, who have paid the greatest attention to a3sthetic perceptions ; assured that while it may fall far short of absolute perfection, it will at any rate be far truer and higher than that of the masses. If THE DIFFERENTIA OP ESTHETICS. 49 we fail to agree with them, while we recognise the ftict as final, we must attribute it to the imperfection of our own sensuous and emotional nature, or of our artistic education. At the same time we must not attempt to impose such a standard upon ourselves or others faster than our develop- ment enables us to receive it. We cannot transmute our Tastes, we can only educate them. It may have appeared a hard saying when I remarked just now that the artist knows what will please his public: it seemed, and justly seemed, a degradation to the highest artist, whose Taste must always be a little in advance of that of his patrons. But the explanation is simple. There are artists for every class of public, from the most cultured to the vulgarest, and they each know what their public requires. The highest, who work up to the standard of their own Taste, usually ffaiu little recognition during their life-time. But the Taste which they have educated gains them at last a late or a posthumous recognition ; while the little artist of the day passes away and is forgotten. The works of the highest Art, like the works of the highest Intellect, necessarily appeal to a very limited audience. We may briefly sum up the contents of this section in two common adages. While it is true tliat "de gustibu? non est disputandum," it is eminently untrue that " there's no accounting for Tastes." § 5. JEsthetic Education. If ^Esthetic Feelings depend, as has been said, upon our nervous constitution, — sensuous, emotional, intellectual, — aO PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. how can there be such a thing as the Education of Taste ? In answering tliis question we must first premise that liore, as elsewhere, the range of Education is comparatively limited. All that it can ever effect is to epper ; we progress soon to water-cress and radishes ; at last we go on to curries and mulligatawny ; and if we have ruined our taste with these, we finally require the fierce stimulation of pungent sauces, red peppers, and devilled meats. Similarly with drinks. Our first liking for milk passes into a taste for 68 niYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. beer and cliiret ; thence we progress to slierry {ind madeira ; and wlien those cease siilliciently to bite the hhinted sense, we may descend at last to neat spirits, absinthe, and Ameri- can mixtures. I'ut in all such cases it should be noticed that, originally at least, we employ such acid and jmngent substances only as condiments ; that is, in small quantit';;8 to add piquancy to what in itself lacks flavour. No one of them can be eaten alone. They are not food, they are accompaniments to food. We use vinegar merely as a dressing for beet-root, salad, 01 pickled salmon; we put a fragment of cliili in our soup ; and we never dream of tossing off a tumblerful of Worcestershire sauce. Even in such cases as radishes and water-cress, the pungency is only incidental, the main attraction being the freshness, coolness, and delicacy of the vegetable : when they grow old, stringy, and fiery, or lose their crispness by keeping, we reject them. Alcohol is endured for the sake of its cordial effects, and of the flavours by which it is disguised : in proportion as it is pure it becomes distasteful. Everybody at once recognises that the taste which cannot be satisfied except by red-hot sauces and burning curries is a morbid and perverted one. A judicious palate prefers mustard in the softened form which French manufacturers give it, and uses pungent stimulants sparingly. In every case a point is at last reached where the action ceases to be mere stimulation, and becomes destructive or disintegrative. That point, in each individual instance, forms, of course, the boundary between simple pungency and pain. Nothing shows more clearly the naturally disin- THE LOWER SENSES. 67 te^^nitivo nature of the stimiiltitioii tliiin tlic fact that no pleasurable excitement passes more readily or more htibitu- ally into pain. An overdose of condiments which brings tears into our eyes is one of our most familiar experi(?nces. The reason for this mechanism is clear enough. \Vc must remember that the theory of evolution, while it rejects the idea of design, yet, by substituting for it the notion of natural selection, leaves most teleological explanations exactly where they were.* The consensus which is slowly produced between the different portions of an organism is the necessary condition of that organism's survival. In llie highest species we must expect to see this consensus carried out in great detail ; and the sense of Taste in man sup[)lies us, in all three of its divisions, with an excellent example of such minute provision. The nature of the external bodies integrated by the organism being of prime importance, we naturally find at the entrance of the alimentary canal a system of highly discriminative nervous structures, in har- mony as to pleasure and pain with the organism generally. Confining ourselves to the portion immediately under in- vestigation we see that the entrance of the oral cavity is provided with a specially thin membrane, so as to yield us immediate information concerning the presence of those caustic or corrosive substances which instantaneously and energetically attack the tissues. Next, the tip of the tongue is so constituted as to be specially sensitive to small • An exception mnst be made for those structnves which, like the fa'tiil tcetli of whales iiud tiie caudal vertabra; of man, are mere obaolusceut relics of a ouco useful uiuchauism. F 2 68 PHYSIOLOGICAL iE'iTIIETICS. quantities of pungent, acid, or alkaline bodies, which, if swallowed in any great amount, woidd pro(hice disastrous results upon the stomach and intestines. It consequently informs us of the presence of these, and acts as a natural check against our swallowing them in larger quantities or more concentrated forms than the system can easily endure. And in infancy, when even very slight amounts might prove dangerous, it prompts us energetically and ..ntirely to reject them. But if the substance which it is proposed to integrate proves pleasant or neutral to this tactual region of the mouth, it is passed on for the further verdict of the purely gustatory nerves, and is finally entrusted to the portion of the organ of Taste in sympathy with the stomach ; after successfully passing' all which, it is handed over to the automatic process of swallowing, with a considerable probability of i)roving uninjurious to the digestive organs. To the second of these regions we may now proceed. The sense of Taste proper is located in the middle of the tongue. Its nerves are twigs of the glosso-pharyngeal. It is by means of these, apparently, that we are sensible of those special Tastes called S7vcct and ditter. The name " Taste " ought in strictness be limited to them, as those lingual sensations which we have hitherto considered are rather tactual than gustatory ; while for the third class, in sympathy with the stomach, Professor Bain has proposed the convenient terms "relish" and "disgust." It is to be regretted that we have not some more general name under which the three classes might be subsumed. Sweet and bitter Tastes form the real crux of the present THE LOWER SENSES. 69 question. The sensations with which we have hitherto dealt proved on examination to be mere intensified varieties of the ordinary chemical sensibility ; but this is not exactly the case with sweet and bitter Tastes, Sugar and aloes if placed upon the skin in solution do not produce any sensation beyond that of touch-proper. Not even when applied to the thinner epithelial membranes do they yield any distinctive manifestation. Hence we must conclude that the pure gustatory nerve has been specially modified in the course of our development so as to be chemically stimulated by certain absorbed substances which do not equally affect the otlier nerves. We must also infer, by analogy with other cases, that the modification is of such a nature as to make the nerve be healthily stimtilated by those objects which are called sweet, and destructively attacked by those objects which are called bitter. In short, I would propose that the doctrine of specific energies, which has hitherto been applied to intellectual discrimination alone, should be extended' to emotional plienomena as well. While the specific i)ain of the eye is called " dazzling," and that of the ear "deafening," the si)ecific pain of the tactual Taste is ^jningmt smart^ and the specific pleasures and pains of the gustatory nerve are known as sweets and bitters^ or relishes and disfjusts, respec- tively, according to the fibres affected. This explanation would account for the singular variety of chemical consti- tution in sweet and bitter objects. The sole comnmnity between them would be the power of normally or excessively stimulating certain gustatory fibres ; a power which might easily be possessed by the most different bodies. That sweet 70 PHYSIOLOGICAL -ESTHETICS. tastes are normally stimulative is evidenced by the fact that no concentration of sweetness ever becomes painful ; the only disagreeable feeling that can result from them being the fatigue of excessive excitation, which we call being cloyed ; and even this is very slowly induced. That bitter tastes are actively destructive is evidenced by the fact that they are not pleasant, as mere stimulation, even in the minutest quantities: whence we may conclude that their action is instantaneously disintegrative, since whenever there is a sufticient amount of the sapid body to be perceived at .'dl, it is perceived as unpleasant : or, to put the same pro- l)Osition in objective instead of sultjective terms, wherever there is a particle of the body large enough to affect the nerves at all, it affects them in a destructive manner. Although we cannot yet account chemically and physiologi- cally for the mode of operation in either case, yet we can easily see why, in the gradual formation of the consensus between the organs, a modification which would produce this effect must naturally arise. Almost all the vegetable productions which enter largely into the food of man, especially in the uncivilized state, are characterized by the presence of sugar in greater or less quantities. Still more is this the case with those tubers, fruits, and succulent portions of plants, which are fitted for the use of the Quadrumana generally. Hence the fact that a natural substance contains sugar becomes in the unsophis- ticated state a rough test of its desirability as food to a mainly herbivorous race ; and we might consequently expect that there would be developed in them, at the entrance to the THE LOWEE SENSES. 71 alimentary canal, a nervous structure which would be a<^ree- ably stimulated Ly sugar, and so give an inducement to the act of swallowing substances which contained it. Just such a nervous structure actually exists ; and moreover the natural sustenance provided for the infant, milk, possesses a sweet taste, and so forms an incentive to the act of sucking. Starch, indeed, would have proved an equally good rough test; but then starch does not possess the diffusibility of sugar, into which it passes after the process of salivation. Moreover, sugar is characterized in a remarkable degree by the power of stimulating the flow of saliva, and thus mecha- nically facilitating the act of swallowing : while, on the con- trary, substances which did not contain it would mostly fail to rouse the saliva, and so be rejected as dry and unsavoury. On the other hand, if we look at the majority of bitter sub- stances, we shall see that, in the midst of a perplexing variety of chemical constitution, they agree very largely in a single characteristic, that of being destructive or injurious to life when swallowed. Those vegetable alkaloids which, like quinine and strychnia, are intensely bitter, are also violent nervous irritants ; and though in certain morbid states of body they may be taken with advantage in small quantities as tonics, yet they are when eaten at all plentifully for the most part so highly injurious as to belong to that class of destructive bodies known as poisons. Now what we call their tonic or irritant property is in reality a power of excit- ing strong or excessive action in the nervous centres, which they reach in small quantities and a highly diluted form, through the blood : accordingly, wc cannot be surprised that. 72 PnYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. tlicy should exercise a powerful destructive action on the specially unstable nerve-terminations of the tongue, on which they are placed in comparatively large quantities, and in a highly concentrated form. Again, the bitter principle of colocynth, and of the seeds and pulps of many gourds and melons, is a drastic purgative. The bitter end of cucumber is similarly poisonous. Rhubarb and aloes are commonly known as strong aperients. Decaying apples contain a bitter and injurious substance known as maloil. Lactucin, the compound which imparts to lettuce stalks their unpleasant taste, is a narcotic. Wormwood, orange rind, chesnut and walnut shells, contain other bitter and injurious principles. But perhaps the most common of all these bodies is that known as amygdalin, the sapid principle of bitter almonds, found also in peach and plumstones, apple i)ippins, and many other fruits. This, under the influence of ferments, splits up into various components, of which prussic acid is one. Hence it will be observed that poisonous bitters constantly occur in close conjunction with articles of food, and especially with some which form the usual diet of the Quadrumana. So that we might expect the same natural selection which aided the development of a taste for sugar to aid the development of a converse affection of the tongue b)" the common vegetable poisons. Such a provision is especially necessary, as the dangerous substance is often so closely conjoined with the ordinary food. This last consideration helps to account for the un}>leasantness of bitter tastes even in the smallest amounts. Furthermore, we see here an instance of that wider con- THE LOWER SENSES. 73 sensus which is necessary between the whole fauna and flora in order that animal and vegetable life may each be kept up. While it is often advantageous to the plant that its seed should be swallowed by animals and so dispersed, or deposited by them in a nourishing matrix of their excreta, it is disadvan- tageous in the highest degree that the actual seed should be digested. Hence on the one hand the growth of that soft, sweet, imlpy casing which we call fruit ; and on the other hand the frequent enclosing of the actual seed in a hard or unsavoury shell, and the secretion within it of essences which are destructive to animal life : imraWcled, pari passu, in the animal world by the collateral development of a nervous structure at the entrance of the alimentary canal which is pleasurably aifected by the one, w^hile it is painfully aifected by the other, and of a general structure on which the former produce beneficial eifects and the latter injurious ones.* Finally, we pass on to the third region of the mouth, whose sensations are in direct sympathy with the stomach. This is the lower part of the tongue and threshold of the pharynx. Like the last portion examined it is supplied with * At wl.at point in the vertebrate series this special gustatory affection begins, and how far it is similar in all species with regard to wliat are rela- tively to us s'veet and liitter substances, are very dillicult (piestions to decide in the absence of subjective information, which is here in the present state of science the nio^t important evidence obtainable. It may be doubted, too, how far it undergoes modification in the carnivora, and even in the ruminants, to meet the siiecial circumstances of their food. Probably sweet and bitter substances aifect birds much as they do us ; and the majority of the mam- malia show a liking for sugar and a distaste for bitter substances : but I have only gone back to the Quadrumana in the text, because it is with them that the habits of feeding first approximate sutlicieutly to our own to justify an argument from heredity. 74 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. twigs of the glosso-phaiyngcal, but tlie difference of sensa- tion and of irritant imply a difference in the fibres and their central organs. It is here that we discriminate that class of feelings which Professor Bain terms Relishes and Disgusts. These yield us pleasures and pains more closely connected with the necessary vital functions than any others of the gustatory sense, because they are almost purely premonitory of the action of the stomach upon the food swallowed. Con- sequently, they vary much with the state of the appetite and the digestive apparatus. Roast and boiled meats, rich vege- tables and roots, made dishes, butter and oils, oysters or crabs, and similar food stuffs, arouse sensations of this class. When they affect the sense ffivourably, the feeling is a peculiarly sensuous one, hard to describe but familiar to all, which urges us to push the morsel further and further down the mouth. This action is a sort of semi-voluntary anticipa- tion of the peristaltic contractions, and its occurrence is a probable indication that the digesti^'e organs will not be in- juriously affected, as there is great continuity of structure and innervation between the lower part of the mouth and the portion of the stomach adjoining it. The })leasure is doubt- less referable to the renewed normal stimulation of the nerves, succeeding a period of intermission and repair, as it passes away after eating sufficiently, and gives place to a feeling of satiety, and a repugnance to any further stimulation. On the other hand, when the morsel is one which will not pro- bably prove digestible in the momentary state of the organs, it gives rise to a peculiar discomfort, known as a Disgust. This is not exactly a pain, nor does it arise, apparently, from THE LOWER (SENSES. 75 any directly disintegrative action. Probably it is ratlier an anticipatory symptom of that violent retching whereby the stomach ultimately rejects indigestible and offensive matters. Thus some people have great physical difficulty in swallow- ing cod-liver oil or putrid meat ; by others they are swallowed, but soon rejected ; while a few persons cannot control the automatic act of expulsion as soon as they reach the lower part of the tongue. Similar confirmation is yielded by the disgust for food which we experience during sea-sickness or other derangement of the stomach. In short, the whole pro- vince of this region is to pronounce finally upon the digesti- bility of food which has passed the tactual examination at the lips and the tip of the tongue, as well as the gustatory ordeal of the middle region. While the tactual fibres reject whatever will prove destructive to the tissues generally, and the pure gustatory district refuses whatever will produce special pathological effects upon the internal organs, the lower portion of the oral cavity decides the minor question whether the food offered it will prove digestible or will be a cause of violent expulsory effort to the muscles of digestion. All this, however, must be accepted only of the healthy natural appetite and digestion of primitive man ; as, in our present state, we often find comparatively simple meats, which yielded us no disgust, prove difficult to digest. The popular belief that our likes and dislikes are the best guide to what is desirable for us is founded upon a truth of our original nature, though much obscured by our present artificial life : for as a rule whatever is relished will prove wholesome, and whatever rouses disgust will prove nauseating. It is only 76 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. because in civilized cookery we mix together so many con- trary tastes, and disguise the natural flavour of food, thereby vitiating our palates and overworking our digestive organs, that this simple truth is so often called in question. Before we pass away from the sense of Taste, it will be as well to mention a few of its peculiarities which bear upon ^■Esthetic Feeling. Properly speaking no sensation of Taste can be classed as {esthetic ; but there are differences between them in this respect, some approaching more nearly to the aesthetic level and others receding very far from it. Feelings belonging to the class last examined, relishes and disgusts, 'are so closely connected with life-serving function as to be very widely removed from the standard of Esthetics. We associate no idea of the sort with roast goose, mince pies, pate-de-foie-gras, or buttered toast. On the other hand there is a faint approach to the aasthetic level in tastes of the pure gustatory class, the sweets and the bitters. Sugar and honey, peaches and melons, wormwood and aloes, do not carry with them the same idea of grossness and bodily func- tions as the previous instances. Consequently, while the first, even in their ideal form, are almost impossible in Art, either pictorial or poetical, the latter, when idealized and surrounded by other assthetic objects, form considerable elements for the painter, and versifier. Pictures containing such factors as fruit, honey-comb, filberts, or red wines are common with both ; but they scarcely venture to introduce beef, bacon, beer, or gin. * Of course, in every case, great ♦ Certain pictures of the Dutch School which do so can scarcely be reckoned as adverse instances. Though their admirable execution may command our praise, their subject must be regarded as outside the aesthetic class. THE LOWEE SENSES. 77 allowance must be made for complication with the a3stlictio element of sight, and sundry emotional foctors in the total effect; yet I think we may safely say tliat part of the difference lies in the sense of Taste itself. Flavours of this higher sort are distinguislied in ordinary language as delicate; a word which at once implies aesthetic descriminativeness. Soft and smooth substances like jei^es produce a similar impression. In short, those objects which rouse tnstes or disgusts strongly in sympathy with the stomach are very far removed from the aesthetic class ; those more remotely connected with digestion approach that class at a less distance. This point will, however, receive further attention at a later stage, and is only introduced here by anticipation lest the reader should fail to see what connexion exists between the present analysis of the lower senses and the general question of iEsthetics. § 3. Smell. After our lengtliy treatment of Taste it will not be necessary to enter quite so fully into the kindred sense of Smell. The organ of smell is situated within the nasal cavity. It possesses, like the tongue, a mucous membrane copiously supplied with nervous fibres, terminating in special bodies, analogous in function with the tactile corpuscles and lingual papilhie, which are known as olfactory cells. The gaseous bodies which reach the olfactory chamber act directly upon these cells. But just as bodies must be in solution to affect the tongue, so they must be volatilized to affect the nose. 78 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. Tlic nose may be divided into two sensitive regions. The first, situated at tlie entranee of the nasal cavity, is supplied with nerves of touch from the trigeminus, and yields sensa- tions which are mainly tactual. The second, situated in the olfactory chamber, is supplied, in addition to these, with the pure olfactory nerve, and yields sensations of its own peculiar character, most of which are in symi)athy with the stomach and the organ of taste. The object of Smell is two-fold, and this makes its treat- ment a little more complicated than that of Taste. In the first place it is an anticipatory Taste, and guides us towards those objects Avliich are useful for food, while it strongly rei)el8 us from those which will prove injurious. In the second place it is premonitory of the effect upon the lungs of the gases inhaled, being gratified by those of a pure and healthy nature, while it is irritated by such as will prove prejudicial to the blood or pulmonary tissues. We shall have to consider its various phenomena in both these lights. The tactual sensibility of the nose is due to its trigeminal fibres and is excited by those volatile bodies which possess the power of chemically stimulating the nerves of touch in other situations. Ammonia, which as we have seen acts powerfully on the skin and the tongue, is a pungent stimu- lant to the nose. So are pepper, mustard, cayenne, and the other bodies of that class. Acetic acid and similar very sour substances, if capable of volatilization, affect the nose in a certain distinctive manner, which bears some analogy to their lingual effect. Alcohols and many ethers also produce a slight stinging sensation. In every one of these cases the THE LOWER SENSES. 79 likeness to the instance of Taste is very striking. An extremely small quantity of the irritant is agreeable as stimulation, but only to the dulled and blunted nervous centres of adults : while even with them a slight excess brings on the painful and destructive degree of action. Furthermore, each of these stimulants, when inhaled in large quantities, exercises a destructive action ujjon the tissues of the lungs ; while, if swallowed in excess, they will prove injurious, as we have already seen, to the coats of the stomach and intestines. So that we have here a double instance of the establishment of an organic consensus, the pungency at once warning us ojff from inhaling the irritant vapour in any large amount, and deterring us from making any further experiment by putting the body whence the vapour arises into our mouths. Children and dogs are generally sufficiently instructed by the nose not to eat any- thing on which mustard or pepper has been sjjread : and the violent irritation caused by large volumes of pungent vapour soon urges us to remove the smelling bottle, or to rush from the loaded atmosphere into the open air, as the case may be. Passing on to the pure olfactory sensibility, we shall find it convenient to take separately the two classes of sensations which yield indications of the probable effects upon the stomach and the lungs respectively of bodies which give rise to smell. In the first of these two classes we notice that the scent of cooked meats and other relishes is pleasing so long as we are hungry, but becomes distasteful as soon as we have eaten to repletion. This shows a sympatliy with the stomach exactly analogous to that of Taste. SimlLirlv, 80 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. the fragrance of peaclies, oranges, pine-apples, strawberries, and other fruits is pleasurable, and strongly suggests the flavour, thus acting as an incentive towards eating them. So, too, with wines, coffee, and aromatic drinks. On the other hand, the smell of decaying animal matter is very offensive, and acts as a strong deterrent against any attempt to taste it. Dead bodies cause us to avoid their neighbour- hood ; and the smell of boiling tallow, in a putrescent state, as in the manufacture of soap, is sufficient to drive us to a distance immediately. Putrid cheese or butter, bad fisli, high meat, are always unpleasant to the unsophisticated sense. Decaying vegetables, though not quite so disagreeable, rouse a recognizable feeling of disgust. Those which contain large quantities of sulphur yield nauseating stenches. Nothing is simpler than to suppose that the pleasing class of smells stimulate the nerves in the normal manner ; as to the un- pleasant ones, I would venture to suggest as a possible ex- planation that they may set up at once a faint disintegrative action analogous to that set up in wounds by putrescent germs, as in hospital gangrene. It is hardly necessary to add that such an arrangement is what we should naturally expect from the consensus of the organs, as the pleasantly- scented objects of this kind are mainly those which are desirable as food, and the unpleasant ones those which, if swallowed, would produce ifausea or other morbid action. Moreover, as the organs of Taste and Smell are continuous in their lower portions, the sympathy with the stomach is readily understood. In the second class of odours, those in sympathy with the THE LOWER SENSES. 81 lungs, we see that fresh air, and the pure, innocuous perfumes of flowers and fruits are pleasant ; while foul air, overloaded with carbonic acid and decaying animal matter in minute particles, is unpleasant. This form of discomfort, however, has its seat rather in the lungs themselves than in tlie respiratory canal, and its opposite is the gratification re- sulting from a gulp of pure air, and the consequent renewal of healthy pulmonary action. More strictly olfac- tory is the unpleasant odour of tlie poisonous gases, such as sulphuretted, phosphuretted, and arseniuretted hydro- gen, or bisulphide of carbon. Why the nose should be unfavourably impressed by these is, teleologically speaking, obvious : while the fact that these gases rapidly destroy organic tissues enables us to bring their case at once under our general law of pain. The opposite instances are found in the perfumes of flowers, which, though not so easily explicable, may be considered as owing their agreeable nature to the mere fact of due stimulation. within the normal limits. Smell being with us a mere relic (as is shown by the shrivelled dimensions of the central organs which repre- sent the olfactory lobes of lower animals), we may probably trace back these pleasures to the scents of fruits and flowers, which are evidently given them, like their colour and sweet- ness, as allurements for insects, birds, and mammals, to promote cross-fertilization and the dissemination of seeds. Hence we may regard them as forming another instance of that consensus between fauna and flora which we noticed in the case of Taste.* The agreeable scents will thus be * It may be added that the pleasure felt by coarse nervous organizations in ft 82 PHYSIOLOGICAL -5:STHETICS. analogous to the sweet tastes ; a view which is borne out by the fact that when very largely increased in intensity or duration, as in jasmine or stephanotis, they merely result in an excessive cloying, like that of honey in the gustatory sense. This unpleasant feeling is simply one of over- stimulation ; it differs widely from the actively disagreeable and presumably destructive action of the poisonous gases. If it be objected that some poisonous gases, such as carbonic oxide, do not smell dihagreeable, the answer must be that this is one of those failures of adaptation — those incomplete establishments of the consensus, which must always be expected in all imperfect organisms. Just as the tongue does not always discriminate poisonous solids and liquids, so the nose does not always discriminate poisonous gusc Yet even here we may notice two qualifying cir- cumstances. In the first place, though carbonic oxide is poisonous, it does not, like the strongly-scented gaseous poisons, act rapidly upon organic tissues ; so that it is analogous to those insipid substances which have not suffi- cient chemical activity to affect the gustatory nerves. In the second place, it is not a gas which is likely to occur in the environment of uncivilized man or his ancestors ; while the gases formed by the decomposition of animal matters, absence of drainage, miasmatic effluvia of tropical swamps, and similar causes, are constantly to be found in such circum- stances ; and of course the organism can only be expected to adapt itself to those agencies in the environment which the perfume of musk has been considered by some as a remnant of the giutiticutiou derived by lower animals from sexual odours. THE LOWEE SENSES. 83 most frequently and directly affect it. So that we need never concern ourselves in this inquiry with those sapid or odorous bodies which are mere laboratory products, but only with those which occur spontaneously in nature. In estimating the place of Smell in the aesthetic hierarchy of the senses, we are led to notice one striking peculiarity which lends it a special interest in connexion with our present subject. Of all the senses of man, Smell is the one which is least intellectual and most purely emotional. We may occasionally employ it to discriminate the contents of a bottle or the nature of a doubtful substance ; but for the most part it yields us relatively large emotional waves, and relatively small intellectual information. This is not the case in the lower animals. The carnivora ,use it to track their prey ; the ruminants to escape their enemies. Hence, in them it is connected with a fully-developed central organ. But in man the olfactory sensibility is a mere relic, which has outlived its principal uses. Accordingly, its central organ has dwindled away, and it has come to be almost purely a source of pleasure and pain. This pecu- liarity helps to raise it almost to the aesthetic level. It is true that those odours which have obvious reference to vital organic processes (such as the smell of roast meats and fish, on the one hand, or of decaying animal matter on the other) have no pretence of reaching the aesthetic standard of disin- terestedness. Accordingly the pleasant odours of this class are inadmissible into Poetry, even in the ideal form ; while the unpleasant ones, commonly known by the disagreeable name of stinks, are so loathsome as to form the ne plus ultra G 2 84 PHYSIOLOGICAL -aiSTHETICS. of tlie sesthetically hideous. But the fragrance of fruits and spices very nearly approaches the requisite freedom from life-serving function ; because the taste which it suggests is of tlie kind least intimately connected with organic wants. And when we pass on from these lower instances to those sweet odours which are utterly unconnected with the organs of digestion, such as the perfume of a rose, a violet, or a lily-of-the-valley, the smell of new-mown hay, the aroma of newly-ploughed land, we feel that these, even in the ac- tuality, are in almost every respect raised into the aesthetic class. Moreover, the perfume-exciting qualities of the rose or the violet are not destroyed in the act of smelling them, as the taste-exciting qualities of a peach or a pear are destroyed in the act of eating them. So that we have here, to a con- siderable extent, that absence of monopoly which we saw to be one of the distinguishing marks of ajsthetic objects. And if these objects in the actuality arouse feelings so nearly a])proaching the aesthetic level, we naturally find their ideal representation entering largely into the composition of Poetry. Of course here, too, we must make great allow- ances for beauty of form and colour, but we cannot doubt that some part in the poetical effectiveness of fragrant flowers must be attributed to the sonse of Smell. § 4. Cookery and Perfumery. There are two arts which, though not esthetic, stand in the same relation to the senses of Taste and Smell as paint- ing and music do to those of sight and hearing. Conse- quently, they throw a little light upon the purely lesthetic THE LOWEE SENSES. 85 arts, and so deserve a few words in passing. Though the pleasures of Taste may occur in connexion with food in its raw state, and though the object of cooking in its simplest form is rather to render food digestible than to make it more palatable, yet in its highest developments the practice of cookery, including therein the whole preparation of food for the table, and the due arrangement of courses, almost rises to the dignity of a fine art, possessing its professors and its cognoscenti.* We saw in the last chapter that the ultimate principle of Esthetics was the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue in processes not directly connected with necessary vital functions. Now the rule of cookery is just the same, in those processes which relate to the inges- tion of food and drink. The object of a good chef is to lay upon the table a dinner, every dish in which shall stimu- late the nerves of taste in different manners, without ever palling or flagging ; to alternate and co-ordinate courses so that they shall succeed one another in the most acceptable order, the lighter viands preceding the heavier, and no course spoiling the palate for the succeeding one ; and to ensure much variety without any sense of repletion. He prefers clear soups to thick broth, which would too rapidly exhaust the appetite ; he carefully assorts the sauces for his fish, adding flavour to cod by oysters, and tempering the richness of whitebait with lemon ; he dresses his entrees in the lightest, daintiest, and most piquant style; he cooks his * Those who wish to see cookery treated nu gi-and serieux as a fine art, may turn to Brillat-Savarin's F/iysioloyie dit Gout, or to an aiuusiug brochure ou t/ic Art of Dining, attributed to Mr. A. Hay ward. m PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. joints to a turn ; and when the digestive organs are satiated with these more solid viands, he stimulates the taste with game, follows it up with light and delicate pastry, and con- cludes with fruits, sweetmeats, and ices. He adds olives to clear the palate for the wine, which has also been carefully adapted to each stage of the dinner ; hock with the fish, champagne with the joints, and the heavier vintages, such as port, sherry, and Madeira, to finish the repast. Finally, he serves up a cup of full-flavoured coffee, whose delicate yet powerful aroma can still urge on the appetite, when coarser flavours would disgust and weaker ones fail to attract. And yet, if he has been successful, he leaves the digestion unimpaired and the mental powers clear. Every exertion has been made to give the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue, alike to the organ of taste and to the digestive apparatus. The analogy to the assthetic arts is obvious ; but what gives the sense of purity in the one and of comparative grossness in the other is the pre- sence or absence respectively of ulterior life-serving purposes, besides the fact that food is above all other enjoyments necessarily a matter of strict monopoly. Perfumery has not been carried to nearly so high a pitch as cookery, and for an obvious reason. Whereas cookery is useful in the preparation of food and only endeavours inci- dentally to give immediate pleasure, perfumery is not neces- sarily connected with any life-serving function on the one band, while on the other it is not susceptible of any high artistic and intellectual combinations. One of our great humorists^ has indeed given a whimsical account of an THE LOWER SENSES. 87 imaginary instrument for yielding sesthetic combinations of odours, by means of stoppers opened and shut in cer- tain orders, so as to give rise to harmonies and contrasts, the perfumes being made to succeed one another rapidly by means of a current of air, over which the nose of the amateur was held. But, apart from the mechanical difficulties of such an instrument, there is a fatal phy- siological objection in the persistence and sameness of the sense of smell, which would prevent that rapid and distinct succession of impressions in time or space which makes possible the delicate harmonies and contrasts of sounds and colours. Hence perfumery has never given rise to an art of any pretension. Moreover, artificial essences never yield the same pure and delicious fragrance as natural flowers and fruits. There is always a sickly tinge about then: sweetness. This inability to compete with nature is a fatal objection to perfumery as the basis of a fine art. It is characteristic of the true assthetic arts generally that they are more beautiful than nature, because they gather to- gether all that is lovely, and omit all that is low, discordant or ugly. Thus the Discobolus or the Medici Venus is more beautiful than any living nude human figure, because it com- bines all the best points of many ; a landscape painting is lovelier than reality, because it excludes all unpleasant accompaniments ; a great poem takes us into a region of ideal delights ; a grand oratorio immeasurably surpasses any natural collection of sounds. But a lily-of-the-valley or a heliotrope is worth all the mille-fleurs or frangipanui that was ever manufactured. 