I W I I, AZ, mrE 10 WI IM LIBRARY OF RHETORIC AND C- CRITICISM r-= POW. F4 I I I% U.- t-IN 7j lie..0 L -0 F PtN-ffl, IUAFEEMIE, '9 i Q. R IM.-A CEP. vjgomp -q ia 4- + 4:+4- -4 -4.' ** - j*1r PS% - -4 -+ -+ -+ -+ -4 4 'I' '9% *4 -. 2W4 A4 w liAliftKAll W7 -h. - A*W* W- =z Fw. tp-m!"L* OF emmum MV -,M W!"L4 Kf-. -lb L. N I., k I. L-P4Y 1,, U ftw-" I (I THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME AN ANALYSIS OF THESE EMOTIONS AND A DETERMINATION OF THE OBJECTIVITY OF BEAUTY BY JOHN STEINFORT KEDNEY NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 FIFTH AVENUE I880 / COPYRIGHT, i88o, BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. PREFACE. THE object of the author of the following treatise has not been to furnish a new manual of the science of AEsthetics, but to re-discuss the fundamental questions which underlie it; to reach those postulates of the science which must have their justification in a Constructive Philosophy. I have endeavored to stray no farther than was needful for my immediate purpose into the domain of Physical Science, Metaphysics, or Theology, and have avoided, as far as possible, using their technical terms. As for the Psychology and Ethic implied in this treatise, I have to say that they are the result of my own thinking. I have received suggestions, of course, but what I have said I have verified in my own thought, or am prepared to justify; and I am under no particular obligations which are not herein expressed. In keeping strictly within these limits, it has been impossible not to make assumptions. All sciences are in their roots interlaced, and no philosophy can justify itself which is not exhaustive. I have endeavored to approach the ultimate phi iv Preface. losophy from the AEsthetic position, which I have sought carefully to survey. From those who agree with me in my psychological definitions, and ethical postulates, I hope for a full sympathy. I have avoided making application of the results I have reached to particular questions in Art, and Art-criticism, except so far as was necessary for illustration. It has always seemed to me a faulty method in most aesthetic treatises, the mingling up prematurely the consideration of Art with the investigation into the prior questions of the Emotion of the Beautiful, and the definition of Beauty; since these are pre-supposed as the origin of the art-impulse itself. Hence, I have endeavored to keep this branch of the science pure. I have been obliged, indeed, to speak of music, for the simple reason that nature herself utters beautiful sound, and the same principle must explain that as explains music which is the production of Art. It is obvious that if the results of my work are received as true, they may be carried into the whole work of appreciation and criticism in the several Arts of Landscape, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Literature, Oratory, Poetry, and Histrionics. I have avoided, too, entering, more than a little, into the question of Aesthetic culture, for the reason that that is a part of the question of culture in general; and only after the question of ethical culture has been settled, can it find its just place, and determining principle. Preface. v While my treatise is intended, primarily, as a contribution to the philosophy of the science, I have endeavored to cast it in such form and style as to interest all intelligent readers, who, if they are patient over some parts of the work, may find it, elsewhere, and on the whole, compensatory. The negative or critical part of my work is, for the most part, relegated to the two supplementary chapters. This I have sought not to make tedious. But the vindication of mine against opposing theories is to be found in the positive, or constructive part, which is an attempt at the unification, rather than the reconciliation of all theories hitherto, which have been predominantly subjective or objective. lbr CONTENT S. BOOK I. The Beautiful and the Sublime as Subjective. CHAPTER I. PAGE DEFINITION OF TERMS-PSYCHOLOGY-T HE ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS,..I CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS-FEELINGLIMITATION-LONGING-SYMBOLS,..6 CHAPTER III. CULTURE-NATURAL ENDOWMENT-IDEAS-INSIGHT — IMAGINATION-THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL, II CHAPTER IV. THE PHYSICAL A NECESSARY ELEMENT IN ALL IDEALS,.. 19 CHAPTER V. IMAGINATION,..,24 CHAPTER VI. CORRESPONDENCE,.....28 viii Contents. CHAPTER VII. PAGE THF SUBJECTIVE APPRECIATION - THE STRAIGHT LINE-CURVEs-GRACE,....31 CHAPTER VIII. COLOR-GRADATION-PURITY- RICHNESS-SOUNDTHE LOWER SENSES,. 36 CHAPTER IX SYMMETRY-PROPORTION,... 41 CHAPTER X. INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY —SHELLEY'S HYMN-FINAL CAUSE,..... 46 CHAPTER XI. THE SUBLIME, MATHEMATICAL AND DYNAMICAL.,. 54 CHAPTER XII. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME IN ALTERNATION-BURKE'S SOLUTION-KANT'S SOLUTIONNIAGARA,....58 CHAPTER XIII. THE SIDEREAL UNIVERSE -INTELLECTUAL SUBLIMITY,.. CHAPTER XIV. THE MORAL IDEA- MORAL BEAUTY,...66 CHAPTER XV. CHARACTER - MANNERS- THE HUMAN COUNTENANCE,... 72 Contents. ix CHAPTER XVI. PAGE MUSIC-TIME-SYMBOLISM,....79 CHAPTER XVII. MORAL SUBLIMITY-SPIRITUAL SUBLIMITY,.. 85 CHAPTER XVIII. SYMBOLS OF MORAL BEAUTY AND SUBLIMITY-SUBJECTIVE IDEALS-TASTE-EMOTION AS CONDITIONING TRUTH,.....92 CHAPTER XIX. WORDSWORTH'S ODE-DIMINUTION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY-HOW RETAINED-THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION AS DETERMINED BY SUBJECTIVE IDEALS,.....99 CHAPTER XX. DEFORMITY —UGLINESS-EVIL,.. 106 BOOK II. Beauty as Objective. CHAPTER I. PSYCHOLOGY AND METAPHYSIC -THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY,...115 CHAPTER II. MAN AS AN ANIMAL-FORCE-MOTION-POTENCESYNTHESIS OF ACT, THOUGHT, AND LOVE-THE HIERARCHY OF IDEAS-UNITY OF THE ANIMAL — LIMITATION OF THE ANIMAL,...121 x Contents. CHAPTER III. PAGE MAN AS A SPIRITUAL SOUL-THE TRICHOTOMYPERMANENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL SOUL-ENJOYMENT AS RELATIVE TO SPIRIT-THE PSYCHICAL ORGANISM-THE SPIRITUAL SOUL AS ABSTRACT -THE REQUIRED CORRELATIONS,. 127 CHAPTER IV. ASPIRATION- IMAGINATION ITS MINISTER-ENJOYMENT A PRIMARY FACT-THE PHILOSOPHIC AND THE POETIC ATTITUDE-CLARIFYING EFFECT OF EMOTION,......134 CHAPTER V. CORRESPONDENCE -BEAUTY OBJECTIVE AND REAL -NATURE AS PROGRESSIVE-FORECASTINGS,. I44 CHAPTER VI. PERFECTION AS THE SYNTHESIS OF THE MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND PHYSICAL-BEAUTY THE PLAY OF THE DIVINE MIND GOD MORE THAN THE UNIVERSE IMPLIED IN THE DEFINITION OF SPIRIT-THE LAST SECRET OF BEAUTY,. 150 CHAPTER VII. DREAMING-THE DREAM-WORLD-THE RECOVERED WORLD,.... I55 CHAPTER VIII. THE ETHIC OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY, HOW AFFECTING THE QUESTION OF BEAUTY,.. 69 CHAPTER IX. THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMPULSE-ART-CRITICISMTHE FUTURE OF ART,.. 1.82 Contents. xi APPENDIX. PAGE NOTE A.-THE INDIAN VEDAS-THE ETHIC OF THE EASTERN RELIGIONS,....185 NOTE B.-RUDIMENTARY ORGANS,.. 192 CRITICAL SUPPLEMENT. CHAPTER I. EARLY GERMAN AND OTHER WRITERS-BURKEALISON - OERSTED - RUSKIN - COUSIN - ALLSTON-DEFINITIONS OF ELEGANCE, GRANDEUR, AND MAJESTY-PRETTINESS,. 197 CHAPTER II, KANT-SCHILLER-HEGEL-PROF. H. N. DAY.. 202 I I I 0 4 BOOK I. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUB. LIME AS SUBJECTIVE. I BOOK I. CHAPTER I. DEFINITION OF TERMS,-PSYCHOLOGY,-THE ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS. IN order to fix the meaning of the terms used in the following Treatise, as much of the Psychology implied as is required for that purpose is given in this introductory chapter. I use the word "soul," meaning that the soul is the true concrete. It is spirit as related to the realm of ideas, or of thought. It is body as related to the physical universe. The notion " mind " is reached by abstraction. It is the soul regarded as knowing or thinking; as "will" is the soul regarded as acting, concentrating itself for a purpose, governing, regulating, adapting its own movement. It belongs to the soul to feel, by virtue of its relation to either realm. It feels because of nature, and by virtue of the sensitive organism. It feels because of spirit, by virtue of the attraction and repulsion of ideas. It belongs to both realms, which meet in it. We know it only as the synthesis of the two, and not as pure nature, nor pure spirit. It is the subjective unity of the two, which may 2 The Beautiful and the Sublime. make itself objective in the idea, " man," of which it is the concrete manifestation, even though it be determined by its heredity and environment to an idiosyncrasy. The human soul is called a " self" because in its consciousness, it distinguishes and relates the two realms, or materiel therefrom; and all of its states are determinations from both sources, amid which it determines itself, and out of which it constructs its own world. As related to the two realms thus in it penetrating each other, it has susceptibilities, (modes of passivity),-Sensation, Registration (before perception), Memory (after perception), on the one side; and on the other, Emotion. And it has also Faculties, (modes of activity),-Perception, Recollection (including Representation), Fancy, Insight, Understanding, Judgmerit, Reason, Imagination. In the concrete activity several or all of these coalesce. The list may or may not be complete, nor is it needful that it should be, as any change in relation, or in object matter, may give rise to a special active process, to which a name might be given. "Reason" is used, too, to mean not only a faculty, but a Light,-as the sum of the special human elements, superadded to the animal soul, hence, as our common possession, as nature is, the impersonal element, the bond of spiritual union, the testimony to consciousness that we belong to a world above nature, or which may be abstracted from nature, or which is natures own dialectic. Definition of Terms. 3 There are other uses of the word " will" into which I may be betrayed. Sometimes it is used to mean mere wish or desire, which may be the consciousness of a spontaneous impulse, or of the attraction of an ideal end or aim. Sometimes it is used to mean, the prevailing bent or tendency of the soul,-i. e.-character,-in which case it represents the entire humanity of the individual, as it found itself, as it has made itself, as it is. As a faculty, Will shows itself in Attention. But its first attention was not the souls own act. It had to be acted upon before it could re-act. It was quickened from without. Till then there could be no memory. And consciousness, blind, vague, diffused over the entire organism, is then drawn to a physiological centre,-the psychological history commences, and consciousness shows itself as a perpetually flowing state. Hence consciousness is not a faculty, but the description of the existing, changing movement and condition of the totality of the susceptibilities and faculties. Consciousness belongs to the animal as such, and is to be distinguished from human self-consciousness, which exists because of Reason, enabling the soul to vibrate between the two attractions, and out of them to form its own third attraction. The animal feels, enjoys, suffers; and the higher animal also remembers, associates, fancies, dreams, communicates by symbolic sound or touch. There is more than an iteration of disconnected irritations and reflections. There is a continuous, yet varying 4 The Beautiful and the Sublime. feeling of complacency, interrupted sometimes and changing into uneasiness, yet resuming its normal character again, and by which it is impelled. And the higher animal is capable of connecting the past with the present, and of anticipation. For this fluctuating continuity there is no better name than consciousness. In the lowest stage of development it is more than irritation, it is enjoyment, which may not transcend the bounds of the immediate present, but which with more complex structure, expands in both directions, and links past and future with the present. Thus consciousness is unfolded, and requires new descriptions, as it mounts, in the ascending concretions of the life-principle. There is no evidence that the plant enjoys. Its history gives no hint that happiness is possible for it. Here is an absolutely new element, and an hiatus for human understanding that can never be bridged over. The idea of the plant is to be studied in the most complex specimen, which alone exhibits the complete development, and the display of the full round of its potentialities. The apparent and the structural resemblance between the lowest animal and the lowest plant is very great; but the ideas are essentially different, as we see when each isdeveloped. Enjoyment in the lowest form marks the lowest animal as higher in the scale of dignity than the highest plant. The apparent and the structural resemblance between the lowest man and the lowest animal is a minimum, yet they possess a common property not possessed by the Definition of Terms. 5 plant, which shows man to be an animal still. As before, the ideas can only be compared by studying them as developed in the highest brute, and the highest man. If a difference radical can be detected in this case, as in the other, it shows that there is an hiatus between the animal and man, likewise not passable for understanding.* * In speaking of the animal consciousness I am not wedded to the word, if a better one can be found, so only the condition be recognized as justly described, and as distinguished from the irritability of the plant on the one hand and the human self-consciousness on the other. The etymology of the word does not forbid this use, for, as a continuous state of feeling, not arithmetically divisible, it has a unity of its own, legitimating the prefix " con,"-and as feeling is the rudimental form of knowing, the " scious " is not illegitimate. The positions above are not affected by the fact of the existence of a common physical basis-protoplasm, nor of protista, intermediate or transitional forms. There must be a point where the idea of the animal is recognized, no matter where it shall settle;-and the idea cannot be recognized by the mind as implicit, till it is known as explicit. CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS,-FEELING,-LIMITATION,-LONGING,-SYMBOLS. THE human being is a sensitive organism, having the capacity of enjoyment. No doubt, in the healthy infant enjoyment exists, and is the rudimental form of consciousness: and in his rapid development, he becomes so related to his environment that a variety of agreeable sensations is possible. Each sense brings its own pleasure. The eye and the apparatus behind it are so constructed, that gratification comes from a particular color, and a lesser gratification, or a disagreeable irritation from another color. One sound is pleasing, another harsh; and the same distinction pertains in the other senses. Thus, existence in the child is a round of agreeable relations, mingled with many that are disagreeable. Sooner or later certain sets of sensations are gathered to a focus, and sensations become perception of individual objects. It is a wondrous step, implying activity in the awakening soul, though started by impact from without. Experience begins, and we have the second form of consciousness. In relating its sensations to itself, and Development of Self-Conscionsness. 7 by that to each other, the soul becomes self-conscious; for these relations are discovered, in an after examination, to be such as to imply that there is another element than the physical in the soul, that it has its own structure, and supplies the forms of its own knowing; and because of this, we call it a spiritual or rational soul, hence a self-conscious soul, for in unifying its sensations, it has distinguished the duality implied by that unity. The analyzing and synthesising processes go on, after the various modes of association, the horizon of experience widens, new implications are discovered, and objects come to be seen in their essential ideas, and thus is reached the third form of consciousness. But every perception, and every recognition of an idea* is enveloped in the consciousness of enjoyment, not, it may be, untroubled, but dim or vivid, and becoming more varied as the life of experience expands. Thus while physical sensation or mental activity can in thought be abstracted from the feeling of enjoyment, or its opposite, in fact they never exist apart, and hence we might conclude that they never can be separate. This consciousness of enjoyment, or of the deprivation of that once had, or of pain, is the first spring, and always a chief spring of all human activity; nor can any concrete form of being, involving self-consciousness, be conceived as without this accompaniment of feeling, penetrating it through* I say " recognition " because an idea is implied in any object perceived. 8 The Beautiful and the Sublime. out. We infer, therefore, that it must be essential to the idea of self-conscious, self-determined being in its highest form, and hence we argue blessedness in God. Nor can enjoyment be thought as pertaining to an utterly solitary self-conscious being. It evidently comes only from relation, and if it is an element in the definition of the absolute Being, if it belongs to God Himself, such relation must be possible for Him, and must exist as a part of His definition. No blind principle, which does not enjoy, which does not love, can then explain the universe. Delight could never come from such a source,-be reflected from such an origin. Reciprocity of some sort,-blessedness therefore, is an essential element of the idea of the Highest and First Concrete. As self-conscious concretes, related to the physical universe, we are, then, necessarily capable of enjoyment from such relation. But pain cannot, then, be needless, since it is possible, and since it exists. How it comes to be possible for animal life, and whence the want of concord and correspondence between the physical universe, of which men are a part, and their ideal requirements,-out of which other suffering comes,-these are speculative enquiries I shall not enter into now. In the flow of the consciousness of the child there soon arises an experience which overshadows all the others, namely, that of limitation,-wherein, the self, and the not-self are set in sharper contrast and each acquires a new distinctness. The envir Development of Self-Consciousness. 9 onment is repressing, obstacles surround him at every turn, his desires are crossed, his actions meet with resistance. He discovers that he is restrained, that he is not absolute nor independent, but only a fragment in a sphere whose vastness widens as his experience increases. But all this is accompanied by, or followed by the discovery of his own power to modify his environment. He is not utterly fettered by it, but can control it within bounds. He desires to dominate it as far as he can, but never loses the sense of contradiction. His ideal of a possible, or desirable life, or state of conscious enjoyment, enlarges and enriches itself with his constantly growing knowledge; but the appreciation of his imperfection becomes more vivid, with the discovery of the elements of such larger life,a life less restrained and richer in content; and the longing for such life is a constant stimulus to activity, inward and outward. In the world around him he beholds resemblances to this object of his perennial and ruling desire,-suggestions of a freer life than his own, with fewer restraints, and richer from manifold relations. Motions are noted which resemble his own internal movement when struggling against his limitations. The motion of a bird, for instance, reveals to him the possibility of a mode of being freed from one restraint under which he finds himself. The fitness of a plaything to produce agreeable feeling suggests the possibility of ampler experience, of which more and more agreeable Io The Beautiful and the Sublime. feelings shall be constituents. Thus, all things surrounding him, suggesting other capabilities of existence, become types or symbols of such freer and ampler mode of being. These resemblances and suggestions fascinate him, and grow upon him perpetually. The enjoying, yet longing soul is quickened to seek them. It analyzes, separates, and then associates itself with what it seeks. Objects, movements, which have this common quality stimulate the soul afresh to live in this self-constructed ideal which measures its present apprehension of the perfect Iife,-but which is ever expanding and becoming enriched. As an elastic force the soul strives to fill the periphery* of the sphere it has evolved. And this activity is never without feeling, the feeling of delight, sometimes merging into that of uneasiness. Wherever the soul recognizes an element of the object-matter of its own desire, that desire receives new food, and the delight which accompanies it a new increment. I shall give names by and by to this soul-activity, to the delight which envelopes it, to the quality which external objects have to elicit it, and to the underlying harmony which makes this correspondence between the soul and the world possible. * It has always seemed to me that we needed a word distinguishing the bounding superficies of a globe, from the bounding line of a circle. Hence I take the liberty of calling the latter "circumference," and the former " periphery." CHAPTER III. CULTURE,-NATURAL ENDOWMENT,-IDEAS,-INSIGHT,-IMAGINATION,-THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL. IN the special soul-activity alluded to in the previous chapter, and therefore in the delight accompanying it, there are all degrees and differences among children and among men. This must depend to some extent upon differences in culture or education. The detection of resemblance or correspondence will have a narrow or wide range according as external opportunities are supplied, and as self-education, or use of time and direction of energies, differs. Every individual human being is a new synthesis of the essential constituents of humanity, and therefore has a peculiar environment, is a particular evolving power, and has his own appropriate ideals. But still the resemblances among men are more numerous and more essential than their differences, and I have described in the foregoing chapter their common history, and the universal form of the growth of consciousness. It is possible, however, that one with a limited experience, and living in a smaller circle, and who has found fewer resemblances to his ideal, or enrich 12 The Beautiful and the Sublime. ments of the same, may yet have a more intense appreciation of that resemblance, and hence a greater delight in its contemplation. This must depend, therefore, on the possession in higher degree of some faculty,-on greater quickness, and strength, and persistence in this mode of mental activity. And the reward of such activity is greater where it is strongly directed upon few objects than in the other case where it is feebler and dissipated among many. This particular faculty it is needful, therefore, that I should more fully describe, and give to it a name. But on the other hand, it must be noticed, that when the soul thus acting is stimulated and gratified by the supply of many objects in a larger experience, the ability and the facility to detect such resemblances are increased, and that the delight accompanying it becomes a stimulus of increasing power, whereby attention is more easily aroused, becomes firmer in its concentration, and keener in its vision. The conditions for this sharp-sightedness, in which men differ so widely must be both physical and psychical, producing all degrees in the fineness of the sensory, (using this word here in the large sense of-the souls capacity to feel.)-To be able to see or to hear what others cannot, however, makes greater pleasure possible, but greater pain likewise. The fine musical ear, which may be rapt into the seventh heaven by an intricate harmony, may also be plunged into an abyss of torture by a discord. Culture and Endowment. I3 Only the fine musical ear, which knows by its unique experience the capabilities of sound, can build up the lofty edifices of music. The same is true in other arts,-as of the poetic ear, with its delicate perception of rhythm, assonance, melody and harmony; and of the appreciation of purity, tone and harmony in color. The mental power to make superb structures in the arts of music, poetry and painting, does not necessarily accompany this special fineness of the sensory; but the latter is absolutely needed to be superadded to the former to constitute the perfect artist. These facts indicate that the conditions for the special activity which detects the correspondence between the actual and the ideal are both physical and psychical; and that the degrees of delight in these resemblances require for explanation, antecedents in which the man may be regarded as passive, but such also in which he must be active. Again am I brought to the need of examining and naming this special soulactivity. I have said that in the history of consciousness the self is brought face to face with Ideas. In the pure sensation the self knows itself only as acted upon, but in perception it knows also its own activity. But perceptions as such have no fixedness, since exactly the same synthesis of sensations never recurs. Though registered in the brain, they are hardly yet food for memory. But when the self not only imparts to any such synthesis its own unity, but correlates its parts as well as relates them 14 The Beautiful and the Sublime. to itself, we have more than a perception, we have an idea,-whose constituents are interdependent, whose centre and circumference are the same. It becomes a sort of organism of the self's own creation, to which it is thenceforward allied as a modification of itself, in which it lives and finds itself, which becomes its own mode of being for the time, which is thus inextricably linked with the life of the soul, and which can be recalled. Memory has thus more substantial food, and the understanding fixed ingredients to assimilate. The universe is thus sown with ideas.* They are not necessarily full growths, but susceptible of amplification with an enlarging experience. For this attention is required, always voluntary, yet with degrees of deliberation,-sometimes so faint as that * It seems hardly necessary to say, here, that by 'ideas' I do not mean mental images of objects,-but that the idea is the object, and the object is the idea itself, in the subjective form that we have it. If the idea is amplified by the discovery of a new implication, the object itself is amplified. Thus, two persons, seeming to see the same object, do not, because the idea, or the sum of implications is larger in the one case. Hence all objects, as ideas, are imperfectly seen, yet not on that account untruly. We agree, as having so far the same, yet disagree, as having more or less. But the idea, though subjectively apprehended, implies objectivity, since we are determined from without. It is the form, growing in completeness and distinctness, which the thought in the universe takes for our apprehension. Ideas then, are relatively true, though incompletely seized. They are reflections in us of the external universe,-rather, reproductions of its intelligence. Hence as every idea is a sum of relations, no idea has absolute truth, but only that idea which is the synthesis of ideas, and as the totality is yet in flux for our apprehension, we have not yet seized the absolute. Culture and Endowment. 15 it seems spontaneous,-and aroused by stimuli either external or internal. But beneath this fixed gaze the idea is illumined, its interior relations grow more distinct, and new implications are detected, yet it never loses its outness or objectivity. It is the property of the self, yet the property of the universe. As we know ourselves only in and through consciousness, it is legitimate to say, that the soul lives in its ideas, and has the power of transfusing itself into them. In all contemplation of external things there is a going out of one's self, as much as there is a bringing in to one's self. The knowledge of one's self as otherwise determined can almost be lost in the abandonment of one's self to an idea by which it is at the time utterly determined. It is for the time being the form of the soul's life, and shows in the soul a wonderful power of transfusion, and to become that which it contemplates, which may be still only itself, but is itself modified by that which it has not itself supplied. It is then one fact that it can apprehend the idea, another that it can recall it, another that it can infuse itself into it, and make its mode of being its own. By what names shall we call these modes of soul-activity, or faculties of the mind. There is no name for the first upon which psychologists are as yet entirely agreed, and I shall call it for my purpose,-Insight. The name of the second is Recollection, or Representation, implying Memory, which becomes when the materiel supplied is i6 The Beautiful and the Sublime. arbitrarily or sportively arranged,-Fancy. And for the third soul-activity, the most wonderful one that man possesses, I know no better word, (though it is often degraded to lower uses,) than Imagination.* We may notice also, that ideas not only multiply in number, but that vaster ones are reached, and that there is a constantly ascending hierarchy. Thus what was at first apprehension becomes comprehension. The idea of a particular plant leads us to the idea of vegetable life, which brings out new implications in the idea of the plant; and in an order not invariable, are attained the idea of the animal, of our earth, of the solar system, of the stellar universe, of man, the microcosm, the reflected universe;-and at length, the idea of the First Principle, which gives unity to the totality.t Into each and all of these the soul may transfuse itself, or may make the attempt, and find itself in a larger mode of being,-in this endeavor sharpening the contrast with its actual. It finds high gratification in this activity. Even though compelled to descend from the height which it sometimes reaches, it has felt delight in its residence there, which haunts it, and which it is indisposed to forget. It yields to the fascination, when it can, courts it often when it * I am aware that I do not use the word Imagination in the sense in which Kant and others do, i. e. th e faculty of Representation of perceptions. The latter word is sufficient for this, and we need the former, or some other, to express the activity sui generis whereby consciousness finds itself in the idea, and makes the life of the object or motion regarded its own. t See Note A. in Appendix. Culture and Endowment. I7 can, and reluctantly, at first, recedes, when recalled by the necessities of its actual existence. These necessities are imperious, and it subsides into the actual, and contents itself with the attainable. It must work, and repress the play-impulse. An end possible to be reached, an ideal attainable it sets for itself sooner or later. But the ideal desirable, which it has been enabled to construct from these manifold suggestions, solicits it still, and into that it escapes seldom or often, and with variant degrees of gladness, yet ever drawn back, as by an elastic cord, into the actual. Thus arise the differences among men,-in the ability or the disposition to live in the attainable ideal, or in that which is desirable. No one utterly escapes the fascination of the latter, as no one misses the pleasure of success, or the pain of failure in the former. Completer identification with the attainable makes briefer and briefer one's residence in the desirable. Hence the ability to live in the desirable is ruled by the disposition to live in it; and that ability may diminish from disuse, yet never quite expire. Delight in the one or the other, increasing, or lessening, thus measures the special soul-activity which I have named Imagination. One can come to live so entirely in the actual life, and be ruled by an ideal which seems attainable, as to be only occasionally and faintly stirred by the attractiveness of the seemingly unattainable: and, conversely, one can live so entirely in the latter, and feed one's life by its types or 18 The Beautiful and the Sublime. symbols as to find the actual, or the attainable unattractive. Sooner or later a permanent habit is formed, the ruling disposition defines itself, and strengthens itself, though constantly modified and fluctuating. This governing tendency determines the end and the use of Imagination, but the imaginative activity is always gratifying, while the intensity of delight depends upon the ideal to which it abandons itself, and upon the frequency and the continuity of such abandonment. CHAPTER IV. THE PHYSICAL A NECESSARY ELEMENT IN ALL IDEALS. THE mode or content of consciousness is, then, the product of the self, and the not-self. The notself is the universe being expanded and enriched; and the self is the known and expanding universe. Thus we cannot be conscious of self otherwise than as related to the universe, though the universe may phrase itself to us under different definitions. We cannot emancipate consciousness, therefore, from its material conditions. Though by process of abstraction we seem to reach a realm of pure thought, yet hidden underneath all the while is the consciousness of the concrete self as related to and formed by the environing physical universe. That universe, with its ideas, displays possible modes of the soullife. The soul does not therefore fully, and therefore not rightly, understand itself and its entire round of potentialities, while it remains only in the abstract realm, while it isolates itself, becomes its own centre and circumference, and plays with its actual thoughts. Even though enjoyment of a high character come from this pure mode of activity, yet, as before, the soul does not comprehend itself in 20 The Beautiful and the Sublime. the totality of its requirements and capacities unless, too, it abandon itself to the concrete, and make the most of its relations to the outlying material universe. It must act, then, and act upon the world, if it will not shrivel up into ignorance of itself. Thus Science, (strictly so called,) is needful for the soul's fullest life, as well as Philosophy, (strictly so called.) Science shows how to act upon the physical world. Science furnishes food for philosophy. Even in the realm of abstract thought, where philosophy is at home, the mind has not its full materiel, unless it avail itself of that which science supplies: and the largest fact in all experience, the conditions for which science does much to exhibit, is the fact of-enjoyment. That is a factor philosophy must deal with in its analysis and synthesis; and thus, if not otherwise, it is linked to the concrete universe from which so much, and so varied enjoyment comes. No ideal of life as desirable can be dwelt'upon, or even formed, which does not include this our relation to the physical universe. Any ideal of a perfect state must extend beyond that of perpetual intuition of thoughts, and include the wealth that can come from a possible environment, between which and the soul's desire, all contradiction is removed. The ideal of a perfect life, even for the philosopher, is, then, still a physical life. Even though matter should turn out to be something else than it appears to be, or than many think it to be, -though we should sink deeper towards its central The Physical a Necessary Element. 21 and true definition, it must still exist and continue to exist, or our relation to it is mere shine and delusion. That our relations to the universe will be absorbed and disappear, or merge into one, that between self and an indeterminate and barren notself, is a chilling and impoverishing view of the essential elements of existence. The material universe, whatever it shall turn out to be, must have its basis in the First Principle, and therefore must be real, or an element of a synthetic reality. Existence cannot be reduced to a mere relation between thought and thoughts, or between self as undetermined and self as determined. Life is development and forever to be determined by conditions which the universe supplies. The modes of the Supreme Reality are realities themselves. Substance is nothing without attributes,-being nothing without relations. We see that possible have become actual relations, and the actual must be an element of the real, or else there is nothing real: and what is real can never cease to be. Some say that no atom of the material universe can be annihilated, which, translated into proper words, means,-that the relation between the universe as a process and every soul that thinks must be permanent. (Some have gone so far as to say that the universe is not a process, but a system of processes,-that is,-that at all times, every possible relation has been actual, a proposition I by no means admit, as it furnishes no adequate explanation of the highest relation of all, 22 The Beautiful and the SubZime. but into that question I decline in this connection to enter.) The out-come of what I have been saying is, that every ideal of the perfect life includes as one of its elements, Physical perfection. This is a constant in every such subjective ideal,-freedom from physical limitations, or the utter removal of all external restraints,-the subjugation of the material universe to the soul's subjective requirements. Other elements of an ampler ideal of perfection may be missed, but this never is. Intellectual perfection,-completeness of knowledge, which implies omnipresence in the universe, and the intuition of truth, of the totality of exsiting relations, may enter into the ideal of some, perhaps is dimly present in all, but not in all as an object of conscious desire, determining the mode of the soul's activity. So, too, Moral perfection, understood rightly or wrongly, under its various definitions, is always present as a modifying element; but even that, though making itself manifest, and troubling all, is not for all an object of conscious desire, and thus may not be among the constituents of the subjective ideal. No one of these ideals is sufficient, absolute, and has therefore true objectivity. As the supreme Idea, to be concrete, must be a synthesis of these three, and in their right relation to each other, -the moral, the intellectual, the physical, and thus only can explain itself to be a true First Principle, so any subjective ideal, which is not also a synthesis of the three in right relation, is mere shine, and has no a, The Physical a Necessary Element. 23 objective validity, and can never be realized. To have it, and to rule ones life by it, is to worship a false God, —who becomes then a mere enthroned force, or thought, or principle of order. Love emerges as a synthesis of the three, and is a description of the innermost of the true Divinity. V. IMAGINATION. Let me recall for a closer scrutiny this mode of soul-activity which I have called Imagination. If we need a word to express the spontaneous flow of images through consciousness, which can only be arrested by a voluntary act,-the perfect dreaming when we are asleep, and partial dreaming when we are awake,-we may call it 'Phantasy.' This is still to be distinguished from Fancy, which is a pure sport among images, but still ruled by the will. This process of Phantasy has been well examined and described in the various.disquisitions upon the modes of association. But the activity of Imagination is still something distinct. It requires not only attention, but the full intensive force of the soul to propel itself into the idea, or to live in the ideal. In its action it is claimed that the brain-movement can be traced to an appropriate centre.* In one respect this faculty is capable of education and culture; in another respect incapable of * " Imagination is a rapid and unifying correlation dependent on the registration of past impressions in the brain, but dependent also on that part of the brain which is its true centre, and which induces attention, or will."-PROF. FERRIER, Princeton Review. Imagination. 25 it. Being under the control of the will, as a faculty, which itself is under the control of the ruling desire, which is the will's own inner character, or ethical form, it follows the choice in the objects upon which it may fix, or in which it may live. Choice reiterated becomes habit, and thus Imagination's realm may become a more abiding possession. So far it is capable of an education, determining the direction of its energy. But its native strength is a fixed quantity at the start, and can receive no increase. A finer sensory, more varied opportunities for observation, a larger experience, may give it a wider and richer realm in which to play. But even when its world is little, it may exist in all its possible intensity. The miser lives as entirely in his wretched ideal, as the poet in his exquisite one. The enthusiastic mathematician, who waited in trembling anxiety the time when he should cry "Eureka," was intensely imaginative. Men may differ in all degrees as to its power, but in each it can grow no greater, nor any less. It is not stronger Imagination only which makes the Poet, the Artist, but a finer sensory, quicker and keener insight, richer memory, and more facile thought, all symmetrically adjusted and harmonized. Imagination finds gross food, or food refined, according to the ruling desire, the subjective ideal of the perfect life,-which itself is the creation of the will, of the focussing of the three elements of our humanity in consciousness,-the physical,-the intellectual,-the moral. 26 The Beautiful and the Sublime. Imagination should not be confounded with Insight. The latter is the apprehending, recognizing faculty, which detects the idea. The former is the transfusing power by which the soul pours itself into the mould of the idea, seeks its utmost ramifications and implications, dwells, lives and rejoices in it: or which absorbs itself in an ideal, attainable or unattainable, yet desirable. It recognizes every resemblance to the latter, welcomes every suggestion which can enrich it; or selects its symbols according to its opportunity, lives in those symbols as incomplete modes of its ideal, and finds delight thus in its own activity,-delight, intense according to its native capacity, and varied according to the wealth of the supply. The stronger or more varied the symbolic resemblances, the more enrapturing the emotion from which it is never dissociated. The constructive Imagination, correlating, separating, combining, unifying, is a voluntary activity of it for a settled artistic purpose. But this is preceded by and presupposes its foregone activity for no purpose but to delight in its own ideal. Hence this faculty should be studied first in the latter, its primitive movement. Nature has already furnished symbols, and Imagination is rich before it becomes constructive. The development of the individual is thus paralleled to the development of the race; for the first Art is symbolic, and dependent upon this correspondence between nature and spirit, into which we Imagination. 27 shall look hereafter. It becomes Classic Art, and at length Romantic Art as this correspondence is more profoundly understood, and as the ideal of perfection receives new increments, and consequently modifications. The constructive Imagination is really the name for a complex mode of mental activity, comprising not only Imagination pure and simple, but memory, judgment, and indeed every other faculty; but Imagination may be the dominant one in the highest attainments; and the delight in all works of Art is dependent chiefly on the stimulus which our own Imagination receives. CHAPTER VI. CORRESPONDENCE. NATURE, at first glance, and at the latest glance for some, seems under the dominion of necessity, to be fixed, inexorable, fateful. But a second look, and perhaps, the final look, finds suggestions and tokens of freedom. The former impression is depressing and mournful; the latter elevating, inspiriting, joyous. Nature's most welcome use at least, possibly its true use, is to furnish reflections of human freedom, wherein it helps to convince the latter that it is real and not a delusion. The soul leaps upon such suggestions or tokens, with more or less energy according to its native constitution, for it finds here a correspondence with its own adytum, its own most precious treasure. It is then the highest and finest use to which nature can be put, if it be a true use, to confirm man in the consciousness of his freedom: and she could not do this were she not also free, were freedom not her own secret, her adytum, her most precious treasure. It is the profound harmony between the soul and the universe underneath the superficial discord. This harmony is, the soul craves to think, that which must, or at least may endure, when the dis Correspondence. 29 cord or contradiction ceases to be. It is that which ought to be. That her communion ought to be with nature as free and fluent, and not as fixed and frozen, is the soul's abiding feeling. The contradiction is or may be transient,-provisional. There is no joy, but only distress in the conviction, or the suspicion, that it is abiding, and the longing for its annulment is her perennial longing. The soul thinks that she should triumph over nature, and not be crushed under her Juggernaut wheels; or, at least, that the soul of nature should be found and embraced, and in that embrace her evanescent and irritating disguise should slip away forever. That the soul is enmeshed in nature, dominated by it, that her inner elastic freedom is repressed,this contradiction is a tremendous fact that cannot be ignored. Why and whence it is, how to describe it, how to alleviate it, how to remove it-is another inquiry, the object-matter of a special science, which I wish to avoid as far as possible now; and so I return to and content myself with the conclusion, which may find vindications as I proceed, that this correspondence of the soul's freedom with nature's freedom cannot be delusion, but betrays the normal and essential constitution of things. When nature supplies hints of her freedom, fellow to the soul's own freedom, one of the highest and dearest delights of which humanity is susceptible becomes possible and actual. But there are other correspondences in nature with the soul's ideal of the perfect physical life. 30 The Beautiful and the Sublime. Indeed, nature has supplied many contributions for such ideal. Illustrations of this sufficient for my purpose will be presently furnished. The realm of thought, with its intricate and astonishing processes, with which we become acquainted through intercourse with our fellows,-the world of man, the microcosm,-that, too, supplies other constituents for an ampler ideal of the perfect life, of which Intellectual perfection may be a fitting name. Humanity, the world of men,-their social life, and its manifold relations, human institutions and their history, these supply other elements for a still wider, and profoundly satisfactory ideal, whose name is Moral perfection. All these are correspondences between the soul and the three aspects of its environment. When set in right relation, these constituents become the last possible form of the ideal, which we may call, Absolute Perfection. What that relation to each other, adjusting the physical, the intellectual, the moral, is, which is the normal constitution of things,-that which ought to be, and must or may be,-is an enquiry needing exhaustive treatment, and which I touch upon now only so far as is needful for the requirements of the present investigation. My immediate enquiry will deal with the correspondence between nature and the soul's ideal of Physical perfection; and afterwards I shall show how this is interpenetrated and modified by the other elements of the Absolute Perfection. CHAPTER VII. THE SUBJECTIVE APPRECIATION,-THE STRAIGHT LINE,-CURVES,-GRACE. HITHERTO, in this enquiry, I have not characized the delight enveloping the special activity of Imagination I have endeavored to describe, by its proper name, the Emotion of the Beautiful; for I would first have had my examination of the conditions therefor recognized as just, and my description as true. It follows, then, that the symbolic correspondence of anywhat in nature to the subjective ideal of the perfect physical life constitutes its beauty for such appreciant. But as that ideal may be corrected as well as amplified, and is itself untrue and unattainable except as merged in a larger Ideal, it follows that there is a disagreement possible among various judgments or appreciations of the Beautiful; and it follows, also, that this subjective regard may be susceptible of rectification, and the so-called beauty be unreal. That true and perfect Beauty is objective and belongs to the essential constitution of things, is a thesis I shall vindicate hereafter; and thus the rival theories may be unified, if not reconciled. Hereafter also, I shall endeavor to account for the differences among men 32 The Beautiful and the Sublime. in the subjective recognition of the Beautiful. But the truth of my explanation thus far may be vindicated by its adequacy to account for those recognitions of the Beautiful upon which men are for the most part agreed. Perhaps it would be a convenience in terminology could we agree to call that essential characteristic of the universe-Beauty; and the same subjectively and therefore variously regarded,-the Beautiful;-but it may be difficult, without circumlocution,to keep to this. The curved line has been called the line of Beauty, since in it is found much of the Beautiful in any simple object, or complex arrangement. A point, surely, is not beautiful, but when it becomes any thing else, motion or life is suggested, and it may thus arouse the first stirring of the emotion. The absolute fixedness or repression of the point breaks into motion or activity, and the joy of life, in its lowest degree, accompanies the movement. But the emotion vanishes when the line comes to an abrupt termination; and even should Imagination prolong the movement, it finds that in it it has neither ease nor freedom,-that the idea is barren and unconsoling, that it must move by a fixed law from which there is no withdrawal, —and thus the line becomes the symbol of constraint.* * It has been much discussed how it is that we arrive at the judgment that the straight line is the shortest between two points. Measurement is out of the question, since that presupposes a standard unit. It has been called an intuitive judgment,-an insight,from The Subjective Appreciation. 33 The zig-zag line suggests alternate repression or hesitation, and resumption of activity, and may have its own beauty, either disturbing, or satisfying, as displaying modes of spontaneity. In the curve a movement quite distinct is needed for Imagination. The immediate and constant deflection or change is restful and implies the absence of constraint. There is variety of content, too,-other possibilities of motion. Imagination seems to " wanton at its own sweet will" and thus finds a symbol of freedom, or the Beautiful. Should the curve, however, with an equal radius return into itself, and become a circle, it loses measurably its beauty as a symbol of freedom, yet acquires a new element of perfection in its completeness, and its harmonious implications. It is the absolute reverse of all disorder, hence of all irritation, and rich in suggestions of the possibilities of the perfect life. In ellipses, cones, and spirals we find at each step more and more of beauty, because more and more of freedom, and at each step a richer content of implications. Yet the impression of their beauty its immediateness. The function of Imagination here has not been sufficiently noticed. In contemplating the straight line Imagination becomes motion,-flies from its commencement towards its termination;-any deflection from the end in view, is loss, delay, implies a counteracting restraint, requiring effort to annul. Shortness is the name of its unimpeded motion, motion under a single impulse, translated into the language of quantity. The curve is motion under a double impulse. The mathematics of nature is correspondent, and shows that it has its final cause in a soul requirement. Thus the dynamic explains the static, rather than the reverse. 34 - The Beautiful and the Sublime. wanis at the discovery in each, of the law of the special curve, to which it is inextricably bound. If the element of free motion, or change, can be introduced, gratifying the desire of freedom, if the law can be hidden, and the whole phenomenon wear the appearance of spontaneity, we have higher degrees of beauty displayed. One may find an instance of the greatest possible variety and complexity in curved lines in a familiar experience, as thus: Close your windows, but allow a broad ray of sunlight to enter your room, and if you are a smoker, let the fumes of your tobacco float into that ray, and you will find in the wilderness of curves that break into existence, an exquisite beauty. Crowding, loosening, swaying, there arc arcs of circles, elliptic curves of enormous length and varied dimensions, spirals that perpetually change themselves into new and unsuspected forms and combinations, aggregations that coil themselves into knots, and burst forth again into parabolas that shoot in straight lines till in wantonness they divide into new systems of bewildering grace. In all this you have a symbol of the soul's requirements of ease, and freedom,-and novel possibilities,-a symbol of perfect spontaneity, that explains its beauty. In the same way we may account for the beauty of clouds,-seeming the freest of material things, exhaustless in their curves, and omnipotent in their changefulness; though they have many other elements of beauty, and in their repose, or august The Subjective Appreciation. 35 movement, in their purity, or intensity, or gradation, or richness of color, symbolize other elements of perfection. A ship in motion is beautiful, because, beside the grace of its swelling sails, and of its movement, it is a symbol of life and freedom. In the strong flight and sweeping course of an eagle, we see, beside the grace of its motion, an emblem of freedom, and power, and fulness of life, exceeding our own, yet which in imagination are ours while we look. I may say of grace generally, that our first apprehension of it is in living and not in inanimate things, and that we have felt it in the movements of animals, correspondent to our own physical impulses, before we speak of it in clouds and ships; and grace, beside that it demands curved lines, and so is typical of freedom, becomes thus the symbol of ease, which is reserved power and fulness of life. When seriousness of intent is added to grace, in the attitude or movement of living things, modifying it more or less, there becomes majesty-but for the full explanation of this we are not yet prepared. The liveliness of the emotion, or the degree of its delight, will depend upon the quickness and power of Imagination to abandon itself more or less utterly to the ideal thus symbolized. CHAPTER VIII. COLOR,-GRADATION, —PURITY,-RICHNESS,SOUND,-THE LOWER SENSES. SIMPLE color, as such, is not beautiful, though often called so, from association or otherwise. It is merely agreeable, pleasing or displeasing, as a result of the construction of our sensory. It is one of the earliest marks of a livelier imagination, and an improving taste, the preference for the beautiful instead of the merely agreeable in color. It becomes beautiful only as it acquires symbolic significance. We rarely see a large mass of simple color in nature, for light and shade everywhere give it gradation and variety, and thus it comes to have more or less suggestiveness. But in some actual combinations of color, the sensation, which is disagreeable,may drown the emotion which otherwise might exist. Violent contrasts of color, too, destroy beauty, since inimical to spontaneity,as well as jarring to the sensory. But where we find gradation, untroubled by unpleasant sensation, we find beauty, for it is a suggestion of the infinite, or is even the numerical infinite, and therein Imagination may find not only freedom, but richness of content, and is led along in an endless life. It is Color, Gradation, Purity, Sound. 