88 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. And now, with the light that has heen cast npon the pleasures and pains of the lower senses in the present analysis, we may proceed to those higher senses whose plea- sures and pains form the chief basis for the purely aesthetic arts of Music, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, and Poetry. r^K"--- CHAPTEE V. TOUCH. § 1. Emotional Phenomena of Touch. Vert little need be said about the tactual sense, and yet that little is well entitled to the dignity of a separate chapter. The science of ^Esthetics is but slightly concerned with Touch, because it forms the exact antipodes of smell, in being almost purely intellectual and very little emotional. For this there are two reasons. Touch proper, being only affected by pressures, cannot yield us appreciable pains ; since, when the painful stage is reached, we refer the crush- ing or laceration to the general organic sensibility. Again, the skin being in almost constant contact with surrounding objects, the sense of Touch does not need special stimulation, as its organs seldom or never have long intervals of repair ; and so it cannot yield us any acute pleasures. Nevertheless, on the other hand. Touch is the first of the senses, in the order of examination which we have adopted, to afford us feelings which may be unreservedly classed as aesthetic, in the actuality as well as in the idea. Tastes and Smells may become subjects of art in the representation alone, but Touch enters into its composition directly. We will therefore run 90 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. rapidly over the few emotional feelings which are yielded by this sense. Rough substances, like flannel or horse-hair, placed next the skin, chafe it and give rise to painful feelings. Soft and smooth ones, on the contrary, such as silk and fine linen, only arouse the normal amount of nervous action, and are accordingly agreeable, or at least neutral. A faint voluptuous feeling is experienced for the first few moments after putting on silk underclothing. A fly, a hair, or a drop of moisture, affecting any thin-skinned part (for example, the neck or cheeks) causes an excessive stimulation which, though not exactly painful, is extremely annoying. The palm of the hand, being unusually well suppUed with tactile corpuscles, affords us some more special emotional effects. There is a peculiar discomfort in running one's hand over a rough or gritty surface, owing partly to the faint tendency to abrasion, partly to the constant impeding of motion and consequent twitching or retraction, which of course implies wasteful expenditure of energy. On moving the finger tips over a piece of velvet wall-paper, such as is often used in dining-rooms, we are conscious of a jarring sensation, analogous to that aroused in the auditory sense by the grating of a pencil on a slate, and doubtless due to the excessive, jerky, and wasteful stimulation of the tactile corpuscles. The gritty coloured papers sold for decorating dishes set the teeth on edge when touched : so do brick and emery cloth. There is a corresponding gratification in the easy and unimpeded gliding of the fingers over a perfectly smooth surface. Hence a portion of the pleasure with which TOUCH. 91 we regard polish on stone or marble, glass or porcelain, varnish on furniture, and soft fabrics like silk or velvet, is doubtless due to tactual feelings, real or ideal ; though allowances must be made for the visual gratifications of lustre and the flowing form. Indeed glossiness, though doubtless agreeable in itself to the sense of sight, is mainly prized as the visual symbol of tactual smoothness. Rough- sawn marble sends through us the peculiar discordant jar produced by jerky stimulation, which will be more fully explained in the chapter on Hearing : when polished, it yields us a pleasant sense of harmonious and regular excita- tion. A simple confirmatory experiment can be tried by passing the hand first over the under surface of a mantelpiece (which is usually left in the rough state) and then over the polished top. The most sensuous variety of this pleasure is found in stroking a seal-skin, a cat's back, or a piece of satin. Softness here complicates the eflfect; smoothness alone gives pleasurable qualities to a mahogany table, a tortoise-shell card-case, or a rose-wood desk. The handles of instruments, being often grasped, ought to be specially smooth : hence those used at table or in the toilet fas well as the keys of pianos) are usually fitted with bone, ivory, or mother-of-pearl; commoner tools have them of polished hard-wood. Door-handles and the knobs of house-bells are made of porcelain or smooth metal. Rough iron is very disagreeable to grasp ; the tongs and the poker are as bright as silver. In an eesthetically-furnished room, leaving out of consideration for the present the visual elements, part of the effect is due to the smoothness of the walnut sofas and 92 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. tables, the soft satin or tabouret coverings, and the morocco easy-chairs ; and part to the suggestion of ease and comfort in their luxurious stuffing, and their contour adapted to the natural positions of the limbs. Even in food, the pleasant- ness of jellies, custards, creams, and ices, is partly owing to their softness and the absence of any necessity for muscular effort in masticating or swallowing them. Strawberries and peaches melt in the mouth. On the other hand, grittiness in food is disagreeable and often painful, while toughness gives unnecessary work to the jaws. Throughout, whatever compels or suggests excessive effort, waste of energy, or abrasion of skin is unpleasant and ugly: whatever is clearly free from these defects is pleasant and beautiful. § 2. Esthetic Value of Touch. Of course the examples cited above of pleasures and pains connected with the sense of Touch do not all equally como under the aesthetic class. Those which relate to food and to underclothing are clearly too closely allied to essential vital functions. Softness, again, is inextricably bound up with the sexual instinct. But the purely disinterested pleasures and pains of smoothness and roughness belong entirely to the aesthetic group. They possess all the characteristics which were enumerated above in the chapter on the Dif- ferentia of iEsthetics. They are very remotely or not at all connected with necessary life-serving function. The i)leasur- able ones amongst them are marked by the fact that they arouse the maximum of stimulation in the organs affected, with the minimum of fatigue or waste ; while tlie disagree- TOUCH. 93 able ones are marked merely by their failure to comply with this requirement, not by any active or violent destruction of tissue. Their objects are not monopolized, nor are tliey destroyed in the act of enjoyment. And, finally, their elements are so slightly pleasurable or painful, as the case may be, that they are scarcely emotionally cognized, but rather intellectually discriminated. While sweets and bitters, perfumes and stenches, yield comparatively large and recog- nizable waves of pleasure and pain, smooth or rough objects yield feelings whose emotional character is only recognized upon mature deliberation. They almost escape us in ordinary life, and only rise into importance when they are so combined with many others (such as those of form and colour) as to arouse a complex thrill of beauty or ugliness. Indeed, a great part of the displeasure felt at rough or rugged objects is due to the impression of bad workman- ship ; and a great part of the gratification aroused by smooth and polished objects is due to the consciousness of finish and workmanlike or artistic care. We find, as before observed, that the components of the SBsthetic thrill are very faint emotional waves, but that by many re-inforcements they become at last sufficiently voluminous for conscious recognition. Accordingly, elements derived from the sense of Touch enter freely into the various arts, both in the actuality and in the idea. The earliest stone implements are rough and angular ; but some belonging to the neo-lithic and modern periods have attained a polish and smoothness which would not disgrace the most civilized lapidary. Savages love to 94 PHYSIOLOGICAL -ESTHETICS. polish cocoa-nuts and other hard seeds, as well as clubs and precious stones. The Egyptians made their granite figures as smooth as glass. In their fully developed forms, the arts still plentifully employ tactual factors. In Music, it is clearly impossible that they can take any part ; but we find them widely employed in Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and (ideally) in Poetry ; while they are almost supreme in decora- tive art It will only be necessary to mention in detail the coating or varnish upon oil pictures, the smoothness of their surface, and the inartistic efiect of blotches which rise dis- tinctly above the general level : while ideal softness of silks, furs, wool, and foliage, and, above all, of human flesh, is a common pictorial device. Marble statuettes gain by polish, and bronze has the tactual element strongly developed. Granite or syenite pedestals point in the same direction. We almost instinctively test a polished pillar with the hand. But it is in Architecture, and more especially in internal decoration, that the tactual sense becomes most important. Mosaics, intaglio work, encaustic pavements, malachite and porphyry vases, all owe much to it. Precious stones, jet, and amber take a high polish. Rough earthenware is varnished over; and porcelain or majolica have an external coat of glazing which hides their gritty surfaces. The tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides, with all its gewgaw surround- ings, yet impresses us by its manual elaboration. Japanese lacquer, buhl cabinets, marble or ivory decorations, at once inform us by their lustre or glossiness of their smooth tex- ture. In fact almost all art-furniture (as opposed to mere upholstery,) derives a large part of its OBsthetic character TOUCH. 95 from tactual elements. So also do the richer kinds of dress, — silk, satin, velvet, cashmere, broadcloth, furs, swansdown, grebe, ostrich feathers, lace, and kid. Ermine and sealskin deserve special mention. In all, great allowances must be made for the emotional element of costliness. Finally, every one of these objects which is beautiful in the actuality, becomes in the idea a possible component of Poetry. But here agam we trench upon the ground of later chapters, as is almost inevitable when dealing with a subject so full of complications and re-involutions as Esthetic Feeling. Beside these consciously-sought artistic pleasures, certain aesthetic objects occur spontaneously in nature which owe part of their beauty to the tactual sense. Grassy slopes suggest the notion of an easy couch, as do also mossy or fern-clad banks. Ice has a glassy surface, and freshly fallen snow, in spite of its coldness, besides impressing us visually by its purity and sparkle, spreads a coat of yielding softness over the hard roads and rugged hillside. Poets accordingly dwell chiefly on the fleeciness of its gently falling flakes. Chrysanthemums, dahlias, and immortelles owe part of their ungraceful effect to the stiffness of their petals : roses, violets, and anemones, on the contrary, please us by their agreeable softness. Rose petals are the poetical embodiment of delicacy, and the school-book story of the Sybarite has given them the stamp of conventional illustra- tion. To " die of a rose in aromatic pain " is our idea of aesthetic fastidiousness. Those odious parodies of artistic products, wax and paper flowers, are indebted to their stiff materials for part of their hideous vulgarity ; thuu-h 1 96 PHYSIOLOGICAL -aJSTHETICS. believe their main failing to be that, like artificial perfumes, they fall far short of nature, instead of surpassing it. To sum up, we see that Touch is very little an emotional sense, and consequently very little an aesthetic one; but that out of the few emotional feelings which it yields, a considerable proportion belong to the strictly aesthetic class, and that it is accordingly entitled to rank with sight and hearing as forming part of the basis for the fine arts and for Poetry. CHAPTER VI. HEARING. § 1 . Characteristics of the Higher Senses. Though we saw in the last chapter that Touch must be allowed a place in the immediately aesthetic class, yet the two higher senses of Sight and Hearing deserve to occupy a pedestal of their own which raises them far above those hitherto examined. The main ground for this distinction may be gathered from the following considerations. The nerves of Taste and Smell are not individually dis- criminative: that is, each one of them does not yield us a different sensation. For the most part, large masses of gustatory and olfactory nerves are stimulated at once ; and their connected centres afford us identical factors of con- sciousness. But every single fibre of the optic and auditory nerves seems capable of differential stimulation, and yields us a distinct and separate impression. Hence, while stimu- lation and fatigue usually extend over large tracts of the olfactory and gustatory systems, everj'- single fibre of the optic and auditory apparatus, with its connected centre, is probably capable of separate pleasure and separate fatigue. Again, while the lower senses are exposed to directly dis- H 98 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. integrative and violently painful action, or to strong pleasur- able excitement, the nerves of the two higher and specially aesthetic senses are so delicate in calibre, and so carefully guarcied from surrounding agencies that they generally undergo only comparatively slight stimulations from their proper excitants ; so that their pains are for the most part merely those of fatigue rather than of violent disintegration, and their pleasures those of delicate and harmonious action rather than of powerful and long-intermitted stimulation. The optic and auditory nerves are not liable to be scratched, burned, bruised, or attacked by chemical agents, but only to be wearied by over use or jarred by discordant sounds and colours. Furthermore, as these senses influence our conduct mainly through the intellect, they are not liable to pleasures and pains of the directly anticipatory sort. Desirable food-stuffs do not gratify the eye or ear, nor do disagreeable ones dis- integrate them excessively.* Hence they are little connected directly with life-serving functions ; and their pleasures are mainly those of such due stimulation as will keep up their normal efficiency ; while their pains are those of such over- work as will render the structures less useful in future, f * The influence of bright-coloured fniits, berries, and flowers on the growth of .^ibthetic Feelings will be discussed in the chapter on Sight. + Even here, however, we find some approach to the establishment of that consensus which is the automatic protection of the organism. The instinctive dread of the serpentine form which pervades the whole of humanity has been ingeniously referred to a hereditary terror, ingrained in the nervous constitu- tion, surviving from a period when our early ancestors were specially exposed to the attacks of poisonous snakes as their chief enemies. The hatred of cows for dogs (,[)rior to all experieuce on either side) is probabl/ a leminiscence HEARING. 99 But the most important distinction of all is that which holds between the rates of exhaustion and repair in the higher and lower senses respectivel}'. Tastes and smells can be endured at a considerable height of stimulation for a con- siderable period of time ; and when the stimulant is with- drawn, the sensation persists for a few seconds. But after fatigue at length sets in, a long interval of reparation is necessary before the structures recover their excitability. The organs of Sight and Hearing, on the contrary, are easily exhausted and quickly repaired. A glance at the sun dazzles our eyes, and we see a negative image accordingly wherever we look. The boom of a cannon deafens our ears, and we cannot for a few seconds hear any lesser sounds. Even the infinitesimally rapid flash of an electric spark is sufficient to weary the delicate nerves of sight. But, except in such extreme cases, the eye and the ear are quickly repaired after each stimulation. There is reason to believe that the optic fibres and terminal organs are repaired, in ordinary cases, seventeen times per second, and those of the auditory nerves thirty-three times per second. To this peculiarity we must in part attribute their great power of intellectual discrimina- tion ; for though this is due, so far as regards the variety of possible sensations, to the immense number of fibres which of the clays when theii* respective ancestors, the aurochs and the wolf, fought one another in the forests of central Europe. Young chickens, wliich (hirt automatically at a fly, run cowering to their mother from tlie sight of a hawk. Tlie roar of carnivores lias a startling efl'eot upon almost all other animals ; and thunder or loud explosions terrify us instinctively. But these cases only show a nascent consensus, very dillereut from the developed correspondence in the lower senses. n 2 100 rHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. may be differentially stimulated, yet so far as concerns their separatcness in time and rapidity of succession, it depends upon the immediate reparatory qualities of the nerves. So that the same properties which make the eye and ear our most discriminative organs, also bestow upon them their ftjsthetic value. For, owing to the immense variety of their fibres, and the rapidity of their exhaustion and repair, we have constantly induced in their several portions partial fatigues which are very slight in amount, and partial stimu- lations which excite small areas of their terminal surface, in a comparatively high state of nutrition, and consequently ready to yield pleasurable feelings as soon as stimulated. Accordingly, they, above all others, are subjects for that minute intellectual discrimination which we recognized as one of the marks that differentiate the ^Esthetic Feelings from other pleasures and pains. § 2. Air-wades and the Organ for their Perception* If we move a fan rapidly through tlie atmosphere, we are conscious of a blast of air in contact with the face. If a heavy weight falls on the ground in our neighbourhood, the jar is communicated to our bodies. If a cannon is fired close to the spot where we stand, we are strongly shaken by the concussion. In all these cases, masses of air are set in violent motion, impinge upon our bodies, and cause an ordinary sensation of Touch. * In all the strictly physiological portion of this chapter I owe my acknow- ledgments to Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone, which I have used chiefly in Mr- Ellis's translation. HEAEING. 101 But besides these larger and easily recognized motions of the air, there are others of a smaller and less discriminable class. When any body, solid, liquid, or gaseous, impinges upon another with any considerable energy, aerial undula- tions are set up whose presence, though not manifested to our sense of Touch, can easily be made visible by means of very small pendulous bodies, allowed to swing freely. Such bodies will be set in motion by the waves so generated. Of these waves there are two kinds. The first kind results when the body impinged upon immediately returns to a position of rest : the second kind results when the body impinged upon continues to vibrate freely. The waves generated by the first are irregular and indefinite ; those generated by the second are perfectly regular and perform a fixed number of vibrations in a unit of time until the bodies generating them have returned to a position of rest. To take specific examples, the first kind of wave is produced when a stone falls on the ground, or when the fist is struck upon the table : the second kind of wave is produced when a tuning fork or a violin string receives a blow, and continues to vibrate freely till the energy it has received is dissipated by friction. Now the aerial waves thus set in motion, though capable of producing some slight mechanical effects, are too small, for the most part, to afifect our nerves of touch. But we have a special nervous end-organ so arranged as to be specially sensitive to these slight waves ; and this organ is the ear. It collects the minute undulations, concentrates and strengthens them by a series of ingenious devices, and 102 PHYSIOLOGICAL -'ESTHETICS. finally diroots tlicm upon the terminals of an important nerve, which conveys the information they afford to the auditory centre, and so at last to the higher co-ordinating regions of the hrain. It will be observed that I have carefully abstained from using the dangerous and misleading word Sound with rela- tion to these aerial undulations, because that word really implies a reference to our sense of Hearing; and I think it important to impress upon the reader that these waves do not objectively differ from any others, but are governed by the ordinary mechanical laws of elastic fluids. It is only when cognized through the sense of Hearing that they be- come distinctively Soimds ; and many such waves which cannot be so cognized, owing to their very rapid or very slow vibrations, are objectively indistinguishable from sound- waves proper, that is, from those which lie within the limits for producing the auditory sensation. For the present, therefore, we shall only regard the undulations from the strictly objective stand-point, as waves of air. Let us see, then, with necessary brevity, what is the conformation of this specialised organ by which we become conscious of aerial vibrations. We will only look at such of its parts as are absolutely essential to a proper compre- hension of our subject, referring the reader for details to morphological and physiological treatises on the ear. The outer portion of the human ear consists of an external passage, through which the air-waves are con- ducted to the tympanum or drum; which is an internal cavity, separated from the passage by a thin circular nEARIXO. 103 membrane. Beyond the dram, again, is situated the labyrinth, a cavity filled with fluid, on whose walls are expanded the ends of the fibres belonging to the auditory nerve. The object of the passage is to collect the aerial waves : that of the drum is to conduct them with sufficient force into the fluid of the labyrinth ; and that of the last- named portion to excite the nerve-terminations themselves. In these various operations the parts named are assisted by many minor pieces of mechanism which need not here be detailed. In order to explain the manner in which the aerial undu- lations are finally converted into nervous stimulation we must look at some analogous phenomena in the outer world. It is a well-known fact of physics that any oscillating body may be set in motion by very slight external energies, provided they are applied with the same periodic recurrences as those of the body's own vibrations. If a pendulum or a church bell receives a number of impulses, each very slight in comparison with the mass to be moved, but so timed that every fresh impulse coincides with the period of the body's swing, it can soon be set in motion in spite of the smallness of the motive power, because each impulse reinforces the last at the exact moment when such reinforcement will produce the greatest effect. Conversely, such a body once set in motion can be easily brought to rest by a number of com- paratively slight checks given it in the course of its vibration. Now we find outside the human or animal organism that certain elastic bodies, such as tuning-forks, violin-strings, and stretched membranes, possess a natural period of vibra- 104 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. tion, and that when the aerial undulations produced by another body in motion impinge upon them, they produce a sympathetic vibration, provided their recurring periods coin- cide exactly (or, in some cases, approximately) with the natural periods of the body sympathetically excited. Without entering for the present into special details, it will be suffi- cient here to remark that among the elastic bodies in which sympathetic vibrations can thus be excited may probably be classed the nerve-terminations of the human ear. Their ter- minal expansions are connected with certain small elastic appendages ; and there is every reason to believe that each of these appendages possesses a natural period of its own, and can consequently be set in sympathetic vibration by such aerial waves as exactly or nearly coincide with its own period.* Moreover, each of them is connected with its cor- responding fibres by a mechanism which is apparently adapted to communicate to the fibre the excitement which the appendage has received. Finally, a differential mode of sensation seems to be attached to the central termination of each fibre, so that the total sensation received depends upon the various fibres differentially affected and their combina- tions. Such is, in its roughest form, the modern theory of Hearing. We must now expand it slightly by enquiring what are the various modes of stimulation thus differentially cognized, and what their subjective counterparts. • In the auditory apparatus of certain small crabs, Hensen observed different particular hairs in sympathetic vibration with air-waves of diHereut particular frequencies. HEARING. 105 § 3. Varieties of Air-rvaves and their Equivalents in Consciousness. We have seen that air- waves, originally set in motion by the impact of one body upon another, impinge upon the ear, through the mechanism of the tympanum and the labyrinth, set up sympathetic vibrations in the elastic bodies which are attached to the terminals of the nerves, and thus communi- cate a stimulation to the fibres themselves. The impulse so imparted to the auditory centre is there subjectively cognized as Sound. We have next to enquire what are the various modes of aerial undulation, and what the corresponding varieties of Sounds. The first great distinction between air-waves is the one already drawn of those which are produced by a single im- pact and those which are produced by the continuous vibra- tion of an elastic body. The latter are periodic and regular, the former non-periodic and irregular. But if the ear is to be differentially excited by these difierent stimulants, and so to cognize them separately, it must have special organs for the perception of each ; and the appendages of these special organs must be set in sympathetic motion by one or the other kind of stimulant respectively. Now we find in ex- ternal nature that some bodies are readily set in motion by irregular and non-periodic waves, but that such bodies only continue in motion for comparatively short periods, instead of vibrating freely for a considerable time : while on the other hand certain other elastic bodies are not set in motion by non-periodic waves, but only answer to undulations whose 106 rnYSIOLOGICAL iESTnETICS. lieriods exactly or very closely coincide with tlieir own, in which case a sympathetic vibration is set up and augnietited by the recurring impacts of the air- waves. In tlie labyrinth of the ear we find sets of nervous structures \vlvlch api)nrcntly answer to each of these conditions. In its outer portion, known as the vestibule, and in certain of its windings called the ampullaj, are nervous terminations whose consti-iiction leads us to suppose that they are readily excited in sympathy with irregular agitations of short duration : and the sensa- tions aroused in connection with these stimulations are cog- nized in the audicory centre as Noises. The deepest recess of the labyrinth consists of a snail-shaped cavity known as the cochlea, on whose walls are arranged an immense number of small bodies, called after their discoverer Corti's organs, each of which, apparently, is capable of sympathetic vibration only under the influence of a regular undulation whose periodic recurrences closely coincide with its own natural period. These bodies are connected with separate fibres, and when the stimulations thus received are communicated to the brain they are cognized as Musical Tones. Again, air-waves of either class may differ in size, or, as it is oftener expressed, in amplitude of oscillation ; that is to say, in distance from crest to crest. Upon this oljjectivo difference in the waves depends the subjective difference of Loudness and ifs opposite. When the waves are very great in size, the resulting sound is said to bo very loud : as the size diminishes, the sound becomes less and less. In short, loudness is the subjective concomitant of intensity in stimu- lation. It does not depend upon the particular fibres excited, HEARING. 107 but upon the amount of the excitation. AYlien we pull aside a violin-string and then allow it to vibrate freely, its excur- sions are at first considerable, during which period the sound is loud ; as it parts slowly with its energy, the excursions gradually decrease, and the sound lessens till it dies away. Next, let us confine our attention to the second class of air-waves, those which, proceeding from a regularly oscil- lating body, perform equal numbers of vibrations in equal times, and give rise to Musical Tones. It is clear that these may differ greatly in the number of vibrations which they execute in a given unit of time, — say, for example, a second. Every body capable of producing such undulations has a certain fixed number of its own, which under similar circum- stances it always yields. This number may be altered by some alteration in the circumstances of the body (for exam- ple, in a string, by lengthening or shortening it ; in a finger- glass, by increasing or lessening the quantity of water), but when all other circumstances remain the same, the number of vibrations per second is constant. Fortunately we possess an instrument, the siren, by means of which we can produce undulations of any desired frequency per second. It consists, in ^^vinciple, of an air-box with an immovable cover, pierced by a fixed number of holes ; on top of which is a movable metal disk, similarly pierced, the holes being arranged at such an angle that the disk can be driven round by a blast from a bellows. Each time that the upper and under holes coincide, a puff of air escapes, and we can reckon the number of escapes, or, in other words, the number of waves gene- rated, by means of a dial attached. In conjunction with this 108 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. instrument we may use certain bottle-shaped resonators, over one of whose open ends is stretched an elastic membrane, against which a drop of sealing-wax is suspended by a deli- cate thread.* Now we find that when we so adjust the siren as to produce undulations which recur with a certain given frequency per second, the membrane of the resonator begins to vibrate sympathetically, and the little pendulum of seal- ing-wax is violently agitated. But only waves of that par- ticular frequency will produce this result : to all others the membrane is perfectly passive, f "We may arrange a series of these resonators in such an order that as the number of undulations per second produced by the sir is increased, one after another of the membranes is sympathetically set in motion. Now, in the human ear, Helmholtz has shown with great probability that Corti's organs in the cochlea, or snail-shaped cavity of the labyrinth, are a series of elastic bodies, each with a different natural period, arranged in a similar order, so as to be severally excited by recurring un- dulations having different periods of vibration. Each of * I prefer this diagrammatic illustration by means of the acoustic pen- dulum to the historical one of Helmholtz's resonavec globes, because the latter require the use of the auditory nerve, while I am anxious to ti'cat (he matter from the objective stand-point alone. Kcsnig's mode of demonstration by manomdric flames would equally well suit my purpose, but it would demand a lengtliy and otherwise irrelevant explanation. I am not aware that a scries of acoustic pcndula, tuned as a gamut of resonators, has ever actually been constructed, but there is nothing impracticable in the idea. I add this noto for the scientific critic, who might otherwise be disposed to carp at my imaginary, but strictly appropriate, mode of treatment. f For simplicity's sake I omit for the present all mention of "Harmonic Upper Partials," which in practice would slightly interfere with this result, but will be explained further on. HExiEING. 109 these organs is connected with a certain number of separate rerve-ubres. When the various stimulations thus excited are communicated to the auditory centre, they are there cognized as differences in Pitch ; the high tones being pro- duced by undulations which recur with very great frequency, and the low ones by those which perform a smaller number of vibrations per second. In short, as a simple illustration, if we set the siren in motion, when the air first rushes through the holes with a comparatively small number of escapes per second, a very low note is recognized by the ear ; as the rapidity of motion increases, and consequently the frequency of undulation becomes greater, the note is recog- nized as higher and higher ; when the rapidity becomes immense, the note produces the effect which we call shrill- ness ; and when the number of undulations per second ex- ceeds some 38,000, it passes the limit of hearing altogether, probably because we have no special organ so arranged as to vibrate in sympathy with undulations of such extreme rapidity. And now, for clearness' sake, before we pass on, let us restate from the subjective side the results at which we have arrived from the objective side. Loudness is independent of the organ affected : it is the result of intensity of stinm- lation alone ; it varies with the amplitude of the air-waves, irrespective of their frequency or recurrence. All other varieties in sound depend upon the organ affected. JS'oises are the concomitants of stimulation of fibres having their terminals in the outer portion of the labyrinth ; they are excited by irregular and non-periodic agitations of the air. no PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. Musical Tones are the concomitants of stimulation of fibres having their terminals in the cochlea ; they are excited by regular and periodic vibrations of certain definite frequencies. Pitch depends upon the particular fibre of the cochlea aiFected ; of these, some vibrate in sympathy with undula- tions having slow periods, and produce low tones, — others vibrate in sympathy with undulations having rapid periods, and produce high tones. There are two other subjective phenomena of sound which have not yet been accounted for by referenc J to their objective counterparts in the air- waves : namely, the Qualify or Timbre of different instruments ; and Note, or the relation to one another of the different tones composing the Octave. These, however, will best be consi- dered at a later period, when we come to investigate the subject of Musical Tones. Though the rapid rdsume I have here given of the physical nature of Hearing has demanded somewhat more space than has been accorded to the mechanism of any other sense, it must be remembered that I have only dealt with such points as are absolutely necessary for the comprehension of our present subject, the Esthetic Feelings, and my brief sum- ming up must not be mistaken for an attempt to set forth fhe true bearings of the question in its wider intellectual aspects. For fuller details the reader must be referred to the luminous and exhaustive work of Helmholtz. With this slight caution against misapprehension, we may pass on to our more proper subject. HEARING. Ill § 4. General Emotional Phenomena of Hearing. It was noted above that the auditory nerve is only exposed to tlie pains of excessive action, or fatigues, and to the plea- sures of gentle and normal stimulation. Let us examine a few in order. Loudness we saw to be the subjective concomitant of excessive stimulation. Accordingly all loud and violent noises give rise to painful feelings of considerable acuteness. Thunder, the roar of a cannon, the din of steam-hammers, the whir of machinery, produce this effect. If the noise is peculiarly shrill, as in the shriek of a steam- whistle, or the screaming of parrots, the waste of tissue seems to be more intense, and the resulting feeling more unpleasant. Though these stimulations can be endured for a very few seconds, yet if long continued they so waste the tissues as to become unbearable. Certain jerky and intermittent sounds, of un- pleasant intensity, such as that produced by scraping a gritty pencil over a slate, have a more special and jarring effect. This is probably due to the fact that the nerve-centres, fibres, and terminals have short intervals of repair allowed them during the intermission of the stimulant ; and it is known that nerves are most sensitive to new stimulations, any continuance of excitation soon deadening their sensibility. Accordingly, in these cases, the very sensitive nerve-matter is assailed after each reparation by the violent stimulant, just at the moment when its excitability is greatest. This point will receive further illustration when we come to consider the unpleasant effects of dissonance. Even the ordinary hum of 112 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. voices in a scliool-roora, or the din of a crowded street where heavy drays rumhle over rough pavements, becomes annoying when long endured, and often results in temporary deafness. On the other hand, mere sound, when not too intense, is pleasurable as a stimulant after the oppressive silence of night or solitude. In the stillness of evening, the dipping of oars on the water, the ripple of the waves among the reeds, and the gentle hum of insects, are all agreeable reliefs. In the country, the cawing of rooks, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cows, the murmur of the stream, are pleasant in the absence of other distracting noises. Of course, complex emotional and poetical associations come in to disturb the certainty of these instances ; but it must be remembered that we lay great stress in such cases upon the gentleness of the sounds, as in the purling brook, the whispering zephyr, and the drowsy murmur of the humble bee : — that is to say, we recognize as important the fact that these irritants do not exceed the limits of perfectly normal stimulation. " Gentle " is the stock epithet of the poets for all these pleasant sounds of country life. Church bells, heard at a distance, are agreeable ; at close quarters they become intolerable. When walking alone in the fields, we often hum or whistle, to relieve the monotony of silence ; a brook by the side of our path, or the noise of ploughing, mowing, or thrashing in the neighbourhood, does away with this necessity. In almost all these cases we see that the pleasure is more or less distinctly a3sthetic, and in a few of them it rises indisputably into that class. When we progress to the human vocal organs, we notice HEAEING. 