37 diverse from the fixedness and constraint of the unicolored mass; and from the perpetual movement required for its contemplation, it more nearly resembles liquidity in its changefulness and possible variety. Thus gradation of color symbolizes also ease or repose, which is not inaction, but pure spontaneity. Imagination is not reined in and shocked as in the case of contrast, but melts softly into the infinite, and finds thus its high delight. The ungradated color of the sky, especially in the distant horizon, is eminently beautiful, because of its luminous depth, suggesting spatial limitlessness, because of its repose, and sometimes because of its purity,-for purity, or color unassaulted by alien intrusion is a symbol of freedom and of the perfect life. What is called richness of color, in natural objects, and in fabrics, depends upon the play of light and shadow, induced by the texture, which brings about subtle and subordinate gradations. Softness yields to the touch, while hardness resists and repels. These qualities for one sense are associated with the object when it comes before the vision, and are so far agreeable or otherwise, yet softness may be beautiful so far as it is suggestive of depth or limitlessness. Flowers are beautiful not only from the purity of their color, but from its exquisite gradation, and from its richness. They are beautiful, too, from the curved lines, or ease with which they hang, and the grace with which their petals are enfolded into 38 The Beautiful and the Sublime. each other. And their healthfulness, or perfection according to their own idea, makes them ready symbols of perfection according to an idea which is higher. The green sward is beautiful, for it is the efflorescence of the healthful earth, unrestrained in her bounty, and because, too, it is full of subtle play of light and shadow. The beauty of trees and of all plant life is made up of such constituents. And landscapes are beautiful just in proportion as all these are found in them; and more beautiful when some unity is discovered or imparted, which gives them an ideal completeress, itself suggestive of the perfect life, and which too is akin to elements of perfection other than physical. In the olden days Imagination not only found in nature symbols of a freer life, but loth to lose them, entered upon a new mode of its function, and feigned for itself sylphs, and dryads, and naiads, whose life was emancipated from all that is weak and painful and restraining in humanity, thus testifying to its irrepressible longing. The sun, and moon, and stars cannot be said to have much mere physical beauty. Their's is of a higher character, to which I shall allude hereafter. Animals are beautiful, because combining all the excellencies of color, and from the greater number of curved lines and their easy flow into each other, and from their grace of attitude or movement; but their physical beauty is constantly modified, enhanced or diminished, from their sym Color, Gradation, Purity, Sound. 39 bolization of beauty other than physical. We anthropomorphize them, and give them such characteristics as we know to be beautiful in human beings. What has been said of color may be said of sound. It is in itself only agreeable or disagreeable, and comes to have beauty only when it comes to have meaning; though simple sweetness is often called beautiful by the undiscriminating taste. Association with objects of vision or touch, and with various emotions, gives meaning and interest to sounds, but does not give them beauty. That they possess from acquired symbolic correspondence with the subjective longing. Hence melody, simple or in unison, may be beautiful, for its changes and cadences start the movement of Imagination, are suggestions of ease and freedom, and express the secret and subtle longings of the heart. Rhythm may be either beautiful or sublime; and out of harmony is born a higher beauty still. But the beauty of music can hardly be fully considered from the stand-point of physical perfection alone, and will more properly be treated in a later part of my enquiry. The three lower senses are generally neglected in considering the question of beauty. We are sensible of an incongruity when we speak of 'a beautiful taste,' or 'a beautiful odor,' or say that any thing is beautiful to the touch. The monitions of these senses are not utterly without symbolic significance, however, especially the delight 40 The Beautiful and the Sublime. in odors. They may, therefore, be looked upon as enrichments of the perfect life, and become elements in subjective ideals. That they are instinctively denied more prominent place in the realm of the beautiful, is because they furnish so little opportunity or stimulus for the exercise of Imagination. The element of motion, of physical freedom, in which is the chief characteristic of imaginative delight, is almost wholly missed. Even in the delight in odors we are passive, and it cannot be enhanced by any soul-activity; hence it can hardly be called an emotion, as not implying the spiritual receptivity, as too entirely dependent upon the merely physical. CHAPTER IX. SYMMETRY,-PROPORTION. SYMMETRY has been often said to be an element of beauty. The unsymmetrical is, indeed, at first glance, jarring and displeasing. Symmetry is ordinarily required for perfection of structure, adaptation of parts, and harmonious adjustment, but when an unsymmetrical object comes to be understood, it no longer jars, and may have beauty. And, too, the unsymmetrical is the unbalanced. Imagination, in infusing itself into it, is overweighted on the one side, while it retains its poise in the symmetrical, which thus becomes the symbol of self-command. Besides, mere symmetry is not beautiful, though negatively enhancing the beauty which an object may have from other sources. This may be illustrated by examining the forms of snow-crystals when figured upon a dark ground. A simple cross, with equal arms is symmetrical, but rouses no feeling of the beautiful; but draw intermediate arms, without losing the balance, and let it assume the star-like appearance, and it acquires beauty. The notion of radiation, of inward resource, of life and activity is then implied; and 42 The Beautijul and the Subliime. doubtless the feeling is enhanced by the resemblance to the actual stars. But let the arms be coarse, or blunt, terminating in right lines, and not in points, nor in curves, and the beauty is lost again. The notion of restraint has come in, annulling the feeling of freedom. The pointed line penetrating the surrounding space is the symbol of force. Multiply the radiating lines, and the figure becomes more beautiful, unless confusion and incomprehensibility are reached. The fertility of the informing idea is more apparent. So, too, if there be subordinate ramifications, either in curved, or if straight, in delicate lines; or even when the latter terminate in subordinate symmetrical figures. Wealth of resources is thus indicated. Here too the explanation is often the same as that of the beauty of vegetable forms, especially of flowers, association with which again enhances the feeling of beauty. If the general structure be of extreme tenuity, as that of a semi-transparent cloud, there is more beauty than when it is opaque. This too is founded on the conception of freedom, of selfrestraint, and fertility of resource in the informing idea. Contrasts, not destroying symmetry, again, enhance the effect, and for the same reason. A discordant contrast, as from transverse lines, ruins the integrity of the structure, as indicating a hostile force, and disturbs or kills the sense of beauty. It is to be noticed likewise, that resemblance to fabrics, etc, the interest in which is dependent on conventional tastes, creates a feeling mingling Symmetry, Proportion. 43 with that of the purely beautiful, of the elegant,in short. Proportion, too, is often an element of beauty. This also is relative to our past experience, insomuch that what appears to be disproportioned comes at length, when its purpose, or relation to its environment, is discovered, to seem justly proportioned. The seeming misproportion of the giraffe disappears as we contemplate the animal, and learn more of its habits and its wants. Proportion is thus far required for accurate adaptation to known functions, and Imagination is not disturbed and bewildered, as it is when it is missing. It has been asserted, that there is a fixed law of proportion in all beautiful objects, and a theory of beauty, I believe, has been founded upon this alleged fact. But I doubt the accuracy of the unmodified statement, inasmuch as proportion is always relative to function; and functions are so manifold, that the law of proportion must indefinitely vary. Still there is no doubt that the proportion of many beautiful objects is ruled by fixed mathematical laws, and this is a fact requiring careful examination. The human figure is such an object. A head too large, a neck too elongated, limbs too short do violate a law of proportion, and hence interfere with beauty. There must then be some ideal standard by which we judge, according to which magnitudes should be adjusted to each other. In the first place, let us notice that we apply the law 44 The Beautiful and the Sublime. of the curve always in such cases. The oval outline of the head is more beautiful than the circular. An unmistakably straight line in the neck, which does not flow curvilinearly into the head and shoulders, is, as a straight, line, unbeautiful. Next, let us notice that members too large, limbs too short or too long, suggest unfitness for function. They are either too little, or too much, insufficient or more than sufficient, wasted, and in the way. The law of proportion must be such, then, as to suggest accurate fulfillment of function, and to bring about the greatest complexity and ease in the curved lines of the body. And this is the final cause of the law. Mathematical law does not constitute beauty, but the special mathematical law is a description of nature's means to accomplish it. The beauty of music is not because of the mathematical relations of the notes; but sounds, and shapes, and magnitudes, having to so range themselves as to produce beauty as their final cause, must have some method which can be expressed by numbers, exhibiting in units the terms of the required relation. The beauty of the human form, then, depends upon the law of proportion just so far as the latter is required to adjust the manifold symbols of perfection in the form to each other without discord or interference.* * "So far as mathematics in the abstract, like nature in the concrete, is the most perfect objective expression of reason itself, so far must all the laws of nature, as they are resolved into pure laws of reason, find their corresponding forms in mathematics; not, as Symmetry, Proportion. 45 All this does not deny that there is a wondrous adjustment and harmony in nature, in the earth itself, and in the solar system, as well as in the human form. The discovery of this makes it a symbol of order, and as such, arouses the emotion of the Beautiful. This was the thought of Pythagoras, and the assertion of the law of number underlying the structure of the universe is a confession that the universe has order for its final cause; and that the stream of tendency is, to annul the disorder that man seems to make by directing its forces and its magnitudes to subjective ends. It is, for the universe, what the " predisposition to good" which Kant discovered in human nature itself, (and which Bishop Butler had expressed in other words,) is for man. In each perfect beauty is struggling to its birth, and the throes will not be over till the discord between man and nature ceases to be. has been heretofore assumed, that the latter is determinative of the other, and nature but the mechanical part in this identity, but that mathematics and the science of nature are only one and the same science looked at from different sides. " The forms of mathematics, as now understood, are symbols, the key of which is lost to those who hold them, but which Euclid still possessed, as it seems from certain indications and the reports of the ancients. The road to re-discovery can only be by conceiving them as forms of pure reason, and expressions of ideas which in the objective form are transformed into another." Schellings method of University Study. Translated by Ella S. Morgan. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, July, 1877. CHAPTER X. INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY,-SHELLEY'S HYMN,FINAL CAUSE. IT is not amiss to speak of Intellectual Beauty. This may be when the imaginative soul makes the thinking soul its own object, or when it recognizes correspondence to its own movement in the outcome of the thinking soul of another. When by nature, and as a result of culture, the mind has become a fine machine, and any one of its faculties, or all are ready at the bidding of the will, and move with ease and energy, this objectified self-consciousness becomes an element in the ever fluctuating and growing ideal of the perfect life. But even here there is a hidden suggestion of physical movement, and a not unrecognizeable symbolism. Just in proportion as the consciousness of mental disturbance, interfering with the harmonious play of its several activities, is wanting; just in proportion as its atmosphere is clear, and defecated of the mists of prejudice or passion, may the mind become beautiful in its movement to its own contemplation. All these are elements of the free, unclogged, and perfect life, We speak of a beautiful mind in another when, Intellectual Beauty -Shelley's Hymn. 47 judging from the outcome, its faculties are symmetrically developed, and its activities never clash, more correctly than we should use the term when any one faculty existed in unusual strength, if dwarfing the proportion of the others; for any want of harmony or internal proportion is a derangement of the ideal of perfection. Thus it is not difficult to abstract the beauty which is purely intellectual, as well as that which is moral, from that which is physical. For the present I am keeping them apart, that they may be thus distinguished, though in the concrete they are never separate. And the unifying element of the three is yet to be searched after. Shelley's Poem, " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" fine as it is, is, according to my use of the words, misnamed. The object of his apostrophe has moral characteristics which peer through its physical symbols, and is, no doubt, the spiritual last ground, or the objective and real Beauty which is pre-supposed in each of the three forms that the Beautiful may take, which are elements of varying magnitude in every subjective ideal. Of this, hereafter. Mere abstract power or force, unrelated, undetermined, without final cause, if it can be thought at all, is not beautiful. If it can seemingly be thought, it may have sublimity, and the explanation of this is reserved. But Shelley's Spirit of Beauty is no such mere power, it is a " —messenger of sympathies That wax and wane in lover's eyes." 48 The Beautiful and the Sublime. But if we make abstraction of the wisdom which informs the universe, supplying purpose for power, and regard the accurate adaptation of means to ends, the unerring certainty of the movements we see, the harmonious interplay of the ramifications of force, and the marshalling of its hosts for some result, yet undescried, but having suggestions of far-off wonder,-here we have Intellectual Beauty of the highest kind, and purely intellectual. When the soul has been let into this realm, and everywhere the distances unveil themselves before its earnest vision, it is filled with new ardors, and new delights; for in these unfolding and brightening vistas all things are to be found, and everything bathed in the brightness of everything. This is the home of Truth. And as these multiplying glimpses, though bewildering, grow clearer, Beauty and Sublimity alternate with each other with swiftness. The wings of the soul acquire strength with use as it ranges on; yet, by and by, when the centre of all this radiance is approached, they fold themselves, and tremble into stillness,-for the soul has reached something else than Truth. Beauty has passed beyond the cold empyrean into the region of warmth and passion, and reveals its own secret in its own soul. CHAPTER XI. THE SUBLIME,-MATHEMATICAL AND DYNAMICAL. BEFORE proceeding further in the explanation of Beauty, I must consider one form of the emotion so peculiar and distinct from the other that it has been called by another name. All emotion is alike in so far as it is imaginative self-consciousness, but it receives the change, and requires a new appellation when it is called out by objects of a distinct kind. So that the difference is more than one of degree, and the new soul-activity requires a special description. I have not been able to satisfy myself with any of the explanations I have yet found of the emotion of the Sublime, and a brief critical review of' some of these will be found in the Supplement. The distinctness of the emotion and its right explanation will be best displayed in concrete illustrations. A youth who has spent his years feeding his love of beauty among the fields and flowers, at length finds his way to the mountains. He wanders, let us say, through some ravine, and looks up at the lofty crags, and the multitudinous forest losing its distinctness in the sky; or he stops beside 50 The Beautiful and the Sublime. the white column of the cataract. He fails to see the accustomed tokens, and to feel the wonted gratification of Beauty, for this recognition is swallowed up in a new feeling. His perception is bewildered, and be no longer observes minutely. His new emotion is intense and absorbing, confusing, yet elevating. Imagination is coping now with a more difficult object, and is strained to its utmost tension. It has yielded itself to a larger sphere, and is struggling to fill its periphery.-Its object, now, is more than it can comprehend or master. It fails to adjust itself to the new requirement, yet has received a new delight from the transient residence in an idea, more vague in its outline, imperfectly seized, yet apprehended as larger than the habitual ones wherein it moves with such ease and complacency. Or,-one comes for the first time into the presence of the ocean,-and, disregarding its beauties, the undulating waves, the breaking foam-buds, the shattered reflections of the colors of the sky, looks to the distant horizon, and strives to take in the object in its unity, but it is too vast for him, and he comes back, ere long, to that he can comprehend; yet the tension of the effort has enlarged his imaginative self-consciousness, and given the corresponding delight. These two are illustrations where the emotion is aroused by objects having physical magnitude, exceeding the magnitudes we are accustomed to deal with. But in the actual case, there is often The Sublime, Mathematical and Dynamical. 51 present another element,-greatness not of size, or not only of size, but of force. The precipice and the waterfall are threatening as well as large; and the ocean's sleep is written over with tokens of tumult. These elements may be called the mathematical, and the dynamical conditions for the emotion. A thunder-storm is beautiful in the distance but when it bursts around us, and the leaping flashes, and the sharp, rattling discharges of sound followed by the low-toned and heavy volley, reveal a power transcending ordinary displays of power, it either inspires terror,-in which case all emotion of sublimity, or beauty either, is lost, and Imagination deserts the lightning and the thunder, and blazes in a realm of apprehension, of possible woe;-or it stops short of terror, or awakens it just enough to stimulate the endeavor to measure the force, and leaves imagination yet free to live in the elemental contest, to lift itself out of its ordinary conditions into a new and transcendant life. Again, its activity in the endeavor to fill the intense force with itself, and to grope with lightning quickness after its spring and its aim, measures the degree of its delight. Thus the zig-zag line of lightning may be sublime, yet beautiful too, since, in its recessions, affording' temporary relief to the earnestness of its intent. When an object or an event which has roused the emotion becomes familiar from the repetition of its presentation, Imagination may refuse the 52 The Beautiful and the Sublime. temptation to live in the larger life, and occupy itself with the Beautiful; or the object itself, or the represented force, having undergone frequent scrutiny, be discovered as having limits, and as not transcending comprehension. In this case the object or the event ceases to inspire the emotion, or arouses it less easily, or in briefer duration. But it has given birth to new and higher aspirations, and Imagination tries itself, and yearns for more exhaustive flights. We all know how great objects lose their grandeur by becoming familiar. Moreover, the tension is so extreme in the emotion of the Sublime, that the imaginative soul becomes weary and restive, and gladly releases itself, and escapes to something more familiar,-that sets it a task less hard. It loosens itself from the spell of the gigantic peak, and leaps upon a flower that it may fondle. But having tried its wing in these new realms, it is drawn thither again and again, and exults in new ventures, indeed, becomes insatiate in its demands. It finds that it can transcend all visible objects, and float steady in the space beyond. It loves its fullest activity. So, there is nothing within the scope of human vision which can satisfy its desire for magnitude. It would have a mountain whose base should cover all the convex of the globe within the eye's reach, and which should spring up into a summit of crystal at the very limit of vision. Did we believe, as the ancients did, that the sky was a solid firmament hung with burning The Sublime, Mathematical and Dynamical. 53 lights, Imagination would find itself" cabined, cribbed, confined," and long to get beyond. And, even now, the stars in our vault of sky satisfy not, for Imagination swathes them in its folds, and aspires after remoter systems. Nothing but the boundless space itself can bring it back crippled and ex-i hausted. Failing to measure the actual infinity, it returns to find it in symbol in many a small thing, as in the exquisite gradation of color in the petals of a flower. Yet that endeavor to grasp the actual infinite, though not unmixed with pain, and resulting in uneasiness, has been a revelation to the soul of its own wondrous possibilities; and it ponders, ever and anon, over the dream. CHAPTER XII. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME IN ALTERNATION, —BURKE'S SOLUTION,-KANT'S SOLUTION,-NIAGARA. I HAVE said that the subjective ideal of the perfect life, the object of habitual desire, is perpetually enlarging or defining itself, and that Imagination delights in every resemblance or suggestion. But to fill the spatial infinite, or to put forth force which shall be world-creating or destroying, does not enter as an element into the ordinary aspiration or longing, But when one is lifted momentarily out of his fond and familiar ideal into one exceeding his own, the experience is novel, and stimulating for a time. Sublimity is felt, then, at the momentary neglect or covering-up of Beauty. The sharp and abrupt lines of the crags obliterate the subordinate curves, and suggest it not. The eye glances over and neglects the beauty of color, or of single trees, to take in the mass of the forest, in the entirety of its magnificence. The ear finds something other than melody in the roar of the great waterfall. There is a new revelation, and Sublimity marks the stage. of transition from beauty in its familiar forms to beauty in forms yet higher, and Burke's, and Kant's Solutions. 55 wider, and richer. The imaginative soul wears no smile in the presence of Sublimity, but rather a dignified seriousness, not unmixed with exultation. We can satisfactorily tranfuse ourselves into the life of nature when it gives birth to health, fairness, or repose, but we do not habitually long to become the spirit of the whirlwind or the thunderstorm, and direct its destroying energies. The force which ruins, and seems to mar the visible fairness we have not yet comprehended, and reduced to unity and found its service. Till we do there is before us a mode of force that we cannot trust ourselves to rule, and which may recoil upon us destructively; and the intelligence which guides it is not ours as yet. But in the momentary abandonment to the storm-spirit, or in the struggle to reproduce that intelligence, is, again, that high soulactivity which is the emotion of the Sublime. In such a case, as I said, the terror must only reach a certain height. When it transcends it, the sublime emotion, if retained, is no longer pure. The special imaginative activity gives way to apprehension, or is drowned in a mere physical sensation, or alternates with these adversaries. Yet with some, quite another result is produced, viz:that they sink back upon the consciousness of, or faith in our spiritual and indestructible being, which lightnings cannot reach nor soil. This thought, or, rather, the feeling which accompanies it mingles with the sublime emotion, and either overcomes it, 56 The Sublime and the Beautiful. or enhances it; or, it may be that physical fear and spiritual self-assertion, each in high degree, neutralize each other, and in this equilibrium, in this calm produced by tremendous agitation, Imagination is doubly stimulated, and loses neither freedom nor power. It does not then recoil from the endeavor to dwell in the lightning and the thunder, and leave us alone to the elevation we may then, and otherwise, reach in the consciousness of our spiritual being, but transfuses itself into the storm, and plays with the play of the elements, rends the heavens with the lightning, and utters itself in the thunder peals. Thus, in this storming of the outworks of our physical being, accompanied by this effort to preserve our spiritual serenity, Imagination reaches a delight breathless in its intensity, which leaves us shattered and collapsed, and ready to glide back for refuge into the bosom of Beauty. Both kinds of sublimity, the mathematical and the dynamical, are united in the cataract of Niagara, but the latter is predominant. The conception of size diminishes as the conception of power increases. The swiftness of motion, the centre-seeking determination of the downward plunge, the august masses of foam in which the cataract glories in its own might, its sport with its rainbows and other mysteries of color, all these and every other element are unified by Imagination, and we have intuition of a tremendous thing, either a chained beast withheld from the destructiveness which yet sleeps in its mighty bosom, or a soul freely wanton Burke's, and Kant's Solutions. 57 ing and unfolding itself for its own delight,-and in its life Imagination lives. Darkness and vagueness may enhance sublime ideas, though they cannot of themselves produce them, because they stimulate Imagination to measure an unknown force. A calm is not sublime in itself, but a calm before a tempest is, for we figure the intense force as silently poising itself, for its awful bursting forth. CHAPTER XIII. THE SIDERAL UNIVERSE,-INTELLECTUAL SUBLIMITY. THE sideral universe!-worthy, in the estimation of the great philosopher, to be set in the same rank, as object of contemplation, with the moral law, the one as inducing the uttermost of admiration, the other, of reverence,-can we consider it rightly except in relation to that same moral law, of which it is, perhaps, the symbol?-Not adequately, indeed, yet not untruly, from our standpoint of the physical and the intellectual, for it has Beauty of both kinds, and Sublimity of both kinds, and thus will furnish a transition prop to the consideration of the Intellectual Sublime. There is not much merely physical beauty in the stellar expanse. Its color, when it has it, is earthly, and varies with our atmosphere. Twinkling lights above us, as twinkling lights on the earth, only acquire beauty from form and arrangement, from lines of grace, or adjusted symmetry. Such lines may be found in the nocturnal sky, and some arrangements which have a seeming completeness and some suggestiveness. The constellations are grotesque rather than beautiful, and require the filling up of the most arbitrary fancy. Beheld by the Sideral Universe,-Intellectual Sublimity. 59 naked eye, the sun has no beauty of color, but some stars, seen through a telescope are lovely in color; and Saturn is beautiful from its system of curves. The moon thus beheld, aside from the suggestiveness of its craters and mountain ranges, has many elements of beauty in its white, shining surface, flecked with occasional shadows, and filled with shapes of symmetry. But it is most beautiful when we seem to see its motion, as it glides and plays among the clouds; for here Imagination puts aside the scientific fact, and yields itself to the arbitrary nexus of fancy. Nor has the stellar expanse much mere physical sublimity, except from its spatial extent, which might be were there no orbs for our vision, and naught but earthly clouds to give a transient rest, and new point of departure for Imagination when it adventured into the dizzy depths. Tales of the vastness of Sirius and Aldebaran rouse no sublime emotion. Imagination has no help from the actual here, and did it trust to itself alone to accomplish vastness, it can create a world a thousand times as big as Sirius. But the recent discoveries about the Sun afford the needful props. These scientific enrichments of our knowledge give it its accustomed food, and as these are appropriated, the Sun is be- coming more and more an object so representable as to have both mathematical and dynamical sublimity. The enormous gushes of hydrogen, flaming into an atmosphere, in whose extent many planets like our own might live, or be blasted into 6o The Beautiful and the Sublime. vapor, the inconceivable swiftness of these outbursts, the great spaces which open upon the surface, and let us into the mysterious and seeming darkness within, these and other such facts, at which description fails, are by degrees making our Sun into a grand object for Imagination to cope with. Nor is it devoid of beauty either, in the symmetral fringes of the cavities, and the conceivable play of light and shadow, and endless complications of graceful forms. Astronomy may yet further enrich the stellar universe for us, and make it sublimer and more beautiful in its purely physical aspect. But the stellar expanse is the home of Light. The opaque sky disappoints us, for it shuts out the element in which we rejoice. The translucent sky admits the incoming of the blessed radiance, as well as the unimpeded outgoing of Imagination. The Sun and the Stars are Light-bearers, Light-dispensers.-From them comes the luminousness in which all things bathe and become beautiful. The star-projections and twinklings suggest motion, too, more readily than when they subside into discs, but it is the motion which is Light. Thus the sky and the stars are beautiful, but with a beauty rather intellectual than physical, and growing with culture and thought. Yet even the rudest capacity knows Light as the condition of life, and of what beauty it can apprehend. And with light comes warmth,-the physical pre-requisite of pleasant sensation, the kindler of Sideral Universe,-Intellectual Sublimity. 6I the earth's fruitfulness, nature's response to light, which too, gives new meaning to the kindly sky. And since in the train of Light come, likewise, form and color, the heaven of stars is known and felt to be the supreme condition of all beauty, and hence indispensible in every ideal of the perfect life. It is quite probable that science may yet trace all extensive motion to Light; nay, possible that matter itself may find its last definition here, and that here is the true mid-region between, and which connects matter and spirit. Reason, the universal element of thought, has its true analogue, if not its very other, in Light, without which neither life nor thought could be. Our light is crossed by shadows, and now and then abandons us; but in the perfect life Imagination wills to have no darkness. Pure night is death, denial, utter limitation; yet even that oppressive fact is cheered by the knowledge that new light may come out of darkness, when our sun withdraws himself, and shows us other sources of the light we yearn after. What wonder that the splendid array of the nocturnal sky, this glittering tumult of stars, is beautiful. The stellar universe has Intellectual Beauty, likewise, as the completest symbol of wisdom, of that order, which is one name for the Final Cause of all things, and which alone can make the universe comprehensible and satisfying. Through the triumphs of science its unity is coming more and more to be perceived a posteriori, which may 62 The Beautiful and the Sublime. be always known, a priori. Thus, as a complete, proportioned, satisfying object for Imagination, it has beauty. But the endeavor to grasp it in its completeness, to fill it with itself, to live in its vast life, and swift motions, and unmeasured periods, and bewildering spaces, requiring the extremest tension of Imagination, makes it, rather, sublime. As an object for contemplation it furnishes no restraint to the desire for physical freedom; and the richness of its content seems inexhaustible, and thus it affords more and more elements as possible for the perfect life. And its order and proportion bring it within the range of human faculties, and make it not impossible to be understood. Were it under the dominion of caprice it would lose all intellectual beauty. Thus it is beautiful in its totality so far as that is seized as a synthesis of ascertained relations, yet becomes sublime at-every step in the knowledge of its vastness, and richness; for this makes ever again a fresh object for contemplation, and necessitates a new effort at comprehension,or seizure of its unity; yet it becomes beautiful once more, as these new elements are seen to blend into the unity of its plan. Again, when abstraction is made of the thinking, forming, moving Principle within it, and above it,-that too, carries Imagination through alternat ing phases of Beauty and Sublimity, until both are lost in a new emotion, having its own special conditions not described as yet, and which we may call Adoration. Sideral Universe,-Intellectual Sublimity. 63 This Principle, then, as the congener of our own thought, and the parent of our own soul, Imagination may make its object, and thus it comes to possess Intellectual Beauty or Intellectual Sublimity. But the Intellectual Sublime may exist in lower forms. When Imagination attempts to fill the mental activity of genius, of the great artists, or thinkers, or generals, or statesmen, it is an endeavor to live in a larger life than we habitually compass, and carries us out of ourselves in a sublime admiration. He who is utterly incapacitated from making the attempt, will not have a touch of the emotion, while he who possesses the same power in kind, though less in degree, will be most sensible of it. It is difficult, indeed to abstract intellect from character, and in the concrete case, other elements from the latter source enter in, enhancing or diminishing the emotion of purely Intellectual Beauty or Sublimity. But it is possible to admire the intellect of a man whom we morally abhor, as well as to have pity for the feeble mental power of one whom we morally admire. It is possible then, so to endeavor to follow the purely mental movement of such minds as Beethovens' or Shakespeare's or Michael Angelo's, or Aristotle's, or Hannibal's, or Moses' as to experience an emotion of the Intellectual Sublime. The consideration of the accomplishments of such men, of the outcome of genius, of such works of art, or literature, or of systems, or deeds as may be beautiful or sublime, belongs to 64 The Beautiful and the Sublime. another branch of the science of 'Esthetics, requiring preparatory investigations not yet concluded. When we consider what is called strength of character, force of will, we may make abstraction of the moral element, and disregarding the ethical aim of the same, contemplate merely the exhibition of soul energy, till the emotion of Sublimity is raised. He who crushes down all opposition, and tears his way through all obstacles, and shows himself sleepless and untiring in the steady pursuit of his purpose; he who overturns empires, and makes them over anew; he who follows with a keen scent his idea, till he has siezed it, and unfolded it, and constructed his system, may become sublime in our regard. There is a keenness of vision, an extensiveness of outlook, and a sustained power, which arouse either simple admiration, or, if Imagination attempts to reproduce it, the emotion of Sublimity. But such as these, are perhaps, the rarest occasions'of the occurrence of the emotion. A battle-field furnishes an illustration both of physical and intellectual Sublimity. Physical forces (so-called,) are there contending, with grand issues; but they are at the beck of will-forces, and the true combatants are human souls, who may show marvellous skill in planning the campaign, or the battle, and direct the messengers of death and destruction to the purposes of victory or retreat. War becomes the most terrific symbol of the inner strife possible among human souls, and of the violation of that order which the sense of beauty Sideral Universe,-Intellectual Sublimity. 65 craves. And to be sublime, compassion and fear, and all other emotions must be held aloof. Thus we see that in the human world, as well as in nature, while the creative and regulative forces are for the most part, beautiful; the destructive forces are sublime; and sublime just in proportion as they woo, and yet task imagination to live in them. As we come to understand them, and relegate them to a position, subordinate in a vaster scheme, they lose their Intellectual Sublimity, and acquire Moral Sublimity sometimes, and sometimes Beauty, as the case may be. CHAPTER XIV. THE MORAL IDEA.-MORAL BEAUTY. IT has been difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, the endeavor to avoid, during my foregoing examination, all consideration of Moral Beauty and Sublimity, and the conditions therefor; yet, I think, conducive to clear thought, and accurate distinctions, so to have done. The moral motive, (using the word, for the present, in an undetermined sense,) is one affecting more or less all human activity, and its aim is therefore an element not entirely missed in every subjective ideal of the perfect life. Thus is rendered possible beauty of another kind, which will be found to affect also the emotion arising from physical or intellectual beauty. We speak o'f certain native tendencies or dispositions in mankind as beautiful; so too, of the harmonious combination of the same, constituting character; and a life ruled voluntarily for an impersonal end, (which yet is not altogether impersonal,) may have beauty or sublimity. We speak of a well-ordered social state as beautiful; and the highest and most perfect beauty in the human countenance, is not only physical and intellectual, but moral. The Moral Idea,-Moral Bcauty. 67 There is one idea underlying the emotion, and making possible all these forms of Beauty,-the moral idea itself; which, when all its implications and relations are taken into account, is no other than the Final Cause of the universe, the objective end and aim of all existence. This idea, (which may have other names,) is the true image of the First Principle, of God, and reflects His immanent relations. It is impressed upon every human being, as the token and the mark of his destiny and his origin, waiting in the darkness of our physical organism, to start into outline at some early stage of the development of consciousness, to be illumined thereafter by culture, to be obscured or brightened by voluntary self-rule, and variously in every human soul. It is there, ineffaceably, even though it awaits its accurate description. A thesis so positive and wide-spreading, requires, I am aware, its elaborate vindication, which, I hope in another treatise to undertake. Now, I have to show that the acknowledged experiences of the emotions of Moral Beauty and Sublimity help to establish it, since it alone can give them a satisfactory explanation. There enters into any subjective ideal of the perfect life, not only to be untrammelled in the physical movement, and sovereign in the realm of thought, but, with a longing faint or strong, so to move and think in relation to other intelligent activities, (which we cannot banish from our ideal universe), that the individual soul and they shall 68 The Beautiful and the Sublime. never interfere, nor clash, nor contradict, nor have the impulse to interfere or clash or contradict. This is no other than the actualization of the moral idea in its aesthetic aspect, which we may call (provisionally) order. Moreover, the desire of enjoyment, which colors every subjective ideal, would not endure any such thing as isolation. It demands other intelligences, with the manifold relations springing therefrom, to enrich its own possible experience. Nor could it endure to be crossed and compelled by any, which could only be, did it never cross or compel any other. Order can only be, when all desire results in attainment, yet where no discord is possible, since the spiritual thirst is slaked at a fountain which is inexhaustible; when the intricate relations possible in the whole realm of action, thought and feeling, wind into each other, and interchange with each other, like the 'pulsations of the Aurora, yet the unity of the whole is never lost. The physical unity of mankind, one element of this idea, is seen already in the instinct of sympathy; their intellectual unity is evidenced by their Reason, their common possession of the realm of thought, in which they are ever moving towards each other in converging lines; and their moral unity, (since to be moral it must be free, and appear as a possibility and not a necessity) is shown in the haunting feeling that the perfection of the individual should only be sought, and can only be attained by voluntarily seeking the perfection of the whole. In combining these three as The Moral Idca,-Moral Beauty. 69 pects, the human race comes to be regarded as an organism, no member of which is complete except as the whole is complete, and the completion of the whole of which, requires the completion of every member. This is the reflection in humanity of the Eternal Order, which it is its task to make actual. In every subjective ideal, then, short of utter solitariness, there is required this adjustment of the relation to other personalities, which is the presence of the moral element. Where the idea in the fulness of its implications is admitted into the will, we have the conditions for Moral Beauty in its highest form. And just so far as the idea haunts the soul with its suggestions, or sways it temporarily or permanently, will the soul detect moral beauty in itself or in others, and recognize its symbols. And just in proportion, too, as the moral end is consciously sought after, and becomes the determining lifeprinciple, and dominates every other element in the subjective ideal, will be affected the appreciation of beauty other than moral. He who has covered up the moral idea to his own vision will find no symbols of it in the physical universe. He who habitually contemplates it, will find Moral Beauty suggested at every step. These facts I shall use hereafter to explain the differences among men in their appreciation of the Beautiful. And it illustrates, too, the. historic development of the aesthetic sense. The constructive Imagination has objectified 70 The Beautiful and the Sublime. the ideals of physical perfection, in its varied aspects, in the Fairies of the northern peoples, in the Sylphs and Naiads and Dryads, and Divinities of the old Paganism. These are emancipated from all that is restraining or distressing in our actual existence, and sport, after their caprice, in their several spheres. Did they exist, they would be incarnations of the Beautiful in its lowest form. These have disappeared from the common belief, and from the artistic vision, before higher aspirations, and a loftier and richer ideal of physical perfection. It has objectified the ideals of intellectual perfection in these same Divinities, and in the Sibyls and Seers. These too, from their insufficiency have passed away, almost utterly, from the artistic mind. It has objectified the ideals of Moral Perfection in Angelic life, with its " wondrous and beautiful order," wherein Law exists not, for there is no occasion for it, and it becomes merely another name for the fulfilled idea. These too have passed from the artistic mind, and an Angel, in a modern picture, seems almost an anachronism. The phase of existence in which men now live, is sublime rather than beautiful. We are in the midst of strife and struggle,-in a seething caldron of ideas and conceptions and novel experiences, and life becomes more " real" and " earnest," and art too becomes more and more realistic, whenever it goes beyond the symbolism of nature, and depicts human life. Our later historic art either satisfies itself with the gross ideal of mere physical beauty, or the merely The Moral Idea,-Moral Beauty. 71 picturesque, which is another form of the same, or, when it aims higher, has a tinge of the Sublime in it, and thus becomes the Pathetic. Thus Art interprets the changing ideals of humanity. But Beauty is behind the veil still, though Sublimity has usurped her place, and warned her aside for the time being. CHAPTER XV. CHARACTER.-MANNERS. —THE HUMAN COUNTENANCE. THUS it comes to pass that we speak of a beautiful disposition, a beautiful character, or a beautiful life. When the native tendences impel to the same acts and the same result as a free endeavor to actualize the moral ideal, we call these dispositions beautiful. They are usually the benevolent impulses, and spring out of Sympathy, the physico-ethical bond of humanity. And when all the native dispositions exist in harmony, and their combination wears the aspect of the actualized ideal, when it is spontaneously what it ought to be, we speak of a beautiful character. Just so far as we discover discord, the character loses beauty; or if we find a subtle selfishness to be its secret, it loses all beauty in our regard. But when the moral idea is the ruling principle, the life or character has sublimity or beauty just in proportion as it shows difficulty and struggle, or ease and calmness after victory. The actual social life of men is always more or less turbulent, and sometimes grand, but still sometimes beautiful. In the early Christian Church of Jerusalem we have the most eminent exhibition of Character,-Manners, —Human Countenance. 73 it, where all good things were held in common, where all particular interests were measurably fused by the fire of love. Here was a brief and vanishing glance of the moral ideal actualized, as the pattern and the norm of that to which the human race should through the generations slowly work its way. And many a beautiful ideal of a well-ordered state has floated before the vision of the statesman. But these ideals are often neither profound nor true;-but false, in so far as nations are regarded as machines whose parts are bound together by mere physical nexus, with power as the binding and moving principle. They are true only in so far as nations are regarded as living organisms wherein all acquiesance is or should be glad and willing, where love is the central and unifying spring. Thus the commonwealth, starting with physical order, or beauty in its lowest form, may rise, through its sublime cataclysms, at each step into a higher realization of the idea, and come to have moral beauty. We speak too, and rightly, of beautiful behavior, or manners. This exists in several grades,-first, in what is called politeness,-which springs out of the conventional resolve to respect the rights and feelings of others, whenever they do not clash too severely with our own. It has its own code, and enables men to move among themselves with ease and grace. When conjoined with pleasing tones of voice, and precise speech, and graceful attitudes and gestures, its beauty is enhanced. Thus it ex 74 The Beautiful and the Sublime. hibits in a superficial way the conception of order, serving not only to keep down all discord, and unbeautiful asperities, but to facilitate the gliding motion of human creatures among each other, regarded as fine automata. But politeness rises in the scale, and receives a new element, and deserves another name, when it is apparent that such behavior is not the product of a conventional resolve, issuing in trained habits merely, but springs out of, or is rendered easy by natural benevolence; when it is not superinduced but spontaneous, when all suspicion is thus removed that it contradicts the native or habitual disposition. Politeness then becomes amiable, and acquires a finer beauty, which we only fail to regard as the highest, when as yet unconvinced that there is a steadfast principle underneath it which can hinder it from being struck into confusion by the outburst of some selfish and hostile impulse. And when there is such a principle, and it is evident that reverence for law, or love, or any other definition of the relation the soul bears to the moral idea, is the motive and guide of conduct, then the manners which flow therefrom acquire moral beauty. The loving soul may show itself in its gestures and looks, as well as in that courtesy which not only respects the coarser rights, but the subtler feelings, and even fancies of others. Not always, however, does the loving soul show itself in beautiful manners. Even though its proper Character,-Manners,-Human Countenance. 75 tendency is to guide the motions, and the tones of voice into the lines and modulations which physical beauty requires, it is often fettered and interfered with by adverse native tendencies, and even by erroneous theories, and modes of thought. Any intellectual aberration, any inability to seat itself at the true centre for right thinking, may cause its very love to flow out into the wrong channels, with results far other than beautiful. Or, faulty education, ignorance of the conventional rules of politeness, or mental preoccupation, or even the needs of some pressing duty, may cause its manners to jar with the higher tastes of those who are more alert; though when it comes to be understood, this harshness is softened, and even its ungraceful movements may come to have a beauty of their own. Or, when imagination is feeble, aad does not detect quickly the symbols of its own ideal, or fuses itself into them less ardently, this too is a hindrance to the entire correspondence between the loving soul and its outward expression. But as our mental gaze penetrates the surface of the behavior of others, it may find a beauty which redeems the absence of the outward propriety, or a deformity which kills the effect of its presence. Thus the awkwardness of a Dominie Sampson may be condoned when we have found that the soul within is sweet, fragrant with beautiful blossoms; and the manners of many a fine gentleman cease to be pleasing, when we find that we are in the atmosphere of a corrupting heart. 76 The Beautiful and the Sublime. And the human face,-perhaps I should say, the human form, or the human body,-but the face is the true centre which alone can explain the rest;-that most wondrous thing that we can touch, or look upon with earthly eyes, what shall I say of it! It may have beauty of form,-in its contour of grace, in the interweaving of its curved lines, shunning all angularity and abruptness, and hinting of all other beautiful forms, in its symmetry and proportion, in its ease and repose. It may have beauty of color,-not only from its purity and transparency in the subtle gradation, wherein the "white and pink" melt into each other infinitely, but in its richness, in the multitude of its subordinate gradations, and even in its contrasts when not too violent. It may have beauty from light and shadow, especially in that efflorescence of its physical life, the multitudinous hair,-where the gradations of luminous color shrink into the darker depths through the wilderness of exquisite curves. Thus the human face comes to have correspondence or association with all objects of grace or majesty, and becomes a very microcosm in its physical beauty. And, besides all this, it may have intellectual beauty,-when its lines and its colors, without loss to their physical perfection, are subtly directed and correlated so as to wear that look which indicates the thinking soul; for we, when we think, Character,-Manners.-Human Countenance. 77 are sensible of a modification, an expansion or contraction of the lines of the face, the similarity to which we detect in the face of another, not merely from experience and association, but by a profound sympathy, binding the denizens of the realm of thought together as possessors of a common treasure. And above all, it may have moral beauty,for the amiable trait, or the symmetrical character, or the rightly ordered life,-these too, without deranging physical. or intellectual beauty, may, through the brain and the nervous system, and the muscular system, so change the adjustment of lines and colors in the countenance, that they harmonize with our own ideal aims, and are discovered by the same sympathy as detects intellectual beauty,-for no one can find moral beauty in the face of another higher than he has set as his own conscious aim,-and this beauty sympathy only detects. Thus the beautiful soul plays over the countenance, unifying all its wondrous elements into a symbol of itself. It concentrates itself in the eye,-for when the soul would act directly upon another soul, it finds that other through these windows, and the other shows itself through the same. Through brain and nerves it is focussed in that orb of spirit light, and lines and colors hasten to correspond. And it can hide itself too behind that fringy veil of lash and brow which nature has provided, to protect itself, or to retire 78 The Beautiful and the Sublime. further into itself,-showing by that instinctive movement that its inner and real being is in another realm than the material, that it has an adytum and a home elsewhere. CHAPTER XVI. MUSIC,-TIME, -SYMBOLISM. THE delight in Music is complex, and a careful analysis is required to discover its elements. First.