113 that those voices which are loud, shrill, and harsh, are un- pleasant, while those which only stimulate our nerves of hearing within the normal limits are graceful and pretty. If they abound in musical tones, a more distinctly a3sthetic element is imported, the explanation of which belongs to a later stage. Rough and jerky laughter displeases us ; the " silvery " character of its opposite is a poetical common- place. Languages which contain numerous gutturals and trilled letters make the greatest demands upon the auditory structures; aspirates and simple mutes are less objectionable; but vowels yield pure musical tones. Hence these differences are of great importance in Poetry. Highly vocalized lines are the most musical, while those containing many gutturals and treble combinations of consonants can only be admitted svhen intended as imitative of some rugged or harsh element in the idea expressed. All the emotional phenomena thus grouped together show themselves to be higher in the aesthetic scale than those which we formerly examined ; because they require for their perception more exercise of the intellectual faculty of atten- tion, and are thus seen to consist of slighter and less dis- cernible waves of pleasure and pain. Coarse and uneducated nerves cannot observe the unpleasantness of rough voices and harsh laughter ; still greater discrimination is requisite for the perception of relative smoothness or ruggedness in Italian and German ; while only a ver :ctentive and highly cultivated ear can thoroughly appreciate the delicate modu- lation in a sentence of Burke, or the sonorous periods of Demosthenes and Cicero. 114 rHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. Tliese last considerations lead us up to the first and simplest of the modes of sound which is regularly employed for a definite aesthetic purpose in works of art. § 5. Rhythm. As we walk along the road, we sometimes amuse ourselves by touching every post, treading upon every second flag, or striking our stick against every lamp post. If for any reason we are obliged to leave out one of the series, or to desist from want of the objects in question, a slight blank is felt, which is very faintly unpleasant. The nervous system has put itself into a position of expectancy, and is ready for the jippropriate discharge at the right moment. If the oppor- tunity for the discharge is wanting, the gathered energy has to dissipate itself by other channels, which involves a certain amount of conflict and waste. In the instances cited above we should probably relieve our feelings by snapping our fingers, kicking a stone, or twirling round our stick, respectively. The due recurrence of all such periodic actions is pleasant, because the organs then perform their functions at the exact moment of expectation. An organic rhythm is set up, and the actions correspond with it. In dances, especially such as waltzes, polkas, and galops, where the rhythm is constant, we see the simplest conscious utilization of the pleasure arising from this measured recurrence. When once we have mastered the first difficulty of learning the step, the easy mechanical nature of ths periodic motion gives us abundant muscular exercise in the form most nearly approaching the HEARING. 115 a3stlietic enjoyments. A false step of our partner or a mis- take of our own gives us an unpleasant jar, and may entirely upset the harmonious action of the limbs for a few minutes. Of course only a small part of the pleasure derived from dancing can be set down to this cause ; but that it is a retd element in the enjoyment is distinctly shewn by our prefer- ence for " a good partner," merely as such. Now, what the rhythm of the dance is to our muscular energies, the rhythm of poetry and music is to the ear. Its main constituent as a pleasure is the regularity of its recur- rence, and the consequent possibility of relaxing our atten- tion to the accentuation or the arrangement of chords. While syllables irregularly thrown together require a certain amount of jumping from point to point in the auditory per- ception, syllables placed in a regular order of short and long allow us to withdraw the attention from their accent, and to expect a continuance of the same harmonious and easily followed succession. Many familiar facts concur to justify this explanation. In attempting for the first time to read a jjerfectly new metre, it is s(mietimes a few minutes before we fall into the swing of it^ as we phrase it ; that is, before our auditory apparatus accommodates it- self to the new mode of recurrence. Until it has done so, we derive no pleasure from the metre, which seems meanwhile the same chaos of unmeasured secjuence as ordinary prose. Agaiu, in the early stages of verse-writing, befure the ear has become thoroughly trained by practice and attention, nothing is commoner than to find schoolboys send up hexameters containing seven feet, or English heroic I 'I 116 rHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. lines with six iambi. At that point of development the ear has not become sufficiently sensitive to notice the discre- pancy ; to a more cultivated hearer, the effect of the sudden intrusion is abominable. Once more, a false or unmetrical line in the midst of others comparatively smooth, has a jarring eifect, like that of the false step in dancing. It u[)sets the organic rhythm which has already established itself. On the other hand, if a few stanzas of poetry are printed as l)rose, we are put oft' our guard ; we do not expect the metri- cal recurrence, and we may consequently read several lines before the ear begins to detect the regularity of the accent or quantity. We may therefore conclude that the testhetic pleasure of metre depends upon the existence of an ex- pectant state, realized in the auditory apparatus as a recur- rent organic rhythm of nascent stimulation : while the a3sthetic discomfort of bad versification depends upon the breach of this expectation, and consequent upsetting of the organic rhythm. In this connexion it is perhaps worth notice that almost all the greatest masters of musical expression amongst English poets have been educated in the practice of verse-composition in the dead languages, which (useless though it is as a means of general culture) possesses the solitary advantage of giving to the ear a sensitiveness to metrical accuracy hardly obtainable in any other way. This is especially noticeable in Milton, and in our great living poets, whose achievements in metrical technique far surpass anvthins: that can be found in our earlier literature. Of course many other sensuous and emotional factors enter into the composition of metrical pleasure, especially in those HEARING. 117 higher flights to which allusion has just been made. In the first place, lines may be highly vocalized and all disagreeable consonantal combinations rejected. This is especially desir- able in anapa3stic and dactylic verse, where rapidity and ease of touch are the points chiefly aimed at. Mr. Swinburne's Dolores is a perfect marvel of execution in this resi)ect. Again, a great deal of intellectual pleasure may be given by an apt adaptation of metre to sense. Iambics (in English) are slow and solemn ; spondees, heavy ; dactyls, graceful and rapid ; trochees, stirring and suitable for martial pieces. Besides the skill which may thus be shown in the choice of metre for a whole composition in accordance with its subject, great power of imitation may be exhibited in adapting even a comparatively fixed m(;tre to a momentary emotion by slight changes in the constituent feet. Take the following two lines of the At)js as examjjles, which I have pointed for those readers who may not be already acquainted with the metre ; " Tibi"cen ubi' cani"t rhry"x ciirvo" grave ca'lamo" ; Ubi ca'pita Mce"iiade"s vi" jaciu"nt lieJeri'gerae"." Or these from Tennyson ; " The long brook falling through the cloven ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea." Or once more from the same delicate artist ; "The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and ivhirled i)i an arch. Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By uight, with noises of the uortheru sea." lis niYSIOLOGICAL iESTnETICS. In all those the plensuro is pnrtly owin^;- to the fact thnt, while the haiance of ex])eetatioii is preserved hy keepiiifjf the same nuiuher of accented syUahles throui2:hont, a very small variation is introduced with an obviously imitative ])urpose wliicli at once forces itself upon the notice of the intellect. Even for mere variety's sake, without any imitative intention, some such ringing the changes is often employed with artistic effect ; as in the weak cresura of Latin hexameters, the fre- quent tribrachs and less conmion dactyls or anapaests of Greek senarii,* and the occasional trisyllables which Shelley showed how to incori)orate amongst the iambi of English blank verse. In all these cases, besides the pure rhythmical pleasure, intellectual eletnents are involved, which will have to be considered in a later chapter. Under the present heading we may briefly mention the other poetical devices of rhyme and (in some classes of poetry, such as the Early English) alliteration. These likewise obviously depend for their effect upon the principle of recur- rence and expectation. * I do not include the spoiidcos, and for a definite reason. Tliej"^ form really a component part of the metre. Pure iand)ie trimeters make a distinct species, ditfering materially from the ordinary senarius. The figment of giiimmarians, that metres begin with a puie form, and that inii)ure feet are afteiwards admitted, is the exact opposite of historical truth. Metre, being originally written by ear (and very imperfect ears, too,) is at first extremely rough and irregular. It is only by gradual refineruents and tentative efforts that it becomes accommodated to the absolute requirements of the trained poet. The Latin hexameter had to pass through the various stages of Livius, Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, before it attained the perfect modulation of the Second Georgic. The iambics of the Phasclns would have proved far too troublesome for a less cultivated versifier than their author. In the present generation Mr. Swinburne has shown Englishmen for the first time that metres composed purely of trisyllabic feet are possible in their language. HEARING. 119 After wliut has been said before it will hardly he necessary to point out that the various [)leasures and disappointments enumerated in this section are composed of very slight emo- tional elements, recpiire for their perception much trained attention and delicacy of nervous constitution, and belong consequently to the most distinctively ajsthetic class. It is also clear that the pleasures arise from the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue; and that the disappointments, being due to breach of expectation and consequent upsetting of an organic rhythm, are trnceable to the felt want of this harmonious species of stimulation. § 6. Musical Tone. Several times in the course of the preceding sections allu- sion has been made to the pleasurableness of Musical Tones, coupled with a promise of its future explanation. At this point we now arrive. We have seen wherein these tones differ in intellectual discriminability from other sounds ; we have now to explain their emotional superiority. It was mentioned above that Musical Tones result from the periodic vibrations of an elastic or oscillatory body, and that their pitch depends upon the frequency per second of the aerial undulations so produced. It was also noticed that the mode of their perception is probably by sympathetic vibra- tions aroused in Corti's organs, the elastic appendages to the nerve-terminations in the cochlea. As any single pure tone can only excite such sympathetic vibrations in a single one of Corti's organs,* we not only see the reason why so large * This, which is doubtless strictly true of absolutely simple tones, like 120 PHYSIOLOGICAL -ESTHETICS. a number of tones are intellectually discriminable, but also why Musical Tones are in themselves, and apart from com- binational effects, more pleasant to us than mere Noises. ^Vhile the outer portion of the ear, which probably responds to the wide range of undulations giving rise to Noises, is constantly undergoing stimulation; each one of Corti's organs, being limited in its sympathy to a very small range of vibrations, is comparatively seldom excited by its proper irritant. Hence we may conclude that the corresponding fibre and the connected portions of the auditory centre are usually in that high state of nutrition which is the condition- precedent of pleasurable stimulation. Accordingly we find that almost all the more distinctly pleasurable sounds, such as the song of birds, the human voice, and the tones of various musical instruments, are made up of vibrations of the periodic sort. But between the various tones so produced there exist con- siderable differences in emotional effect. Some are said to be rich and mellow ; others, harsh and poor. Some, when sounded together, produce a consonance ; others, a dissonance. In order to comprehend these differences, we must go a little deeper than we have hitherto done into the physical composi- tion of air-waves, as well as their physiological and psychical counterparts. If we produce upon the siren air-waves of any given fre- quency per second, we hear a tone subjectively recognized as tlioso of a siren or a tuning-fork, is interfered with in most cases by those other undulations wliich produce " Harmonic Upper Partials." That jtho- nomenon, however, I persistently disregard for the i>roscnt, as it merely complicates the q^uestion iu hand. HEAEING. 121 being of a certain definite pitch. If we then double the fre- quency per second, by making the siren perform twice as many rev(jhitions in the same time, we obtain a different tone, recognized subjectively as such, and yet standing in a certain definite relation in consciousness to the previous tone, which is expressed by saying that the second is the Octave of the first. If we again double the frequency of undulation, we obtain a third tone similarly recognized as the Octave of the second. And so on till the limit of audi- bility is reached. If, once more, instead of doubling the number of revolu- tions (and consequently of vibrations) we make the siren perform three revolutions in the time in which it formerly performed two, the note will be higher in Pitch than it pre- viously was, in a certain analogous recognisable ratio, which is known as a Fifth. Similarly, we find that if the siren produces first three revolutions per second, and then four, the resulting relation of tones is known as a Fourth. If it first performs four revolutions per second, and then five, the relation is known as a Major Third. If it first performs five per second, and then six, the interval is called a Minor Third. Two other rather more complicated intervals (immaterial numerically to our purpose) are known as Major and Minor Sixths. All tones which stand in these numerical relations to one another are said to have consonant intervals. The meaninir of this term will be explained hereafter : for the present we shall adopt it as a convenient name. The eight tones which bear such relations to one another are said to form an 122 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTITETICS. Octave. Tliis, then, is the physical difference which gives rise in consciousness to the distinction between the Notes of the Octave. So fiir we have treated both the air-waves and tlie tones to which they give rise as though they were perfectly simple and uncompounded. This is actually the case with a small number of air-waves which originate musical sounds, such as those of the siren or the tuning-fork. But the vast ma- jority of vibrating bodies, like violin-strings or the human vocal organs, have been proved to i)roduce air-waves com- pounded of many undulations having different frequencies ; because, while the whole vibrates as a whole, various frac- tional parts also vibrate independently as parts. The first class may be described as simple, the second as compound wave-systems. Again, it has been shown that a compound wave-system may be analysed into its component factors by a series of resonators, each of which has been so regulated as to vibrate sympathetically with one set of undulations only, of a given frequency, amongst those which form the compound system. And, in the human ear, Corti's organs, being practically just such a series of resonators, probably analyse the whole wave-system into its various factors, so that each of them is heard as a separate and very slight tone of a recognisable pitch. Accordingly, the whole tone heard when a violin-string is set in motion is not simple and undecomposable, but is a compound of many simple tones, all of different pitch, each of which is called 2i partial tone, in contra-distinction to the compound tone which results from their combination. A good musical ear can easily HEAEIXG. 123 recorcnise these partial tones, and discriminate between one loudest and lowest note (produced by the vibration of the whole, and known as the prime tone) and other less loud and higher ones, called the upper partials. Lastly, these various sets of waves with different periods which compose the compound wave-system may or may not stand towards that largest class of undulations which give rise to the prime-tone in the numerical relations given above as con- stituting the consonant intervals : and, accordingly, may or may not produce tones standing in the relation of musical intervals to the prime-tone. In the former case they are said to be harmonic^ in the latter case, inharmonic^ upper partials. Before we proceed to examine the reasons for the pleasure derived from consonance of tones and the objectionable nature of dissonance, we may notice one aesthetic ajjplica- tion of the above principles which can conveniently be made at the present stage. We have already seen that nuisical tones are more agreeable than mere noises, because, while the nervous apparatus for the perception of the latter re- ceives frequent stimulation, each portion of the nervous apparatus for the perception of the former is comparatively seldom stimulated, and is therefore usually in that high state of nutrition which is the necessary condition for plea- surable excitement. Accordingly, to carry the same argu- ment a step further, a stimulant which would affect a large number of these special organs would afford greater pleasure than one which affected a single organ and its connected fibres alone. Now the tones produced by simple 124 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. uncompounded undulations, having a single pitch — like those of tuning-forks — can only arouse a sympathetic vibra- tion in a single one of Corti's organs : and we find, as might be expected, that such undulations produce a tone not used in Music, and characterised by its poverty and dullness. On the other hand, the tones produced by wave- systems compounded of many individual sets of undula- tions, each having its own frequency — like those of violin- strings — ought naturally to excite sympathetically many of Corti's organs, with their connected fibres, and to be cog- nised as a mass of sounds, differing in pitch : and we find that these are the wave-systems most employed in Music, as yielding tones noted for their richness and fullness — expres- sions which well describe the actual physiological effect. This result is only interfered with by the singular pheno- menon of dissonance, to which we must next proceed. Up to this point we have treated of air-waves as though a number of systems could be propagated side by side with each other through the atmosphere without mutual inter- ference. But this is not really the case. If two series of simple undulations are produced upon the siren, it is found that in certain cases the waves mutually interfere in such a manner that they at one time reinforce and at another cancel one another. The reason of this is that the crests and troughs of the waves are alternated in such an order that occasionally (at fixed intervals) two crests or two troughs coincide, when of course the resulting undulation is of greater amplitude, and at others a crest and a trough coincide, in which case they neutralise one another. Now HEARING. 125 whenever this phenomenon of interference in the waves occurs with moderately long intervals, the ear is conscious of each separate interruption of the tone, and each subse- quent reinforcement. Such alternations of sound are called Beats. But if the intervals between the interferences are very slight, then the ear at last fails to recognise the sepa- rate beats as such, and is merely conscious of that rough and. discordant sound which we call a (lisso?ia7ice. As a matter of physics, it has been shown that all orders of undu- lations produce with one another interferences (and conse- quently dissonances due to these minute beats) unless they stand to one another in the numerical relations of frequency which correspond to the consonant intervals of Music. But why should these interferences produce un[)leasant sensations ? The solution of this question is the key to the whole difficulty of harmony and discord : and that solu- tion we owe to Helmholtz. It was stated above that the ear is one of the organs whose repair is carried on at the most rapid rate. After every stimulation the fibres and nerve-centres are quickly put back into the proper state of nutrition for performing their ordinary functions. But the intermittent character of the stimulation in air-waves sub- ject to interferences taxes the structures to the uttermost. For it is a common experience that continued stimulation of a nerve deadens it after a short time to the action of the stimulus ; while intermission of the stimulation gives time for a renewal of the nervous excitability, and a consequent liability to fresh stimulation. Accordingly, the rapid alter- nation of irritation and repair set up by air-waves whose 126 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. mutual interference produces rapidly-recurring beats, is highly destructive of nervous tissue. At the very moment when the sensibility of the nerve is renewed after the last preceding shock, a second and a third shock come to waste its newly-recovered strength. We have already seen that rapid alternation of stimulation in the tactile corpuscles pro- duced the jarring sensation of gritty touch ; that a similar rapid alternation in the case of the auditory nerves in the vestibule produced the unpleasant thrill of a pencil scratched over a slate ; and we shall see hereafter in examining the sense of sight that the rapid alternation of light and shadow in a flickering candle or an intermittent series of electric sjiarks affects in like manner the optic apparatus. In pass- ing beside a fence through which the sunlight flickers alternately between the palings, wij have all experienced the unpleasant effect of such intermission. So, whenever two series of aerial undulations interfere with one another in such a manner as to produce alternate reinforcement and cancelling, with rapid rates of recurrence, the effect upon the auditory nervous system is that of severe and inter- mittent stimulation, wastefully attacking the fibres and end- organs concerned, and cognized in consciousness as a special form of discomfort called a dissonance. Not only can simj)le series of air-waves thus interfere with one another, but so also can the several members of those compound wave-systems which we saw to be the objec- tive counterparts of musical tones possessing harmonic upper purtials. Indeed, as a rule, dissonances are more often produced by interferences between the lesser members HEAEIXG. 127 of each series than between the main undulations which correspond to their prime tones. And as all orders of undu- lations, except those which stand to one another in the numerical relations which underlie the consonant intervals, have been shown both by mathematical calculation and physical experiment to produce such interferences, it results that only those ratios which yield the consonant tones can be employed together for assthetic effect. They, alone, when conjoined, continuously and harmoniously stimulate the auditory fibres ; all other combinations yield that inter- mittent stimulation which is cognised in consciousness as discord. Finally, the component members of a single compound wave system, yielding a tone with upper partials, may pro- duce such interferences with one another ; in which case the tone itself is cognised as unmusical, rough, or braying. We left open for awhile, above, the question as to what was the objective fact which underlay the distinction of timbre or quality between tones of the same apparent pitch, sounded upon different instruments or different human voices. It will be seen from what has been said hitherto that this distinction really depends upon the number and character of the harmonic (or inharmonic) upper partials which each possesses ; or, to put the same fact objectively, upon the various periodic frequencies of the various members composing the compound wave-system. While in any two such cases the periodic frequency of that dominant member of the system which yields the prime tone is the same, and affects sympathetically the same one of Corti's organs, (or else 128 PHYSIOLOGICAL ^STUETICS. we would not regard the two as possessing the same pitch) the number and frequency of the various minor component members which yield the harmonic (or inharmonic) upper partials may be very different, and so give rise to sympathetic vibrations in different units of Corti's organs, and be con- sequently differentially cognised in consciousness. The dis- tinction thus originated is called quality or timbre. I need hardly add that those qualities are agreeable which stimulate the largest number of fibres with the greatest freedom from mutually-produced interferences ; and those qualities objec- tionable which stimulate fewest fibres or produce mutual in- terferences. The former class are said to be rich^ the latter poor and harsh respectively. Lastly, we see that these emotional effects are still more minute in character and still more difficult of discrimination than those that we have hitherto examined ; and we conse- quently decide that they stand highest of all the auditory class in the assthetic scale, § 7. Music. It is not my intention to enter into the deeper questions of musical composition, partly because I am not qualified by musical tastes to do so, and partly because Music, except in those elementary phases which have been hitherto treated, does not largely enter in the ideal form into the composition of Poetry, which is the ultimate end of our present inquiry. It may be well, however, to glance briefly at some few points which especially demand our attention. In the first place, just as the principle by which (though HEARINa. 123 unconsciously) we are guided in the choice of certain moditi- cations of the human voice, and certain reeds or striuirs, for musical purposes, is that they produce the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue or waste ; so, too, in the combination of these elements, the same end is heUl steadily in view. A chord consists of a combination of tones, none of which produces a dissonance with another, either in primes or partials. Such chords are then placed together in that systematic order which yields a musical phrase, that is, a consciously-felt harmonious pleasurable stimulation, in the complex total as well as the several elements. And, in a complete composition, such a rational and intelligible sequence of phrases is sought after as will give the whole a definite completeness as a single work, not a mere collection of chords. This can only be done by combining the various parts upon a regular plan, which involves an immense deal of previous association, and, probably, a certain amount of conventional arrangement. As an assistance in attaining such an intelligible order, musical tones are not permitted to vary indefinitely in dura- tion, but are arranged in a definite scale of length, each note lasting double the time of the next below^ and half the time of the next above. Hence we are enabled to arrange them in various combinations, which give varying degrees of promi- nence to one tone or another. We can employ chiefly semi- breves, minims, and crotchets, to produce slow and solemn music ; or we can use mainly the shorter notes, and produce rapid and easy tunes. Moreover, these differences in dura- tion and their ratios to one another are readily recognised by K 130 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. the ear, so tliat we can perceive a certain orderly arrange- ment in the time as well as the tune, anil an adaptation of the one to the other, which appeals to our intellectual facul- ties and our love of symmetry. But the great mass of pleasurable feeling aroused by Music is undoubtedly due to its power of suggesting and stimulating the various complex emotions. Why these emotions yield us pleasure is a question that must be left for a later chapter ; but we may well enquire here how Music has acquired this power of arousing them. It is a well- known fact that mere collocations of sound, without words or other interpretation, will rouse martial enthusiasm, quicken religious feeling, or bring tears into the eyes of thousands. To account for these effects is difficult, but we may jjcrhaps see how they are brought about if we follow up the growth of such emotional associations from their simplest germs. The high and low tones respectively are the natural ex- pressions of different passing emotions both in man and other animals. We get the earliest case in mere shouts and cries which express joy, surprise, anger, or surliness, without fore- thought or concert. A step above these are the dance of victory with its accompanying song of triumph; or the wailing and funereal cries, which are regularly planned and consciously carried out. Such performances may be accom- panied by chanted words, in which case the varying ideas implied by them will have their varying but natural emotional expression, changing with every change of thought. In this way a first beginning will be made, by which certain HEARIXG. 131 modes of sound become associated with certain phases of emotion. As music becomes more conscious and more differentiated, attempts will spontaneously be made to suit the time and tune more definitely to the idea expressed. Instrumental aid will also be called in. The hollow timbrel is fitted for slow funereal marches ; the tinkling cymbals express the joy of victory and welcome the conquerors home. More extensive imitations of emotional expression next arise. The more delicate affections, grief, tenderness, rapture, have appropriate tones, which can be combined with words that eke out the half-expressed idea. Rajtid transitions produce one distinct effect ; slow rhythm another. Songs of purely musical character thus grow up slowly out of the monotonous chants and spontaneous recitatives of savages. Instrumental music is similarly developed from the rude clamour of the tom-tom, the rattle, and the gong. Artificial association does the rest. Certain combinations have always been employed in connexion with particular phases of thought, and recall them at once. Gregorian music has always been heard in dim cathedrals or on Sabbath evenings, and so, besides its natural solemnity, revives the memories of those sacred scenes. The tripping measure of dance-music suggests the gay throngs with which it is most closely connected in thought. Thus we have gradually come to recognise certain combinations of time and tune as specially adapted to sacred, processional, martial, tender, or gay subjects. These, again, subdivide into more special classes, recalling more special emotions. In the oratorio, the subject alone suggests the extraneous association. In K 2 132 rnYSIOLOOiaVL jesthetics. the opera, dress, gesture, language, and action, all aid the realization of the musical import. Here then we are able to form numerous other emotional and classical associations, all partly natural in their ground-work, but all owing something to the conventional interpretation that we learn to put upon them. At last, by all these various steps, we reach that final power of receiving special emotional stimulation from sounds alone which is illustrated in such compositions as the Lieder ohne Worte.* Expression in composition depends upon an intimate know- ledge of these various effects and a vast repertory of combina- tions suitable for their production. Expression in execution depends upon realization of the composer's meaning. Tlie performer must intellectually grasp the idea that was in the mind of his composer, and must aid its development by exerting all his technical skill in rendering. This can only adequately be done by minute discrimination of the faintest emotional shades in touch, cadence, and timbre, combined with perfect delicacy of fingering, or thorough command over the muscles of song. It is just this power of putting liimself in harmony with the spirit of a great master, and reproducing in faithful representation his innermost conception, that above all other points distinguishes the true artiste from the mere brilliant executionist. The one plays and sings the notes, the other plays and sings the idea. And if the perception of harmony and discord in simi)le * For the relation of Music to natural expression see Mr. Herlert SiJOiicer's Essay on the " Origin and Function of Music." HEARING. 133 combinations of two tones demands a comparatively lii^di order of emotional discriminativeness, it is immediately obvious that these higher and successively higher combina- tions of re-representative elements require for their apprecia- tion a successively minuter and more delicate discriminative- ness, besides a deeper emotional and intellectual nature. Hence they are amply entitled to the first place in the aesthetic scale of Hearing, if not, indeed, in the whole hier- archy of the senses. Music is claimed by its admirers as the highest of the directly presentative arts, and surpassed by Poetry alone, the absolutely ideal and representative form of aesthetic gratification. CHAPTER VII. SIGHT. § 1. ./Esthetic Importance of SigJit. The enormous majority of testhetic objects appeal to tlie sense of Sight, and it must accordingly be placed first of the senses in the aesthetic hierarchy. This will seem u hard saying to the musically-minded, but a little consideration will justify it to any unprejudiced thinker. It must be remembered that only a few natural sounds, such as the song of birds, the hum of insects, and the murmur of water, are sesthetically beautiful ; while, besides the artistic device of rhythm, only a single art — that of Music — is based upon the sense of Hearing ; and it adds comparatively few ideal elements to Poetry. But Sight yields us numerous gratifica- tions from natural objects of all sorts, as well as endless pleasures of aesthetic effect in manufactured articles, keramic, textile, and general ; while, amongst the higher arts, three principal ones. Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, are founded upon it alone ; and immensely the larger part of the ideal sensuous elements in Poetry are of visual origin, in one of the modes, as form or colour. A brief enumeration of some among these various objects SIGHT. 135 will perhaps aid us in estimating the importance for our pre- sent subject of the sense which we have now to attnck. Amongst natural esthetic products owing their beauty to visual qualities we may mention, in the organic world, bright- hued flowers, green leaves, plants or trees, and coloured foliage ; sea anemones and other brilliant radiata ; shells of mollusca or articulata; butterflies, beetles, and moths ; birds of bright or delicate plumage ; and many graceful or beau- tiful mammals, such as the antelope, the zebra, the tiger, and the hare. Here, too, we must place the beauty of human beings, man or woman, adult or child. In the inorganic world, we have gems and precious stones : marble, amber, jet, and porphyry ; the various metals, especially gold and silver ; with all the coloured woods, stones, sands, and clays. Amongst effects of light in a more transitory form may be reckoned the rainbow and the hues of sunset, the solar sjjec- trum, the dew-drop, and iridescence generally on water, ice, crystals, or thin plates of any transparent substance. We have direct light in the sun, fixed stars, fire-flies, glow-worms, and the phosphorescence of the sea. Amongst larger collec- tions of natural objects we may notice woods, valleys, moun- tains, rivers, lakes, glaciers, rocks, waterfalls, the stormy ocean, the blue expanse of heaven, and the autumn tints upon the forest. All these, combined, go to make up what we call scenery. To this list we must add the artificial pro- ducts which man has wrought out of these natural objects or agencies. Beginning with the feathers, shells, and pebbles of the savage, we go up through all the grades of dress, dyed cloths, purple and fine linen, silk, lace, furs, jewellery, and 136 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. embroidery. Similarly with upholstery, from the simple rushes and wooden bench of primitive royalty to the Turkey carpets, pomegranate wall papers, mahogany tables, marble mantelpieces, lace curtains, and satin coverings of modern civilized life. Pottery and domestic utensils, too, have passed from the rough clay pipkin and the rudely-carved calabash, to Greek and Etruscan vases, Palissy and Wedgwood ware, the goblets of Cellini and the many-hued Venetian glass. Architecture has grown from the wattled hut and the wooden Ionian cottage to Corinthian columns, Roman domes, Gothic cathedrals, and Indian temples. It has superadded to natural scenery the further charms of the towering fortress, the ruined castle, the venerable abbey, the village spire, the bridge spanning the cataract, and the cottage perched upon the crags ; all of which give the sense of human occupation, past 01- present, and relieve the solitude of unpeopled nature. Side by side with these, cultivation has introduced the close- ghaven lawn, the trim croft, the hedges and walls which impart individuality to each element of the scene ; the hay- ricks, the apple-orchards, the vineyard, and the waving corn- fields. Finally, we have the more distinctly aesthetic arts of Painting and Sculpture, which imitate and emulate all these, besides appealing indirectly to the various complex emotions, and so inducing to the fullest extent that compound sensuous and emotional thrill which we know in its synthetic totality as artistic pleasure. With such a vast repertory as this. Sight may well claim to take first rank in the iesthetic order of the senses. SIGHT. 137 § 2. u^T^ther-waves and the Organ for their Perception. Besides the atmosplieric air which continually surrounds us, modern science teaches us to assume that there exists everywhere a much subtler and apparently imponderable fluid, known as the iEther, which we figure to ourselves as filling not only the vast interstellar spaces, but also the minute interstices between the molecules and atoms of all ponderable bodies, the gases of the atmosphere itself in- cluded. Of the true nature of this iEther we know nothing with certainty : indeed, we may regard it rather as a hypo- thetical expression which enables us to comprehend certain orders of facts than as a real and indubitable existence. But whatever may be the doubts which rest over the nature of the iEther, we can feel quite sure of the reality of many manifestations which we can only formulate to ourselves as modes of motion in this imponderable and all-pervading fluid. As such, then, we shall unhesitatingly regard them, remembering that the truth of our explanations is in no way bound up with that of the theory in terms of which they are at present necessarily expressed : for the proved and measure- able energies which we thus figure to our minds will remain equally real, and every mathematical formula with reference to them will be equally correct, whatever may be the ultimate fate of our present mode of representation.