-There is simple sweetness of sound, dependant upon the construction of the sensory. Science may show the whole process of the correspondence between the air vibrations, and the auditory nerves, and may ultimately chase up the changes wrought in the brain. It has found out the mathematical laws which rule these vibrations, and will find their physiological responses. These are ultimate facts, which may one day be accurately, or even perfectly described. Thus far we have found the conditions for the agreeable in sensation. This sweetness runs through all music, and makes one element of its delight. Tones disagreeable may sometimes be introduced, to heighten the agreeable ones by contrast, to make us fall back upon the latter for relief. And discords may be introduced for the same reason, but they are oftener used to produce or heighten beauty. Music becomes beautiful only when it becomes symbolic, when it strikes chords of feeling. It can never express thought, though it may suggest it. It is more stimulating to the imagination than any 80 The Beautziful and the Sublime. thing else, because it uses for its symbols what is more agreeable to the sensory than anything else. Sweet sounds are more delightful to most persons than agreeable colors. The fact that the agreeable is never lost, is the reason why people ordinarily confound the agreeableness with the beauty, and measure the excellence of music by the degree rather than by the kind of their enjoyment; for it is difficult, if not impossible, in the concrete case, to separate the one from the other, and give to each its intensive value and proportion. Its beauty has the same explanation as the beauty of lines and colors. First,-there is the element of Time, and its expression in rhythm,whose requirements are imperious, and only give way occasionally before the requirements of the higher expression. Its Time is the symbol of regularity, or obedience to law; for Time is movement, change by regular and steady impulse. It produces the sense of continuity, uninterruptedness, absence of intrusion from without, and therefore of freedom. Time is for sound, what the straight line is for vision; and in either case, Imagination which follows it has its own requirements. Musical Time may be accelerated, and thus sometimes enhance the imaginative delight, by stimulating to a slight accession of activity; but it must not be done too abruptly. The gradual increase in the velocity of a railway train, or its slow decrease, or the concussion of the sudden stoppage, furnish analogies to the movement of Imagination when Music,- Timne,-Symbolism. 8I we listen to possible music. Thus Time, if in itself beautiful, has beauty but of the lowest kind, like the beauty of the straight line; but is the thread, the indispensable sine qua non of what is to be strung upon it,-the skeleton on which the flesh is to be laid. And too, the pleasure of correct Time must have its physiological conditions, and, so far, may be simply agreeable. When thus we have agreeable sound, and a method of change which does not violate the law of the sensory, we have laid the foundation, and may build our structure. Any other beauty must depend upon the rhythm, the variations, the changes of tone, the alternations, the cadences, all which make it a language for feeling, and not of thought, or of thoughts which have not taken shape,-for feeling though conditioned by thought, is yet separable for thought;-but of what feeling? Sound, like form, may be the symbol of freedom. Imagination moves in the one as easily as in the other, fuses itself into the time-movement, as readily as into the space movement. When we listen to a sonata, the movement of Imagination is similar to its procedure when it lives in the curved lines of cloud land. It has in either case a wondrous field in which to play, and it rounds the cadence as it rounds the ellipses and the spirals; shoots along the continued note, as it shoots with the beam of light; breaks into the massive flow of the undertone, to follow the inner currents which wind curiously within its bosom. Thus its utmost 82 The Beautiful and the Sublime. delight is in its utmost play, and sound furnishes symbols, and the sweetest ones, of the perfect life. And there is no element of that perfect life which has not its symbols in sound,-its freedom, its grace, its repose, its sense of reserved power, its obedience to law, the concord and the coalescence of those who demand to share it with each other; and thus sound may symbolize not only physical perfection, but moral perfection. Especially is its harmony, or unity 'in variety, expressive of such spiritual concord. The delight in that as agreeable, must have too its physiological explanation, but as beautiful, is from its symbolic expressiveness. It is the momentary concord of Imagination with the new symbols of feeling which in fine music are perpetually thrown up to the surface. There is a constant movement of Imagination in listening to music, and a succession of delicious surprises. We are delighted to be led along in a movement so graceful and so varied, in the bosom of sweet sound. The impulse to graceful movement, may even be detected in the body itself. Hence the dance,-showing that the delight is in the imaginative activity. When listening to music of the highest character, there is often a suggestion of visible images, lightning glimpses, dim and ravishing experiences of something seen in the past, or possible to be seen. Imagination thus interprets according to its own caprice, and riots, as it does in dreamland, Music,- Time,-Symbolism. 83 when the watchful will has dropped its finger. And music, thus, furnishes symbols, not only for desires and aspirations which are precise or habitual, but for longings which are mysterious, and can not be put into words, whose genesis has become obliterated, and whose history is untraceable,-for vague solicitations of the perfect life, for the inexpressible sighs and the giddy joys of humanity. It supplies the wings upon which the soul seeks to fly back to the dim source whence it came, and whither it is going, to penetrate the darkness of its destiny, and to possess it before the time. Of course too, music is capable of being sublime;-not only from its volume and massiveness, akin to visible magnitudes,-and from its swiftness 4nd unerringness and sustained power, akin to physical force;-in all which Imagination struggles to fill the larger symbol, and is expanded and elevated in the effort, and exults in its own power, even when disconsolate at its failure; but also in its ability to suggest the hindrances of life, and the difficulties to be overcome, and the spiritual strength needed to endure, and to resist, and to accomplish. And, too, those instruments whose function is to emphasize the rhythm give the music often sublimity. It seems like the majestic approbation of the listening Imagination. The art of the composer is displayed in suggesting these obstacles and bewilderments, or in uttering these grand approvals,-but he fails to create music 84 The Beautiful and the Sublime. which is sublime, unless he suggests the strength to wind one's way out of the oppressive wilderness he may spin for Imagination. So too, sad music ceases to be beautiful when too much prolonged, or when it does not contain hidden suggestions which are compensating for its pessimistic character, when it does not show us a bit of blue sky among the lowering clouds, some loophole of escape into the upper serenity. But I touch my topic more lightly here, for I have not yet considered all the conditions for Moral Sublimity. CHAPTER XVII. MORAL SUBLIMITY.-SPIRITUAL SUBLIMITY. WHEN we regard the moral law as that which should govern human life, and contemplate human character as steadily endeavoring to actualize the moral ideal, the emotion of the beautiful is raised, just so far as the impression of ease and success and spontaneity prevails; but when the obstacles to be overcome are apparent, and the difficulty of overcoming them is estimated, just in proportion to the seeming intensity of the energy required, does the resisting or endeavoring soul, or its activity, seem morally sublime. Thus self-sacrifice, when it is great or difficult, and steadiness before the shocks of temptation, and courage before human opposition, and patient endurance of deprivations, and swift-moving zeal in benevolent enterprises, all these may have Moral Sublimity. The history of our race has furnished many illustrations of it, and we can even find it near us, without looking long. Never perhaps, have the various modes of moral sublimity been more remarkably united than in the Christian hero St. Paul. But Pagan Rome had its heroes, and every nation under the sun has had them. It would be a yielding to commonplace to name them, and eulogize them. The common 86 The Beautiful and the Sublime. characteristic was, devotion to a principle of duty carried to the display of virtue or spiritual strength. But heroes have not been always aware of their own heroism. Though conscious of the inner resistance and of the need of effort, yet their displays of strength, and their sacrifices, may have seemed easier to them than to those less capable of them. They may have hardly known that they were doing, or were in themselves, something so illustrious. And others too on the same moral plane with them might underestimate their heroism. To appreciate that as sublime, one need not feel capable of like spiritual strength, but one must appreciate the nobleness of the end in order to rightly estimate the force needed to move steadily and successfully towards it. If the end seem a chimera, then the emotion such heroism raises is chiefly perhaps, of Intellectual Sublimity, or of Moral Sublimity in a lower grade. But as before, the intensity of the emotion, in every case, is dependent upon the power of Imagination to live in the activity of the hero, and reproduce his inward experience within itself. It is then summoned to one of its difficult tasks, to fill the mould of the grand character, to run through the seemingly superhuman activity. It lives in the larger life for a brief while, yet subsides breathless into its lower ideals. But while it lives there, delight in its own activity, not unmixed with pain at the effort required, constitutes the unusual emo Moral Sublimity,-Spiritual Sublimity. 87 tion, which soon collapses, however, when it shrinks into the compass of the actual and familiar self. But if it flies from the actual again, as rarely or never satisfying, it is more likely to shun than to seek the sublime contemplation, and to find itself in some ideal of beauty. The emotion of Moral Sublimity, in any intensity, is the rarest one in human experience. And very few times in the lives of most of us, have we been rapt into that transcendant realm. It is that form of all aesthetic emotion which has the largest element of pain, and it is, consequently, less attractive than Moral Beauty. When it has seemed of superior attractiveness, its purity may be suspected. As men have rushed to martyrdom not simply courageously, but too gladly, one cannot but wonder whether the motive to display one's strength to others, or to nurse the consciousness of it for one's self, may not have tainted the purity of the sacrifice. To reach the end of the moral law with difficulty and not with ease cannot be desired in itself, for the very difficulty is proof that one as yet falls short of attaining that end;-though one may acquiesce in the difficulty, when not self-made, as means of discipline or moral gymnastic. Thus there is generally a shrinking of the soul away from that contemplation which brings the emotion of Moral Sublimity. It is abnormal, and springs out of that which ought not to be. The very depth of our sympathy may be fatal to the esthetic emotions. And the future of the human race looks, 88 Tlhe Beautiful and the Sublime. not beautiful, nor only sublime, but terrible, in proportion as spontaneity disappears from the prospect, and the likelihood of the vivid conflicts becomes great. The equilibrium of contending forces (to call such, ideals determining human activity,)political, social, religious, individual, (all capable of being ranged under two categories,)-forces which neutralize each other's power, and keep up the balance in human history, as forces do in the physical universe, is forever fluctuating, and when those forces shall receive their utmost increments, the calm can last no longer. The weaker ones must give way suddenly, and the victorious must destroy ere they can re-create. When the hum of human activities becomes monotonous, from their multitude and their intensity,-this murmuring mockery of quietude will be the prelude to some cataclysm, some shock and outburst, which shall reduce the human hive to chaos, momentary or prolonged, which again may gather itself into order and beauty, either perfected and eternal, or destined to begin a new cycle of development. Moral Sublimity, according to the strict meaning of the words, is only predicable of true heroism, devotion amid impediments to the end and aim the moral law reveals. When we admire false heroism, devotion to an individual end, not moral, which disregards all impediments, and moves irresistably to its aim, we have to abstract and put to rest our moral judgment, and figure either amplitude and keenness of intellect,-which may have In Moral Sublimity,-Spiritual Sublimity. 89 tellectual Sublimity,-or energy of will, which thus takes on the appearance of a physical force, since the ultimate results are chiefly physical, and need to be so to be food for Imagination, and arouse the emotion at all. It is probable that degrees of native strength of will are dependant on physical and physiological conditions, though the will may be strengthened or weakened from the spiritual side. When by abstraction we have reached this astonishing force-centre, there is a new revelation of the wondrous potentiality of the human soul, even when it creates results which we do not admire, which are to us repulsive. And the aesthetic characteristic might be called,-Spiritual Sublimity -though the word 'spiritual' wears a strange look in such a connection. The Constructive Imagination has sought to symbolize this characteristic in its higher forms, in its personifications of the Spirit of Evil; though all poetic creations give it necessarily in its mixed rather than its pure form. Its pure form is that of a Spirit in utter revolt from the existing Order, aspiring, in the highest degree conceivable for finite intelligence, after independency, deliberately rejecting all coalescence with the totality, uttering its preference for isolation. It may be that when moral evil appeared in the universe, it was and must have been in this form, though it could not maintain itself therein, and turned its face that moment it had reached its seeming end. 90 The Beautiful and the Sublime. This conception may have an awful attraction, or a fearful repulsion, according to possible modes of human character, and the impulse of Imagination to trust itself in the enterprise of measuring it. The conception is sublime, for it is the uttermost trial of spiritual strength, the only pure antithesis of the moral, the absolute reversal of all the predispositions of our being, the annihilation and re-creation of one's self. But the conception, even while Imagination regards it, becomes clouded and loses its purity. Neither feeling nor thought can maintain itself there, for there is no prospect, no relations. It is barren, lifeless; it is Nirvana. And so every poetic personification, has given us a mixed ideal, and Imagination has been true to its instinct as member of a race, as denizen of an order. And so, we have Satan,-seeking companionship in his revolt, craving sympathy and strength even in his negative and reliant attitude, descending thus from the sublime heights of pure evil, showing that he has not annihilated his former self, nor emancipated himself from the totality, exhibiting, thus, the possibility of his own return to the harmony he has abandoned. Or, we have Lucifer, weakening the nations and experimenting upon the servants of God, to see whether evil after all can maintain itself, or is only permitted and overruled. Or, Mephistopheles, the mocking spirit, railing ever, and showing by his railing that he is not indifferent to, but craves fellowship. Moral Sublimity,-Spiritual Sublimity. 9I Thus, the poetic mind, moving free from dogmatic trammels, finds that for our present intellects, evil cannot be conceived as maintaining itself in its pure form, nor utter unrelated solitariness as possible for any concrete existence. CHAPTER XVIII. SYMBOLS OF MORAL BEAUTY AND SUBLIMITY.SUBJECTIVE IDEALS.-TASTE.-EMOTION AS CONDITIONING TRUTH. I HAVE said that no subjective ideal of the perfect life is utterly undetermined by the moral idea, and that this last is the supreme element in the ideals of many. Hence this too finds its correspondence in nature, which furnishes ready symbols. Poetry is full of the recognition of these, and all elements of the beautiful in moral character find their analogues in the static or dynamic aspects of the material world. The modesty of the moss-rose, the humility of the violet, the bold innocence of the harebell, adventurous"-daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty." the purity of the lilies, the benevolence of nature in the wealth of her vegetation, the beneficent rain, the purifying storms, the encircling and protecting seas, the life-giving sun, and the tranquilizing moon, the oak grappling with its roots the rocky height, doing its best to stem the elemental fury, and Symbols of Moral Beauty and Sublimity. 93 hardene4 to iron beneath its shocks, the ship struggling for life among the waves, the headland, worn and channeled, yet proudly erect, the shining serenity of the snowy peaks,-all these, and others innumerable are symbols of moral beauty or sublimity, and are the staple materiel for poets to weave together and unify. Every aspiration and longing may find its correspondence, and nature, as her secrets become known, and her history read will continue to supply new material of this kind. And her sounds too,-her moans and sighs, her whispers and murmurs, and her joyous utterances, her solemn undertones, even the shrieks and roars of her conflicts, these are the elements which music makes use of to suggest the mysterious feelings and longings of humanity. But this is ground so familiar that I hesitate to tread in it any longer: yet it may give us a key to understand the differences in the subjective appreciation of beauty and sublimity, and to undertake a true distinctive classification in this regard. It is evident now that every subjective ideal of the perfect life will be idiosyncratic; that it will vary from others, according as physical perfection, or intellectual perfection, or moral perfection is the most constant and ruling element; and that each one's particular appreciation of beauty will be determined by the predominance of one or the other characteristic in the ideal. This accounts, at once, for all differences in men's tastes:-for each one finds readily symbols of that which is his ruling 94 The Beautiful and the Sublime. desire or most powerful passion. He in whom either element is weak will be little awake to its special symbolism. But the desire of freedom from physical restraint, the impatience at the contradiction between spirit and matter, under the oppressive burden of the latter, is so profound and 'universal, that the familiar forms of beauty, which depend upon this for their explanation, are never lost sight of; although the emotion may abate in its intensity, according as Imagination is pre-occupied with other elements of its ideal, or stagnates in the actual and attainable. Hence, this sensibility to beauty pervades all degrees of intellectual development, or moral attainment, and is dependent for its own degree, chiefly on the vividness of Imagination. Higher culture may sharpen the mental vision, and enable it to find objects more readily, and more numerous, and thus enrich the arena of Imagination; or it may dull the vision to outward things, and turn it inward to the contemplation of mental forms,-though not without the sense of beauty still;-for the ardent mathematician may be profoundly imaginative, and find symbols of perfection, and therefore beauty, in his ideal figures, and satisfactory demonstrations. But taste, is what it is, in each case, more from the character of the ideal in the moral regard than from any other cause. He for whom sensual pleasure constitutes the chief of life, and is the object of constant seeking, will find that beauty mainly which ministers to this desire. He will Symbols of Moral Beauty and Sublimity. 95 gaze with dull eyes upon any beauty in woman other than physical; and many a thing which is gross and repulsive to a higher taste will be fully satisfying to him. Thus from long habitude the sense of the beautiful may be almost wholly lost, and Imagination flow out upon the mere mental substitute for a physical appetite, and its gratification. The African king prefers the plump and unctuous rotundity of his women to that graceful and ethereal beauty before which a higher culture stops amazed. And he whose life is ruled by ambition, or pride, or any selfish ideal whatever, even though keenly sensitive to beautiful things, and with tastes refined to the uttermost,-capable thus of finding and enjoying all symbols of that which forever floats before his mental vision, may yet be dull to detect the moral beauty of a life or character; or show himself utterly unable to appreciate it, or incompetent to understand it, and reproduce it. The highest beauty of the human face he will not see, and the abundant moral symbolism of nature will be much less keenly felt, and much of it be unperceived. Thus taste is not only refined by intellectual culture, which measurably lifts it-out of the mesh of the sensual, but refined and improved by moral growth, which both purifies and enriches it. The ideal of perfection having become true in its outline, may be filled in without deranging its symmetry, and be colored and glorified by no transient 96 The Beautiful and the Sublime. but an immortal passion. Imagination now may make no mistakes, and has a wider and richer field in which to expatiate. But if the moral end be false, or caricatured,-and hence hardly deserve the name,-or if the true end be imperfectly descried, this will not only govern the whole of life and so far misdirect it, but will react upon taste, and educate that too falsely. While, if the moral aim be true,-and to be true place must be found in it for the religious element;-and if it be correctly descried,-and for this too, religious light and religious experience cannot be spared,-then we have, superadded to the needful mental powers and culture, and not till then, the conditions for a true and correct taste, which is more than subjective, which can vindicate itself by a philosophy, which allows of no discrepancy between the beautiful and the good and true, but asseverates their harmony and their unity. 0 how keener the vision can become, when thus the mental eye is opened wide, when it can pierce directly to the centre of the globe of truth, and find itself there, and behold the symmetrical radiation; when it looks no longer obliquely, and therefore nothing is distorted. That globe becomes transparent then, and without deranging its outline, new things spring up within its compass, and it becomes forever richer and richer, and more and more satisfying and compensating. Now, from everywhere, from the visible earth and sky, from the page of history, from the depths of man Symbols of Moral Beauty and Sublimity. 97 himself, the rays come back to crystallize upon the refining soul. All over the universe, spread like the sunlight, start forth types of the pure longing. Even upon this material veil, which sometimes looks so dark, we descry the bright lines of the garment of God. From this point of outlook only can the hopeful view maintain itself free from assault. Creation smiles upon it, and beckons into the inner depths, yet it can gather into a frown, should one ever prove false to his ideal. We know that, in the task of self-discipline, it is a wise thing to suspect one's self when under the influence of any strong emotion, to restrain one's utterances lest we speak foolishly, to avoid doing anything, lest we sow the seed of regrets, to doubt one's judgments, since formed under mental disturbance. Every feeling creates its own atmosphere, and objects brighten or darken, seem great or little, are proportioned or distorted, according to the medium through which we look. Not that we see falsely, except as we see them out of relation, for the spot on which our vision burns, from excess of light causes all things else to retire into a transient obscurity. But as no air is without its color, we need the white light, the fusing of all colors, in order to miss the gloom and be undismayed at the shadows. So, as we cannot think or act without feeling, we need to have the synthesis of all feelings, the ground and origin, and the end and 98 The Beautiful and the Sublime. purpose of all, in order to see things in the colorless light. And, since enjoyment, to be pure and perfect, dies out in solitariness, and can only sustain itself in sympathy, and ever seeks wider sympathies, and rests not till universal sympathy is reached, which can only be when the mental vision is true, and liable to no correction;-therefore is love the only feeling which can dissipate the clouds of our atmosphere, and admit the penetrating vision;-not that pathological passion which makes some one object the gem to which all nature is the setting,-but love all pervading, for humanity as such, for, all creatures who can enjoy or suffer, for God who flashes to us his momentary glances in the Beauty that pervades the physical world. When such love is the ruling passion, Philosophy may come as an instructor to confirm its intuitions, to correct its synthesis of relations, to illumine the lineaments of the universal order. And the' instinct of love is still partial and misdirected, unless the religious movement has its due share, its central and unifying position. CHAPTER XIX. WORDSWORTH'S ODE.-DIMINUTION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY,-IIOW RETAINED.-THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION AS DETERMINED BY SUBJECTIVE IDEALS. " There was a time, when meadow, grove, and stream The earth, and every common sight, 4 To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory, and the freshness of a dream." But now,-" nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, and glory in the flower." NOWHERE is this problem so touchingly stated as in Wordsworth's Ode. But the fullness of meaning of this exquisite lamentation can only be felt by the more imaginative souls. There are many into whose hearts Beauty has shone so faintly, that they have never spent a sigh over the diminishing brightness of its ray. Still very many would, if properly questioned, confess to a sense of departure; while some, who have doated over the loveliness of the earth, whom "the sounding cataract " has " haunted-like a passion," or who even may have felt the " sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused." I00 The Beautiful and the Sublime. will be sadly aware that a charm has departed from -.>the earth. The change, they know, is in them'seIves, and may have its explanation. It is an unwelcome thing to dissent from the cheering solution which the poet gives, but it must be brought to the test of careful observation. The question of the pre-existence of the soul, as one for speculative philosophy, I shall not discuss in this connection, and it may be that a close scrutiny of the experience in question, will convince us that there is no need here, of asserting or denying it. If by " heaven " is meant the spirit and power of beauty, it is not true that it "lies about us in our infancy,"-and that "shades of the prison house begin to close about the growing boy —" Beauty is a recognition later than the earliest years of childhood, later than many things most unheavenly. The experience of the beautiful may start very early in youth, and may, though vague, give intense delight; but it is a gradually clarifying recognition, and its hold, through the ryears of growth, acquires an increasing firmness. Not till manhood. is reached, and still later for many, is that hold relaxed. In describing this, and lamenting over it, and finding consolation for it, Wordsworth's Ode is so felicitous, that again I hesitate to translate it into prosaic language, and to correct the description. The child soon, as I have shown, attains an ideal of freedom, growing in extent and distinct Wordsworth's Ode. IOI ness through the years, and when the symbols of that are detected, awakens to a sense of the beautiful. It is his privilege to play, and no anxious tasks may call him away from his dream. If they do, the growing sense of beauty is checked. And when the youth or the man is summoned to the strife, and care sits ever at his ear, —then he either comes to live in the attainable ideal, and Imagination flows out upon that, and deserts the symbols of perfection that lie about him; or else the desirable ideal receives new modifications, and the emotion changes, and runs through various possible phases. If there was ever much " splendor in the grass," and " glory in the flower" for him who so readily yields to the temptation or the necessity of the attainable ideal, they fade away very soon, and with little pain. But he who can be satisfied only with some ideal that is higher, holds out his arms to them longingly as they depart. The experiences of life on the earth are too much for us for a while. Work is necessary, and drags us into its rugged tasks and angular motions. Physical pain comes and absorbs the very feeling of existence into itself. Doubt comes, of the truth of all things, of any thing, of beauty itself. We are tossed in a sea of perplexities, and Imagination struggles with the actual, and escapes into the ideal realm with a sense of insecurity, and that it must soon return to the actual. What wonder, when doubt of the possibility of any perfect life shuts the soul in the dungeon of the actual, that 102 The Beautiful and the Sublime. we should regard even the beams of beauty that come straying in with misgivings and heart-sickness. But sooner or later'the clouds depart, and the clear sky comes, and we have faith in something, faith deeper than we know, and with it beauty comes back, no longer, perhaps, fresh and new, but with more meaning in her gaze. Before the presence of these sterner figures, she could but glide into the shadow of her supplanters, to get a new expression from that shadow, not so joyous, because not so thoughtless, yet more joyful, because breaking through the mournful gloom that threatened to extinguish her. And thus it may come true that— " we only have relinquished one delight, i;, To live beneath her more perpetual sway." But there is a possibility of cheating work and care, and pain, and doubt, measurably of their influence, and of fastening this phenix of beauty for. a time, and after a manner. And this possibility I shall now consider. It is owing to coarser structure of the sensory, rendering even the feeling of the agreeable less intense, as well as to a feebler Imagination which translates this experience into emotion, that in most men, delight in the beautiful is not sufficient to make them count much upon it, or expect it to make any large share of their happiness. But when the sensory is fine, and perception quick, Wordsworth's Ode. I03 and insight comprehensive, and memory ready, and Imagination strong, then the delight in this emotion is so wonderful that the cares of life assert their power not so soon, or intermittingly, and it comes to pass that such men retain their hold of beauty longer, and never lose it entirely. They enter, too, from choice, into such pursuits as keep these faculties in constant use, furnishing the material to be worked up either into waking dreams, or into works of art or literature. Here a new function of the royal faculty is displayed, and it becomes the Constructive Imagination. Such men receive so much from beauty, that they propose to themselves never to miss this reward; and the cultivation of their susceptibility for these delights, may absorb so much of their attention as to fix all their plans of life, and determine their vocation. It is evident that in such a case, the charm of beauty may be kept up longer. This is a lofty function for human energy, yet even this glorious expenditure is ruled by the moral element, and the ideal which it subserves is either false, or incomplete, or true. Art has its own end, and its own autonomy, indeed, but that end is not absolute, but subordinate to the right aim of life. It does not terminate in itself, but it too is means. It is not that which ought to rule; and, having this lower position, it may serve or hinder that which ought to be. A man may achieve much, yet be sinking in the moral scale. If life be spent in day dreams, it is wasted. If its energies terminate 104 The Beautiful and the Sublime. in mental structures, these may be corrupting or hallowing. Thus it happens, often, that the lower beauty is retained with the loss of the higher, yet the emotion of it may continue to be exquisite till the end of life. A man who allows these issues of his soul to venture forth, betrays sooner or later his own secret. We discover his ideal aim, and read his character accordingly. This is the highest reach of criticism,-to find the ideal of him whose work is criticised. And to be a true critic, one must himself be able to appreciate the highest aim, and to hold all subjective ideals at their proper valuation. Thus the judgment of the simple heart may often be a truer criticism than that of the seeming expert. Here, now, is a mode in which we may study men, even if they are not author's or artists, to find whether they live in the attainable, or the desirable, and if the latter, in what? Upon what objects does their Imagination most readily stream out? What kinds of beauty do they cherish? What sort of symbols is dear? How long have they been able to retain their emotions of the beautiful, and to what influences have they succumbed? What excites their admiration, the beautiful life, or the sublime struggles,-the physical beauty of nature, or the moral meaning? Even in their tastes for simple things, we may seize their secret. Is the flower valued for its purity, or its subtle gradations, or for its sweet habitudes; or is it for its grace, or its intensity of color? Or have Wordsworth's Ode. 105 they no eye but for its simple agreeableness? The soul peers through their chance expressions, and even a Talleyrand could hardly guard himself from being understood, were such a test brought to bear. But he only can retain "the glory and the freshness " of his "dream " of nature, who has found in her,-" something far more deeply interfused." Nature glorifies God for him only, who also glorifies Him. The "clouds of glory" burst forth from the earth only before the warm sun of the loving heart. No developed being is shut in this earthly prison, but a germ of wondrous possibilities comes from the " God who is our home," which can turn the food provided into nourishment for Beauty, or into poison, curdling its inner currents into issues of deformity or ugliness. CHAPTER XX. DEFORMITY,-UGLINESS,-EVIL. Too wide a departure from the typical form of an animal or a plant is called Deformity. It is when the ordinary functions of an animal are so far interfered with, that it can no longer fulfil them with ease, whether the impediment come from surplus and wasted growth, or from minuteness and inadequacy, where the result seems equally wasted, or from mal-adjustment interfering with the normal facility or spontaneity of motion. And a tree, or any plant may be said to be deformed when alien or disturbing influences have wrested it too far from the shape which, in our accustomed apprehension, indicates health and vigor. The deformed is not necessarily the ugly, for the residue may have much physical beauty, though the whole be disturbing; and we know that moral beauty may be found in the countenance and the movements of mis-foimed humanity. Purely physical ugliness is (for the most part, if not entirely) negative. We say,-" it is an ugly table," or,-" it is an ugly hill," when the shape, at first impression, has, or seems to have no beauty, Deformity,- Ugliness,-Evil. I07 and when we mentally compare it with others which we have seen that were beautiful. The beautiful meets us so at every turn, that objects in which we do not readily detect the favorite quality, we are apt to call ugly. In vegetable life physical ugliness is seldom seen. Beauty so reigns and riots in this kingdom that a second look always finds it. When occasionally we see a flower that we call ugly, it is from association with positive ugliness, wherein this impression drowns out our appreciation of the beauty which yet we might discover. And when devastation has ruined the fairness of the landscape, and contorted its lines, and confused its colors, here too the disturbing impression is from association with positive ugliness. An animal may be not mis-formed, and yet be thought ugly, from lack of all constituents of beauty perceived at the first impression; and so may be the human countenance; though the second and analytic look may always find beauty in either; and, too, the impression of the physical ugliness may yield to the detection of moral beauty symbolised in the prevailing or transient expression. The animal body, or the human face is often called " ugly," when its color or complexion is such as is associated with sickliness or decay, though here such ugliness may contest with beauty of form or expression. But the positively ugly has a spiritual origin. Io8 Thze Beautiful and the Sublime. Even though the animal form be pleasing, yet the impression of ugliness is given when the disposition is known to be malignant, or when the apparent impulse creates apprehension. We then figure a destructive and beauty-marring force, likely to be guided to results assaulting the integrity, or the normal tendency, of physical being. We give the same sort of ugliness to inanimate objects or motions, as when we say, "a threatening and ugly cloud," or "wave," or "precipice," or " tempest." And especially may the human countenance become ugly when its lines are such as betoken a malicious disposition, or a momentary envious or malignant feeling. Thus, while the negatively ugly is always pitied for its defect; the positively ugly is feared for its possibilities of mischief. The emotion of the Ugly arises, then, when we are brought into the presence of the destructive forces,-the spirit of contradiction, that which hinders or mars the healthy normal processes which are beautiful; and becomes most intense when the destructive possibility is clearly traceable to, or is intuited as proceeding from a malignant will. It is, in short, the outlook of the spirit of Evil, which confessedly peers through the fairness of the universe. It is no wonder that men, seeing this, have arrested their thought at the first superficial theory that promised an explanation, and rested for a time in Dualistic schemes. By the unbiased move Deformity,- Ugliness,-Evil. o109 ment of the mind they naively traced back all discord and destructiveness to an evil will, and seeing man's impotence in nature, they went beyond that, and figured a universe contested for by opposing Divinities. It is a phase, perhaps, through which all speculative thinking passes, yet has not borne, and will not bear the test of exhaustive a priori, or a posteriori thought. The element of truth in it which must be conserved is, that all motion implies will, that the cataclysms of the universe are no chance shatterings of soulless forces, but are under guidance and have meaning, and are processes in the march of development. Science has done good service here in showing the insufficiency of all Dualistic schemes, the physical unity of the universe, and interdependence of its parts. But the problem of evil is still unsolved. We may, indeed, fancy that man, a part of nature, and who alone finds the beautiful or the ugly in it, did not exist, and that some intelligence, aloof from nature, and contemplating its processes with the knowledge of their meaning and of the idea of its development, would see only the inner harmonies, and find nothing to impair his impression of the orderliness and beauty; but it is only fancy, and not even abstract thinking; for if we carry our own concrete intelligence into such inquiry, and make it an imaginative search, we who feel as well as think, could find no beauty in the ravages of the herbivorous mammoths, or the battles of the carnivora, or the hostile greed of the animalcules, but IIO The Beautiful and the Sublime. only the evidence of a contradiction in nature her. self, that we could not resolve into a harmony, and which was precisely that which ought not to be. It has been said that such an earth is adapted and accurately fitted to be the home of a race of rational beings, such as man is, before whom is the task of self-development; that to subdue and replenish the earth, to fight with its obstructions and overcome them, could alone bring out all the resources of an intelligent will; and that, too, by the victories of the loving spirit alone, could he acquire moral strength as well as moral rectitude,that through this sublime struggle only, could he mount up to the ultimate beauty. All this is true indeed, and the scheme can have convincing vindication. We acknowledge that man, as he is, requires such an environment, to elicit his capacities, to be able to realize his own ideal. But the problem is still unsolved, for we see no necessity that man need be as he is. Physical evil must indeed exist if man is necessarily morally evil. But necessary moral evil is a contradiction in terms, in which the distinction between moral and physical evil utterly disappears. The concept of moral evil can only be maintained by holding that this struggling, sublime development is precisely that which ought not to be, otherwise the concept of human freedom disappears. Such a development is a necessary possibility for the concept of moral freedom, but not a necessary actuality, otherwise freedom is given up, and we are Deform ity,- Ugliness,,-Evil. III brought round to an absolute contradiction to the fundamental postulate of all knowledge, and the ineradicable instinct of humanity itself, which no philosophies can utterly exterminate. It is true indeed, that the good exists only by eternally producing itself. This is its essential idea, but that to do so, it requires evil as its foil, is a description of the fact, and not of the idea,-between which and the idea the contradiction exists. Thus again, this most promising solution fails. There is still another speculative solution of this enigma, which I cannot venture to reproduce in this connection without wandering too far from the domain of my proper science, and I confess that here is an hiatus that must be filled up, if possible; or if there is, as many think, an insoluble mystery here, the very verge of which may be illumined. Here it may be seen how all sciences relate each other, and that an exhaustive solution of any problem of existence requires an exhaustive philosophy. If then the ultimate explanation of Moral Ugliness, which alone can explain positive physical ugliness, cannot be reached, and we must turn our backs upon this darkness, we may move forward more hopefully; for Beauty beckons us towards the light, and if light is to triumph over darkness, it must have preceded it, and when we are in the perfect light, we may be able to look back with more fully developed powers, and to see, perhaps, that the ugliness, though actual, was yet only an intervening cloud, destined to pass away. 12 The Beautiful and the Sublime. He who claims to have solved the question of Evil, has convinced himself alone, and cannot convince his fellows, when he brings his solution into the open day of our common reason. BOOK II. BEAUTY AS OBJECTIVE. I BOOK II. BEAUTY AS OBJECTIVE. CHAPTER I. PSYCHOLOGY AND METAPHYSIC.-THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. BEFORE taking the next step in this investigation, the aim of which is to determine Beauty as objective, and a characteristic of the universe, it will be necessary to refer again to the Psychology and Metaphysic which are implied in this treatise, -not elaborately to vindicate them, for that would require a distinct and prolonged enquiry, but to exhibit them in such features as are demanded for my present purpose, and with such critical remarks as are needful clearly to distinguish them. The old Dichotomy, which regards soul and body as disparate entities, has for a long time been weakening as a satisfactory explanation of man. It fails to show any unity of these, as juxtaposed constituents of human nature, or even to show any necessary relation between them. Nor can any more satisfactory Psychology be derived from the Spinozistic Pantheism. Exten II6 The Beautiful and the Sublime. sion and thought, modes of two of the infinite attributes of the one substance, not shown to have any necessary relation except their common derivation, are said to find their subjective unity in man, and carry him along their inevitable stream. We have a physical and a logical process, but the relation between them is not apparent, for the third term which relates them, and makes either explicable,-freedom, self-determination, is left out; and it is a wonder that Spinoza did not explicitly refer this to a third attribute of God, since it seems implicit in the latter part of his ethic. And I may say of any Philosophy whatever that connects the manifold of the universe by a nexus purely mechanical, or purely logical, which, of course, the human being reflects, that it contradicts a primary element of knowledge,-selfconsciousness; for the freedom to determine one's own ends is implied in the very mental activity which constructs the postulates of such Philosophy. The " Pre-established Harmony," of Leibnitz is rather a statement of the problem than a solution of it, for it, too, gives us only a synthetic or superimposed unity of soul and body, and hence no true unity for thought. The "New Psychology," founded on the doctrine of Evolution, is an attempt to reduce human nature to unity, and thus make it intelligible; and has called attention to many facts which must not be disregarded. But the fire of criticism to which it is subjected, and which I have no desire Psychology and Metaphysic. 117 here to reproduce, is showing its inadequacy to account for experience itself, as containing transcendental elements, and, a fortiori, for all the higher issues of human nature. Its chief reliance, now, is upon its Psychogenesis,-the endeavor to trace the development of the human being historically, from his origin in the purely animal; but, really, in this procedure, its method is synthetic, not analytic, and the alleged facts are interposed by the hypothesis itself. It cannot be shown apriori that, and how an animal, as such, can or must develop into a man; and, a posteriori, the method of the alleged development cannot be studied. There are no data, before the historic period, wherefrom to study the consciousness of the human being, and its possible changes. And the fossil remains of the pre-historic period show us only the physical structure, and not the psychological accompaniment, save in the evidence of some few habitudes, different from purely animal habitudes, and some resembling those which man still retains in common with other animals. To examine a developing being historically, in order to conclude upon its law, we must know the entirety of its history and the changes of its environment; and, at the best, before the historic period, science can only dip here and there, and gather scanty facts. The Idealist is charged with being narrow in studying the developing being only at the latest stage of the same, but the new 118 The Beautiful and the Sublime. Psychogenesis can only fix upon some anterior stage of development, and is without the facts to fill the various hiatis. Moreover, if the essential elements of human nature are a constant, and development continuous after its law, then all the elements of that nature, and the modus of change must be discoverable at the later period of development as well as at the earlier, and, indeed, more distinctly. Having found it there, we may see that it was implied in the earlier; but the unsolved problem of the Psychogenesis is to see whether it was implied in the animal. But as what is explicit is clearer, and more conclusive than what is implicit, there is more knowledge of man to be gained from the study of him as developed to the uttermost than in the earlier stages. We may know more even of his physical structure by the study of the developed being than by any study of his Psychogenesis within our power. We can forecast his future more confidently than we can trace back his history to his origin; for the thing to be examined is now before us, or within us; we see what it is, and whither it is tending, and what correlations are required to explain it in its present developed state, and which therefore were possibilities while yet its potentialities were not apparent. But this Psychology has done important service in calling attention to the principle of heredity, or transmitted proclivities,-modifying instincts, Psychology and Metaphysic. i19 and thus producing social modifications. It gives us facts, slowly ranging themselves into laws. The organic unity of the human race is here implied, and the results of this conception are manifold and important. That an absolute uniformity and harmony of its instinctive tendencies, can be reached by this, cannot be maintained without denying again the principle of self-determination. Each human soul is a particular modifying activity, and and the free-determinations in each and all must be harmonized, as the condition for the physical processes which are to result in the harmonized instincts; and, as before, the relation cannot be reversed in thought without contradicting a primary element of all knowledge. We cannot dispense then with the study of the smaller unit, if we would understand the larger. Justice must be done to the individual, as well as to the entirety. In humanity the entirety exists for the individual, as well as the individual for the entirety. And this shows that humanity is a true organism. But the entirety does not yet exist, and the past history of the race must await its explananation in its future history, in its end and destiny. That end and destiny can then be best studied in the individual, if we would forecast with any confidence; though we may think that the more highly developed generations of the future may still more clearly descry what is before them. In the ramifications from the original stock, within the period of our knowledge, each one has been developed to 120 The Beautiful and the Sublime. an idiosyncrasy, indeed, but this has not been by the addition of any new elements, or the subtraction of any, but by a new synthesis of the same, with the corresponding correlations. If the essential elements of human nature are uniform, it may be studied at any period of the history of the race, but with ampler results now than ever before. Besides, while the ante-natal developmont of the individual must be purely animal, its development from infancy to maturity must be a true analogue to the development of the race as distinctively human, and is as important to be studied as the facts of history; and it can be more closely observed. If it can be rightly described, it may give us a key to conjecture satisfactorily the condition of the human race in the pre-historic stage. And Physiology, occupying the border ground between the material world and the world of consciousness, may throw much light upon its own side, and illumine the region up to the verge of tile mystery. An eminent teacher of this science tells us that "these results of physiological examination correlate, but do not annul psychical facts." I find nothing in our latest Physiology which I do not welcome as rather confirming than contradicting the Psychology of this treatise, and even sometimes a ray that crosses the seeming chasm. * Professor Ferrier, King's College, London. CHAPTER II. MAN AS AN ANIMAL.- FORCE.- MOTION. — POTENCE.-SYNTHESIS OF ACT, THOUGHT AND LOVE.-THE HIERARCHY OF IDEAS. —UNITY OF THE ANIMAL. -LIMITATION OF THE ANIMAL. MAN, then, is an animal. We know nothing of an animal soul without body, or of a body without soul. The dead corpse is no body, but mere material elements, subject now to the lower forms of force exclusively, chemical, and mechanical. Even if vital force be shown to be a mode of mechanical, it is in a higher form, i. e.,-guiding itself teleologically according to a higher idea. The idea is no longer made actual in the dead body. Force is a purely mental concept. Empirically we only know motion, and resistance or counter-motion, the varying modes of two conflicting tendencies,-towards the periphery and towards the centre,-the impulse of extension or intension,-radiation and its return. Motion pervades the actual universe, and there is never rest. Nor does experience ever show us blind motion, or chance motion. It is always for an end, and is the actualization of an idea. " Efficient cause" is an utterly 122 The Beautiful and the Sublime. meaningless phrase, without the correlative "final cause." Motion according to its idea, is what we mean when we say " force." Activity for an end implies intelligence,-thought,-and thus we have the concept "will" which is still, however, abstract, as we shall see presently. This is a conception possible for the human mind, and is the abstract spiritual, in two elements. By motion, then, in the form of the idea, spirit activity is manifested to spirit, the Divine energy and thought are apparent to the actively receptive human spirit. In the universe the activity of spirit carries with it,potence, giving outness to its ideas, and thus perpetually creates. The human spirit is without this potence, and can only live ideally by imagination in the potence of the universe, or avail itself of the motion it provides, which motion it can rule for subjective ends. Actual motion, or motion in space cannot be thought but as a movement, (so to speak,) or energy of spirit; nor can it be thought but as in time, that is, as a continuous of consciousness, marked off into times, and thus becoming known to us as time, by the particularity of perceptions. The spirit movement, and the actual motion, together, are real motion, are united in all experience, and cannot be thought, even abstractly, apart from each other. We cannot, in imagination translate the movement of the Absolute Spirit into actual motion, because we lack potence; but we can follow the movement of the Absolute Spirit Man as an Animal. 