* * I use this doubtful language for fear of those strainers at gnats, wlio can swallow the whole material universe, but refuse the one item of /Ether. It is amusing to see the naivete with which most scientific men (who are not metaphysicians) accept unhesitatingly the existence of air, while they plume themselves upou their cautiou iu using hypothetical terms with refer- 13S PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. The Mther, like all other fluids, is capable of being set in rhythmical or oscillatory motion, so as to produce recurrent undulations. It is not largely affected, however, by those greater oscillations which produce the air- waves, cognized in consciousness as sound. It is true th it air- waves as they die away give up their energy at last to the -^ther ; but the ordinary and best-known undulations of the latter have a different origin. The motion which usually produces this effect upon the imponderable fluid is that rapid and minute vibration of material particles which takes place when their temperature is considerably raised, and the iEther-waves thus generated are infinitely smaller and quicker than those of the air. Any body whose particles are in this state of rapid vibration (commonly induced by chemical combination with other substances) impinges ui)on the surrounding J^ther and sets up in it a series of undulations which spread in every direction in straight lines. The particular nature of these undulations and their differences from those air- waves which constitute the objective basis of sound, need not here be entered into. They do not concern our immediate subject, and they can be found in any treatise on Physical Optics. All that we need at present notice is their physiological effect, and the mode of their final psychical perception. If we warm a piece of iron, short of red-heat, in a darkened room, and then hold it a few inches from the face, we are ence to ^Etlier. As though all forms of matter, ponderable or imponderable, were not equally mere symbols of unknown realities or possibilities, all alike revealed to us simply through their effects upon the human senses. We know just as much about air as we do about iEther, and no more : that is to ay, exactly nothing. SIGHT. 139 conscious of a peculiar sensation in our cheeks, which we name heat. This sensation is produced hy waves of iEther, which attack the nerve- terminations of those fibres, dis- tributed over the whole body, whose office is to inform us of changes in the temperature of our skin.* The undulations of the ^Ether may be supposed to set up corresponding undula- tions in the terminals or adjacent tissues, and the stimulus thus received is transmitted by the fibres to the brain. The iEther-waves so cognized are comparatively slow in their rates of oscillation, though many times more rapid than those of the atmosphere which give rise to sound. But there are other iEther-waves far quicker than these. If we replace the iron in the fire, its rate of vibration becomes much more rapid, and when we again withdraw it, we find not only that the sensation of heat is intensified, but also that a new sensa- tion arises, localized in our eyes. The iron has become red- hot, and now yields, besides the first and slower class of undulations which we knew as heat, another and more rapid class of undulations which we know as light. The mode of action in the first case is a very familiar one. We know that whenever the slower ^ther-waves, which we distinguish by the name of Radiant Heat, fall upon any object, they set up in it sympathetic vibrations ; which we call Absorbed Heat. It is quite intelligible that these vibrations should affect the terminations of the thermal nerves, and so give rise to the sensation of Heat. But the mode of action in the second * We assume the existence of special thermal fibres, because it is difficult otherwise to bring the case of heat and cold under the general principle of specific energies. Another explanation may, however, be discovered hereafter. 140 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. case is more special, and it resides in a more specialized organ, — the eye. This, indeed, is quite what we might expect. The varying degrees of temperature are of the utmost importance to animal life, which they aflfect directly; and even very low animal organisms are accordingly provided with nervous structures sensitive to heat and cold. But the more rapid -lEther-waves which we cognize as Light, though all-important to vegetables, do not produce so immediate results upon animal life ; and the various indications which they yield are only valuable with the help of a compara- tively complex system of organic co-ordination — known sub- jectively as intellect — in the development of which system they bear the chief part. Accordingly, we find the organ of Sight wanting in the lowest animals, only slightly developed in the intermediate classes, and attaining an advanced state of perfection in the higher articulata and the vertebrates alone. And side by side with this advance in visual adapta- tion we find a general advance in intelligence. We need only concern ourselves here with that particular form of the organ of Sight which is found in man. The essential portions of the human eye are two in number : first, an outer or conducting portion, by which the ^ther- waves are received and converged upon the nervous structure ; and, second, an inner sensitive portion, where the waves impinge upon the nerve-terminations and set up action in the fibres. The most important part of the external eye is the crystalline lens, a viscid body capable of converging ^ther-waves upon the sensitive background, in the same manner as the ordinary glass lenses used by opticians. But, SIGHT. 141 owing to its semi-liquid consistency, it is possible to alter its shape and focus by a muscular contraction so as to converge at will JLther- waves from different sources at varying distances upon a given point behind it, and thus to save the necessity for many separate lenses, which would liave to be used if the material employed were solid.* The inner or sensitive portion consists of the retina, a net-work of nerve- terminations, whose principal organs, known as the rods nnd cones, are spread like a piece of tessellated pavement in close ranks over the back of the eye. Their exact nature or functions are not perfectly understood : we may regard it as probable; however, that the ^Ether-waves set up in them some kind of sympathetic vibration which communicates its disturbance to the fibres of the optic nerve. At any rate, we know that these terminations are the most delicate and the most minutely discriminative in the whole body ; and there are many reasons for supposing that they consist of specially unstable nerve-substance, so arranged as to be easily affected by almost infinitesimal incident energies, like those of the quicker setherial undulations. Each point upon the retina corresponds to a particular spot in the visual field ; and when nervous action is set up in any such point, the resulting sensation is regarded as having its objective origin in the corresponding external spot. The nature and cause of this connexion is a question belonging to the analysis of our in- tellectual faculties : it must merely be accepted as a datum in the science of Esthetics. * All questions as to the mode of convergence belong simply to Physical Optics, that is, the objective science of /Etlier-waves and their transfornia- U2 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. § 3. Varieties of yEt/ier-maves and their Equicale7its in Co?iscious}iess. So far we have only recognized that broadest distinction between J^ther- waves upon which are based the widely- different sensations of Light and Heat. We have next to enquire what are the minor varieties of undulation, and how they are separately cognized by the organ of vision. Here again we must necessarily speak with great brevity, referring the reader for details to special works upon the subject. If we pass a pencil of ^ther- waves, proceeding from any incandescent body, through a prism in a darkened room, we split up the pencil into a number of separate series of undu- lations, varying in their rapidity of oscillation, just as we saw that the air- waves which produce sound, varied according to the rate of vibration in the generating body. We find, that the waves arrange themselves in a regular order, beginning with those slowest ones which produce heat, and ending with the most rapid of all. If we project the divided pencil upon a screen, we can measure the number of varieties ; and when we do so, we are conscious, visually, of a belt of coloured bands, beginning with red and ending with violet. If, beyond the red band, we insert a thermo- electric pile, we find that the slowest waves which produce heat are mostly concentrated upon a region outside the coloured bands on that side ; and if we test the other end, beyond the violet, with certain chemically-prepared surfaces, tions : it would be impossible to treat that subject even cursorily iu a work like the present. SIGHT. Ii3 we find that the opposite class of very rapid waves, possess- ing great chemical activity, are mostly concentrated upon a corresponding region outside the bands on the contrary side. Between these two points we find the various colours arranged in visible order. Hence we conclude that the slowest and the most rapid undulations alike fail to affect the nerves of the eye ; but that the intermediate classes of waves fall upon the retina and there excite difierential sensations. By what mechanism they do so is our next question. This we are enabled to answer with great probability by Young's theory of the perception of colour, which may now be regarded almost in the light of a proved law. We may suppose that all over the surface of the retina nervous terminations are closely packed, belonging to three orders which correspond to three classes of fibres and their connected central organs. Each order of terminations vibrates in sympathy with a sj'stem of ^ther-waves pos- sessing a limited though widely varying rate of oscillation only. From the stimulation of those in sympathy with the slowest (visible) waves arises the sensation of red. From the stimulation of those in sympathy with waves having a medium rate of oscillation arises the sensation of green. From the stimulation of those in sympathy with the quickest (visible) waves arises the sensation of violet. All other sen- sations of colour are due to combinations of these in different degrees of intensity. Stimulation of all three simultaneously produces the feeling of whiteness. Stimulation of the red and green produces the sensation called yellow : of the green and violet, tnat called blue : of the violet and red, that called 144 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. purple. Hence the visible shape of any ohject depends upon the number and position of the points in the retina affected by it : its colour depends upon the class of nervous termina- tions stimulated ; and this last point, again, depends upon the rapidity of the ^ther-waves which impinge upon the particular portion. So that, in the eye as in the ear, dif- ferences of sensation are ultimately explicable as due to differences in the several structures involved.* It is obvious from what has been said above that an ordinary pencil of ^ther-waves consists of many systems possessing all the various rates of oscillation, from the slowest to the most rapid. In the method of sifting by means of a prism, adopted in our illustration, all these various systems are separated from one another, so that in one place we get the slowest or heat-rays ; in another the somewhat quicker or red rays ; next to them again, with increasing rapidity, the orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet rays ; and last of all, the quickest or ultra-violet rays. But there is another and commoner mode of sifting the com- ponent wave-systems of compound a3therial undulations, by what is called interference. In order to understand this method, which gives their distinctive proper colours to all material objects, we must first examine very briefly the simpler case of reflexion. When a pencil of compound aotherial undulations falla upon a perfectly smooth and polished opaque surface, it is • The number of separate kinds of terminations mnst be accepted as purely conjectural. The ordinary explanation is that given in the text, but the real numbers may be much greater. SIGHT. 146 not analyzed into its component fiictors, but is turned back again in its totality (at least so far as concerns its visible constituents) at an angle equal to that of its original inci- dence. Such a pencil is said to be reflected. If, into our darkened room, wi admit a single pencil of iEther-waves, and then project it upon a mirror so as to return the reflected ray upon our eyes, we obtain an image as strong as we sliould get by placing our eyes in the direct i)ath of the i)encil. The rays may be all returned, if the reflecting surface is an (ideally) perfect one ; or they may be partly returned and partly transmitted ; or they may be returned in portion only, and the remainder absorbed by the body. This, then, is what happens when the opaque surface upon which the pencil falls is perfectly smooth and polished. But most ordinary objects are not so uniform as the mirror. They consist of innumerable minor surfaces, each of which receives and reflects the ^ther-waves at a different angle. Nor do they all reflect the total beam in all its constituents alike. Some orders of undulations are occasionally absorbed by an interference similar to that which we noticed in the case of air-waves. If, instead of the mirror, we place in the path of the pencil n particular piece of prepared silk, (I purposely avoid misleading terms which already involve the fact of colour-perception) we shall find that the pencil is no longer reflected in its totality ; only the rays of a particular rapidity — say in this case those which produce the sensation of redness — are cast off by the silk ; and even these are not directly reflected in a single pencil, but scattered in every direction through the room. Now all opaque surfaces thus L 146 niYSIOLOGICAL JESTIIETICS. scatter tlie yEther-wavos that fall upon tlicm, sometimes returning them all, in which case the surface is said to be white ; sometimes absorbing many and returning a few, but all in equal proportions, in which case it is called grey ; sometimes returning those of one or two orders only, the rcnuiinder being neutralized by interference, in which case the object is said to be red, green, blue, or yellow, according to the kind of waves which it reflects ; and sometimes ab- sorbing all the rays, in which case the surface is said to be black. The principal object subserved by our eyes is the recogni- tion of such dispersed and reflected light. It is the A'ltluiT- waves thus cast off in every direction from the surfaces of material bodies which have had the main share in the de- vel()[)ment of the visual organs. Before the introduction of tires, candles, lucifer matches, and gas-lamps, the sun and the fixed stars were almost the only objects which could aifcct the nascent or developed vision with direct light. To become cognizant of these distant bodies could not be of any practical importance to the differentiating organisms. But all the various terrestrial objects around us are perpetually casting off waves from their surfaces in every direction, which fall upon the nervc'terminations of the eye, and yield special indications of form, and colour, immediately translated by the intellect into thoii- corresponding tactual terms. And this probably explains the reason why the eye is only sensible to the middle or visible rays of the spectrum, and not to the two extreme bunds. The slowest or heat rays, besides the fact that they do not pass readily through the crystalline SIGHT. HT lens, are mostly absorLed by tlie suiTacos upon wliicli tliey fall, instead of being reflected like the liglit-vays : and tlie quickest or ultra-violet rays, besides beinbability that the existence of special nerve-terminations for t.he perception of the various colours is due to the sifting of total solar ./Ether- waves by most terrestrial surfaces, and the consequent dis- persed reflexion of different systems of undulations from different bodies in the environment. As any tendency which might arise towards the establishment of such differentially- affected structures would be obviously for the advantage of the organism, by giving it more specialized i ilormation with regard to food, enemies, or other relatively-important facts in its surroundings, it would of course be perpetuated and increased through the joint action of heredity and selection, so as to produce at last that minutely-constructed and highly-discriminative organ, the mammalian and human eye. With this brief and somewhat diagraiximatic resume of the mode of action in vision we i)ass on to our more proper subject, the pleasures and pains derived from the eye. § 4. General Emotional Fhenomena of Sight. The eye, like the ear, is not ordinarily exposed to any de- structive disintegrative action, nor to violent and long-inter- mitted stimulation. Hence its pains are chiefly tliose of I, 2 148 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. exhaustion and fatigue, in the whole or a part of tlie nervous structures ; while its pleasures are chiefly those of normal and harmonious stimulation, occurring after comparatively short periods of sufficient repair and nutrition. We will briefly examine the most obvious cases, before proceeding to notice those more delicate instances which are properly re- garded as belonging to the ^Esthetic class. Painful feelings of considerable acuteness arise from ex- posure to any very powerful and persistent direct light. The sun, the voltaic arc, the calcium lamp, all rapidly fatigue the nerves of the eye. If the exposure is long continued, the feeling rises to a very painful pitch : and blindness results after a certain time, as in the barbaric torture of cutting oif the eyelids. Even very short exposure yields a disagreeable dazzling sensation. Lights of lesser intensity, such as ordinary gas or kerosine lamps, fatigue the eyes if looked at directly for a few moments. Reflected light, when of mode- rate strength, similarly affects the nerves, as in tlie glare of sunshine from the water, or from mirrors, metal roofs, and shop windows. Even when far less intense, as in the case of wet pavements, snow-crystals, and dewy grass, the garisli effect is highly disagreeable. Dispersed and scattered light is occasionally powerful enougli sensibly to fatigue the sight. ►Soft snow, which does not directly reflect the su'.isliine, yet rapidly dazzles the eyes. In the tropics, white roads produce a like effect ; and even in an English suninu'r the glare of dusty streets is excessively unpleasant. Nor is it only the powerful stimulation of white light, afl'ecting all three orders of fibres at once, that produces this result : red SIGHT. 149 and orange in large quantities equally tire the special struc- tures concerned ; and the general diffused light of a very sunny day is decidedly disagreeable. Besides these varieties of painful, because excessive, stimulation, there is another class of visual fatigues which is worth notice on account of its analogy to the case of disson- ance. All intermittent and jerky stimulation of the optic nerve is unpleasant, because it attacks the fibres just as they are freshly repaired. To this class belong the unpleasant effects of flickering and unsteady lights, many of which have been already quoted. Gas and tallow candles, as well as fire-light, yield instances : while the mellow effect of day- light and moderator lamps is owing to their steadiness. On the other hand, mere light is agreeable in proper quantities as stimulus after sleep and repose. In the night, if awake, we dislike the dark and long for morning. In the evening, we enjoy the lamp or gas, and object to gloomily- lighted rooms. Brilliant illumination is specially desired for dinner-parties, balls, and other festive occasions.* Savages seek similar pleasures in their torch-light dances. The light of day is agreeable, if not too strong. Sunshiny mornings are more pleasant than murky ones. As a relief from over- stimulation we insist upon the pleasure of a normal amount of light in a shady walk or a dim cathedral aisle. Poets and painters are fond of such subdued illumination, and dislike the garishness of full sunshine. In morbid states of nerve — as during headache — we require a darkened room. In * Many readers may remeuibtr the ridiculous appearance of the London theatres during the gasmen's strike a few years since. »i~i<.;jfcti„^ *._:,„,„;— 150 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. sliort, the due amount of action in the visual organ is plea- sant. Gloom prevents us from fully carrying out our ordinary functions, and glare fatigues our eyes : but normal stimula- tion yields us a slight passive pleasure. A more distinct kind of enjoyment is derived from separate points of liglit, when not too intense, in contrast to surround- ing darkness, as in beacons, bonfires, illuminations, rockets, and Catherine- wheels. The full moon, comets, and the stars yield similar pleasures. So do fire-flies, glow-worms, marine phosphorescence, and electrical phenomena. The aurora boreal is exhibits the same effect on a grander scale. Even the lurid light which overhangs a great city, a house on fire, or an iron-smelting district, is not without a weird beauty of its own. All these varieties of visual pleasure and pain depend en- tirely upon fatigue or normal stimulation of the optic nerve. But there is also another order of emotional phenomena con- nected with vision, dej)ending rather upon the various muscles and contractile bodies which regulate the direction and conver- gence of the eyes, or the focussing of the organs for close or distant sight. If we try to fix our eyes steadily upon any single point for a long time, we are conscious of distinct muscular fatigue. If we dissociate the eyes, or gaze at any object too close for proper convergence, we feel a similar strain. In looking attentively at very small points, especially at a distance, we are easily tired. Rapidly revolving bodies weary us in the automatic attempt to follow their revolutions : if two adjacent ones revolve in opposite directions behind one another, the effect is positively painful. After a day's sight- SIGHT. 151 seeing the eyes ache ; and long continued reading produces a similar disagreeable feeling, sometimes accompanied hy permanent disease. In fact, any excessive or exhausting demand upon the muscular apparatus of sight soon gives rise to more or less painful effects. It need hardly be added that as the muscles are very minute, the point of exhaustion is quickly reached. No very obvious instances of the corre- sponding pleasure can be cited; but this part of the subject will be more fully entered into when we come to examine beauty of form. So far it will be noticed that we have merely considered the general pleasures and pains of total light, or of the mus- cular adjustments of sight, without any allusion to the s})ecial cases of form and colour. A few of the former, as in the case of fire-flies or the full moon, almost rise to the {esthetic level ; but the greater part are the analogues of those emo- tional phenomena of sound which we regarded as outside the sesthetic class. We must now pass on to the more distinc- tively assthetic visual manifestations. § 5. Colour. Absolutely black and dull surfaces scatter no appreciable amount of light. All the rays which fall upon them are de- graded to the form of heat. Consequently, they give no stimulation to the optic nerve. Hence blackness is always unpleasant, unless relieved by polish and consequent direct reflexion. A room hung with dull black is appalling in its sombreness. Black is the almost universal hue for mourn- 152 PHYSIOLOGICAL -^JSTHETICS. ing, and most of the fabrics used for the purpose are, like crape, as rough as possible. Here the original intention is to show sorrow by the complete absence of decorative colour. It takes a very pretty face to look well in widow's weeds. For a similar reason, black is used in the dress of nuns, where the object is to make the natural beauty of the features (if any) as unattractive as possible. When we employ black objects for decorative purposes, like jet, we give them the utmost attainable lustre ; and we polish our boots after blacking them. At best, black in ordinary cases is emotion- ally neutral, and can only be made pleasurable by some super-added effect of reflexion, softness, or contrast ; as in the ordinary combinations of black-and-gold, black-and- silver, or black-and-red. White, on the other hand, though liable to become pain- ful in an excessive light, is usually pleasing as a stimulant, but not so pungent as the analytic colours. Freshly fallen snow, spotless linen, white paper, are all more or less agree- able. Marble, either in statuary or architecture, is more decidedly assthetic. White dresses, the Roman toga, or the modern bridal attire, have a certain simple beauty of their own. Probably these effects are chiefly due to the intensity of the scattered white light in each case, and its consequent power as an excitant. The whites of nature are mostly greyish in tinge : poets, on the contrary, dwell upon the parity and spotlessness of the white objects they introduce. The love for white in its full intensity gives rise to the pro- cesses of fulling and bleaching. A fleece on the sheep's back is a sorry-looking dirty tangle : when washed and SIGHT. 163 combed into a heartli-rug it pleases us by its snowy hue as well as by its luxurious softness. Between white and black, with little or no admixture of analytic colours, are innumerable shades of grey and mud- colour, which difier from pure white only in the ever- decreasing amount of rays which they reflect in proportion to those which they absorb. These are, on the whole, the least pleasing of all hues. They affect the nerves in the same manner as white, but with a slight and languid stimulation. Hence they have neither the pungency of red, green, and yellow, nor the purity of total white. They are very common in inorganic nature, and civilisation has brought them to the surface in our roads and streets. While green is the prin- cipal hue of the native fields, grey in various shades is the principal hue of the city. Compared with the absolute negation of black, the familiar stimulation of white, and the duller excitement of the dif- ferent greys, there is the pleasure of novelty and pungency in the strong irritation of the analytic colours, simple and compound — blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and purple. That these colours are in themselves pleasurable, especially when brilliant and pure, is undeniable. Not only do children and savages prize coloured objects, like feathers, beads, cloth, and pebbles, but the most refined taste is gratified by them in the rainbow, the hues of sunset, and the autumn tints upon the forest. The gratification is doubtless due to the powerful stimulation of the nerves in a special area by the single irritant. If the stimulation is excessive or pro- tracted, pleasure soon yields to fatigue. 154 rnYSIOLOGICAL iESTlIETICS. All these colours, however, are not equally pleasurable. In external nature, untouched by the hand of man, the violet end of the spectrum is much commoner than the rod. On the hills and valleys around we see masses of green : in the clear sky above, an unbroken field of azure. But only an occasional flower, a stray butterfly, or a solitary bird yields us crimson, purple, or orange. From this arise several noticeable testhetic results. In the first place, our eyes, having naturally adai)ted themselves to their circumstances, are capable of enduring much greater and more prolonged stimulation from green and blue surftices than from red and yellow. Hence we prefer a pre})onderance of these hues in the visual field ; we demand that a landscape should chiefly consist of sky and foliage ; and we require abundant green as the background to a bouquet, which seems otherwise too staring. But on the other hand, the rarer stimulants of reds and yellows are more distinctly pleasurable in themselves, as arousing function in seldom-excited nerves ; while the greens, blues, and greys are rather sought after as reliefs from excessive action. Furthermore, the colours of the red end would seem to have assigned to them weaker or less numerous fibres than those of the violet ; which is only what w-3 should expect from their lesser frequency. Accordingly they more rapidly fatigue the organs ; and though admired in masses by coarse natures, children, and savages, they are only endurable by the refined in small amounts, properly relieved by other tints. Yet it will be immediately noticed that reds and other ''warm" colours are much more frequent in artificial products, even the most refined, than SIGHT. 156 in external nature ,• wliich clearly proves their pleasurable effect. Indeed the very existence of reds, yellows, and purples in the outer world is indirectly almost entirely owing to their special effect upon animal organs. For though a few rare minerals, like the precious stones, exhibit brilliant colouring, and though many clays and sands show duller shades of these hues, yet for the most part they are found in the flowering parts of plants and in animal organisms. Now the flowers with brilliant corollas or stamens are those which are mainly fertilized by means of insects, and they generally have other allurements in the way of scent and honeyed secretions. Those on the other hand which are mainly fertilized by the wind are generally destitute of all these attractions. A moment's consideration will show us that a bright patch of colour in the midst of greens and greys would give a very pungent and special stimulation to a particular area in the eye. Hence those flowers which possessed such patches in the neighbourhood of their stamens and pistils would be readily discriminated by insects and birds. So, in the midst of the prevalent green of vegetable life, we find that patches of red, yellow, blue, and orange are developed around the floral organs of reproduction, as an aid to cross-fertilization. Niglit-flowering plants, on the other hand, have mostly large white blossoms which reflect all the possible light, thereby attracting the eyes of moths. Similarly with seeds. Those among them which bid for animal favour, like the pulpy sweet fruits, are rendered attractive not only by their taste and smell, but also by their 156 PUYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. brilliant hues, as in the orange, the mango, the cherry, and the plum. Hips and haws, holly-berries, and the bright scarlet capsicum are specially coloured to allure the eyes of birds. Conversely, those fruits which would be injured by animal interference, like the horse-chestnut and the filbert, are covered by a protective sheath of green when upon the tree, and brown when lying on the bare soil beneath. Pari passu with this development of brilliant colour in the vegetable world, must have come the development of a taste for brightness in the animal world. So that we have here another instance of the growth of that wider consensus between fauna and flora which we have already noticed in the case of taste and smell. The rise of this liking for visual pleasures aroused by unusual stimulants shows itself in the sexual selection of beautiful mates which has pro- duced the crest of the newt, the plumage of the argus pheasant, the "peacock, or the bird of paradise, and the brilliant hues of the baboon ; not to mention the cherry lips, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and golden hair of our Aryan maidens. Occasionally, too, the bright colouring serves rather to warn than to allure — like our own red danger- signals — as is the case with many insects whose tints are startlingly vivid, while their taste is disagreeable. Con- versely, here again, as with the seeds and fruits, those insects which are liable to be preyed upon by birds or other enemies simulate closely the colouring of their environment.* * This ground has already been sufficiently broken by Mr. Darwin, Pro- fessor Wallace, and Dr. Hooker ; but they have rather pointed out the adap- tation of these colours to the animal eye, while I wish more to insist upon the parallel adaptation of the eye to the colours. I had originally intended to SIGHT. 157 The distribution of colours in the environment wiiich is thus partial has produced a like partial distribution of colour-perceiving elements in the retina. Many facts concur to prove that there are fewer fibres for the perception of red than for the perception of any other colour ; and that these fibres require a stronger stimulant to produce sensation than is the case with any others. The peripheral portions of the retina are incapable of perceiving red ; and white, when seen on these portions assumes a complementary greenish tint.* If we try to perceive very small or imperfectly illuminated figures, those coloured red are the least easily perceived of any. And in a common abnormality, known as colour-blind- ness (or more correctly, dlchroism), the power of perceiving the red rays, alone or in composition, is wholly wanting. All these facts point alike to a comparative weakness and scarcity of the red-perceiving elements. And a moment's consideration will show us that this is just the effect whicli we might expect to see produced by natural selection. For it is clearly desirable that the eyes of the frugivorous animals should be pleasurably stimulated by reds, oranges, and purples ; and the simplest contrivance for effecting this end would be to give the greatest possible rest to such ele- ments as answer to stimulations of these orders. Accord- ingly, they ought to be only excited by comparatively powerful stimulations of their proper kind. How greatly habits of life may alter the conformation of the eye can be follow out this subject in a chapter on "The Genesis of /Esthetics," but have decided not to do so for want of space. * See the next section. 158 niYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. seen hy considering- the case of nocturnal animals, whose retina shows i)eciiliarities which probably indicate an absence of the mechanism for the perception of separate colours, and a presence of that for the discrimination of light in varying intensity alone. We may conclude accordingly that patches of bright colour, especially red, yellow, and purple, always attract the unsophisticated eye, in the midst of prevalent greys, browns, and greens. Children delight in gathering handfuls of way- side flowers, though they have not skill enough to relieve them by interspersing sufficient foliage. But flowers quickly die, and grown savages are not content with such transitory possessions. Hence the value attached to any bright-coloured object which permanently retains its tints. While roses and peonies, starfish and sea-anemonies, soon fade away and become positively unpleasant, shells, feathers, pebbles, pearls, and seeds are prized as personal decorations. The precious metals delight the savage eye by their glitter ; and it is a curious thought that the commerce of the civilized world is still carried on by bartering the shining baubles which once hung round the necks of barbarian chiefs. Soon the discovery of pigments is made : the bow or the basket is stained yellow, blue, or red. To this stage belong the purple-dyed ivory and the gold-studded sceptre. Bits of cloth are stained for personal attire, the brightest hues being preferred. Colour becomes an attribute of state and royalty ; the simple throne, the kingly dress, and the royal hut are conspicuous for their gorgeous tints. At last we get the application of colour to imitative purposes, and SIGHT. ' 139 art proper begins. This fiiuil stage must be consitlered in a later chapter. "We must remember that in all such questions as these concerning the intrinsic beauty of colours we should always take as our standard tlie simple sense of savages, children, and uneducated adults. In our own time men of culture, revolted by the preference vulgarly given to strong stimulants, prefer the more delicate tints, neutral colours, and pale or subdued primaries, to the staring dyes which they see around them. But with primitive man the case is different. Red and purple are to him novelties, and his coarser organisation is not easily fatigued by their effects. Even in modern houses furnished with the most fastidious taste as to wall-paper and dado, carved oak and dainty coverings, it will be found that reds and yellows are far more conspicuous than in external nature. Nobody has yet succeeded in expelling them from his conservatory. Under the present heading we may interpolate the pleasure derived from lustre ; that is, from the reflected light of polished surfaces. This pleasure is partly intel- lectual, and consists in a recognition of tactual smoothness in the lustrous object ; but it is also in part immediate, and is derived from the acute stimulation of total light. By means of lustre, blackness can be considerably relieved, and may even become an agreeable rest for the nerves by the side of the bright surface. Lustre also adds an extra beauty to white and to the brilliant analytic colours. In leaves and fluwers this effect is generally obtained by immediate re- 160 • PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. flexion from the transparent cell-walls ; while the coloured light is scattered by the more deeply-seated pigment matter. It is constantly imitated by art, as in the varnish on oil- paintings and furniture, or the polish on statuettes and porcelain-ware. Conversely with dullness : not only is there an unpleasant suggestion of gritty touch, but also we miss the agreeable stimulation of immediately reflected light. Hence the invention of varnish, lacquer, and all the other expedients by which we glaze over or smoothen the surface of rough and dull objects. But in all these cases the visual and tactual elements, in the actuality and in the idea, are so closely bound up with one another, and with complex emo- tional feelings, that a complete separation even in mental analysis is almost impossible. For example, white by its physical purity suggests the poetical analogy of moral purity, and this again re-acts upon our sense of white. Hence we see a peculiar propriety in white as the garb of the virgin bride, of the first com- munion, and of religious service ; and we further extend its use to angels and other ideally pure beings. On the other hand, black by its dullness and gloom is appropriated to purposes of mourning ; and this idea, too, re-acts so as to uive us an associated distaste for black, which we further picture as the complexion of devils, goblins, and evil spirits. But when once black has come to have a conventional association with death, we may for purposes of state and show 80 mitigate its unpleasantness by considerations of form and costliness as to leave merely a sense of solemn magnificence. Such mitigation is attempted in a ceremonial SIGHT. 