123 in actualizing its idea, and live in a life alike in kind to our own. It is not right to say, then, that matter moves, or is moved; for that would imply that there might be rest, which is contrary to all experience. Without the movement of Spirit there could be no matter. It subsists by the activity of Spirit. What matter is in its ultimate, primal, simple form, as the first resultant of the Spirit movement, philosophy may attempt to determine a priori, but such determination brings no concrete concept, and it is the problem of science to verify it, and bring it within the sphere of Imagination. Thus much we see,-that it is utterly impossible to think matter otherwise than in its concretions, i. e. in the form of an idea. It cannot, then, be severed, in thought, from spirit,-and our last word about it is, that it is simply the mode by which Spirit manifests itself to spirit. Nor can we think the Absolute Spirit to exist as concrete, without the possibility of thus externalizing itself, for then it would be abstract and barren oneness, without relations, and the idea of self-consciousness would evaporate. This externalization for other spirits we call potence,-in God, Omnipotence. For such spirits, for us, then, it is not the pure thought which is externalized by the pure act, but the thought, or the ideas which exist in inexhaustible wealth in the Divine Principle, in the materiel afforded by the Divine potency. That materiel may be called the Divine glory. Why that glory 124 The Beautiful and the Sublime. is hidden, measurably, for us, why it shows itself in the hard, impenetrable, resisting concretions of material things, and is not fluent and plastic as for the Divine energy, is, again, an enquiry beyond the limits I have set myself in this treatise. Spirit, then, concretes itself in matter, and matter in such phenomena, as to be always correspondent to ov- spiritual state. The laws of nature, then, are identical with the laws of our intellect. If we can conceive the latter to change, by the unfolding of new powers, bringing about new interior relations, the former must change with them. Development is mutual and correlative. But,-as I said,-spirit as the synthesis of pure act and pure thought is still an abstract conception, and cannot be thought in the concrete, i. e. reproduced in consciousness. From such a principle the universe, as we have it, could never have come. It could not explain what is most wonderful and precious in it. We can only think concrete spirit by superadding-love, blessedness, enjoyment, feeling in its originary and pure form. In the actual universe, then, we must see the reflection, and the evidence of all elements necessary for our conception of the Absolute Spirit, if it be a true concrete, activity,-thought,-love. The Divine Will is the unity of the three, and therefore has character, and can come into ethical relation with other spirits. And by its potence, giving outerness, the Divine Glory is manifested to created AMan as an Aznimal. 125 spirits in the processes of a developing universe, which we can follow back to their origin, till we find the Divine will, as act, and as thought, and as love. The Supreme Spirit, then, concretes itself in a hierarchy of ideas, each one dominating those 'that went before, and in turn dominated by that which is to follow,-in the plastic, original materiel of the starry systems, in the multitudinous and fluent aggregations, in the prophetic crystallizations, in the plant and the flower, and in the animal, with seemingly fantastic variations which are innumerable, thus, in its play, showing its inexhaustible riches and the fertility of its resources. To follow with imagination that mode of its concretion which we call life is just as impossible for our present faculties, and no more impossible, than to know the mode of its concretion in the nebulae. These are simply the names of the new ideas, whose implications, and correlations, however, we can study. We can think the dialectic, but cannot conceive the change, can only recognize it. If to all that went before we superadd enjoyment, or feeling, (implying consciousness), we have the idea of the an'imal. To all observation, no such concretion as the -animal can maintain itself, while matter is what it is, but it yields sooner or later to the disintegrating forces. We study it to discover the correlations required to explain it. The animal soul has no higher capacity terminating in itself, than to 126 The Beautiful and the Sublime. enjoy, and this, we may assign as its final cause, and true explanation. The animal body is simply the animal soul regarded as visible, tangible, i. e., brought into relation with other souls, and with its physical environment, thus enriching its sphere of enjoyment according to the complexity of its capacities, to which its organs are correlated. There is nothing in the animal from which we may confidently argue its permanence; though the principle of development may forbid us, with absolute confidence, to deny the possibility. As yet, there is no seeming Dichotomy in the animal, other than in the plant, unless we can discover feeling, or enjoyment, i. e., a mode of consciousness, dependent for its existence upon other than its physical structure and environment, and incapable of explanation therefrom. An animal then is a soul, a concrete unit. It is the idea of the species, actualized, however, to a particular idiosyncrasy, through its heredity and its environment. And every species of animal is a distinct idea. There is no possibility of getting rid of the teleological element. The co-ordinating movements are for a special result. Should the idea receive new increments, and advance, or detriments, and retreat, it still correlates the environment, and the modified idea is actualized. We, by virtue of our intelligence, can recognize the idea and its modifications. That we can trace these modifications at all is sufficient, even though we Man as an Animal. 127 cannot trace them perfectly, even though there be rudimentary organs.* The motion, in the case of the individual, has actualized precisely the modified idea and no other. We may study the animal, then, to discover the specific idea, and the same as modified by particular environment, i. e., the individual idea,-its idiosyncratic actualization. To study the animal we must study the history and the habitudes of the race, but chiefly the permanent characteristics of the individual, which are also the permanent characteristics of the race. The animal soul, then, is a true unity. Not only because it is one idea individualized, but because it is one consciousness with its relations. Every animal organism is a true unity, since every, so-called, part is, by virtue of its relation to every other part, and to the idea of the whole. And there are aggregations of organisms, dependent on each other, and which are thus more than aggregations, and hint of a higher and more comprehensive unity. We cannot, let us notice however, say, that any particular organism perfectly realizes its specific idea. Nature never shows the perfect animal, or the perfect plant. And the reason is, that, since no idea is complete in itself, but only in the synthesis of ideas, in the universe, that universe must be harmonized, ere the actualization can show us real perfection. And its harmonization depends upon the self-determination and self-de* See Note B. in Appendix. 128 The Beautiful and the Sublime. velopment of the spiritual souls which inhabit it, and for whom it exists. The animal, as conscious, can enjoy and can suffer, though it be not self-conscious or capable of relating its own sensations so as to constitute thought. We cannot reproduce in ourselves this mode of consciousness, so as to think about it, though we can, and do, doubtless, experience it, for it would be more than this could we recollect it in such a form as to think about it; but all evidence is in favor of the belief that every animal enjoys. The suffering of the lower animals may exist as a minimum, or may not exist at all, but the enjoyment in some feeble degree, we have no grounds for concluding is ever wanting. That the animal remembers and associates shows a development of the idea, for it brings the capacity for new enjoyment and suffering; all which, however, may be explained from its physical environment. And when the animal comes into relation of service with man, with the higher nature, then still newer potentialities appear, and he mounts in our estimation in a manner to startle us sometimes, yet stops always before a chasm which he is unable to pass. CHAPTER III. MAN AS A SPIRITUAL SOUL.-THE TRICHOTOMY.-PERMANENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL SOUL.-ENJOYMENT AS RELATIVE TO SPIRIT. -THE PHYSICAL ORGANISM.-THE SPIRITUAL SOUL AS ABSTRACT.-THE REQUIRED CORRELATIONS. THE human infant is an animal, conscious of suffering or enjoyment, even before arriving at self-consciousness. Who doubts it? Its period of consciousness which is not self-consciousness is brief, and this, perhaps, explains why its instincts or inherited tendencies are less pronounced and less strong than those of the lower animals, because the larger part of the experience of man is one of self-development.* But when this self-conscious* Here is a difficulty for the philosophy of evolution when it strives to interpret moral phenomena;-for, if the moral habitudes of men are inherited tendencies, dominating as they do in most cases all others, they ought to show themselves as instincts in the infant, and not wait for maturity. If they have merely a physical origin, they should not wait for self-consciousness to come, but the infant should show that the far-off calculations of its ancestry with self-preservation, or enjoyment, or survival of the race for their end, have issued in involuntary acts of kindness and benevolence. The individual self-preserving instincts, and the gregarious instincts show themselves in the animal immediately after birth, but we find 130 The Beautiful and the Sublime. ness comes, and a development commences, ruled by ideal ends and aims which it has constructed for itself out of other materiel than exists for the brutes, then we see that man is a unique animal, that his idea is not only specific, but that it differs so widely from all others, displaying such marvellous implications, such higher potentialities, requiring more recondite correlations, that he becomes a complex and difficult object for his own study. Some are content to think him still an animal like the others, and that he fulfills his destiny in his round of activity and experience of suffering and enjoyment in this life; and, seeing that his lot is on the whole a mournful one, regard him as the chief of nature's failures, or a malignant success. And some, as the sole comfort, ask him to be content that his life as an animal has been a failure, since his history has been known, and to gladly sacrifice himself for the problematical benefit of some far-off generation, which shall possess and few such, or such feebly, in the human infant. That it requires other care for its survival than the animal requires, shows that the gregarious instinct has taken a new form, only explicable from the presence of the higher ideas, that its final cause is a realm of voluntary interdependence, something quite other than anything ever actualized in the animal world. We may note, too, that the higher animals detach themselves from their gregarious instincts, when brought into contact with man, and subsist chiefly in their relation to him, as in the case of the dog. Man, too, feels the impulse, when in contact with a higher form of being, to detach himself from his gregarious instincts, and hence we have asceticism, in which self-development slumbers and the full potentialities are not actualized. Man as a Spiritual Soul. 131 enjoy the harmonized instincts. If he can immolate himself on this altar with sublime joy, it deserves a better recompense. But others, seeing that other animals measurably fulfill their seeming destiny, and that their instincts are fitted to their environment, study the human being, to find that his destiny demands a larger scope, and that he has special instincts which require as their objective correlation, something more than the environment of the animal. This animal soul clings to the hope of persistent life. It has aspirations which nothing earthly can satisfy. In it the ability may be developed to construct for itself ideal ends and aims which stretch out into perpetuity. It can live in a realm of thought, which has nothing resembling it that we can discover in the experience of the mere animal. It has new joys and sorrows, and irrepressible longings which are wasted, unless it can elevate itself in the scale of existence. This soul, then, in its ability to commerce with the higher ideas, is a unique soul. It is irradiated by light of another kind. There have flashed into it elements, which make of its experience, ideas more comprehensive than can be found in any lower mode of consciousness. It can regard truth, and goodness, and 'beauty. It can know and exult in its own freedom. It is then a spiritual soul, and we have another seeming Dichotomy of soul and spirit, as well as a seeming Dichotomy of soul and body, or rather a true Trichotomy, that is, a unity, whose 132 The Beautiful and the Sublime. idea is a self-consciousness that requires for its explanation, on the one hand an organism which can feel, and on the other a spirit which can enlighten, and by virtue of which it aspires, —and out of the two construct a third mode of existence, of feeling and knowing, for itself. It is a thinking soul, and the modes of its thinking activity must be studied as well as the structure of its organism, in order to envisage its idea and its destiny. This soul felt before it was self-conscious. It reaches the time when it ceases to think, ceases to be self-conscious, but is still conscious. Its career on earth begins and ends with feeling, seemingly at the last of suffering, perhaps, (who shall say not?) of enjoyment. It goes back to the rudimental mode of consciousness which it had at the first, yet with its idea unrealized, and destiny seemingly unfulfilled, with its development arrested, to all appearance, when it would seem most promising. Does it look like a closed circle? Who shall say that the outlook for future development of the aged sage, is not clearer, and farther-reaching, than the outlook of the youth, and richer in imagined possibilities? And if it is a member of a vaster organism comprising the species, does not its own continuity of being imply the continuity of all other members? Its essential idea it has found to be that it is a self, whose self-development may be infinite, and which shall continue to be itself no matter how its environment may alter. Moreover, Man as a Spiritual Soul. I33 it is not possible for the soul to imagine its own extinction. But this Soul in its highest aspirations and ideal aims never loses the sense of enjoyment, and the longing for enjoyment. It has found delight other than sensitive in the world of ideas. Its psychical organism is, therefore, not one with its physical organism. It could not have such delight did it not organize itself spiritward, as well as towards the material universe. The mere animal cannot enjoy ideas,-has no ideas to enjoy. Truly all feeling other than animal sensation, and enjoyment or suffering,-and which, for distinction's sake, we call emotion,-requires the assumption of other realities, above, below, or within the actualities of matter, body and space. Remove in thought the physical organism, and, if the abstract self-consciousness remain, it can no longer depend on a reiteration of brain impressions. It must possess its fulness, and be a timeless self-consciousness; or rather, exist in pure time, and not at this time or that time. Truly, if it be real, this is an unimaginable elevation or depression in the scale of existence. Though the thinking soul is in time, and conditioned by space, yet its objective thought is in neither, and its objective thought is the sum of its being, what it has made itself. Consciousness shows itself to us as a continuous. It is not identical with itself in any two of its states. Identity could only be predicated of its 134 The Beautiful and the Sublime. totality, when its past and its present should be united in it. If the psychical organism, severed from the physical organism, still subsist, consciousness must be of this sort. And,-as we cannot think the soul as a concrete without character, either as loving or unloving, its character can only thus be known to itself, when past and present are identified. And if enjoyment or its opposite depend upon character, such enjoyment must depend upon the whole historic consciousness of the individual. Its past is thus summed up in a present, and hence affects and determines its emotional existence; and thus we see that we are what we have made ourselves. That such would be an elevation in the scale of being may be questioned. It severs itself from all that we can imagine, as belonging to concrete existence. The physical universe seems to have served its purpose, and might pass away. Its Beauty is gone. Its wondrous concretions have been but foam bubbles that vanish with the subsiding and disappearing sea. If it is not mere shine, if it is anything more than a corruscation that sinks back into night, if its wealth may be preserved, then the Absolute Spirit must still concrete itself in the plastic materiel, and the multifarious life of the soul must still be possible therefrom. A universe will still be required for progressive self-development; and the soul must organize itself afresh to meet its correlation. The soul's seeming descent in its career must be the Man as a Spiritual Soul. 135 preparation for a new advance, must be a state of inward healing, and accurate self-knowledge, preparatory to a new spring in advance and into its new universe. Such a physical organism must relate, then, not the universe as we have it, the impenetrable matter, but its innermost, matter in its fluent state, and subject to the soul's own potence. The human soul is then a unity, linked to the material universe, as correspondent to itself,-linked to the metaphysical universe, because it is also spirit; and, because it can and must carry its feeling, conditioned by character, through all possible phases of its career as a self-conscious,-linked to a transcendant universe, where spirit and matter have their bond and explanation, and which alone is real, since in it alone the innermost of matter and the innermost of spirit have their true synthesis. CHAPTER IV. ASPIRATION,-IMAGINATION ITS MINISTER.-ENJOYMENT A PRIMARY FACT.-THE PHILOSOPHIC AND THE POETIC ATTITUDE.-CLARIFYING EFFECT OF EMOTION. IT has been said that all the native instincts of man are varying forms of one,-the instinct of preservation. Most of them, no doubt, can be so reduced. Some have the preservation of the individual for their end, while others, the benevolent instincts, forms of sympathy, imply the physical unity of the race, and are reduceable to one, that having for its final cause the preservation of the race in its harmony and integrity. The seeming or actual contradiction between the two is annulled by a third element, which is not altogether an instinct because it depends upon the will of the individual, and presupposes an ideal. The recognition of the moral idea as the true law of our being, thus taking the form of rational acquiescence, is accompanied, however, by a special feeling, viz: obligation, which thus has been called a sense. The word is used to express either the judgment, or the feeling. As the latter it may be called an instinct, because spontaneous, and not Aspiration,-Imagination its Minister. 137 under our control. This judgment, or this instinct, then, unifies the selfish and the benevolent instincts, and does justice to both, and man comes to seek his own well-being in the well-being of the race. But there is still another instinct than these, equally'irrepressible, yet, like the last we described, not conceiveable as growing out of purely physical antecedents, and which therefore, may be called a spiritual instinct,-of which too little account has been made in all our psychologies. And that is-the instinct of aspiration. It is the struggle of the soul after higher possibilities, out of the inferior into the superior. When one height is gained, new heights to be surmounted are disclosed. It is the secret of the intense, human discontent,a feeling that we can barely discover in the lower animals,-and comes from the discord between the ideal and the actual. And how vast, and how imperious are its demands! Though the very fibre of our early self-consciousness, it may be drugged, and stagnate, by the opiates which life supplies, yet never be wholly put to sleep. In despair it may turn from the desireable as impossible, and content itself with the attainable, yet it stirs even in the latter, and breaks away, at intervals, into the former. When indulged it clamors for new attainments,-longing gratified begets other longing. Nothing less than the highest will satisfy it. It can only be appeased when the actual and the ideal are reconciled, and become the real, when all is attained and there is nothing 138 The Beautiful and the Sublime. more to be striven for, when no force overcomes or represses it, when truth is reached at its true centre, when blessedness is complete, when pure and perfect spontaneity exists, when it sees as God sees, and thinks as God thinks, and feels as God feels, when its consciousness melts into the Godconsciousness, when it "reigns" with Him, when the Creator and the creature are united. Nothing short of this would be the return of the radiation from the primal sun back into that sun, yet glorifying that source by the perfection of its own self-hood, from which centre, again, it could spring in completed being, and enrich the universe with new creations. That this instinct needs its regulation, may be most true, that this is its crude, and not its pure and final form; but that man has it, is as certain as that he has the instinct of hunger, or love, or fear, and no possible philosophies can annul it in the race, or in the individual, except by cruelly selfimposed violence, which yet is unsuccessful. The pessimistic clouds will be but transitory, the despairing wails will be hushed, the spirit of sacrifice which has taught itself consolation in the dream of a far-off generation living in contented peace, will itself hope that it may find its own peace included in that. This aspiration rules all mental processes. I have shown that the faculty which is its mental correlative is Imagination, the ability to live in an idea sharing more or less of the elements of Aspiration,-Imagination its Minister. 139 the ideal after which the soul aspires, or in the hints and the symbols of it which it finds in nature. And the gratification of the instinct by means of the activity of Imagination is enjoyment, which enjoyment is its stimulus, and the special name of which is the emotion of the Beautiful. To have the perfect life in idea, to dwell upon its symbols, is not merely a recreation, or a delusion, but may be a true step towards its ultimate attainment. It is encouragement and invigoration for the soul in its upward flight. It is nearer to the centre of truth when it detects the harmony of the universe in its two aspects, and being nearer to the truth, it is nearer to the blessedness it anticipates. When we ask, " What is enjoyment?" the reply is,-it is conscious life, life not infringed, or intruded upon.-It is, that we feel,-of which we can think as clearly as we can think of thought. Words are nothing here, I know, but a fact as primal as that I think is, that I enjoy. As good a starting point for philosophy as the Cartesian "Cogito, ergo sum," is that, I 'enjoy, therefore I am'; though both are tautological, and the true formula is-' I am, enjoying, thinking.'-A priori, from this nothing can come, until we avail ourselves of the a posteriori processes, and I find among them that I enjoyed before I thought. I must assume the concrete with the relations it implies, and I can build no true conclusion upon myself with any element abstracted. On the two sides of either predicate lie the two worlds, which converge and 140 The Beautiful and the Sublime. meet in me. It is the true philosophic method, not to evolve the universe mechanically or logically from any self-constructed assumption or premise, but, assuming the concrete self with its correlations, to weave the whole into a web that shall be selfconsistent and harmonious, and to trace the dialectic of thought which underlies the processes of nature. Once again, let me repeat myself, and gather what I have scattered. Enjoyment is then, an ultimate,-a primary fact which cannot be analzyed into anything simpler. In the lower animals it seems to be diffused over the whole structure. In the higher animal the nervous system conducts all impressions to a centre which unifies them. Life is in them centralized sensibility. But in either case enjoyment is the manifestation of the idea of the animal, and that which elevates it above the plant. It is a wonder, indeed, that matter, in a conservative system, can so stir, so feed and waste, so receive and give, as to bring about this surprising result. There is no hint or prophecy of it in the lower forms. It is the final cause of the animal, a stupendous movement upward in the scale of being. It acquires, (at least, so it appears to us,) intensity and richness as the species rise in dignity, and are more complex in their idea. But everywhere, from the lowest to the highest form, sensitive enjoyment is conditioned by the environment. New organs, and higher organs bring new and higher impres Aspiration,-Imagination its Minister. 141 sions, yet the animal moves in a circle, and cannot lift itself beyond it, nor can more than slightly expand it. Rays from the larger including circumference of human life and experience penetrate it, and produce strange phenomena, and we can almost discover in some animals a yearning after something higher, thus establishing a finer link of connection with ourselves than the merely physical one; but it seems still iron-bound in its little range of possibilities, and cannot develop itself beyond. There is no evidence that it lives in the realm of ideas; and, as yet, no token is trustworthy, or even apparent, that the animal soul as such can survive the article of death, though as yet it cannot be said that it is absolutely excluded. It is hard to feel that the favored brute has vanished forever. It can be remembered, we know, and it may be, that, when potence is ours, it may be re-created; but as what made it dear was its relation to us, if it can be restored, it can only live again in its relation to us. The enjoyment of the human being, too, is conditioned by its environment, but that sweeps in a vaster circle, through other realms, and enjoyment acquires intensity and variety. In all above that of the merely animal, new characteristics can be detected which react upon that, modifying even sensual gratifications, making them more exquisitely delightful or painful. But in all such higher enjoyment the function of Imagination is clearly traceable, the ability of the soul to live in 142 The Beautiful and the Sublime. the idea. The secret of this is the soul's freedom. It is no longer a conscious enjoyment merely, but a conscious activity. Its essence is self-determination, (words often used, yet to a full apprehension of whose meaning I am striving to lead), freedom to go beyond the sensuous impression, and seize the hidden unity, freedom to be everywhere, in every implication of the idea, to make over the complex manifestations of the process. The soul as free is conscious motion. Could it carry potence with it, it could and would create what it now contemplates. It is still,-life, and as life, motion. The soul can only think force as motion. In imagining force it truly moves. Motion is life and only life, and the soul lives in space and moves in space. But the hard impenetrable matter arrests it, disturbs it, brings the sense of contradiction. Yet even in that seemingly dull matter it can move, and live, and find correspondence to itself. Motion in space, the intangible element, is that in the physical world, to which it feels itself most akin. Any thing that suggests motion deepens and stimulates the consciousness of its own freedom. And when it masters all circumscribed ideas, it urges itself beyond, clamors after new revelations of possibilities, will be content with nothing short of the highest; feels sometimes that there is no likelihood or possibility of its activity expiring in fruition, but that it may live in the infinite; not that its moral perfection may not be reached, but that Absolute Perfection, be Aspiration,-Imagination its Minister. 