1(51 funeral, with its sable horses, crape drapery, black waving plumes, and polished hearse. Though the pleasures here considered are not of a very high type, being so little discriminative and so universal, yet they undoubtedly belong to the lower stratum at' ^Esthetic Feelings. Those which we have next to examine claim a higher rank. § 6. Harmony and Discord of Colour, We have seen in the last section that certain masocs of colour are in themselves, apart from any effects of com- bination, pleasurable stimulants of the optic nerve. They may thus be regarded as the analogues of musical tones, which we saw to be similarly gratifying in isolation, because they aroused normal amounts of action in fully-nurtured and under-worked nervous structures. But most pleasures of colour are not so simple in their nature as these, nor do those we have already considered rank very high in a&sthetic value. Savages are pleased by yards of red or blue cloth, and even cultured eyes are often attracted by a colour of unusual purity and richness, unrelieved by contrast or harmony : but the greater number of artistic effects depend upon combinational considerations. We found in Hearing that the peculiar fact upon which consonance and dissonance were based was that of interference, and the consequent production of beats; we have now to enquire what is the corresponding physical fact upon which is founded the feel- ing of harmony and discord in the perception of colour. We have seen already, that if we gaze for a moderate time 21 1G2 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. upon the sun or an incandescent object like the carbon-points of a voltaic arc, our optic nerve is rapidly fiitigued. If we then look away at any unifcrraly illuminated surface, such as the wl lite-washed ceiling, we are conscious of a dark patch, having the same shape as the object with which we have tired our eyes. This dark |)atch does not remain stationary, but follows the motion of the eyes. The reason for this phenomenon is as follows. The direct light from the in- candescent body fell upon a certain area in the retina; all the nerves having their terminations in that area are conse- quently quite exhausted, and can yield us little o'r no sensa- tion until they have undergone a comj)aratively lengthy re])air. But the surrounding area is still fresh and unex- hausted ; and accordingly all parts of the retina except this wearied patch perfoi'm their functions correctly. Such patches of weai'ied nerves give rise to sensations known as negatlce accidental imagcfi, to distinguish them from another class called positive, of no great importance to our i)resent question. The negative image which we have just considered was produced by total light falling upon the retiiui. I'ut cases also occur where fether-waves of a particular fre(iuency alone, giving rise to a sensation of analytic colour, fatigue certain portions of the retina, and are foUowed by a negative image of a aiti'erent colour. For example, if we ga/e 8t(!adi]y for a few minutes at a bright green figure, and then with- draw tlie eyes and fix them upon the ceiling, we shall see a corres})onding figure, subtending an equal angle, and appa-. rently coloured pale red. The reason of this is analogous to SIGHT. 1G3 the previous case. The green rays have fotigued the green- perceiving fibres of the optic nerve, terminating in that portion of the retina, and they no longer yield their full amount of sensation. But the other fibres of the same area are unaffected hy liie green rays, and conse- quently retain all their freshness. So, while the green rays reflected from the ceiling in the total light produce no effect, the remaining rays, in which red preponderates, arouse action in their corresi)onding nerves and terminal organs, and • the sensation is cognised as faint red. Similarly, a red object is followed by a green image, and a blue object by a yellow one. In short, whenever one set of nervous struc- tures is fatigued, a negative image appears, and is seen of a certain other colour which, when combined with the original incident colour, produces the sensation of whiteness. Colours which when so combined yield white light are said to be com})lementary. These facts ha.e been introduced because they give the best proof of tb.e general principle that light of any i)ar- ticular coloui falling upon the eye fatigues those nerves only which answer to it as a stimulant. In this partial exhaustion we get the ground-work for the pleasures and pains of har- monious and discordant colouring. In the cases already quoted, the fatigue of the eyes can be distinctly recognised as such, and hence they fail to come up to the a3sthetic level of mere intellectual perception. After practical ex[)eriment8 in seeing negative images, the eyes ache. But when we recognise a discord between two adjacent colours, we do not set down our dislike to conscious fatigue ; we know the eil'oct 164 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. only as an assthetic feeling. Hence these cases are strictly analogous to the instance of hearing, llecurrent interfer- ences up to a certain point of frequency are cognized as beats : beyond it, we saw that they were only known as dissonance. It may, however, be objected that this principle of fatigue could only apply to successive, not to simultaneous and ad- jacent colours. Such is actually the fact. Our ' eyes are perpetually moving in a restless manner from point to point in the field of vision, even when we are not aware of it ; and only a very small area in that field can be distinctly cognised at one and the same instant. Hence the portions of the retina afiected by adjacent regions of the visual field are in a constant state of interchange. Accordingly, if we have in one place a patch of red, the portion of the retina which is receiving light from it will have its red-perceiving fibres strongly excited and, as a necessary consequence, fatigued. If, next, it is directed upon a neighbouring patch of green, the red-perceiving fibres will be at rest, and undergo repair, while the fresh and vigorous green-perceiving structures will receive normal stimulation. Hence such interchange of colours will be pleasurable. But if, on the contrary, it is immediately directed upon a patch of purple or orange, which will make fresh demands upon the wearied red-per- ceiving fibres, the effect will be that disagreeable feeling which we call a discord. So that all colour-harmony consists in such an arrangement of tints as will give the various portions of the retina stimulation in the least fatiguing order, and all colour-discord in the opposite.* * 1 leavu from milliners and dress-makers that after sewing for a long time SIGHT. 165 Actual experience shows us that such is the case. The famous colour-harmony of the Italian painters, red, green, and violet, is that which rouses action successively in all three classes of fibres, so that the eye can range freely over the whole field of combination without exhaustion, and with ever-refreshed enjoyment, thus yielding, in accordance with our formula, the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue.* Blue and bright yellow, purple and green, violet and orange, form similar tasteful combinations ; while green and blue, green and yellow, orange and red, yield most unpleasant results. In each case it will be noticed that those combinations give pleasure which call into play the most different fibres ; while those produce discord which succes- sively stimulate the same class of structures. Here, too, we see the reason for the occasional relative plea- surableness of black. By itself it is disagreeable or neutral, but when combined with certain varieties of light it becomes negatively pleasant : that is to say, it gives the eye time for repair in the intervals of stimulation. Hence the favourite colours for combination with black are those which most rapidly fatigue the nerves, so redressing the balance. Gold or silver are in themselves too pungent ; the excessive gild- ing of mirrors and picture frames is an infallible token of bad taste. But when sparingly employed on a background upon discordant inateriah, such as they occasionally liave to make up, their eyes distinctly ache. I may add that they aio unusually discriminative of this class of feelings. * It is due to Professor Bain to state that this formula was originally (though unconsciously) adopted by me from a chauce expression of his in dealing with colour-harmony alone. I did not discover my obligation to him for the phrase till the earlier parts of this work were ready for publication. 106 niYSIOLOGICAL iESTUETICS. of black, they become iiiilcl enough for the most fastidious eye. We have seen ah'eady that red is a specially fatiguing colour ; and its various shades go well with black both in dress and art. Green, blue, and violet, on the contrary, aie not pungent enough to stand this relief. Negresses look best in scarlet or yellow turbans, which add colour to their otherwise neutral faces : blues and greens do not suit them. The black and crimson Canadian soldier-bird is one of the loveliest natural objects I have ever seen. In the case of l)olished black surfaces we get side by side brilliant patches of light and total darkness. In short, the real pleasure in every instance is derived from the positive light, and the blackness only acts as a repairer or non-stimulant ; but we imagine it to be pleasurable by a parallel illusion to that M'hich leads us to consider it as a colour instead of a mere negation. Strip off the red bows, or the gold and silver trimmings, and what becomes of a black dress ? Similarly with other combinations. In arranging flowers, we need a copious interspersed background of green. Take a piece of holly with the berries attached, and nothing can be prettier than the effect of the dark verdure and the brilliant scarlet ; pull off all the leaves, and the berries re- main a mere staring mass of red. Foliage does not show off well as it grows : but we can better admire the delicate green of a fern if we hold it against a field of dark brown. Again, much depends upon the effect which we wish to pro- duce. Green and gold form a bright and beautiful mixture ; purple and grey have a riiore solemn and severe ajjpear- ance j white needs relief with black or dark blue j while SIGHT. 167 red requires bright green for liveliness, and darker tints for subdued harmony. Moreover, masses of colour which, if taken by themselves and at close quarters, fatigue the eyes, are pleasant at a short distance, wlien they only form a single element in the visual field. Tiius the dress of a soldier is by itself hideously over-stimulating ; taken as one element of a landscape it is effective. Painters put old women in red cloaks as a warm foreground to their pieces. But such colours taken in large quantities are unendurable. In an ordinary ball room, the black coats of the men serve as a foil for the white, pink, and light blue dresses of the women. At a regimental. Masonic, or Highland dance, the varied mass of unrelieved colour, heightened by the glare of gas, has a somewhat barbaric extravagance. In a Gothic cathe- dral, the crimson light from the painted windows is toned down by the solemn grey of the walls : a Byzantine church gives us gold and scarlet till the stimulation is overwhelming in its intensity. Great taste in the selection and blending of colours may somewhat diminish the unpleasant effect, as in the empirically-obtained harmonies of Moorish decoration (which mamly depend upon the smallness of each sepa- rate coloured t\rea, so that the eye can wander rapidly from one to the other) : but even while we allow the highest praise to the skill exhibited, we feel that the aesthetic effect is pro- duced rather by well-sustained pungency than by more delicate interventions of relieving tints.* It will be unnecessary to add further examples. Starting * The amount of each colour — primary, secondary, or tertiary — neeiied to balance the total effect is given in Field's scale of Clirouiatic Equivalents. 168 PHYSIOLOGICAL -ESTHETICS. from these simple cases, it is easy to see that we may progress to every possible combination, only requiring for their per- ception more and more discriminative nervous organizations. It will also be obvious that the pleasures and pains of harmony and discord are far higher in the aesthetic scale than those of the simple colours : so much so that they almost escape children and savages, and are only fully appreciated by the most delicate organs. We may leave these and similar questions to be filled in by the experience of the reader, and pass on to the second great division of visual sensations. § 7. Form» Colour, we have seen, depends upon the class of optical nerve-fibres differentially affected : Form depends upon their number and relative position. This remark, however, must be accepted in the strictest sense as applicable to visible form alone. The eye has originally only two modes of perception, that of colour and that of plane figure. Distance is recognised by certain combinations of these and the muscular adjust- ment of the organ ; and form in three dimensions is a com- pound of colour in the way of shading with plane figure. All questions respecting these belong entirely to the intel- lectual half of our nature ; beauty of Form is chiefly con- cerned with the muscular sweep of the eye in cognizing adjacent points. We saw above that when the muscles or contractile bodies of the eye are employed for any length of time in observing SIGHT. 169 a single point or in following rapid and perplexing move- ments, fatigue supervenes. Now the painful effect of all unpleasant forms is due to a modified and very slight ex- haustion of a similar kind. Conversely, the agreeable feeling derived from all graceful forms is due to the easy and un- impeded action of the muscles and other tissues concerned. These cases, however, are so very minute in their nature as almost to defy regular analysis, and it will accordingly be necessary to approach them in a somewhat different manner from that which we have usually adopted. Straight lines are almost, if not quite, unknown in nature. Whenever we see a straight row of trees or plants, we know that they have been sown by the hand of man ; whenever we come upon a straight stream of water, we recognize it as a canal of human construction. But in the woods and the rivers, all is careless and unconstrained. As soon as the human race begins to use its hands for constructive purposes, the straight line is recognised as the most con- venient boundary for many objects. In building, it com- mends itself as being the most stable form ; in weapons, as being the most unerring. Moreover, it has a regularity and perfection which naturally contrasts with the uneven handiwork of nature. So the straight line comes gradually to be employed for a vast number of purposes, until at last its infrequency in the savage world is almost forgotten. In the rooms where we live we find the walls and the ceiling straight ; the tables and cupboards, the doors and windows, are bounded by straight lines ; the very panes and panels, the lock and the hearth-rug, are all rectangular. This page 170 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTlIETICS. is cut to an even edge, and all the letters are arranged in regular rows. In every one of these tacts, and in a dozen more which a single glance around him will reveal to the reader, we see that love of order and symmetry which is so deeply seated in civilized man, and whose origin must form the subject-matter of a succeeding section. We must accordingly allow a certain {\3stlietic value — intellectual rather than sensuous — to the straight line ; which none can doubt except that class of mystical thinkers who consider merely the most complex artistic developments instead of beginning with the simplest elements. Even those who most strenuously deny the beauty of the straight line would hardly give any other limiting boundary to a picture, a book, or a room. If, however, we follow up with our sight a straiglit line which proceeds for some distance, we shall find that a distinctly awkward motion of the head and eyes is necessary for its perception. Still more clearly can we notice that the attempt to take in any rectangular figure involves a con- siderable expenditure of muscular energy. Figures with very acute or re-entrant angles are yet more trying. And as soon as we really direct our attention to the subject, we find that we can only observe a very small figure at a time without re-adjustment of the visual organs. In observing angular shapes this re-adjustment is required for every angle. A curve, on the contrary, being coincident with the natural sweep of the organs, is easily and carelessly per- ceived. A series of curves, like Hogarth's line of grace, can be followed without difficulty. An excellent opportunity SIGHT. 171 for tryinf^ the experiment may often be found in tlie com- parison of a modern rectangular casement of cliurcli-<\'arden architecture with the flowing tracery of an adjacent flam- boyant window. The first symptom of nascent architectural taste in English villas and cottages may be traced in the introduction of an arched door-way, a rounded alcove, or a bow window. In this faint emotional difference we have the simplest origin for the distinction of graceful and awkward forms. The necessity for variety gives us another supplementary basis, more purely optical, but largely mixed with intel- lectual elements. Sameness in outline will demand con- tinuous exertion of the same nr.iscles, combined with con- tinued stimulation of the same retinal points. Variety in figure implies variety in stimulation. Hence, in part, the pleasure which we feel in looking over a field of vision full of varied and novel forms and colours ; as well as the converse discomfort of flatness, monotony, and uniformity in shape and hue. Again, the eyes are specially restless organs, not only laterally and vertically, but also in their focus for nearer and further distances. When we are obliged to kee]} our eyes fixed for a considerable period upon' a single point, as in having our photographs taken, the effort is extremely fatiguing. So too a look-out from a window upon a straight flat wall, besides its intellectual meagreness, tires us by the uniformity of focus which it demands. Hence in architecture a fagade on a single plane is very wearisome : we require porticos, arches, projecting turrets, and other 172 I-KYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. salient points, which attract the eyes and keep them wander- ing over the whole elevation with constant grateful changes of focus and muscular sweep. And in a landscape we admire hills which lie one behind another in perspective ; vistas through avenues or interlacing boughs ; large objects in the foreground breaking up the monotony of the focal distance ; and a background of decided objects, upon which the eye can rest with that arrangement for long vision which makes the least call upon the muscles regulating the shape of the crystalline lens. Lastly, a portion of the pleasure usually assigned to this heading is not really due to true perceptions of Form, but to the pleasing variety of colour which is given by shading, relief, and perspective. I am aware that the explanation thus vaguely sketched is a very imperfect one, far less immediately physical than those which have hitherto been given ; but for this imper- fection two excuses can be pleaded : in the first place, the pleasure of Form is far higher and more delicate than that of colour, and far less amenable to fixed rules — which is equivalent to saying that its emotional factors are far more minute and inscrutable; while, in the second place, so involuted and interdependent are the various elements of Esthetic Feelings, that we cannot examine the intellectual till we have catalogued the sensuous, and yet cannot explain the sensuous without the aid of the intellectual. Though colours are often beautiful in utter isolation, (as in the clear blue of a cloudless sky, or the delicate crimson of vinegar in which beet-root has been steeped,) hardly any single line SIGHT. 173 can be said to possess beauty of itself, apart from intellectual considerations of symmetry and proportion. To these, then, we next proceed.* § 8. Symmetry. The pleasures and pains we have hitherto examined are those of normal or excessive stimulation in the optic nerve, and those of due exercise or fatigue in the various motor appliances of the eye. We have now to notice a species of emotional feelings which are connected with the higher perceptive centres, and are commonly described as intellec- tual. They will form the subject of the succeeding chapter, but a few remarks concerning them must be interpolated « here, in order to complete our view of the visual iEsthetic Feelings. Observations made on persons with congenital cataract, afterwards couched, have shown that for some time after gaining the faculty of vision they are troubled and distressed by the vast mass of shifting visual sensations perpetually poured in upon them. The intellect is unable to co-ordinate these various perceptions so as to draw from them any reasonable impression. It is only by slow degrees that their relations to the various tactual counterparts are per- ceived : and meanwhile the effect produced is one of mere * In this section I have only endeavoured to work out the purely sensuous or prcsentative elements of beauty in fonu : the reader will find the ideal or representative elements fully considered in JVIr. Herbert Spencer's Essay on Gracefulness. The exact nature of those curves and sections which yield pleasurable feelings is fully considered l>y the late Dr. Symonds in his Miscel- lanies, and still more lately by Fechner in his Vorsckule dcr ^Esthetih. 174 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. bewilderment. This necessarily involves waste of nervous energy, for it implies unsuccessful efforts at co-ordination. In an infant we Lave some signs of the same bewilderment, but it is not so obviously displayed, because the higher co- ■ ordinating centres are still in a very undeveloped state, and the corresponding tactual sensations are as unknown as the visual forms by which they are symbolized. The period at which an infant begins to correlate sights with touches and tastes is marked by very apparent symptoms, technically known to nurses as " taking notice." After this period, changes in the visible surroundings are rapidly observed, and the obtrusion of unknown objects is followed by fear or perplexity. These feelings give way in the child to shyness, and in the adult to a more or less languid curiosit3\ But even at a mature age something of the youthful con- sternation is revived on the first visit to a great city, a foreign country, or a society to which we are unused. In all, we experience an unpleasant bewilderment, a difficulty in ordering our conduct so as to meet the requirements of the untried situation. On the other hand, we are always pleased at any such familiar arrangement as at once enables us to frame our action aright. After a few weeks abroad, the look of English streets, the habits of English hotels, the dress of English policemen, all assure us that we have returned to comparatively well-knr.wn surroundings. A map or plan of a city enables us to reduce its chaos of streets to a mental order. Country walks are rendered far more interesting if we know the various surrounding landmarks, and can SIGHT. 173 identify hill or cape, seen from different points of view. In short, everywhere that which suggests the idea of know- ledge and comprehensibility is pleasing : that which wastes the energy of the higher nervous organs in useless con- jecture is disagreeable. Now I will not affirm that our love of symmetry and order is immediately dependent upon such considerations, or that it owes nothing to other utilitarian sources ; but I believe that it is closely cognate with these intellectual feelings. A mere tangled mass of sensations, without order or plan, strikes us as meaningless or absolutely disagreeable : a regular arrangement of parts yields us a mental gratifica- tion in following out its various portions, and recognizing its apparent design. But while the emotional feelings described above are not regarded as {esthetic, because they are con- nected with the due regulation of our practical conduct, the feelings aroused by orderly or disorderly arrangement of parts, being unconnected with such useful ends, are elevated into the aesthetic rank. We have been taught in our obser- vation of organic bodies to expect regularity, and we imitate it ourselves in art. A few cases of each will suffice. The leaves of plants for the most part exhibit a sym- metrical arrangement on either side of the midrib. Leaves like those of ferns, which show the symmetrical order both in the whole and in its various parts, with considerable variety of contour, are the most admired. Others in which symmetry is slightly marked and variety wanting, like bur- dock or cabbage, have small claims to beauty. Those flowers which bid for animal observation by their scents, 176 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. secretions, and brilliant colours, are also noticeable for the systematic order of the corolla and its adjuncts. Many have the petals arranged in a radial form, and their edges rounded or pinked. Others have their various colours symmetrically disposed, like the daisy, the fuchsia, and the tiger-lily. If we proceed to the animal world we see, in the lower grades of life, the radiated or circular arrangement of star-fish, sea- anemones, and echini, all of which are beautiful objects. Above them come the double shells of bivalve mollusca, and the regular spirals of univalves. Amongst the articulata and vertebrata, symmetry is usually bilateral, but still very noticeable, alike in the butterfly and the beetle, the swan and the deer. On the other hand, all apparently amorphous creatures, like the oyster, the slug, and the polypus, besides all species which depart from the usual bilateral symmetry, as is the case with soles and flounders, strike us with a cer- tain disgust. Even abnormal distribution of colour, as in piebald horses or port-wine stains, is by no means so pretty as the regular speckling of trout and guinea-fowl. Every- where, regularity pleases us, and disorder repels or at least fails to attract. From the constant sight of all these symmetrical objects and others like them, and from the contemplation of his own fellows, primeval man learns to expect a regular order of parts under certain circumstances.* Most of the above instances occur in perishable objects ; but, as in the case of colour, * On the connection between symmetry in animal forms and in C ret'k archi- tecture, see Mr. Herbert Spencer's Essay on the Sources 0/ Archikdura Types. SIGHT. 177 whenever symmetry is found in any permanent natural \m)- ducts, like shells, corals, seeds, and crystals, they are prized as personal decorations. When he begins to combine coloured feathers or pebbles for his own adornment, he arranges thoni in recurring orders. As soon as he has learnt the use of pigments, he paints his bow in equal strips of alternate red, green, and yellow. His calabash and his earthen j)ot are decorated with circles and crosses at measured distances. His own person is tattooed in curves and figures. In his earliest attempts at weapons he gives his stone hatchet and his arrow-head a rough symmetry, which in remains of the neo- lithic period has developed into considerable artistic finish. The dances and processions in which the savage deliglits are arranged circularly or in even rank and file. His first lessons in architecture consist in rings, like Stonehenge, avenues, like Carnac, or regular rounded tumuli. When, with advanc- ing culture, he begins to imitate nature in stone or colours, every object is perfectly symmetrical. All the men have two sides exactly alike ; all the trees consist of branches at equal distances ; and all the flowers grow at regular intervals. We get numerous instances of such symmetrical art in tlio Egyptian and Assyrian remains. Children draw after the same fashion to the present day. Later on we get symme- trical figures on textile fabrics and pottery, the well-known Greek key-pattern, arabesques, and the geometrical designs of wall-papers, carpets, and encaustic tiles. To illustrate once more by the room in which my reader is sitting, the table-cover, the anti-macassars, and the centre-piece of the ceiling, consist of circular ornaments, radially arranged ; the N 178 PHYSIOLOGICAL -ffiSTIIETICS. olobes of the glass chandelier have a regular pattern, and its branches are at equal angles : there is a conventional design on the banner-screen, and even the holes in the fire-shovel form an orderly figure. In higher walks of art, the columns ot a Corinthian temple have fixed intervals ; they are regularly arranged into corresponding parts : and their capitals are symmetrically carved. The tracery of a rose-window forms a geometrical pattern, and so do those of the perpendicular lights. Indeed, architecture generally is eminently charac- terized by symmetry, especially in all points of detail : and the same is even more strikingly the case with the art of internal decoration. Geometrical designs and conventional figures are now almost universally adopted for this purpose. All that is here asserted about symmetry will doubtless meet with strenuous denial from a certain class of transcen- dental art-critics, who think that highest style of art alone worthy of analysis which satisfies their highly cultivated taste. They are fond of asserting, on the contrary, that there is no beauty in symmetry, and that real art is always unsym- metrical. The answer lies in an appeal io facts. That symmetry is pleasing to the vast majority of minds is conclu- sively shown by its almost universal employment in every form of decoration, from flower-gardens to crotchet- work. On the other hand, in those arts which aim at the imitation of nature it is obviously out of place, because symmetry in nature holds only a subordinate position. Each leaf and each flower is regularly arranged, but in the tree and the landscape, as they strike the eye, hardly a trace of regularity can be seen, Heuce imitative art soon outgrows the tram* SIGHT. 179 mels of conventional arrangement. Even in architectural and decorative art an occasional breach of symmetry is beau- tiful by contrast as a novelty. But it is only the general employment of symmetry that makes its absence a pleasing variety. A building in which every door, every window, every arch, and every pinnacle was placed irregularly would strike us as a mere chaotic monstrosity. Irregular (though bilateral) flowers, like the orchis and the snap-dragon, or un symmetrical leaves, like the begonia, please us only by tlieir singularity, as interesting though concordant divergences from an ordinary type. But in making bouquets we always reject broken or imperfect leaves, and flowers some of whose petals have been blighted or cramped. An educated taste admires variety, but all alike are revolted by obvious disorder and anarchic confusion. It need only be added that symmetrical figures, like all others, must bow to the general laws both of form and colour. Straight lines and angles must be avoided ; graceful and flowing curves must be introduced ; and harmony must be carefully studied. Circular forms are most in favour for geometrical patterns. When all these recpiirements are ful- filled, as in the best internal ecclesiastical decoration, sym- metrically arranged figures, though falling far short of imita- tive art, may and do excite comparatively high forms of {esthetic pleasure.* * On the wliole of this subject the reailer may consult witli ndvaiitage Mr. Oweu Jones's Grammar of OniamciU, which is written in u philoBoi»hic spirit rarely found in oesthetic works. N 2 180 niYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. § 0. Concrete u^sthetic Objects owing their Beauty to Visual Qualities. Before we pass on to the imitative arts, it will be necessary to enter briefly into the question of intellectual and ideal feelings, which hold such an important position in Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture. These will appropriately form the subject of two separate chapters. But it may be well, after so long an exposition, to give a few concrete instances of objects in external nature, or in simple human products, which derive their beauty from colour, form, or symmetry, in various combinations. Colour and bright light alone give beauty to the sunset : a fixint element of regularity and curved form is added in the rainbow. Iridescence pleases us by its rapid interchange of hues: it is illustrated in the soap-bubble for a moment ; in mother-of-pearl and the opal more permanently. Certain glazed porcelains and Venetian glass imitate artificially the same effect. Plants have beauty of form with bright green colouring. Their leaves have usually variety and symmetry. Fern, maple, parsley, and horse-chestnut leaves depend mainly upon these elements. Arum, holly, laurel, hart's- tongue, and the young leaves of iv}'' are beautiful for their brilliant green and glossiness. The foliage of the vine owes much to its exquisite venation. Those leaves which are both dull and shapeless are emotionally neutral or positively ugly. Among trees, the palms have drooping feathery brandies ; the conifers, tapering forms and symmetrical boughs ; the weeping willow, graceful curves. Flowers need no special SIGHT. 181 illustration. Shells, besides their brillitint tints, have curved or spiral forms, and many, like pecten and soalaria, are fluted or crenated. Some have coloured bands regularly * arranged ; others exhibit in their lips the most dainty i)iuk or violet. A few are delicately transparent ; they taper to the finest point, and astonish us by the minuteness and elegance of their workmanship : these depend for effect mainly upon form, symmetry, and variety. Oyster-shells, on the contrary, are both dull and shapeless. Butterflies have lovely colours and graceful forms : they flit easily from flower to flower, and chase one another in rhythmical curves. Some add lustre to their other attractions, while many are remarkable for the extraordinary purity and marvellous shading of their hues. Several beetles are burnished like gold, though their forms are ungainly and heavy. But birds bear away the palm of beauty from all competitors — indeed, their highly-developed a3sthetic tastes are shown alike in their form, their colour, and their song. The bird-of-paradise has an exquisite shape, soft and plumy feathers, marvellous har- mony and delicacy of colour, and perfect symmetry combined with freedom from stiffness. The last-named charge may perhaps be urged against the lyre-bird, which is faultless in all other respects. The peacock and the argus -pheasant at once occur to the readers of Mr. Darwin. The humming- birds have every beauty under heaven, except song : the amethyst, ruby, and sapphire of their throats are absolutely unsurpassed in art or nature. Even the less showy birds, like the heron, the swan, and the plover, show exquisite varieties of form. The dove has delicate colour and a grace- 1S2 niYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. fill sliape. The very crows and magpies are beautiful after their kind. Indeed there is scarcly such a thing as an ugly Lird, if we except some species of owls, vultures and turkey- huzzards. Mammals are as a rule less beautiful, espec'illy in colour. Those which please us in this respect are more remarkable for their delicate greys or browns than for bril- liancy of analytic hues, as in the case of antelopes, pumas, quaggas, and hares. Others are striped, like the zebra and the tiger, or spotted like the fallow-deer and the giraffe. All these have beauty of form as well. Stags have slender legs and branching antlers ; gazelles, a graceful body and tender eye ; while the various larger cats are noticeable for their ease of movement and the gliding motion of their limbs beneath the skin. Bears, rhinoceroses and hippopotami, on the con- trary, are dull, shapeless, and heavy. Lastly, man and woman unite all the beauties of form and colour, symmetry and variety, with every kind of complex emotional interest. If we pass on from these separate elements to the greater totals which form natural scenery, we shall see (omitting for the i)resent ideal factors) that all the varieties of visual plea- sure enter into its composition, together with many intellec- tual gratifications. We have brilliant colouring in green fields, blue sky, purple sea, and cliffs of red marl or white chalk. Relief is present, if necessary, in the mild stimu- lation of black ploughed fields, grey cloud, or bare and craggy mountain-top. The snowy summits of the Alps shine with dazzling whiteness, and the fleecy clouds are tinged with gold or silver. Curved form is found in sweeping bay, and winding stream, and undulating down, and sloping hill- SIGHT. 183 side. Variety is given us in all the prospect. Flat and monotonous fields fatigue us. The desert, with its hot level expanse of grey sand, sweltering and blinking in the full glare of a tropical sun, is our ideal of utter dullness.* The unbroken green of western prairies is scarcely less tiring. The sea without a sail, as seen from mid-ocean, is miserably dull : a whale, a porpoise, or even a good foaming gale, is hailed as a grateful variety. When in search of aBsthetic pleasure, we seek the interchange of hill and dale, river and waterfall, castle and abbey, green valley and ice-clad height. We climb downs for the extended view, s})cnd our holiday at the sea-side for the sake of cliffs and water, or ransack Iceland, Ceylon, and Colorado in search of picturesque novelty in geyser and volcano, palm and tree-fern, c.aon and lava-plain. Symmetry alone we reject, because we have learnt to asso- ciate that with the puny works of man, or when we find it in the outer world to expect it only in detail. Our notions of sublimity require that in her grandest achievements Nature should not be tied down to rule and plummet. The same considerations apply to dress, textile fabrics, pottery, and other human products ; but here, on the con- trary, symmetry is imperatively demanded. Vases have usually beauty of curved form, applicability to their special function, colour either in a single delicate retiring shade, or else in harmonious combination, and symmetrical arrange- ment of parts. The loveliest fictile objects give us a double * I am reminded by a friend that painters are rather fond of a caravan in the desert. Tliat is true, because the monotonous sky-line brings out the camels in strong statuesi^ue relief. But nobody ever dreamt of painting the desert without the camels. 184 PIIYSIOLOQICAL ESTHETICS. curve, horizontal and ptipendicular, thus yielding the maxi- mum beauty of simple form. Glass is sometimes coloured, but more often depends on form alone, with the accompani- ment of a regular pattern in a rougher ground surface. Dress is systematically arranged to be graceful in shape, harmonious in colour, and adapted to the individual who wears it. Tlie ballet perhaps exhibits it in perfection. In- ternal decorations, as already noticed, are usually in geome- trical figures. Colour enters largely into their effect. Archi- tecture depends almost entirely upon form ; it exhibits the sweeping arch, Romanesque or Gothic, the vaulted dome, and the interlacing branches of the painted window. Sym- metry here is all important. Variety, too, counts for much. But, above all, intellectual appreciation is a prime factor ia tlie aesthetic pleasure of architecture. These human additions go far to enliven natural beauty. The unrelieved vegetation of tropical mountain scenery yields us the painful consciousness of an emotional blank. We long for the sight of man's handiwork. All must have been struck in Scottish lochs or Alpine passes with the unexpected pleasure when a turn in our course suddenly reveals some ruined fortress perched upon the crag, or mouldering abbey nestling in the vale. Sion, Fribourg, and Chillon form as important factors in our memories of Switzerland as do Pfiiff'ers, the Giesbach, and the Mer-de-glace. Those who have compared the Rhine and the Hudson, the latter of which possesses every natural superiority and is disfigured by every architectural monstrosity, can appreciate Mr. Ruskin's objection to visit a country which has no castles. Even far SIGHT. 185 less imposing structures have a beauty of their own. The light-liouse at the Needles, the Swiss chalet on the mountain- side, the Terrapin Tower at Niagara, each add to the effect of their several scenes. It is interesting, too, to compare the amount of aesthetic value to be attributed in each case to nature and to art. Hill and bay have done everything for Torquay, and man has done his best to spoil them. The lagoon of Venice is a mere stagnant pool, but it has been made lovely by the noblest architecture in Europe. Edin- burgh, Nai)les, and Athens owe an equal debt to natural and artificial beauty. With this necessarily brief list of a few leading visual aesthetic objects we may proceed to our analysis of the intel- lectual and ideal feelings, which form a large element of artistic enjoyment. CHAPTER VIII. THE INTERVENTION OF THE INTELLECT. § 1. General Emotmial Phenomena of the Intellect The pleasures and pains which we have hitherto considered are those aroused by normal or excessive function in the peri- pheral end-organs of nerves, or in the fibres and central end- organs immediately connected with them. But there is a higher class of nervous structures in the human system, whose business it is to correlate and co-ordinate the energies so received, and, where necessary, to liberate — immediately or ultimately — in accordance with the intelligence conveyed by these impressions, new energies which re-act upon the ex- ternal world in the manner demanded by the circumstances of the case. The functions of such higher co-ordinatino- structures are known on their subjective side by the name of Intellect. Like all other portions of the sentient system the organs of the Intellect are liable to normal and moderate exercise, subjectively cognized as pleasurable, or to abnormal and excessive exercise, subjectively cognized as painful. It was necessary in the last chapter to touch slightly upon a few of these phenomena, because the central and peripheral organs of sight are more closely connected with intelligence, INTERVENTION OF THE INTELLECT. 187 genetically and actually, than any others. But we shall have to enter a little more fully here into the pleasures and pains of the Intellect, regarded as a separate element of ^Esthetic Feeling. And first, in accordance with our usual plan, we will glance hriefly at those emotional phenomena of Intellect which do not attain the aisthetic level. Acutely painful feelings of intellectual exercise are rare or unknown, as might indeed be expected from the peculiarly secluded position of the organs concerned, which almost pre- cludes the possibility of direct disintegrative action. Intel- lectual pains are mostly those of fatigue from over use, and of effort or wasteful and ineffectual attempts at complex co- ordinations. The only one among them which ever rises to any great height is that of perplexity ; and even this, unless intensified by the affection of fear, is scarcely more than a mere discomfort. Intellectual pleasures, on the other hand, are common, and often reach considerable distinctness. They arise either from the normal and easy exercise of the structures concerned, in which case the feeling is comparatively faint in pleasurable character, if not absolutely neutral ; or from the sudden suc- cessful performance of a co-ordination which has for some time baflfled the energies co'^ierned, in which case the feeling- is often acutely gratifying, and is known as a sense of triumph, pride, power, or exultation. When these latter pleasures are aroused in connexion with the immediate practical ordering of our conduct, — as in the discovery of a path, the settlement of a business difficulty, the invention of a piece of mechanism which has long engaged our faculties, — they are too obviously 188 PHYSIOLOGICAL -SISTHETICS. conducive to useful ends for admission into the aesthetic class. Even when their influence upon practice is only remote, — as in solving- a mathematical problem, probing a knotty psycho- logical fallacy, or effecting a physical discovery, — the pleasure is too much alloyed with painful exercise in the pursuit and with ulterior practical aims, to be regarded as ajsthetic. It is only the fainter form of pleasure arising from the easy working of the intellectual mechanism which ever becomes a true a3sthetic element; and even among these feelings only a comparatively circumscribed number can properly be in- cluded in that class. Let us see what is the cause of this special limitation. If we visit a great city, a zoological garden, a manufactory of glass or hardware, we derive considerable intellectual gratification from the various objects or processes which we observe. Difficulties are solved, unusual combinations are exercised, new facts are noticed, and old ones receive a fresh significance : all of which functional changes are obviously of the pleasurable sort. But the resulting gratification is not necessarily jesthetic. On the other hand, if we visit a beau- tiful park, an art gallery, a cathedral, the intellectual feelings aroused are immediately recognized as belonging to the aesthetic class. The main difference is this : in the first set of cases the component sensuous factors may be beautiful or ugly indiscriminately, and the intellectual impression is that of useful and interesting knowledge ; in the second set of cases, the component sensuous factors are in themselves beautiful, and the intellectual impression is that of imme- diate and disinterested pleasure. So that there are two ueces- INTERVENTION OF THE INTELLECT. 1S9 sary principles which must govern every aBsthetic intellectual pleasure : first, its sensuous elements must themselves be beautiful ; and, second, it must be remote from all ulterior aims. We may be Poking at the most lovely prospect in Europe, but if we are scrutinizing it for the purpose of set- tling the road to our hotel, of determining trigonometrically the height of a mountain, or of reconnoitring an enemy's position in the valley, we derive no aesthetic pleasure i'rom the intellectual processes involved. If, on the contrary, we are surveying it for the purpose of taking in its various beau- tiful points, and of consciously realizing the emotions it arouses, our intellecttial enjoyment is truly a3sthetic. In short, intellectual exercise is aesthetic only when it is em- ployed on {esthetic objects for an aesthetic purpose. A few examples will make this clearer. § 2. Esthetic Fecliyigs connected with the Exercise of the Intellect. We have already seen that order and symmetry are elements of many aesthetic totals, and we have allowed that the pleasure derived from them is intellectual in character. Now when order obviously subserves some useful end, or when wo are contemplating the end which it subserves, we derive from it a purely practical pleasure. But when it is merely cognized as order- in-the-abstract, without reference to any special end, then the intellectual feeling reaches the necessnry disin- terestedness of aesthetic pleasure. Thus we may admire the regularity and ingenuity with which the parts of a steam- engine are put together ; but as the parts are not in them- 190 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. selves beautiful, and as their purpose is obviously utilitarian, our admiration is not artistic. But when we recognize the symmetry of columns, arches, and windows in a noble build- ing, we recognize it not only as admirable but also as beau- tiful ; because each part is separately an »esthetic sensuous object, and the whole is put together with an aesthetic pui'pose.* Next to the intellectual pleasure of symmetry may be placed that of skill in handicraft, which forms so large an element in the gratification derived from the imitative arts. Here, too, the same distinction will be observed. When we are pleased with the perfection of any useful article — a knife, a coat, or a lock — because it will be of ulterior benefit to ourselves or others, the feeling is non-a3sthetic ; when we notice that much manipulation has been bestowed upon any object in order merely that it may be beautiful, the admira- tion for the skill displayed becomes an additional aesthetic factor. Thus we may admire smooth and polished surfaces, true-fitting joints, and delicate adjustments, even in machinery. It is delightful to watch the perfect action of a great marine engine, as its cranks turn so powerfully and yet so gracefully at the end of each excursion. But in these cases the pleasure is too obviously connected with a useful end. When, however, the object aims merely at being assthetically beautiful, as in painting or sculpture, the pleasure felt in fine workmanship is greatly enhanced. Hence, in part, the gratification of polish and glossiness, of variety * III Mr. Herbert Spencer's Essay on Use and Beauty will be found a full account of this relation, I fear I liave hardly given enough prominence in liarts of my book to the general principle which he there lays down. INTERVENTION OF THE INTELLECT. 191 and detail, of fine lace and intricate carving. We even transfer the feeling to natural objects, which we figure to ourselves as the result of intelligent design, and compare with mere human standards, so infinitely inferior, admiring the exquisite finish of leaves and flowers, of daintily-fluted shells, and embossed sea-urcliins, of many-sided crystals and convoluted coral. And when the microscope reveals to us the wonderful perfection of minute structure in organic bodies or crystalline forms, a new world of intellectual pleasure is laid open before us. We are lost in astonish- ment, awe, and delight at the myriad facets of an insect's eye, the painted scales of a butterfly's wing, the marvellous symmetry of a tiny flower, and the exquisite architecture of a spangled snow-flake. At each moment we compare their delicacy with the roughness which characterizes even the finest productions of man's hand, the jagged and rugged needle- point, the coarse matting of a cambric handkerchief, the clotted pigment of an oil painting. But though the imper- fection of our instruments prevents us from ever rivalling nature in her minute handicraft, we must remember that human skill forms in every case the point de depart from which we judge the outer universe. Here, too, may be noticed our objection to all imitations which fall short of the original in finish and workmanlike skill. Cut glass has a sharp and crystalline edge; when imitated by pressing, the angles are rounded and indefinite, and the lines of junction in the mould are distinctly visible. In machine-made lace or embroidery we miss the delicacy of the hand-made originals. Photographs, where the sun does 192 PHYSIOLOGICAL -SISTHETICS. all the work, are a poor substitute for paintings or steel engravings. Plaster-of-Paris images show at once their hasty and inartistic manufacture. Personal labour bestowed upon any artistic product is never thrown away. Every little touch which betrays the loving care of the artist, is duly noticed and appreciated. Again, in viewing natural scenery, if the various objects which compose it are tame and monotonous, the absence of intellectual excitement co-operates with the sensuous dullness to produce the feeling of tedium. On the other hand, if the objects are numcK us and diversified, besides the variety of sensuous stimulation, we have abundant exercise for the in- tellect in classifying and recognizing the mutual relations of river, lake, and mountain, castle, church, and abbey, sea and cloud, ship and steamer, deer and swan. To this head we may consequently refer part of the discomfort in monotony, and pleasure in variety, which is further aided by emotional elements of more complex kinds. As a special case, it may be noticed that one main difference between an architectural work and a bit of mason-building is the superior amount of intellectual exercise afforded by the former. Our i)revious instances of the mid-ocean or the desert, compared with a wide and well-filled landscape, may here again receive mention. So, too, ornamentation in art or manufactures depends largely for its effect upon the intellectual elements. This is especially noticeable in fictile products. Interest in the design helps out the mere sensuous pleasures of form and colour. INTERVENTION OP THE INTELLECT. 193 It would be easy to extend this list greatly, and to enume- rate many other species of intellectual feelings whicli may be classed as aesthetic, but I purposely refrain from doing so ; partly because sufficient examples will be adduced in later chapters; but partly and more especially because I believe far too great prominence has been hitherto assigned to this order of feelings, under the influence of certain previous writers on ^Esthetics, to the manifest neglect of the much more important sensuous elements. I feel convinced that every Esthetic Feeling, though it may incidentally contain intellectual and complex emotional factors, has ne- cessarily for its ultimate and principal component, pleasures of sense, ideal or actual, either as tastes, smells, touches, sounds, forms, or colours. And I have consequently devoted the larger part of my work to illustrating and enforcing this view; giving only a minor degree of attention to those sesthetic elements which have already been more than sufficiently worked out by others. It is for a similar reason that I have chosen the title of the present chapter, regarding the office of the Intellect essentially as an intervention -y that is to say, as su})ple- mentary, not as fundamental. It combines sensuously- beautiful factors, so as to yield a synthetic whole more beautiful than all its separate parts. But without the originally aesthetic components, its exercise cannot yield an aesthetic result. CHAPTER IX. THE IDEAL. § 1. Mental Pleasures and Pains. Hitherto we have only concerned ourselves with the plea- sures and pains of unmistakably bodily origin. Every one of those which we have yet examined is the immediate reflex in consciousness of an existing nervous state. We have seen that the pains of burns and bruises, of bitter tastes and disagreeable smells, of discordant notes and inhar- monious colours, or of excessive intellectual labour, are each traceable to an actual present disintegration or waste of nervous tissue. We have observed, similarly, that the plea- sure of bodily exercise and field sports, of sweet tastes and agreeable perfumes, of musical combinations and delicate harmonies of shade, or of healthy intellectual activity, are each referable to the due stimulation, at the moment of perception, of structures in a high state of nutrition, ready lor the performance of their proper functions. But there is another class of pleasures and pains which we usually call ideal or mental, and which we are apt to regard as having H less intimate connexion with our nervous organisation. THE IDEAL. 195 AVe Imvc often alluded to them already, without attenij)ting any explanation ; and we must now see how far, if at all, we can bring them into accordance with our main principle by showing that the pleasurable feelings of this class corre- spond to normal performances of function in over-fed and under-worked nervous structures, and that the i)ainful ones are concomitants either of actual disintegration or of exces- sive and wasteful nervous action. On searching about for some clue to guide us through this difficult and dangerous labyrinth, we are struck by the fact that a large number of these pleasures and pains, though not apparently connected with due stimulation or destructive action at the actual moment of perception, are yet so connected by anticipation. I allude to the whole class of feelings which involve the jihenomenon of plea- surable or painful expectation, roughly expressed as Hopes and Fears. In their elementary form, hope is the expecta- tion of some pleasant sensation ; fear, the expectation of some painful one. Now of course the sensations so expected will, when actually present, correspond to a normal stimu- lation of the nerves in the one case, and a destructive attack upon them in the other. But the new peculiarity introduced into the case, and that which gives it its special interest, is this : that the mere anticipation, as well as the actuality, is in the first instance pleasurable, and in the last disagree- able. Not only does a child derive gratification from the taste of a bun and pain from the. smart of a whipping ; but it is also pleased by the promise of a bun and frightened by the t/irnat of a whipping. If we can succeed in explaining u 2 196 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. these most elementary cases, we shall have found a safe starting-point for our theory of pleasure and pain in the Ideal. Before attempting the analysis of these states of feeling, however, it may be well to show that they form a portion of that general consensus of the organism on which we have already so often dwelt. It will clearly be for the advantage of the individual that the expectation of pleasure should be pleasurable, for it will then be stimulated to take the proper steps for obtaining the actuality : and equally desirable that the expectation of pain should be painful, for it will then be stimulated to take the proper steps for avoiding the actuality. But this correspondence is of a much more subtle kind than that coarse and immediate one which we noticed in the case of the lower senses. There, by a contrivance closely analogous to reflex action, whatever was to be ulti- mately destructive to the body was seen to set up pre- monitory destructive action — cognised as pain — in the first structures with which it was brought into contact, and so to induce cessation of activity or energetic antagonism, as the needs of the case demanded : and, similarly, whatever was to be ultimately beneficial to the body was seen to set up anticipatory normal stimulation — cognised as pleasure — in the first structures with which it was brought into con- tact, and so to induce continuance of the action till the point of satisfaction was reached. In these higher cases, however, the process is more closely akin to that of volitional activity, because the pleasure or pain is not immediately present to the senses, but is mediately suggested by means of the THE IDEAL. 197 intellect. Hence they imply a much more complex nervous organization, and much more complicated relations of nervous ganglia, than the correspondence of the lower senses. It is mainly through the organs of sight and hearing that we obtain that information as to the probable future which gives rise to the state of Expectation, cither in its emo- tionally neutral forms, or in its aspects as Hope and Fear. It is mainly through previous experience and the nerve-connexions so functionally established that we in- terpret the indications yielded us by the senses into pre- monitions of pleasure and pain. And this process obviously implies the existence and use of those higher co-ordinat- ing structures whose functions are cognised in conscious- ness as intellect, so that we may expect intellectual phe- nomena to enter largely into the explanation of our present difficulty. Among the intellectual processes which may throw a little light upon our question, the most important is that of Attention. It is a well-known fact that out of the various sense-stimulants which continually assail our organs, and which may give rise to impressions known as sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and organic sensations, a vast ma- jority are never consciously cognised at all, wh'.le of the remainder a large portion float upon the border-land be- tween consciousness and the unconscious, only a very small number being clearly and distinctly cognised in the fore- ground of psychical existence. For example, in the visual field, we are generally only conscious at any single moment of a comparatively small central area upon which the eyes 198 rilYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. arc definitely focusscd ; wliile the periplicry of the field is not present to consciousness at all, and the interniediate portion is half cog'nised and half unregarded. If we wish to take in the whole field at a glance, as in viewing a beau- tiful i)rospect, we are obliged to move the eyes rapidly through their greatest possible sweep, converging them upon all the i)oint8 separately in very quick succession. Similarly with Hearing. Our ears are constantly receiving aerial im- pulses from moving bodies in the neighbourhood, such as .the ticking of the clock, the sound of the wind, the crack- ling of the fire, the hum of voices in adjacent rooms, the tread ()f footsteps in the street ; yet, as a rule, we are utterly unconscious of more than one of these stimuli at a time, or even of them all together. But we can at any moment, by an exercise of the faculty which we call Attention, converge our psychical being upon any one of these sense-stimulants. Thus out of the whole possible number present upon any given occasion, we may specially observe the face of the dial or the ticking of the clock. Of course part of this ])henomenon consists in a purely physical alteration in the direction of our organs ; as when in the acts of looking and listening we converge and focus the eyes, or tighten the membranes of the ear to the desired degree. But there is another much subtler operation which composes the act of Attention proper. What is this ? I think we can hardly fail to answer, if we are consistent physiological psycholo- gists, somewhat after the following fashion. Consciousness, which, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has pointed out, always tends to assume a serial form, is most probably all but exclusively THE IDEAL. I'jf) associated in the lii^^her grades of life with tlie highest cu- ordinating centres possessed by each particular grade. It always tends to relegate every minor and automatic function to lower and unconscious organs. Now, thougli it has never yet attained the complete serial form, it has succeeded in disembarrassing itself of the chief necessary vital functions, such as respiration, digestion, and the circula- tory process. Moreover, in the higher mammals, and far more in man, it has to a great extent managed to get rid of the vast majoiity of 8ense-imi)ressions. In other words, it seems probable that human consciousness mainly or entirely resides in those higher co-ordinating structures which are the seat of Intellect. To these, the central organs of sensation constantly but by no means universally transmit their disturbances. When the hio-her co-ordinatin»'- structures are occupied in transforming or correlating such transmitted energies, we are in a state of Attention to our sense-impressions ; as in the case of observing the dial, or listening to the tick of the clock But when the external stimulus only transmits its disturbance to the central oro-an of sensation, while the higher co-ordinating centres are en- gaged upon a different order of functions, we are then said to be in a state of Reflexion, and inattentive to our sense- impressions. Between these two extremes we may have any number of intermediate and alternating states ; and, moreover, we may at any moment be attentive to any one portion of the total possible field of stimulation rather than to another ; that is to say, the higher co-ordinating struc- tures may be occupied with any one transmitted disturbance — \-' 200 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. rather than another. To take some extreme instances ; the higher organs may, under certain circumstances, be so exchisively concerned with their own internal action, and so little interfered with by external disturbances, as to become wholly unconscious of sense-impressions ; in which case we are said to be absorbed in thought. But even in this state of pre-occupation, any violent and sudden sense-stimulant, such as the roar of a cannon, a flash of lightning, a shooting pain, or an unexpected shaking, communicates its disturb- ance at once, and forcibly interrupts the regular course of c:>nsciousness. Yet men occasionally, under circumstances of great internal activity, are actually unconscious even of the most intense sense-stimulants, as when a soldier in the heat of actic n is not aware of receiving a wound, or a person in deep grief is unconscious of the most pressing personal danger. The energies which correspond objectively to the main stream of consciousness are so disproportionately greater than the incident energies which correspond to the sense-stimulation, that the latter produce no perceptible change of direction in the total current. So, to sum up, we may conclude that while the automatic vital functions are all but wholly unconnected with consciousness, only adding to its sum in a few morbid conditions ; — and vhile the functions of the sense-organs are intermittently connected with consciousness, sometimes obtruding upon it violently, but generally forming only one of its subordinate elements; — the functions of the higher co-ordinating nervous centres are consciousness itself, every other nervous function being only definitely cognised when brought into relation with that THE IDEAL. 201 system of energies in the higher organs which constitutes the psychical life.* Let us now apply these views to the two simple cases of Hope and Fear already cited. In children the higher co- ordinating centres have not yet come into full play, and those which work at all are mostly engaged in dealing directly with immediate sense-impressions. If, then, we promise a child a bun, what is the consequence ? The notion of the pleasure to come is vividly suggested, and monopolizes the field of consciousness. There is a nascent stimulation of all the nervous structures concerned, and a series of actions are set up, tending more or less towards the realiza- tion of the pleasure. If we make the promise an immediate one, and attach any simple condition (such as the giving of a kiss or the utterance of some easy formula, like " ta "), the condition is carried out hastily and with empressement, and a speedy realization is demanded. The higher co- dinating centres have duly accommodated the means to the end. Here we have an easy unimpeded working of the * It may bo objected to the account of Attention here given that it does not attempt to eiphiin what most people mean by that word at all ; that is, it deals with natural or priiuitivt; Attention, not with the artificial or acquired faculty. To this 1 would answer that nothing more is required for my purpose. And, indeed, in the majority of phrases Attention bears the meaning here assigned it, though oddly enough the other idea is the one called up by the word in isolation. The phenomenon of strained Attention, though a very interesting one, is confined to the small class of men who have to undertake unpleasiint studies for the sake of an ulterior object ; and as they are just the class who feel most interest in mental operations, it has come about that this very abnormal case is usually taken as a type of the ^^hole phenomenon ; just as in the free-will controversy the unusual but striking e/ample of deliberation has been usually posited as the typical in- stance of volitional action. 202 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. nervous mechanism of intelligence, directed towards an action ultimately desirable for the organism as a vv'}>ole. And the corresponding feeling in consciousness ia, not exactly a pleasure, but what we may call a state of Enjoy- ment. On the other hand, when we threaten a whij)ping, the notion of pain to come is suggested with equal vivid- ness, and alike monopolizes consciousness. A stinmlus is communicated to the higher nervous organs, but its effect is to produce nascent efforts to escape the threatened infliction. If some condition is attached by observing which the penalty may be avoided, it is complied with, and the disagreeable feeling passes away. But if no such outlet offers itse the result is an exhausting strng<>le on the part of the higher co-ordinating centres to bring about the desired end; and this cannot be effected, because no appropriate channel is opened. The fruitless effort has for its correlative in consciousness a feeling which is not exactly a pain, but which we may call a state of Distress. And if the infliction threatened is one relatively very severe, the waste is long and continuous, and the monopoly of con- sciousness by the distress reaches a pitch which we name abject terror. So that often " fear is more pain than is the pain it fears." The two classes of feelings, Hopes and Fears, thus described may be taken as simple types of mental pleasures and pains generally, or, as they may better be termed, of Enjoyments and Distresses. Of course it would have been easy to choose finer and more imposing examples of the feelings here examined, such as the anticipation of pleasure in the return after long THE IDP:AL. 203 absence of a dear friend, or the agony felt at tlie appre- hended loss of a beloved relative. But there are many reasons for preferring the simpler and more elementary case. In the first place, its explanation is shorter and demands less reference to complex emotional phenomena. Again, it only involves such pleasures and pains of simple sensation as we have already accounted for. And, lastly, it is not open to the charge so often and so unjustly brought against the analysis of our higlier mental functions, that it is a deliberate attempt to degrade what is noblest in man by referring it to the basest origin. But if, in the above sketch, we substitute the expectation of emotional gratifica- tion or emotional distress for the anticipation of sensuous pleasure or sensuous pain, the explanation here attempted will equally well cover such more complex instances. And we must recollect that the actual emotions themselves are plea- surable or the opposite simply because they arc normal or abnormal exercises of function in certain structures here- ditarily adapted to subserve their special office. § 2. Happiness and Misery. We have seen in the last section that the life of man, the most highly developed organism inhabiting this planet, is not wholly made up on its emotional side of the mere plea- sures and pains of the moment. As he progresses in intelli- gence, so is he always widening his emotional horizon, and fore-seeing with ever increasing vividness the pleasures and pains of a more and more distant future. The lamb that sports in the pasture, unconscious of the cruel knife that will 204 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTELETICS. 80 soon cut short his days, is a subject of envy to the poets : but this very unconsciousness is a source of weakness to its species, since that race must in the long run survive which most clearly fore-sees all the dangers and all the possibilities of enjoyment contained in the remotest future. So we find a constant progress of fore- thought with increasing age in the individual and the species. The emotional life of children and savages is chiefly confined to the immediate present. Pleasures and pains promised or threatened for to-morrow seem too far off to force themselves into the thread of con- sciousness. But with the increase of age and intelligence, the pleasures and pains of the future grow to greater pro- minence. Small incidents of the moment do not obtrude so violently upon consciousness, which is rather occupied with more general and more complicated co-ordinations. This particular pudding, that particular scratch, become of less importance than the main question how to procure food, clothing, shelter, how to avoid death, hunger, cold, for many days to come. In this way there arise at last the wider con- ceptions of Happiness and Misery y in contrast to the simpler ones of pleasure and pain. A happy life is one not merely made up of momentary pleasures, sensuous and emotional, but free from serious anxiety about the future, and filled with anticipations of enjoyment. A miserable life is its exact opposite. Accordingly, happiness, not mere pleasure, is the end at which civilized men aim for themselves and those they love. In beings endowed with highly-developed nervous systems, consciousness is chiefly occupied with re- mote possibilities of pleasure and pain. To see one's path THE IDEAL. 205 smooth before one, to have a home, food, a fixed income, a wife, a family, and a sufficiency of health and worldly goods to make them and one's self comfortable for life, gives a background of contentment on which the individual pleasures of the moment can firmly base themselves. A few head- aches or an occasional slight cross in business do not seriously interfere with the course of such a life. On the other hand, to be invalided, to have no home, or the prospect of losing one, to be in want of a fixed income, and to have one's personal fears increased by the awful anticipation of suffering for those whom one loves, gives a background of wretchedness which no immediate sense-allurements can overcome. Conscious- ness is too deeply engaged with the difficulties of co-ordinat- ing the impracticable to allow the intrusion of such minor pleasures upon its sombre woof. It is obvious that in the first of these cases the highest nervous functions are carried on with the greatest ease and simplicity, while in the second a certain struggle exists in which the higiier nervous tissues are wastefuUy consumed. This fact has been actually proved by the observation that after periods of severe mental perplexity the products of nerve-waste in the excretions appear in largely increased quantities. Hence we see why mental pleasure is felt to be akin to bodily pleasure, and mental pain to bodily pain. At the same time we see the reason of the distinction be- tween them : the bodily pains being sharper and more clearly marked ; the mental, rather distinguished by that characteristic which the Greeks well called a-nopia, a sense of utter inability to escape from a difficult and untenable 206 rnySIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. position. And conversely with the bodily and mental pleasures : the former are characterized by acute and momen- tary stimulation ; the latter, by a constant and placid under- current of consciousness, flowing easily along unimpeded channels. . § 3. Ideal ^'Esthetic Feelings. The reader may perhaps have enquired to what purpose this long introduction has tended. That question we may now hope to answer. It is clear that we cannot be concerned in the present work with those mental pleasures and pains which are anticipatory of bodily states in close connexion with vital functions, such as the hopes of food and shelter, or the fears of cold, hunger, and enemies. But if there is any class of emotional states, purely ideal, and not connected with necessary vital functions, then they will answer to our definition of Esthetic Feelings, and may form the elements of a line art. Such a class is actually found in the mental pleasures and pains which are exclusively employed in Poetry and Romance, and which also form large components of Tainting and Sculpture. Let us consider what is their origin and exj)lanation. We have seen above the nature of ordinary Hopes and Fears. But besides the class which consist of immediate anticii)ations of pleasure or pain, and the class which give the undercurrent of brightness or gloom to consciousness at laro'c, there is a tliird class less directly anticipatory, and recognized as involving a much greater element of uncer- tainty, which we call day-drcandng or building castles i?i the air on the one hand, and iaking trouble at interest on the THE IDEAL. 207 other. The last plieiiomerion is a speciu] and we may almost say a morbid one : it does not aid us in averting the actu- ality ; and so, in healthy organisms it is Lanished from consciousness as soon as it appears. But the other and pleasanter form is a cheap and easy anmsement, giving free play to certain of the faculties without much risk of serious ultimate disappointment. Its rise will clearly throw some light upon the ideal pleasures generally. First, we must notice that no sharp line can be drawn between the ordinary faculty of fore-thought, by which we co-ordinate our plans for the future, and the more fanciful faculty which we employ in day-dreaming. Whenever we are about to take an important step in life we not oidy think over its immediate results, and arrange for the proxinuvte future, but we also reflect upon all the possibilities of happi- ness which it involves, and allow the attention to dwell upon them rather than upon their opposites. Before marriage, we talk over the arrangements of our house, our probable trips and excursions, our domestic enjoyments, our visits from friends and relations, with all the other delights which open temptingly before our exuberant fancies. On entering a University, taking up a profession, moving to a new si)hcre of life, attaining a dignity, we similarly form our plans for the future, not only so far as we can actually calculate, but into the remoter regions of mere conjecture. Such building of castles in the air, however, though [)leasurable enough, does not rise to the testhetic level, and tor this reason, that it is too monopolist, too closely connected with our own fulure happiness. We are ourselves the centres of every 208 PHYSIOLOGICAL 2ESTEETICS. such dream, and its main pleasure consists in the notion of its possible realization in our own persons. Sometimes, though our individual selves still form the nucleus round which the story gathers, we cut the link which connects our dream with reality, and imagine ourselves placed in all but impossible positions. At one time we come unexpectedly into large fortunes ; at another we are made Prime Ministers or Commanders-in-Chief; and we then work out our course of action in these exalted positions. Occasionally we depart still further from possibility, so as not only to idealize the future but to make the past course of our lives different from actual fact. But in all these cases we still, by an illusion of fancy, preserve our personal identity, and think of the rich and handsome hero in these flights of imagination as a phase of our known selves. It is to be noticed that these unreal dreams are distinguished from the former class by the fact that their realization is not expected, and is often actually self-contradictory. Hence they are indulged in chiefly when we have no opportunity for the extended exercise of our faculty of planning for the future. At those periods of our life when the higher co-ordinating portions of the brain are occupied in arranging definite desio-ns which are to be carried into practical execution, as at all special crises of our personal history, we do not feel the need for these wider excursions. If we draw upon the fancy at all, we connect our day-dreams with our actual plans, and to some extent provide for the fulfilment of both together. But in moments of occasional recoil from the monotonous course of humdrum business life, we give free play to the THE IDEAL. 209 otherwise unexercised faculty in speculations which have no bearing upon our immediate actions. Especially in child- hood and youth, when our co-ordinating powers are inadequate to grapple with the difficulties of real life, and when our parents take upon themselves the serious business of direct- ing our future, we employ the nascent fticulty on wild schemes of future success, military, practical, or amatory. And, in later life, when unhappy circumstances lead to the constant monopolizing of consciousness by unpleasant actualities or fears and doubts for the immediate future, we sometimes escape for a time from the wretchedness so caused and ob- tain a momentary relief by conjuring up delusive pictures of imaginary happiness. It is not only in these larger and more conspicuous in- stances that pleasure can be derived from the idea in the absence of the actuality, Even the special sense-pleasures can to some extent be represented ideally with a gratifying effect. We may notice that people, compelled by some unusual circumstances to live on hard fare, as in a sieire, a shipwreck, or an African expedition, often derive pleasure from talking over the dishes they will indulge in upon their return to civilization and plenty. So the poor and those suffering from severe illness picture to themselves the various sense-pleasures they might derive from money or health. And, without multiplying instances, we may say generally, that whatever gives us pleasure in the actuality carries with it a faint tinge of pleasure in the idea. The reason for this is not wholly confined, I believe, to the action of the central organs. It seems probable that 210 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. every idea, besides involving a stimulation of the nervous centre or group of centres in which the corresponding actuality is cognised, also implies a certain amount of com- municated disturbance in the fibres attached. Directing the attention to any part of the body has a noticeable efiect upon its vaso-motor nerves : the sensation of itching and tlie blush are conspicuous examples. Sexual images rouse physical excitement in the correlated organs. The sight of agreeable food, especially when hungry, makes the mouth water. Suggestions of nauseating ideas bring on sickness in weak states of the stomach. Indeed, we may regard the idea in every case as an incomplete form of the actuality. Hence we may conclude with great probability that when any body of nerve-fibres and their central terminal organs liave been long deprived of their natural stimulant, and are consequently in a high state of nutrition, they will derive a certain amount of pleasure from that centrally-initiated stimulation which is cognised in consciousness as ideal, though, not so large an amount as they would derive from that more normal peripherally-initiated stimulation which is cognised in consciousness as actual sensation. And we find as a matter of experience that any ideal pleasure is greatest when we have been longest deprived of the actuality. Here, then, we reach at last the explanation of Ideal Esthetic Pleasure which we have so long been seeking. When the gratification derived from the exercise of nervous organs in the ideal form is connected in thought with our own personality and made part of an imaginary programme TUE IDEAL. 211 of our future lives, the pleasure is too monopolist to reach tne iestlietic level. But when that gratification is the pro- duct of exercise unconnected in thought with our own personality, and wholly cut ofi* from actuality, it becomes a subject for esthetic employment, both in poetical and pic- torial representation. With this psychological origin for the sister arts of Poetry and Painting is inextricably mixed up another and more purely intellectual one,— that of plot-interest. The youngest child is pleased with a story, and finds an outlet for its budding intelligence in follovring the incidents of a nursery rhyme or a fairy tale. If one ofters to draw for it upon a slate, it immediately proposes a subject for dramatic treat- ment ;— a man shooting a bird, or a lady riding on horse- back. From this common starting-point of the child and the savage diverge the various forms of Poetry and Romance, of historical and genre Painting. The earliest literature con- sists of tales and ballads ; the earliest pictorial art represents the king in battle, the ofiering to the gods, or those domestic operations with which we are so familiar in Egyptian re- mains. From the union of these two pleasures, the intel- lectual and the ideal, flow the various forms of higher aBsthetic enjoyment. The part which each bears in the complex total varies, of course, with the particular style of art. Plot-interest is of greatest importance in Romance, narrative Poetry, and historical Painting ; ideal sensuous or emotional feeling predominates in descriptive or lyrical Poetry, landscape Painting, and Music. A few of the simpler instances chosen from general !ite- p 2 'J 12 rnYSIOLOOICAL iESTIIETICS. rafure will make this clear. The fairy-tales in which children delight combine a certain element of plot-interest with a much larger proportion of ideal sensuous gratification. The persons with whom the story deals are every one of them kings and queens, princes and princesses. They are all young, beautiful, rich, strong, and hapi)y. Feasting, dancing, and love-making fill up the whole of their exist- ence. There are no lessons, no rainy days, and no whi[)- ])ings in fairy-land ; everything is as bright and glorious as it can be. The magical power of the fairies smooths every difficulty and gets rid of every annoyance. Pumpkins turn into gilt carriages and mice into prancing steeds at a single wave of the silver wand. Life moves on through a circle of delights ; no serious cares disturb the harmony of exist- ence ; and if some great misfortune threatens for a moment, it is at once dispelled by the timely assistance of the super- natural godmother. In the end, the hero and heroine invariably marry and live happily ever afterwards.* The " Arabian Nights " give us an instance in which plot-inte- rest is slightly more conspicuous : but here too there is a profusion of ideal sense-pleasures. Cool sherbets, delicious fruits, gardens perfumed with roses, vocal with nightingales, and peopled by peacocks coloured like the rainbow; jialaccs filled with gold, silver, and precious stones ; sultanas of Surpassing beauty ; harems crowded with the ftiirest Circas- sians ; troops of obsequious servants, and caravans laden * If it lie objected that the historical growth of faiiy-tales from lU'griidpd iiiytlis (Iocs not hear out this view, I answer that though sucli is undeniably their origin, they have been gradually adopted, in the course of ages, to tlicii' altered purpose of yielding simple imaginative pleasure to undeveloped niindi^. THE IDEAL. 2i;{ with spicea, dates, and perfumes ; — these are the staple of the entertainment, interspersed with marvellous adventures and hair-breadth escapes. The poetry and romance of Chivalry contain similar elements,— jousts and tourna- ments, richly caparisoned steeds and ladies ^^aily dight, feasts and minstrelsy in hall or bower, with all the para- phernalia of courtly pageant and knightly adventure, ar- ranged to suit the tastes of mediiuval readers, and with plot-interest still further developed and sustained. Lastly, in most cultivated literatures a considerable differentiation takes place, and we get as distinct forms Romance, which depends almost entirely upon its connected story, and Poetry, which consists of the purely assthetic elements sifted and combined into a harmonious whole. But it is only the lowest forms of art which rely mainly or exclusively upon sensuous gratifications even in their idealised form. The fairy-tales of our childhood and the chivalric romances of our youth pall upon our adult imagi- nation. We still require the same sensuous elements in our pictures and our poems, but we require that they should be subordinated to another order of pleasures which we recognise as higher and more ennobling. These are the ideal emotions which deserve for their exposition a short separate section. § 4. Ideal Complex Emotional Feelings. , To trace the origin of the manifold complex Emotions in the human organism would be a task clearly beyond the sphere of the present work. However interesting and 214 rHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. tempting such an enquiry may appear, we must be content here to take for granted the existence in man of a hirge number of developed complex Emotions, such as the ma- ternal, domestic, and social affections, the love of country and the sentiment of religious veneration, whose normal exercise upon their proper objects yields the ordinary grati- fication of function in fully-nurtured structures. All that we shall have to do here is to show that besides the imme- diate and actual pleasures of real exercise, these faculties are capable of yielding ideal pleasures from their application to imaginary objects. Fortunately this is a comparatively easy matter. The structures upon which these feelings depend being always stimulated, not immediately by combinations of external energies, but mediately through the action of the higher co- ordinating centres upon the disturbances transmitted by such incident energies, it naturally follows that they may be excited almost as easily by the ideal suggestion of their ])roper object as by its actual presence. And such we find by positive experience to be the case. In youth the amatory passion (amongst civilized men) Cvinstantly manifests itself at first in the form of ideal cravings. "With women who happen never to have attached the emotion to a particular person, it often expends itself upon ideal heroes, upon pets, or even upon plants and flowers. Somotimes, too, it takes a more abnormal outlet in a general tendency towards the romantic, or in a strengthening of the devotional feelings. Hence the in- dulgence of sentimental friendships among girls, or tiie THE IDEAL. 215 impulse towards conventual life. Similarly witli tlie maternal instinct. Unmarried girls, especially of mature age, manifest a deep interest in the babies of other women, and are never so happy as in tending and nursing tliem. Even little children delight in the playful exercise of maternal solicitude towards dolls and kittens. Both these feelings are carried into the purely ideal sphere by painting and poetry. The domestic and social affections in like manner can be ideally gratified by allusion or pictorial representa- tion. The malevolent feelings display themselves in kindred shapes. Burning in effigy an unpopular person ; shaking the fist and grinding the teeth behind an enemy's back ; lampooning, caricaturing, or abusing an adversary, are common examples. Defacing a statue or picture, and hacking at an imaginary figure, carry the realization a point further. Satirical poetry and political cartoons are the artistic outcome of these impulses. The emotion of combat, so deeply rooted in our race, is gratified by ideal representa- tions. Boys' sports, like prisoner's-base, foot-ball, and rounders, all contain a pugnacious element. Mr. Herbert Spencer has pointed out that antagonism is an essential part of most games, appearing even in chess, whist, or billiards. Patriotism is at once stimulated and gratified by historical or rhetorical descriptions of our country's great- ness, and by poems like the Charge of the Light Brigade, or paintings of Waterloo and Trafalgar. When we talk of Marathon and Thermopylte, we are all Greek for the moment, transferring our allegiance to the wider interests of culture, freedom, and civilization. And as we advance in 216 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. breadth of moral sympathies, we find the higher arts striving ftiintly and tentatively after the embodiment of those senti- ments which are most in harmony with the highest aims and aspirations of the race. The older appeals to the monopolist senses, to the selfish feelings, to the narrower sympathies of class, and race, and nationality, and creed, are yielding place, we may hope, at least in our poetry and possibly even in our imitative arts, to the nobler sentiments of all-embracing humanitarianism. It is in this way and in this way only that art can fully deserve those eulogistic titles which it so often receives. So long as it remains merely a means for the gratification of the senses, without strengthening the higher consonant aims of life, it can only claim to rank as the most exquisite and self-sustaining among the selfish enjoyments. When it rises to be the handmaid of ethical purpose, it may worthily take its place beside the grandest products of human development. Science and Right, having as its object to enrich and beautify our lives by tuning us unconsciously into harmony with whatever is noblest in nature or in man. CHAPTER X. THE IMITATIVE ARTS. § 1. The Origin of Imitation. We have now completed our survey of the separate elements which compose ^Esthetic Feelings. But it will help greatly to illustrate our general principles if we take a few of the great synthetic totals, known as works of art, and analytically resolve them into these ultimate factors. Indeed, such an analysis of the highest artistic product, Poetry, is the final goal which we have placed before our- selves in the present treatise. As an introduction to this we may glance first at the Imitative Arts of Painting and Sculpture. Among the earliest products of human industry revealed to the present generation by archteological research have been found sundry rude imitations of the forms of men or animals, roughly scratched with splinters of flint upon the tusks of the mammoth. In our own day the most civilized races hold annual exhibitions for the display of paintings and statuary, representing scenes of human life or of in- animate nature, skilfully pourtrayed in the richest pigments or exquisitely carved in the finest marble. The question 218 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTUETICS. which we have to attack in the present chapter is this : What is the origin of that pleasure which the most savage and the most cultured men alike have always felt in delineating ex- ternal objects or in observing such delineations by the hands of others? To answer it we must dive a little deeper than hitherto into the volitional sources of artistic production. We have seen already that the due exercise of the limbs and muscles yields us the ordinary gratification of normal function. But man cannot be satisfied, like the lower animals, with the simple enjoyment of such coarse bodily actions as walking, running, and leaping. He possesses by hereditary transmission a set of highly-developed nervous centres which are adapted for accurately correlating the most varied and delicate muscular actions. The faculties of which these centres are the governing organs constantly require a proper outlet. Hence our inability ever to indulge in that complete state of indolence which is habitual with the lower animals in the intervals of life-serving functions, and which is familiar to us all in the cat and the dog. We are per- petually impelled by our fully-fed nervous centres to be em- ployed upon some kind of occupation. Even in our con- geners the monkeys this restless activity is sufficiently noticeable ; in the savage it is more intelligently directed to aseful ends ; and in the civilized man it seeks to vent itself upon some higher object. But when any unusual circum- stances, such as a railway-journey, a sea-voyage, or the forced inaction of a waiting-room, prevent us from following our ordinary avocations and deprive us of our common resources in reading and society, we are generally driven to THE IMITATIVE AETS. 219 aranse ourselves by some comparatively purposeless exercise of the more delicate organs of correlation. How we do it varies with our temperament. We may whittle a piece of stick into a doll or a tooth-pick ; we may cut out figures with a paper and scissors : we may draw pencil sketches on our finger nails ; we may fish over the ship's side for sar- gasso-weed ; we may plait the loose ends of the leather window-strap ; we may deface the letters on the company's notices ; we may carve our initials on the wood-work ; we may smoke, bite our nails, or hum a tune ; but some- thing or other we must do. Under ordinary circumstances adult men have enough to occupy them without such shifts ; but women of the upper classes are obliged to expend their superfluous energies on embroidery, wool-work, vitromanie, wood-carving, leather-moulding, and a thousand other quasi- artistic expedients. In short the nervous structures are there, and an appropriate object must be found for them. Of course all these facts already postulate the series of prior developments by which such complicated organs of correlation have been brought into existence. The function is imperative because the structures exist ; and the struc- tures exist because previous function has slowly perfected them. So that these characteristics of civilized man cannot account for the first artistic attempts of the savage. But in the savage too, though to a less extent, there is a necessity for exercising the hands upon comparatively useless work. Just as the eye, whose main functions are at first those of searching for food or mates and anticipating the approach of enemies, must yet expend its energies in viewing countless 220 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. other objects during its intervals of leisure ; so the hands, when not engaged in hunting or fishing, in wattling the hut, polishing the stone hatchet, or framing the bow, will occasionally employ themselves at stray moments in playing with tools and materials. From such leisure employment will arise, mainly by hazard, the earliest forms of that spor- tive industry which we call art. The artistic feelings, as Schiller hinted and Mr. Herbert Spencer has proved at length, take their origin in the play-instinct. Give a child a slate and pencil, and allow it to sit down quietly by itself without any suggestion as to what it shall do with them. At first it will be satisfied with making lines and splashes ; but after a while it will begin to form a series of marks upon the slate which half by accident bear a remote resemblance to some familiar shape, such as a plate, a rect- angular house, or a human profile. The intellect at once seizes upon the resemblance, and there is a pleasurable thrill of recognition, together with an emotional elation of power. The child is incited to a fresh attempt, and this time succeeds a little better. A few trials result in the completion of a formal or conventional representation of the object imitated, which satisfies for a considerable period the imperfect intelli- gence of the child. For example, a house is symbolized by four moderately straight lines, enclosing a smaller rough rectangle for the door, and two lesser ones for the windows ; a profile is represented by a straight forehead, an angular nose, and a re-entrant angle for the mouth, with a circular or oval eye put somewhere above the nose. These sym- bolical forms are repeated once or twice till they become in- THE IMITATIVE AUTS. 221 grained in the nervous and muscular systems ; and improve- ments are only very slowly intr()du{!ed, each one tendill,^^ itself to be similarly stereotyped in the motor npijiinitus ; just as, in learning to write, we incorporate each new acquisition in our formal style, and so produce what we call our hand. Savage and semi-civilized art long contimies in this conven- tional stage ; indeed, the symbolical representation is much more easily recognised by savages than the most artistic picture. But while our child is thus gratifying his motor system by the exercise of scrawling, he is also gratifying his perceptive and intellectual system by the constant recogni- tion of similarity. The pleasure of art-production and the l)leasure of art-perception grow up side by side. As with the infant, so with the early development of the race. The first rough design sketched half-imconsciously by the savage with flint or deer-horn will be but a very imper- fect representation of the object which it is intended to pour- tray. But successive attempts will better the imitation, and will be productive of renewed pride find pleasure in the artist. His fellows will be struck by the skill exhibited and will derive an intellectual gratification from observin<'- it. For we have seen that the exhibition of skill always pleases us, first in ourselves, and afterwards, sympathetically, in otliers. This feeling will already have been roused in the manufacture of celts, fish-hooks, and arrow-heads ; it will soon extend itself to the new faculty of imitation, and the fortunate artist will be able to give a new pleasure to his admiring follow-tribesmen. Shortly, more truly {esthetic elements will be introduced in bright colouring and "-raceful 222 rnYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. forms. Art will gradually select for imitation only what is most beautiful in nature, rejecting all that is ugly, discordant, and base. But many ages will be required for this passage from mere imitation to developed fine art ; and it will best be considered in a separate section. We may note in passing that it is very difficult to draw any sharp line between the two main classes of art, the imitative and the decorative. Originally there is a con- siderable distinction between the circles and splashes which adorned the rude pottery of primitive man, and the figures which he etched to represent human or animal forms. In- deed, it has been noticed that some tribes of savages exclu- sively adopt the one system, and some the other. But in the process of time the two become inextricably blended by the introduction of conventional imitative figures into geometrical ornamentation. Most symmetrical patterns at the present day consist of intermediate forms, such as fes- toons, scrolls, sprays of formal foliage, or grotesque heads of birds and animals. But in the succeeding sections of this chapter we shall only deal with the regular imitative arts in their purest form. They include within themselves all minor developments. § 2. Painting.^ There are four separate kinds of pleasure which Painting may seek to arouse ; first, the actual sensuous pleasure of * The two sections which follow on Painting and Sculpture, I put forward with considerable diffidence. 1 am a psychologist, not an art-critic, and I am loth to go ultra crcpidam. Hence I have refrained from quoting special instances, lest my taste should be called in (luestion by those competent to THE IMITATIVE ARTS. 223 form and colour ; second, the ideal sensuous pleasure of sug- gested softness, smoothness, musical sound, coolness, warmth, sweetness, or comfort generally ; third, the ideal emotional pleasure of the various special sentiments ; fourth, the intel- lectual pleasure of skilful imitation. To all these is some- times added the other form of intellectual pleasure known as plot-interest. Each of these we must examine seriatim. The Actual Sensuous Pleasure of form and colour has already been explained, and is of course specially expected in pictorial art. As to form, we demand that a painter should choose for his theme beautifully-shaped objects, such as human figures, male or female, in graceful attitudes, nude and exquisitely formed, with rounded limbs, or clothed in flowing drapery, Greek or Roman, Oriental or Florentine ; animals like the fawn, the panther, the Arab charger, the swan, and the butterfly ; mountain peaks, bossy hills, winding bays ; the cataract leaping in an arch from the crag ; Naples and Vesuvius, Tivoli and Niagara, the curved horizon of ocean, the thousand inlets of a highland loch ; graceful pottery, elegantly-moulded goblets, flagons, and vases, slender beakers and shapely chalices ; the domes and minarets of Staniboul, the sweeping arches of Tintern and Poitiers, the columns of Paestum, the rounded tiers and galleries of the amphitheatre. On the other hand, the painter generally avoids (except for some special effect of colour or contrast) do so. j\ll I can do is to account to the best of my ability for those foblings which works of art arouse in me personally, and which observation or enijuiry liave revealed to me as existing in other people. I can deal with them merely as so many known facts, without much reference to the place which they would till in a graduated scale of aisthetic feelings. 224 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. lean, harsh, and angular limbs or features, constrained and graceless clothing, awkward postures and actions ; heavy, ungainly, or shapeless animal forms, such as the bear, the cart-horse, the goose, and the slug ; flat and monotonous plains ; the still ocean unbroken by a winding shore or bluff headland, unrelieved by a ship with bellied sails or a tempest curling the breakers on the beach ; straight streets, plain rectangular houses, square windows, and flat facades destitute of arch or column, dome or portico. As to colour, we demand sufficient stimulation blended with due relief; warm reds and oranges, not too strong, too massive, or too prominent ; delicate toning and harmony ; together with variety and fit- ness for the objects delineated. The drapery of historical paintings is selected with an eye to mixed effectiveness and harmony of hues ; sacred subjects, oriental pieces, and scenes of the XVIth, XVI Ith, and XVIlIth centuries admit of gayer colouring as well as more graceful shapes than the ordinary incidents of modern life ; and amongst the latter, such are generally chosen as will give an opportunity for the introduction of bright female costumes, or else of court and military uniforms, while the present sombre and inartistic dress of men in evcry-day life almost defies pictorial repre- sentation. Landscape of course presents us with all the hues of natural scenery which it would be tedious again to par- ticularize. The choice of *' bits " is one of the greatest tests of an artist's natural taste. Autumn and sunset are the chosen seasons of the painter as well as the poet, lleds are far more common in art than in nature, and bright colours are lavished in considerable profusion. In short, all those THE IMITATIVE ARTS. 225 tints and shapes which please us elsewhere are seleetoil niid combined in Painting. The Ideal Sensuous Pleasure of suggested feelings is plenti- fully found in Painting. Ease of movement is given in the attitudes of dances, especially such as the minuet and tlie coranto. Flesh is so represented as to convey the notion of softness and warmth. Satin and velvet, grass and nioss^ tempt us to stroke them. Glossiness reveals the smooth surface of jet or amber. The glow of a fireside is rendered in such a manner that we almost feel its comfortable wanntli. Domestic pieces generally rouse the sense of comfort and happiness. Coolness is suggested by river-side nooks and green fern-clad grottos. Fruit-pieces display grai)es and melons, pomegranates and filberts, temptingly before our eyes, till we long to taste their luscious flavour. We can almost smell the roses and the heliotrope; while, as to musical sound, I have seen at least one painting of a throstle in a hawthorn bush, pouring forth its soul in open-mouthed delight, so that the very notes of its song trembled in one's ear. The Ideal Emotional Pleasure of the various complex senti- ments is, however, a much larger component of artistic gratification. It will not be necessary to enter fully into illustrations here, as these sentiments will be treated in extenso under the head of Poetry : but a very few pictorial examples may be briefly run through, for the sake of formal completeness. The emotion of sublimity is given in moun- tains, crags, the stormy ocean, and the thunder-cloud riven by the bolt : it is also aroused by supernatural beings, c.f ii '2'2a PHYSIOLOGICAL 7i:STlIETICS. Vfist iuul sliadowy j)roiKirtU)iihi or jMiltonestiiit' viigueness ; by j)iiliu;t'S ami castles, kniglits and princesses, heroes of «;^iga!itic limlis, aiul all that is antiquated, venerable, or mystic. The l)a inter, once more like the poet, lives mainly in the storied or imagined i)ast.* The religions sentiment is apjjealed to, in earlier times by pictures of the gods and their doings ; under Christian influences, by saints and martyrs, angels and cherubim, tiara'd pojjcs and mitred bishops, the attitude of ]»ra3-er or praise, the dim cathedral and the village church. The emotion of i)ity gives us the blind beggar and the woundeel soldier, the widowed bride and the fathei'less bairn. Here, as elsewhere, love of course forms a main theme, but speci- iication is both diflicult and unnecessary. The domestic sentiments are also fully rei)resented by fireside pieces and village scenes. Patriotism and the allied ego-altruistic feel- ings of military life flood the walls of exhibitions yearly with battle-pieces and loyal demonstrations. Even the purely ])ersonal and monopolist pleasures of pride and power may sometimes be imi)orted with efteet into artistic works.! The three classes of pictorial gratification which we have hitherto examined are concerned chiefly with design ; the next class. Intellectual Pleasure of (Skilful Imitation, is de- pendent on execution alone. This is the proper pleasure of imitative art. In its coarsest form, — that felt by the child, tlie savage, and the rustic,. — it consists merely in the appre- hension of likeness between the representation and the object * See this point fully worked out in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Essay on Use and Bcautjj. t Tlie ditticult question of tlie employment in art of ^-'^hiful emotions will )je considered under the heud of Poetry. THE IMITATIVE ARTS. 2-J7 represented. In a sliglitly higher stage, tliut of tlie ii\)\n\- ciative but uncritical public, it consists in gratirication at the workniausliip as a whole, apart from any consciousness of tlie minute skill displayed. In its liighest form, as seen in the artist and the trained art-critic, it consists in a rational recognition of the end attained and tlie means employed fur its attainment. In this last case, all the difficulties of a particular scene are accurately comprehended, and the tact and knowledge with which they have been overcome is dis- . tinctly observed. The gloss on the satin; the glow of the lire ; the bloom on the peach ; the transi)arency of the muslin beneath which the soft shoulder is half hidden, half per- ceived ; the motion of the waterfiiU; the spray from tho angry waves ; the trembling of the hand tliat tries to hidu the furtive love-letter :— all these demand the utmost skill, and receive the highest jiraise when dexterously imitated. Here, too, we must include all the techni(pie of art : the })roper use of pigments and vehicles ; the knowletlge of anatomy, of perspective, of chiaroscuro ; the i)0wer of group- ing and composition ; the employment of all that slowly- accumulated science which raises modern art above the rude bas-reliefs of Egypt and Assyria. And just as the marks- man alone can fully appreciate a contest at long ranges ; just as the billiard-player alone can fully appreciate the skill which makes a break of three hundred, or scores a ten-stroke from a seemingly hopeless leave, by marvellous calculations of side and angle,— so the artist alone can fully appreciate the wonderful art by which a straw stands out in the foreground, a cranny in the wall is filled with moss or stone-crop, and Q Q «■■ 228 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. a distant hill is made to loom weirdly through depths of intervening mist. Art thus projects itself even into the ai)preciation of nature, and every scene is viewed and enjoyed by the painter with a tacit reference to its capabilities for pictorial representation. Lastly, we may have, in addition to all these varied grati- fications, the Intellectual Pleasure of Plot- Interest. A paint- ing may represent a living action and tell its own story. A Greek interior, a Roman domestic group, an incident of the ])alfestra or the arena, a Venetian love-tale, a page from the stately annals of Florence or Genoa, a scene from Sliake- spenre or Molifere, Goldsmith or Cervantes, a Spanish bull- fight, a village feast in Flanders, a touching sketch of English farmhouse life. In telling the story there is again much scope for artistic skill in face and figure, in delicate shades of emotion and suggestions of inner thought. Some exquisite little touch in the corner of a mouth, or the drooping of an eyelid, is often the making of a picture's fame. Indeed, plot-interest is the element of pleasure which is most strongly felt by the inartistic public. At exhibitions, the crowd col- lects around the canvas which most vividly tells the most interesting history. Landscapes of marvellous detail and single heads of ideal beauty are mostly left to the admiring eves of the cognoscenti. It will thus be seen that Painting, in one or other of its forms, yields us in the highest possible degree that harmo- nious combination — the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue — which we saw to l)e the essence of a3sthetic pleasure, and yields it to us in every department of THE IMITATIVE AETS. 229 our nature, sensuous, ideal, emotional, and intellectual. All classes of paintings, however, do not equally depend upon all these forms of pleasure. The only one which is necessarily present in every case is the actual sensuous gratification of form and colour, simple and combined, and that of skilful imitation. Landscape depends chiefly upon these. It may also call up ideal sensuous pleasures of coolness, softness, or sweet odour ; as in the case of a mossy bank or a new-mown hay-field. Historical paintings add the special emotions of pity, sublimity, or patriotism. They owe much, too, to plot-interest. Genre tells us an amusing or interesting tale, and further appeals to the domestic emotions or the amatory passion. Sacred art is a special study by itself. Military pieces depend for part of their effect upon the combative instincts : they are most popular amongst the most warlike nations. Minor details can be easily filled in by the memory and imagination of the reader. A few cursory remarks may be added upon the develop- ment of pictorial art, viewed from our present psychological standpoint. The earliest attempts of the savage are devoid of any care for harmony of colour or gracefulness of form. Beyond bright and striking hues, the mere pleasure of suc- cessful imitation is all that he prizes, and even in that he is satisfied with a very low and conventional standard. A step higher up, Egyptian art delights in the powerful and unusual stimulation of the analytic colours, but does not attempt harmony, shading, or tone. It gives us tolerably accurate representations of men, animals, and plants, in the 230 niYSTOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. ahstrad, witlioiit reference to special circumstances, emo- tional expression, perspective, or chiaroscuro. In its arrange- ment it is strictly symmetrical and conventional. In purpose it is rather religious and governmental than {esthetic, and so it does not appeal to any other sentiments than those which suit its special ohject. Offerings to the gods, the judgment of the dead, the king capturing a city, the king surveying his prisoners — tliese are stock specimens of its choice of suhjects. Faces and figures exhibit no kind of emotion. A sokh'er kills or is killed, a king hunts or performs religious ceremonies, with exactly the same wooden attitude, the same stonily indifferent cast of features. Still, to the undeveloped intellects wdiich observed them, these pictures doubtless af- forded the gratification of bright colour, comparative skill in imitation, and a certain amount of plot-interest. Assyrian bas-reliefs show, perhaps, a trifle more appreciation for beauty of form, especially in animals. A step above this we may interpolate Chinese art, whose line of development was unconnected with the West. This gives us much im- jn'ovement in colouring and shading, considerable expression of emotion and life-like attitude, witli greater variety of l)lot-interest ; but the emotions aroused are usually low and sometimes (to our ethical feelings) disgusting. The Japanese arrange brilliant colours in very effective com- binations ; their imitation of trees and animals is good ; their landscape is often pretty: and the emotions are represented with much spirit and vigour. To return to the regular line of Western development, classical painting shows us an enormous advance over all that preceded it with liir. lAlliAlivE ARTS. 231 tliat marvellous rapidity which characterizes the whole growth of Hellenic culture. In it we o-et a sudden vet traceahle transition from simple imitative painting to aasthetic art. We see harmonious arrangement of delicately- shaded colours, instead of mere powerful primary stimula- tion. Exquisite gracefulness in the shape of limhs and arrangement of drapery replaces the straight, stiff contours, the coarse, angular forms of Egyptian painting. The imita- tion ajiproaches much more nearly to actual life. Figures are naturally grouped in unsymmetrical composition. There is considerable disphiy of plot-interest in the scenes depicted from the beautiful living mythology;— Theseus, the Minotaur, Ariadne, Dionysus and his train ; Odysseus, Calypso, the Cyclops, Scylla and her dogs. But even here, all is not perfect. Emotion is very slightly exhibited in the faces ; most of them have a calm, statuesque repose. Single fi'>-ures are managed with great skill; but deeper persiiective still baffles the artist, and comj^sition is yet in its infancy. Although the human figure has been emancipated from the trammels of conventionalism, animal 8hfq)es, vegetation, and landscape generally, are still formal and unreal. Never- theless, in Painting, as in every other higher department of human handicraft or intelligence, it was the Hellenes who took the first great s^op from the material to the spiritual. Egypt had bright colour and amusing imitation ; Hellas first intro- duced that higher aesthetic pleasure which we term distinc- tively beauty. We must pass over Roman painting, which was really Greek in all but the name, and omit the gradual decline of Byzantine art— with its recurrence to primary •232 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. colours, excessive gilding, and conventional arrangement — as well as the deluge of Western barbarism, and the mediaeval love for minute skill in delineation, coupled with want of truthfulness to nature in her wider manifestations. With the earlier Italian revival of art, conventionalism is once more dis'^arded, and the higher pleasures of faithful natural imitation re-instated in the first rank of artistic feeling. Lastly, modern post-Raphaelite painting, departing from the narrow choice of Madonnas, Holy Families, and St. Sebastians, arid appealing to the widest possible range of emotions, gives us, in one or other of its special and highly- differentiated forms, every one of the above-enumerated classes of J^sthetic pleasure.* § 3. Sculpture.'] Some early forms of Sculpture undoubtedly preceded the first attempts at Painting. To carve a grotesque head upon the club or the stick, as savages constantly do, is almost naturally suggested by its shape. The lineal descendants of these rude imitative efforts are still to be seen on our walking sticks, our umbrella handles, and our briar-root pipes. The South Sea Islanders make hideous gods of feathers, and the Africans give a monstrous human shape to clay or soft stone. But that form of art which in its * For the purposos of this section it has been both impossible and unne- cessary to distinguish in the carUer periods between Painting and bas-relief, t Sculpture I approach with even more diffidence than Painting, partly l)ecaiise of the greater delicacy of the feelings involved, and partly because I am obliged to express opinions which come nearer to the critical level, I do so, however, in all duo deference to those whose higher tastes may lead them to dilfcr from my conclusions. THE IMITATIVE AETS. 233 full development we know as Sculpture is not the direct offshoot of these crude artistic beginnings. It is rather a differentiated species of the original mode of painting, practised by the founders of our Western civilization, which, beginning with a single scratched outline, developed at last into coloured bas-relief, having the contour lines incised, and the pigment spread upon the raised portions. From this common beginning. Sculpture gradually progressed through the differentiating stages of figures in high relief, attached to a stone background ; figures, seated or erect, attached to a block ; figures supported by a dorsal column ; figures in one solid piece, with the arms and legs symmetrical and united to the body, but not connected with any support; figures with the arms unsymmetrical and separate from the body, but the legs united and solid ; and, finally, figures in dramatic attitudes, whose arms and legs alike are unsym- metrical and separate. In its fully-developed form. Sculpture consists of single figures or groups, in bronze or marble, having the natural colour of the material only, and repre- senting for the most part the nude or semi-nude human form. This is the particular form of the art with which we must specially deal at present. Though Sculpture is historically antecedent to Painting yet it will be seen at once that it is more convenient to postpone its consideration to tliat of its younger sister-art, because it depends on many of the same sensuous, emotional, and intellectual gratifications, yet refuses the aid of otliers with apparent capriciousness. Nevertheless, this very refusal to call them all to its aid we shall find to be an 234 rilYSIOLOGICAL iESTnETICS. important component in the special charm which Sculpture aft'or.ls us. Taking the same order of examination as before, we see that among the Actual Sensuous Pleasures Sculpture appeals to that of form alone. Colour it riirorouslv excludes. The reason for this rejection is probably as follows. The optical consciousness cannot readily be divided. Either it attends to form or it attends to hue ; rarely and imperfectly to both together. If we take any simple festhetic object, such as a vase, we shall see that when it is covered with coloured figures or flowers our attention is distracted from the u-eneral outline to the particular coloured shapes enclosed by it. If, on the other hand, its colouring is uniform, we thiidv only of the beauty of form, leaving all other considerations on one side. Now, the perception of beauty-of-form we saw to be a higher {esthetic feeling than that of colour. Hence this deliberate sacrifice of the lower to the higher pleasure yields to those capable of appreciating it a gratification of unusual purity ; thus importing into the estimate a vague emotional feeling. One of the most marked symptoms of the late resthetic regeneration in England is the revulsion from gaudy Parisian taste in over-coloured and often ungainly vases to those of plain earthenware in exquisite shapes, either of a single uniform retiring hue, or of many varying shades in green and yellow, forming no definite pattern, but scattered iridescently over the surface ; or, at most, having belts of black or darker ornamentation, marking what may be called the critical zones of the vessel, and so aiding the appreciation of its form. Similarly with animal shapes : THE IMITATIVE AHT!S. 2.35 those which strike us most in rospocjt to form are noficeuhle for the uniformity of tlieir cok)ur. Compare the Anih ami tlie zehra, the jnuna and tlie jaguar, the «,^azt"IIe and the fallow deer, tlie swan and the peacock. We see in eiu;!) case that, even though the heauty of form is in itself nearly equal, the species which attracts notice hy its colour thereby distracts om- attention from its shape. So, too ferns, the leaves whose form <,nves us the «>-reatest pleasure, have no brilliant flowers to withdraw our notice from their delicate contour and symmetrical arran-s which suggests the angels. Without accepting in their entirety the views of Winckelmann, we may {\groo that marble is not a good vehicle for the expression of tlie emo- tions, because they depend so largely upon the eye, which cannot be properly represented without the aid of colour and chiaroscuro. So, that, on the whole, in spite of many groat exceptions, those pieces of Sculpture please us most which give us the ideal nude form, in graceful attitudes, with dis- tinction of permanent character in the cast of features, but without any attempt at the expression of mere passin<»- emotions. The Intellectual Pleasure of skilful imitation is present in Sculpture as in Painting. Yet even here there is a cliarnc- terlstic distinction. Though Painting, as a rule, selects only what is most beautiful in nature and rejects what is uylv yet it may occasionally, for some effect of contrast or sohk; special emotion, give us a deformed beggar or a litter of 238 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. rotting- vegetation. Seulpture, on tlie contrary, aims at abso- lute ideal beauty of form. Every limb must be in perfect proportion, every feature in exquisite hiirmony. As it mostly rejects composition, it cannot easily be led to intro- duce unpleasant figures for the sake of combinational etfect. Moreover, any deformity, any mere ungracefulness, militates against that pure beauty of form to which Sculpture totally devotes itself. No skill can make the portrait-statue of a stout middle-aged gentleman in a surtout anything but shapeless and ridiculous. Lastly, the Intellectual Pleasure of Plot-Interest is gene- rally wanting to Sculpture. As it mostly rejects composi- tion, it can tell only a very })laiii and simple story. There are a few pieces, how . er, like the Laocoon, which involve a certain amount of this feeling; and terra-cotta grou{)s, which hover upon the border-land of Sculpture proper, often bear a close analogy to genre painting. To sum up. Sculpture mostly ditfers from Painting in the very high and restricted order of pleasures to which it ap- peals. Its fastidiousness recommends it to the most delicate taste, and its austerity, its absolute remoteness from the warmer sensuou;5 or emotional feelings, repels the less re- fined. Hence it usually lays itself out to suit only the most cultured classes, and rarely condescends to mere tricks of art or catchy emotional effects. Veiled ladies and crying boys always collect a throng at exhibitions ; but artists linger before busts of Roman severity and female figures of more than Greek perfection. Before we pass on from presentative to representative art, THE IMITATIVE AliTS. 239 from Painting and Sculpture to Poetry, there i« one question wln-eh may naturally have occurred to tlie reader, and wiiicii it may bo well to notice here. I have referred throughout to the beauty of the human foce as a known fact, widiout miy attempt to analyze it into its component ftictors. For this I have had two reasons. In the first place, it is very delicate ground to tread, involving complicated question^- of sexual selection;* and in the second place, I think the sub- ject has been i)r()ductive of much error in earlier treatises. It IS a common characteristic of awakening enquiry that it usually begins by attacking the most complex instead of the most simple phenomena. Thus, in physics, before men had settled the most elementary laws of motion, heat, or light, they constructed empirically the vastest a priori theories of the universe; in biology, before they knew the simplest physiological facts, they prescribed confidently for compli- cated diseases ; and in mental science, before they had learnt anything as to the action of the five senses, they dogmatized on i-ovs and btdvoLa, on conscience and free-will. Similarly in .Esthetics, long before anyone had endeavoured to account for the pleasurableness of red or blue, dialecticians ex- hausted argument on the nature of human beauty, with the general satisfactory result of proving that the features of Socrates were ideally lovely, or that sufficient early training would teach us to prefer the figure of a baboon to that of the Apollo or the Aphrodite. Now the fact is that human beauty is the most involved case in the whole range of * Soe the whole difTiculty fully set forth from this point of view in Chap XIX. of Mr. Darwin's Descent of Man. 1240 PnYSIOLOOICAL AESTHETICS. il^'isthetic Feeling. Not only does it contain the moat coni- jilex elements of form, colour, and symmetry, but it is further complicated by many emotional, intellectual, and ethical considerations. Moreover, it is largely affected by dilFerences of race, class, family, age, sex, and individual peculiarities. It is, indeed, the instance where the largest allowances must be made for personal equation. Again, the fact that infants will answer sympathetically to the emotional expressions of pleasure or anger in others, prior to all ex- perience of their meaning, shows that not merely the human face in itself, but even its passing modes, have produced hereditary connexions of nerve which answer immediately to pleasurable or painful stimuli. And further, we have observed and compared so enormous a number of human features and limbs that we can appreciate unconsciously all sorts of delicate varieties in contour which in any other sub- ject would evade even the closest scrutiny. So minute are the points of discrimination that a passing indisposition, the shade of a bow, or the twist of one lock of hair, may make all the difference between prettiness and plainness. All that can be said with confidence is this : — human beauty is, in part at least, a combination of abstract pleasure in form and colour, with a certain given, relatively-rigid, symmetrical, normal, healthy type. All very wide divergence from the type is shocking to us, and is usually connected with disease, im[)er- fection, or morbid function. But so long as the ty[)i('al lineaments and distribution of colours are fairly well fol- lowed, we are pleased by such deft combinations of tints, such graceful curves and slender yet rounded limbs and THE IMITATIVE AETS. 241 features as would dcliglit us iu any inanimate ol»ject. Per- sons who for the first time mix with tlie African race in hirge numbers ima<^ine, to begin with, that all are equally ugly, because there is so considerable a divergence from the Euro- })ean type : but as soon as the new standard has become familiar, those individuals who best conform to its ideal form, and who exhibit a lustrous deep-black skin, brilliant white teeth, clear and intelligent eyes, smooth, rountl, and glossy cheeks, flat but not very open noses, full and fleshy lips, with general plumi)ness of body, are recognized as hand- some or i)retty.* The men, however, though usually strong and muscular, strike a European eye as etfeminiite in their faces, owing to the smoothness of their skins, and the scanti- ness or absence of beard and whiskers. In the case of North American Indians, on the contrary, I notice that most Euro- peans consider the men handsome, noble-looking, and well- made, but that they regard the squaws as masculine and hard- featured. Here the type is so little removed from our own in many external points that we are able to api)reciate its good characteristics at once : but the divergences are in some features so marked, and are of a sort so exactly opposite to those which give softness and sweetness to female faces in our own race, that we immediately associate them with the unlovely emotional elements of savage character. So that we must make great allowances for mere conformity to type in our estimate of human beauty ; remembering that * European artists who have not lived among the Afiican race sometimes try their hands at a pretty negress ; but they always Aryanize the type, and so produce a face which looks, to one accustomed to living specimens, a mere sickly sentimentality. B 242 rnYSIOLOGICAL iESTnETICS. appreciativeness for such conformity may he actually en- grained in the nervous systems of each race. Of course, as already hinted, many other elements go to make up the total effect ; and, on the whole, it seems best to leave the case of human beauty untouched, except so far as these few remarks may throw liglit upon it. It has only been alluded to here at all, because it is so prominent an element in the art of Sculpture that to pass it by without an apology would seem like ignoring a difficulty instead of candidly confessing that its complexity enablesfit practically to defy analysis.f t A dissertation upon this subject will be found in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Essay on Personal Beauty. Mr. Spencer, however, mainly confines himself to itleal and emotional elements in the total effect, while I, in accordance witli my general plan, have given greatest prominence to the immediate sensuous efleet. At the same time I am most willing to allow that sexual selection and the survival of the fittest will in all probability have jn-oduced such an internal consensus that those persons of either sex who bear outward signs of intellectual, moral, and physical qualities adapted to their circum- stances, and who are consequently the most desirable parents for the coming gi'in'rations, will nmtually please the opposite sex. CHAPTER XL POETRY. § 1. Esthetic Nature of Poetrtj, Literature may be roughly divided into two great classes : that which aims at imparting knowledge, and that which aims at imparting pleasure:— in other words, the scientific and the aesthetic In the first class may be. included works on the natural sciences, on philosophy, and on history properly so called : to the second class we may assign Poetry, romance, and the mass of belles-lettres generally. Of course many kinds of writing hover on the borderland between the two : still, we usually recognize the fact that a book or a paper aims on the whole at one or the other of these two main objects,— the increase of useful information or the im- mediate gratification of the assthetic sentiment. The pur- pose of science is of course equally to enlarge the happiness of men ; but it does so by indirect means, and the pleasures which result from its cultivation can hardly be considered as esthetic. With the first of these divisions we have con- sequently nothing to do ; but the second falls naturally into its place in our present enquiry. It will be sufficient, how- ever, if we examine the nature of Poetry, taken as a type of 244 PHYSIOLOGICAL ESTHETICS. tlio class ; since the jjleasiirc folt in other imnginative litera- ture has the same origin, and Poetry, IxM'ng more exclusively OBsthetic in its purpose than any other form of composition, embraces all the special points of other forms, besides a few almost peculiar to itself. Literature has its beginnings far back in the infancy of man. History traces its origin to the sacerdotal annals of early liome, to the knotted chronicles of Peru, and to the traditional pedigrees of real or mythical ancestors, up to Zeus and Woden, which form the boast of savage chiefs. Poetry dates back to the degraded myths which settle into fairy-tales and folk-lore, to the semi-religious epic of warrior life, and to the song of triumph which accompanies the dance of victory. In their beginnings, both are alike oral, and both alike differ very little from ordinary speech. Yet they are necessarily marked by some kind of assistance to the memory, which gives them their literary character. The proverbs, nursery songs, charms, and religious invocations of savage or semi-civilized peoples are either rudely metrical, or else contain rhyming lines and alliterative jingles. But as literature begins slowly to assume more formal shapes, a differentiation is gradually set up. That species of compo- sition which vaguely foreshadows scientific writing is couched in the straightforward language of everyday life ; that species which is simply 83sthetic in its purpose, and which tends towards the production of modern Poetry, grows more and more confined to certain rules of material repetition, rhythmical recurrence, assonance, or alliteration. We have no difficulty in recognizing the song of Deborah or POETEY. 245 tlie ballad of Brunanburli from the midst of the clirouiclcs in which they are imbedded. Side by side with the growth of this presentative pleasure, an ideal element is introduced in the stilted language, the ornamental tropes, the fanciful episodes, the emotional ai)peals to the joys of battle or the delights of the feast. Long before written Poetry begins, this double differentiation is carried out to a considerable degree of perfection. In the Homeric ballads, in the old English song of Beowulf, in the great Finnish epic, we get already regular systems of versification, a developed poetical phraseology, and the unmistakable iesthetic spirit. But it will be l)est for our present purpose, as with Painting, so with Poetry, to examine its structure in the most advanced form, which will necessarily include all the simpler modes of pleasure given by the earhest poems. § 2. Presentative Elements of Poetr]/. The most conspicuous difference between Poetry and the other fine arts is this, that while they appeal directly to the eye or the ear, and aim only in a minor degree at emotional 6r intellectual pleasure, Poetry appeals very little to the senses, and owes most of its effectiveness to its ideal factors. But before we examine these proper poetical gratifications we must glance very briefly at its presentative elements. It will only be necessary to allude to them in the most cursory manner, because they have been already mentioned under the head of Hearing. Poetry is generally distinguished from prose composition by some kind of rhythmical recurrence, either material as in Hebrew ; quantitative, as in Latin and r t g ? i; i « ywt-.'" • ■VTrr^"-"-T:-— ,%-.t«'^w«f»*»>«rp»' 246 PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. Greek ; accentual, as in English and German ; or syllabic, as in French. It is also often marked by other modes of expected repetition, such as perfect rhyme, or assonance of vowels and consonants, found in most modern verse ; im- perfect rhyme, or assonance of vowels alone, which is the ordinary rule of Spanish poets ; and alliteration, which is systematic in so-called Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic songs, while it is employed as an occasional beauty in all languages and ages. Besides these various mechanical devices, Poetry may further gratify the ear by smoothness of flow, which is obtained through high vocalization and the rejection of harsh consonantal combinations, awkward hiatus, and excessive sibilants or trills. Certain words are in themselves, apart from the suggested idea, harsh and disagreeable, while others are soft and pleasing ; though of course these distinctions can only be observed by a cultivated and highly discrimina- tive ear. Poetry seeks, so far as possible, to avoid the former and cumulate the latter : but this principle may be interfered with by considerations of intellectual or emotional effect. The various presentative elements thus shortly enumerated are commonly summed upas the form of 'Poetry, while the far more important representative elements, to which we next proceed, are known in contradistinction as its matter. § 3. Representative Elements of Poetry. We all know that verse is not necessarily Poetry, and even that Poetry is not necessarily in verse. In reading fourth- rate rhymes we feel that they differ from prose only in their POETEY. 247 metrical arrangement. On the other hand, in reading certain impassioned passages of prose authors, we are often struck by a special emotional thrill, which we describe as poetical. What may be the nature and origin of this peculiar feeling is the question which we have to attack in the present chapter. The medium through which Poetry gratifies the eesthetic sentiment is language : and in the great diiference between language on the one hand, and colour, shape, and musical sound on the other, we have the groundwork for the dis- tinction between Poetry and the sister arts. For colours, shapes and musical sounds, the elements of presentative art, are in themselves pleasurable stimulants to the senses : but words in themselves are seldom either pleasant or painful. Exception being made for the slight presentative differences mentioned above, their emotional quality depends entirely upon the object to which they are applied. They are sym- bols which, when heard or read, call up into consciousness a faint form of certain previously experienced sensations or emotions, singly or in groups. Thus the word orange calls up a vague and imperfect consciousness of the various sense-impressions which when actually present are known by that name. But words derive their power of gratifying the sesthetic sentiment from the fact that accompanying the faint form of the sensations which they arouse is a faint form of the appropriate associated emotion. Thus the word lily of the valley excites in us not only an ideal conscious- ness of the flower so called, but also a very slight wave of that pleasurable feeling which an actual lily produces in us . - >«..•«.. 248 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. through the senses of sight and smell. So, too, the words violet and cabbage, palfrey and donkey, ruby and chalk, do not differ very widely as to the manner in which they affect the auditory or optic nerves : but they are assthetically gratifying or the opposite in virtue of the pleasant or unpleasant sensations, the dignified or undignified emotions, memories of which are aroused in connexion with the objects they symbolize. And if it be granted, as we saw to be pro- bable, that the physical seat of ideal feelings is the same as that of the corresponding actuality, it will follow that the faint emotional waves generated by language exercise in a minor degree the same nervous plexuses which would be exercised more fully by the original vivid waves of which they are copies. We thus see how the pleasures of imagina- tion can be finally affiliated on our general principle of pleasure and pain. The ideal pleasures thus characterized may be aroused by single words in comparative isolation. Even in choosing names for persons or places we endeavour to select a title which shall convey some small amount of the emotional thrill. Thus we give our children the names of flowers, Lily, Violet, Daisy, Marguerite ; or those of great mythical or historic heroes, Arthur, Alfred, Harold, Hector, Hugh ; or such as call up some vague recollection of the imagina- tive past, Edith, Cyril, Eleanor, Ethel, Claude; or those belonging to characters in some favourite poem or romance, Rosalind, Beatrice, Cordelia, Dolores, Geraldine. So, too, with houses or estates : however questionable may be the taste displayed, there is at least an aesthetic intention in POETKY. 249 such titles as Myrtle Bank, the Cedars, Hi^^h Cliff, Mon- loisir, the Nook, Nightingale Grove, and the tliuusand other sentimentalities of suburban villas. Now in all impassioned writing, such ideal sensuous or emotional feelings are occa- sionally and incidentally aroused in hirger masses. But Poetry deliberately seeks to gratify the' justhetic sentiment by a conscious stringing togetlier of ideas which give rise to the feehng of beauty. It lifts us into a fanciful atmosphere of sensuous and emotional delight, a land of perfect happi- ness, an imaginative realm where nothing common, base, or hateful is ever seen. Its object may be described as the attempt to arouse in the hearer the largest possible amount of massive pleasurable ideal jDsthetic feeling. We may consider the pleasures of Poetry under the same four heads which we examined in the case of Painting. But of these we have already dismissed the few presentative sensuous factors ; and it will be convenient to divide the representative sensuous factors into two classes. So that our classification will be as follows : first, Simple or Abstract Ideal Sensuous Elements ; second. Complex or Concrete Ideal Sensuous Elements ; third, Ideal Emotional Elements ; and fourth, Intellectual Elements. Each of these will demand a separate section. § 4. Simj^le or Abstract Ideal Sensuous Elements. We have already seen in the earlier portions of this volume what special sensations are in the actuality gratify- ing. We have now merely to run through a brief list of them, in order to show that they can enter effectively 250 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. into poetical composition just in proportion to their original pleasurable nature, and to their remoteness from life-serving function. Beginning with the various senses in the order of aesthetic precedence, we come first to Sight. We saw that this sense has two principal functions, the perception of colour (in- cluding lustre) and shape. And we can now see that all beautiful colours and shapes are in the highest degree poetical. The names of all vivid hues are frequent in Poetry, such hues being themselves pleasant stimulants to the eye. As examples we may take scarlet^ crimson, pink, orange, golden, green, blue, azure, purple, and violet. On the other hand, the names of dull and undecided colours are not in themselves poetical, the corresponding actualities not being remarkable for imparting any agreeable stimulus. Such names are gre^j, brown, dun, black, bay, and drab. It is true these words, like many others originally neutral, may become poetical by some effect of harmony or intellectual fitness : but these efiects belong to the later consideration of the emotional and intellectual elements, and so cannot be examined here. One only has to read over the two lists to see how greatly they differ in poetical value. Again we saw that the red end of the spectrum, being less fully repre- sented in nature than the blue, has acquired a greater pleasurableness as a stimulant : and we find accordingly that red and orange with their congeners are more adapted to Poetry (cccteris paribus) than blue and green with their cognate tints. That this is true will, I think, be clear to anyone who carefully compares the emotional waves roused i POETEY. 251 by each of the words crimson and azure^ or thinks of the number of passages in Latin Poetry where roseus and C(Eruleus respectively occur. The red sun, red gold, the red right hand of Jove, the red king Pyrrhus, ruby lips, cherry cheeks, ruddy faces, the rosy-fingered dawn, the crimson flush of eve, the scarlet stream of life, are poetical common-places. But it is a difficulty in making an estimate of the simple or abstract elements that the words denoting them tire never used except as adjectives of a concrete, and that consequently intellectual appropriateness and skill of rendering have at least as much to do with the question as the original quality of the sensation. When we get to the concrete elements we shall see that this difficulty no longer besets us; that bright-coloured objects are more poetical than faint-coloured, and those in which red or orange preponderates than those in which green or blue takes the lead. Passing on to the other mode of pure optical sensibility, lustre, we find that words denoting its presence are poetical, while those denoting its absence are not. Such are brilliant, sparkling, sheeny, polished, lustrous, luminous, twinkling, glancing, silvery, pearly, by the side of dull, dingy, rough, and turbid. In the muscular element, shape, we saw that the motor apparatus of the eye is fatigued by sharpness, angularity, or intricate figures, while it is agreeably exercised by curved lines and harmoniously arranged forms. Hence whatever is rounded, curling, graceful, lithe ot flowing, is more poetical than what is straight, stiff, awkward or upright. 252 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. So much for Siglit. In Hearing, the next of tlie senses in aesthetic order, it will be observed that words denoting musical tones or harmonious combinations are poetical. Such are clear^ ringing^ silverg^ musical^ sweet, melodious^ mellow, rich, and lorn. Those of an opposite nature are (unless redeemed by some other effect) unpoetical. Such are shrill, hoarse, grating, harsh, loud, and croaking. It may, however, be mentioned that words denoting varieties of sounds are frequently transferred from other senses, and so carry with them much of the associated feeling which is gained in their original sphere. In Touch, the emotional element is weak, the perceptional taking the lead. Hence words relating to this sense are neither very poetical nor the reverse. But its few emotional aspects are ideally reproduced in Poetry, affording us the adjectives soft, waxen, fleecy, smooth, delicate, and tender, in contrast with hard, rough, harsh, tough, and coarse. In Smell, which is an exceedingly emotional sense, the distinction is very marked. Fragrant, sweet, perfumed, scented, odorous, and all other words denoting pleasant sen- sations of smell are highly poetical : while those denoting ill odours, such as stench, stinhing, adds beauty to gems, polished stone and crystal, as well as to certain leaves and the human skin. On the whole, how- ever, this sense, not being a specially emotional one, does not enter largely into the ideal factors oi' Poetry. Taste gives us honey, wine, and milk, besides innumerable fruits. We may select as good examples (embracing other senses as well) the grape, the apple, the plum, the citron, the pomegranate, and the olive. Golden jellies, lucent syrups, sparkling juleps, combine beauty of colour with delicacy of flavour. But this, the most monopolist and functional of the senses, is subject to the special limitation which was noticed and explained above. The boldest of poets could scarcely venture to introduce roast goose or apple dumpling. 2oG PnYSIOLOGICAL iESTIIETICS. To tlic class of organic sensations we may refer cool grottos (which are a legacy to us from the south of Euroj^i) summer breezes, evening with its stillness and fresh zephyrs, groves and mossy couches, sleep and drowsiness, rest after labour, and the wliole poetical furniture of the Lotus Eaters and the Castle of hidolence. In all these cases we can easily refer the poetical effect to some one or two sej^arate senses ; but there are other con- cretes in which all the pleasurable feelings seem inextricably united so as to defy complete analysis. As these contain the greatest possible numbers of agreeable sights, sounds, smel'ls, tastes, and other sensations, besides combined emo- tional factors, they are of course the most poetical of all ; that is to say they rouse the largest volumes of ideal pleasure. Such are the vast assemblages of objects which make up a beautiful landscape or impressive pageant. Mountain glens, hemmed in with beetling rocks, through which white foam- ing streams rave ceaselessly ; woous and valleys, pastures and meadows dappled with daisies, sweet with the breath of kine, vocal with the song of birds ; an Italian lake, bathed in sun- set gloiy, its overhanging terraces rich with autumn tints, while a rainbow spans the tiny cataract that plashes music- ally into its unruffled bosom, and the soft sound of the vesper bell steals over it from some neighbouring campanile, half hidden amid chestnut and orange-blusso)u ; far above whose green heads the roar of the tliunder and the flash of the lightning play awfully around the pinnacles of eternal ice — these are a few of the great concrete wholes with which Poetry deals, whose elements can be sifted and referred to POETRY. 257 their proper place as we read tlietQ over, but wLich would scarcely repay the toil of a minute and deliberate classifica- tion. Before ;:)roceeding to our next division, the emotional elements^ :t will be well to consider what results we can derive from our analysis of the sensuous factors alone. The reader will observe that on attentively conning over any of the above lists, or still better some familiar descriptive passage in his favourite poet, he is conscious of a faint emotional wave, varying in intensity according to tlic number of pleasurable sensations ideally aroused. He will also notice that while each word does not dejinitehj bring up into consciousness all the aesthetic points possessed by the object symbolised, it does so indefinitehj . While the word ruoiney for example, does not awaken a complete picture of the object so called, nor a full recollection of the accompanying gratification, it awakens a vague consciousness of the object, with a correspondingly vague emotional thrill. This thrill it is the office of the poet to arouse, to sustain, and to econo- mise. It is because each thrill is separately not very strong that I have defined the purpose of Poetry as being the production of massice pleasurable emotion ; using the word in Professor Bain's sense, as opposed to acute. Poetry depends for its effect upon the unbroken succession of beautiful ideas and images, not upon the sei)arate result of individual impressions. Again, it will naturally result that each class of sensations will enter efficiently into poetical composition just in propor- tion as it is capable of being easily and distinctly recalled 8 258 niYSIOLOGICAL iESTIlETICS. into consciousness on the su2:e She crushes, inoffensive must and meaths From many a berry ; and from sweet kernels pressed She tempers dulcet creams ; nor these to hold Wants her fit vessels pure ; then strews the ground With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed." Keats, too, thus describes the supper in the Eve of St. Agnes: " He from forth the closet Ijronglit a heap Of candied apple, quince and plum and gourd, With jellies, smoother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon ; Manna and dates in argosy transferred From Fez ; and spiced dainties every om; From silken Samarcaud to cedared Lebanon." POETRY. 261 And, once more, here is Tennyson's picnic at Amllej/ Court : " There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid A damask napkin wrouglit with horse and hound ; Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home, And, half cut down, a pasty costly-made, Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret, lay Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks Imbedded and injellied." Now in all these passages (omitting for the present the emotional elements of costliness, antique allusion, oriental tinge, or primitive innocence) the poetical feeling is entirely clue to their picturesque character. The objects are not described as food but as parts of a scene. In itself a game pie is vulgar and inartistic enough, appealing to a sense which is both monopolist and closely connected with vital function ; but the skill of the artist is shown in overcoming the difficulty by presenting the pie to us in such a light that we see only its beautiful pictorial points. So too, with sexual feeling. Closely bound up as it is with our most powerful complex emotions, it yet defies introduction into Poetry, because the feelings aroused, though they may be pleasurable, obviously fall short of a3sthetic dis- interestedness. It can only be introduced under a veil of mysterious reverence, as in the well-known love passages of Paradise Lost. Even on those only a Milton could have ventured. It may be added before we proceed to the emotional division that descriptive poems, as well as the greater part of narrative verso, are chiefly composed of sensuous factors ; though no high- class poem can be so entirely. The Georgics 262 rnYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS. and Thomson's Seaso?is nmy stand as cases in point. Mere lists of beautiful objects often produce a genuine aesthetic thrill. What can be more poetical than the catalof^ue of ])recious stones in the foundations of the New Jerusalem ? — the jasper, the sapphire, the chalcedony; the emerald, the sardonyx, the sardius ; the chrysolite, the beryl, the topaz ; the chrysoprasus, the jacinth, the amethyst. And yet it is only a catalogue after all. Milton is peculiarly happy in rapid strings of names for natural objects, and Shelley's Alastor consists of little else than separate gems of scenic description, strung on a slender thread of connecting narra- tive. But there is always more or less of human emotion as well, or else the verse sinks from Poetry into the mere oriental profusion of the Arabian N'lrjJds. On the other hand, however emotional the main theme, it must be dressed up in copious simile, metaphor, and other devices for intro- ducing the sensuous elements, or the verse will appear poor, frigid, and colourless. Lastly, it is worth notice that while sweet sounds, meadow scents, and ocher sensuous elements are originally chosen as factors of Poetry because of their intrinsic pleasurable nature, yet their ideal employment in verse re-acts upon the actuality, so that our pleasure in their positive perception is mixed up with literary and poetical recollections. A mis-interpreta- tion of this fact led to the fanciful theories of Alison and Jeffrey. § 6. Ideal Emotional Elements. The complex emotions, which form only occasional com- ponents in the pleasure derived from Painting and Sculp- POETRY. 263 ture, enter into the very essence of Poetry. For we saw in our chapter on the sul)ject that ideal emotion approaches much more nearly to the actuality than ideal sensation. Accordingly, language can gratify us far more by calling up subjects of pleasurable emotion than by mere word-pictures of agreeable sights and sounds. Even those concrete objects which formed the theme of the last section are constantly raised into the sphere of higher imagination by some fanciful emotional touches bringing them into C()m[)arison with com- plex human feelings. Thus the rainbow and the sunrise re- appear as Iris, the many-hued, and Aurora, the rosy-iingered. Personification, or the attribution of mental qualities i^es^ju- cially emotional) to inanimate objects, is one of the ordinary devices of Poetry. We speak habitually in verse of the modest daisy, the flaunting dalFodil, the gladsome light of day, the eager cataract, and the angry murmur of the thunder-cloud. Sleep glides gently down from heaven upon our wearied eyelids; Famine stalks gaunt and hideous through the land ; Confusion and Flight march in the con- queror's van, with Sorrow's faded form and Solitude behind. In all these instances allowance must be made for intellec- tual factors ; but a considerable residuum of feeling is due to the special emotions. Thus, in a joyous piece we make all nature rejoice with us ; in a meditative one we see calm reflexion in every object about us. We may properly enquire, therefore, in connexion with our present subject, what complex emotions are of a pleasurable sort, and what poetical elements they afford. In dealing with this question it will be best to depart from the strict order of psycholo- •264 PHYSIOLOGICAL iESTHETICS. gical arrangement, and to place first those emotions which are most frequently employed in the composition of Poetry. And first we may consider the emotion of the Sublime. The Sublime takes' its origin in admiration for literal physical greatness, and, in its very earliest developments, the greatness of the strongest men. It is thus closely akin to the sympathetic pleasure of manual skill. The members of a tribe naturally make much of the strong man who guards them from the enemy, and the deft- handed man who fashions for them arrow-head and hatchet. Hence arises a delight in feats of strength, which is gradually transferred to the deeds of mythical ancestors ; to imaginary beings, gods and djinns ; and again to inanimate objects, mountains. » rocks, the cataract, the ocean, whose vast size and enormous force are contrasted with the puny thews and limbs of mortal men. Next, it is extended to remote time, the dim past, the greatness of duration ; to remote space, the vast uni- verse, the greatness of extension ; to thought, genius, the greatness of intellect ; at last to moral grandeur, heroism, the greatness of ethical endurance. We find, consequently, that the earliest Poetry, the ballad literature of savage tribes, is almost wholly engrossed with the mighty deeds of heroes in battle ; when relieved at all, it is by the acts of the great gods and the majesty of natural scenery. The Iliad rests its much exaggerated claims upon these grounds. It will be seen that the passages which strike us most and oling longest in the memory are those which appeal strongly to these early germs of the Sublime: — the Titans piling Pelion upon Ossa ; Phoebus Apollo, like to the night, coming down POETRY. 265 from the peaks of Olympus, wrathful in heart, the arron-s clanking in the quiver on his angry shoulders ; or Achilles, sitting apart, looking over the illimitable sea, wine-coloured, harvestless, while big scalding tears of rage and shame roll down his burning cheek. We get a great advance on such mere material conceptions in the Prometheus of iEschylus. Every line is gigantesque, yet sustained in its majesty by the sense of et.'iical self-sacrifice. On the snow-clad cra