143 longs only to the Infinite, and that towards this with all its omniscience, it will cleave its way through all the eternities. Does all this seem rhapsodical? This outcome of human aspiration is as much a fact to be acknowledged and accounted for, as the outcome of the instinct of self-preservation, rather it is the ultimate form of self-preservation itself. The soul will consent and desire to preserve itself only as included in a larger self to the measure of which it would become commensurate. It is a sober fact with which philosophy has to deal. To explain it away into a harmless or harmful delusion is to take away all meaning. It would be a rudimentary organ which has no use. But rudimentary organs when they first appeared, hinted of possibilities which were afterwards actualized, showing the upward tendency.* And this rudimentary organ is the one which marks the creature, man; and the power of finding the Beautiful, is proof that its possessor has a higher destiny, that nature has not failed at her latest effort; that this creature need not sadly sink back into Nirvana, or selfextinction, but may move forward into a Nirvana, or a self-extinction, which will be but the finding of a larger self. The philosophic mind is justified here in calling the poetic mind to her aid. The dialectic, coordinating faculty may transmute itself into one * See Note B. in Appendix. 144 The Beautiful and the Sublime. piercing after a deeper insight, may nerve and warm itself for this telescopic, microscopic vision, and seize a new fact, or find a new relation, that will necessitate a new arrangement, and a new unity. Then, sinking back into her own calm attitude, the philosophic mind may flash around the whole circle of relations, and be cheered afresh at her effort to resolve the apparently incongruous into a harmony. The very fact that the poetic attitude is accompanied by an emotion suigeneris, but yet an emotion, and which is the chief element of its consciousness, indicates that emotion is a conditio sine qud non for the highest attainment of truth, that it clarifies while seeming to confuse, that without it mental activity knows not its own capacity and strength. It -" adds a precious seeing to the eye." Nothing but emotion reaches the totality of the human being. Pure thought casts a large part of him into abeyance, and he loses almost the consciousness of his body. Sensation too prolonged, or too intense drags him into his animal being, and drugs him for his life of thought. In the higher emotions only both respond, and he is conscious of his spiritual dignity and power, yet likewise of the physical tremors,-that he is rooted in the earth, as well as breathing in the skies.* * " A patient, having facial paralysis, and unable to move one side of his face voluntarily, can, under the influence of emotion move both sides as well." Prof. Ferrier, King's College, London. Aspiration,-Imagination its Minister. 145 The conclusion is, that the imaginative soul, living in the types of the Beautiful in physical freedom, represents the real being of man as truly as when the thinking soul winds its way among the abstractions of pure thought. CHAPTER V. CORRESPONDENCE. -BEAUTY OBJECTIVE AND REAL. - NATURE AS PROGRESSIVE. - FORECASTINGS. IT has been seen that the activity of Imagination, in which consists the emotion of the Beautiful, is an attempt to overcome a contradiction between the actual and the ideal, between the material and the spiritual, to annul the limitations of physical existence, and live for a time, and imperfectly, in a realm wherein they are removed; but that the soul is obliged by those same limitations to sink back into the realm of the actual. There is then an ideal correspondence between nature and the soul, which hints of a possible real correspondence. No new gift, the soul feels, would be needed to make real this correspondence, but only the removal of a restraint. The soul is fettered by its organism, and can only live transiently and imperfectly in the vaster organism of nature. The necessities of the body, the possible pain which comes from neglect, require it for self-protection to sink back into the smaller life, and be in bondage. Imagination cannot carry the full soul with all its capacities, in its flights. We can neither Correspondence,-Beauty Objective and Real. 147 see the magnificent outbursts of the sun, nor hear its tremendous uproar. We can only live in the imperfect idea which is derived from the scanty materiel that observation has supplied. But the coalescence with the soul of the universe has been no less true and real though incomplete. And Beauty is that objective thing, the free soul of the universe, whose recognition, from correspondence with itself, by the individual soul makes the emotion of the Beautiful. Beauty then is real. It is the display by the soul of the universe of the possible modes of soullife, the infinite play of the Divine consciousness, the efflorescence in manifold ideas of the Divine Word. The universe is the wealth, the exhaustless outcome of the Divine Creative Imagination, the glorious incense cloud, which rolls forever in free and endless change from God himself;-and the concrete souls which sparkle in it may each reflect that glory in its totality, and do reflect it, much or little, according to their self-development, and their fitness to reproduce in themselves the outer harmonies. The instinct of aspiration is the movement of the soul towards this fuller coalescence and correspondence,-that which cannot be satisfied till it overcomes all physical restraints, and finds nature fluent and subservient, and no longer the crystallized thing it seems to meet with in its struggle. I have said that the problem,-how it has come 148 The Beautiful and the Sublime. to pass, and why it is that nature is thus restraining,-and how it may come to pass that this restraint may be removed, and perfect correspondence ensue,-is one that I cannot treat of in this connection; and I acknowledge that here is an hiatus, which I hope one day to fill; but now I stop at the outcome of such an enquiry,-that Beauty cannot be fully possessed till this contradiction be removed. Should the instinct of aspiration ever meet its correlative gratification, we must and shall find nature so changed to our perfected apprehension, as to be no longer what it seems now, but obedient and fluent, and that the perfected soul will possess the power which the soul of the universe now possesses, to effloresce into beautiful forms. I do not think that anything that Science has achieved, or will achieve, can contradict this expectation, which arises when we come to study man and the universe, and forecast the possible developments. Science seems to show that the physical universe was once fluent and formless, and the simplest outcome of the Divine glory, and that its development by incessant motion into form proceeded by such steps and stages that we can follow them with our intellects, trace its history, and find the incessant multiplication of the Divine ideas. And it is amazing that with such a wondrous past behind us we should incline to stagnate in the present, and not confidently anticipate future developments, and the display of new ideas. Correspondence,-Beauty Objective and Real. 149 Even though no law of the past be infringed, yet with the incoming of new ideas there must be new modes of actualization, whose methods will be recognized as laws, when sufficiently observed. That the human mind can follow nature's movement thus far so successsfully is warrant for it to study carefully the indications of future development. Surely the appearance of vitality on our globe was followed by new modes of motion, by a victory over mechanical forces, and gravitation found its sometime master; and if mere vitality and enjoyment be not the last reach of possibility, and there are indications in the human being of an higher idea, higher aims, and a higher destiny than are betokened by the mere animal;-then surely, we should look for, as the ground of such higher possibilities, that in man which distinguishes him from the brutes, to the moral element, to his capacity to realize freely the law of love, and constitute a commonwealth of voluntary interdependance; and should that result be reached by the human race, it would be only in accordance with past analogies, to expect the setting free of a new force, which should rule the vital force and all beneath it, as that has ruled all that went before. And the requirement of loving souls,-to be free, and to have effort and sacrifice disappear,will be just this domination over nature, which the emotion of the Beautiful has suggested to us, and led us to hope for. Nature then will be fluent for a commonwealth T50 The Beautiful and the Sublime. of perfected souls. The primal flexibility from which our present nature has issued, is only an analogue, and will not be identical with her ultimate fluency. We cannot know the latter till our faculties are correspondent, till the change percurs in ourselves, but we may illustrate the latter, perhaps, by the former, and help Imagination in her forecasting effort. And if nature become thus fluent, and display the Divine glory in its ulterior manifestations, she will furnish materiel wherewith the soul may create, as God now creates, so that no lovely thought need ever be lost, but be perpetuated, and that new combinations may ensue, which shall enrich, without deranging, the structural harmony and the essential bond. In the improved science of the generations yet far-off, it may be that there will be given hints, how the universe, without annulling any law of the past, may move forward a step towards this her ideal state, not perhaps without cataclysms, and apparent retrogressions, and a seeming deadness here and there. The death which reigns in the moon may no more be permanent than can be the tumultous life of the sun. Already astronomy shows us force at work in her hot and frozen surface and disintegration commencing. Nor can this be any return to any former condition. We are entirely without evidence that nature moves in cycles. Hers is an ever onward march, her recoils are for a new advance. But the physical universe will still seem to be what it is, and give no proof, Correspondence,-Beauty Objective and Real. I 5 I though it may give a hint, of any new law which is bringing about its recuperation, as long as men remain what they are. Sleep and seeming death veil the re-creative processes of the chrysalis. The physical universe in its convulsions simply images the discords and conflicts in the moral world. Could it come to pass that by moral achievements, bringing in their train improved and harmonized instincts, the race should realize its moral possibilities, then might nature wear a different appearance, and be likewise correspondent. And then as now what the world seem to be, she would be; just as actual as she now is in her rigidity would she then be in her fluency. I know that all this is neither science nor philosophy, but an effort of the forecasting Imagination. But without some kind of effort of Imagination, science can move forward no step, nor attain any important result; and without the forecasting Imagination, philosophy cannot weave the totality of relations into a web, which will give us the perfect picture, even though it may give the essential outlines. And there are other vindications of the position I have taken, not permitted me by the limitations I have assumed in the present treatise. CHAPTER VI. PERFECTION AS THE SYNTHESIS OF THE MORAL, INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL.-BEAUTY THE PLAY OF THE DIVINE MIND.-GOD MORE THAN THE UNIVERSE IMPLIED IN THE DEFINITION OF SPIRIT.-THE LAST SECRET OF BEAUTY. WE have seen that the chief element in the emotion of the physically beautiful is freedom, i. e. motion emancipated from constraint, and resisting all interference with the subjective ideals. And we have seen that the characteristic element in the emotion of the morally beautiful, is recognition of free obedience to law, and submission to an ideal formed for the subject, or discovered by the subject, but which it has made its own; while intellectual beauty may share either or both characteristics. The idea of the moral, intellectual, and physical in synthesis we may call-Perfection. This requires that each one of the three elements shall accurately correspond to the other two, and no contradiction be possible. The physical world must retain no secrets from thought, and present no resistance to the will; the moral requirement must present no restraints to the activity of mind, no Perfection as the Synthesis of the Mora. 153 repression of any physical impulse. The intellectual processes must never mislead physical or moral activity, must conduct into no contradictions; pure and perfect spontaneity must exist. Anything short of such entire correspondence as this, falls short of that perfection which we can conceive, and which we aspire after. And it is not necessary to think this as other than a still developing process. Thus it is seen that physical, intellectual, and moral beauty are aspects of the same perfected idea. Now the idea fall short of actualization, and pain, and error, and sin exist, and the Beautiful often becomes the Sublime. To make this idea actual or to accomplish a normal development, subject to no arrest or intrusion, the impetus must come from the central and mediating element of the idea. It cannot spring from the physical in ourselves, as we have it now. It is turbulent and capricious. It cannot spring from the intellectual in us. That, by monopolizing activity can measurably repress, but cannot regulate and symmetrize the physical, and it cannot set itself free from its own limitations. It must have its birth then in the moral, in that in us which relates itself to other spirits, and to the Supreme Spirit, and the ideal which it furnishes be filled out;-for that ideal not only does not disregard and annul the physical and the intellectual elements, but requires that justice be done to both. Its final cause is a world where contradiction and effort will be no longer. It really covers the 154 The Beautiful and the Sublime. ground of the others, and demands that intellectual and physical perfection shall come in the train of its own perfection; and thus the absolute and completed idea alone can have reality and permanence, and persist, in its characteristic of spontaneity. Thus the moral ideal, in its ultimate content requires that the physical universe, in its materiel, and in its possibilities of motion shall be at its service, if this correspondence is to ensue. That it demonstrates this issue formally for the moral subject is not asserted. The moral endeavor and aspiration needs, to sustain itself and escape the painful contradiction, the faith that the powers of the universe are at the service of the Divine love. But faith is implicit knowledge, or instinctive knowing. This faith may have special nutriment, but Beauty also is its true food, for that is a perpetual suggestion that Perfection does exist, and that the contradictions may be annulled. The universe is so framed as to correspond to this longing after perfection, as to hint that man's conscious life, and social life, and earthly surroundings are adjusted to each other, may change each as the other, and be resolved at length into a harmony. Beauty is not, then, the name of the subjective emotion, but has objectivity,-has it in the movement of the soul itself,-has it in the flow of the physical universe,-has it in the crystalizing symmetry of the realm of thought. It is the form which the soul of the universe takes for the human Perfection as the Synthesis of the Moral. I55 soul, and the human soul finds its entire self and the intent of its being, only in that larger soul. Beauty then as symbolic, is more than a resemblance pertaining to two planes entirely distinct. It is more than resemblance between disparates. It is felt only in the coalescence of two activities, similar in kind, and when there is a relation of reciprocity. Beauty is thus a proof that we live in the Eternal,In God we live, and move, and have our being." The informing soul of the universe, which actualizes itself as motion, is both perfect law, and pure spontaneity, and unlimited wealth. It so moves for every result, that when we follow it, we make recognition, and some element of Beauty is seen, and the emotion felt, its freedom, or its ideality, or its rich and unbounded content. Beauty then is more than the consecution of thought, or the work of forces. It is the play of force, evincing freedom, and the play of thought, evincing infinity of resources. As the human soul has its nature, so the soul of the universe has its nature. But as its nature does not measure the possibilities of the spiritual soul, nor explain its implications; so its nature does not measure the possibilities of the soul of the universe, nor explain its implications. The actual, spatial universe is not infinite, or it would be a plenum, and could have no development, no progress, no history. It is a process, and does not therefore exhaust the creative possibilities. Moreover, as not the absolutely perfect, it is not a suffic I56 The Beautiful and the Sublime. ient object for the Divine love. For either reason, God is more than the actual universe, or the soul of it, even regarded in its true dialectic, otherwise His freedom is disguised necessity, and falls below our conception of the Highest. Did the universe comprise God, the soul would terminate its process, reach the utmost of its development, and would cease to be. In the Divine Being must be possibilities of outcome far transcending the actual, or the universe, including man, must run back into its primal state, and vanish, or repeat its meaningless cycle. No universe can ever exhaust the Divine ideas. That no actuality can ever measure the possibilities of spirit is implied in the very defition of spirit. A true dialectic, here, is at one with Christian Theology. The last secret of Beauty, then, is to be found in the Divine Being, of whom man is the image. There is a transcendant correspondence and harmony there;-act,-and thought,-and love, which is the name of their eternal relation, have their sum of ideal content, their eternal robe, their glory, out of which by free expression the actual universe has been unfolded, and which the developing universe,.reaching a new stage in its career in a commonwealth of harmonized and perfected souls, may enrich as it flows back to its source; as when streams flow into a fountain already full, and which can be no fuller, yet enliven it with new music and beauty. Jesus says, "I have glorified Thee on the earth," yet says,-" I am glorified in them." CHAPTER VII. DREAMING. -THE DREAM-WORLD. - THE RECOVERED WORLD. No doubt, if our dream-consciousness could be fully recalled, it would shed much light upon the questions we have been considering, especially upon that mode of soul-activity which I have called Imagination; and scanty as the materiel is, it is worthy of careful study. In dreaming the whole mental action seems to be quickened to a degree quite inconceivable in our ordinary wakeful life. An experience in the latter somewhat similar, is that related by persons who have been upon the point of death by drowning, who tell us that the whole past life, or much of it, seemed then to have been summed up in their immediate consciousness. If such experiences could be established as authentic, they would illustrate what I have said in a previous chapter, that the identity of human consciousness is in its totality, which thus may be figured as existing in an immediate present, or only inwardly determined. It may be that this particular experience may yet be more carefully examined. And sometimes in our mental processes, we are 158 The Beautiful and the Sublime. conscious of an astonishing activity, quite other than the ordinary one. This may result from the fascination of a new thought, or the acquisition ot a new fact, in which case an emotion of unusual strength is aroused. And always, under very strong emotion, mental movements are stimulated, and, in the direction required by the emotion. These facts show, as I have said, that the soul has its fullest possible life only under the conditions of emotion, and the necessity that that should be purified and strengthened, if the mind is to receive its utmost development, and possess its normal power. But the mental activity in dreaming is far more astonishing. Narratives are abundant of dreamers who have, in a brief moment while asleep, run through long series of events, taking much time to describe. It is alleged that Coleridge composed his " Kubla Khan " while asleep, afterwards revising it. I do not know how authentic is this anecdote, and do not propose to draw any conclusion from it, except from such resemblance as I can recognize in my own experience, which I may be pardoned for relating, inasmuch as one can best study the phenomena of dreams in himself. I have frequently composed in dreams, and sometimes, on awakening, have been able to retain a few of the last sentences. They were invariably grammatical, and, if in verse, the metre was always correct, but there was no logical consecution of thought, and the whole result was meaningless. Dreaming.-The Dream-World. 159 But the particular phrases were accurately descriptive of the mental picture which always accompanied the composition. Every object described was seen in the dream, every emotion implied was felt. Yet sometimes, in dreams, I have made nice distinctions in the meaning of words, which I could remember; and sometimes, as others too have testified, have run over the steps of an argument, in a movement similar to the ordinary thinking process, and have remembered the result, the conclusion reached, but not in words, but as a thought, which, on awakening, I would have to translate into words. Such an experience, if truly described, is one argument, among others, for the position that we do not, as some allege, always think in words; that language, as symbolic, is needful to fix thought, and sustain it, to stimulate and suggest it, to give it form for memory as it awakens in the rudimental feeling, and consciousness develops, but is not essential to its being, or that the soul can find other symbols for it; and that a mode of existence is possible, if not readily conceivable, wherein thought can be, and be communicated, without language, where ideas and their relations can be apprehended by an immediately created symbolism, or without symbols at all. This would enable a perfect dialectic. And sometimes in sleep I have made pictures,* pictures full of objects, and that would pass before me in a swiftly moving panorama; but which made no impression on the memory that could be re I6o The Beautiful and the Sublime. called, except that sometimes I have arrested the last one, and fixed its constituent parts, and been able imperfectly to describe it. This is something I confess I am unable to do in my waking moments, to compose a picture, except by toilsome efforts, yet in sleep such a one must have been composed in an inconceivably brief space of time, which it would take me some minutes to describe, even in what of it I could remember. I do not see how such phenomena as I have alluded to can ever be brought under physiological examination, and the brain conditions be determined. To know anything about such experience, we must depend upon our obscure knowledge of the psychical conditions only, or upon conjecture to be verified by its analogy with wakeful experience. It is generally said that in dreams the will is at rest, and that images flow spontaneously, and by physiological connection showing itself in mental association, through the consciousness. But the assertion that will is absent, I am convinced, is founded on an imperfect analysis of the admitted facts. If an argumentative process can be carried on in sleep, a purpose is implied. We recall not only the terms, or the thoughts of the process, (which perhaps we had attempted while awake), but the intent of the same. There is a projection of the mind into the future, or the possible of thought, and for this attention or will is required. And when the materiel of memory is wrought up Dreaming.- The Dream- World. I6i by fancy into new combinations, and Imagination infuses itself into them as completely as it does, more completely than in wakeful experience, the very contemplation of the same, and detection of the relation of parts, implies an arrest by the soul for which attention or will is required. And surely if a picture can be composed in sleep, a formative power is needed, no different in kind than the artist is conscious of when awake. The unity here shown is the mind's own contribution to the scattered images of memory, and again indicates an intent in making the combination. Here then, is pure soul-activity, or will, only dealing with purer materiel than makes up our mixed consciousness when we are awake. I find it impossible, by the most abstracted and prolonged effort, when awake, to recall colors, or mentally compose a bouquet of flowers, yet I have done the latter in dreams, and had a vivid impression of color, which lingered and could be described after I had awakened. Surely in arranging symmetrically these brilliant memories of color, attention or will has been required. What has given rise to the opinion that the will is inactive in dreams is probably this. All the mental faculties, especially fancy and imagination, the formative powers, show themselves in their normal strength only when attention is not diverted to the actual world. In our wakeful experience we are almost completely enmeshed in the actual, and need nearly all our attention to maintain our rela I62 The Beautiful and the Sublime. tions to our surroundings, to our fellow men, or to guard our physical integrity against the hostile forces of nature. After periods of marked abstraction, when we come back to actuality, there is the same difficulty in recalling the sum of mental movements which have intervened. But in sleep, when the chains which tie us to the actual world are more completely broken, we are left alone in the ideal world. The soul is possessed of all her power still, but she lives upon her past experience, and her ability to make more of it, without being troubled by new suggestions, or by more than a minimum of new suggestions from sensation, which compels perception, and draws the soul in its train to assimilate this constantly recurring new materiel of experience. Remembered dreams occur in imperfect sleep, and there is a difference of opinion as to whether there is any dreaming in sleep that is sound and untroubled. The arguments pro and con can be found elsewhere, and I only adduce the probabilities arising from my own train of thought. I know of no physiological reason against concluding that the mind is active in sound sleep. We are capable then of involuntary or reflex action, we know; the brain is not motionless, and therefore there may be an unremembered flow of images through the animal consciousness. No fact, indeed, evincing self-consciousness, and assuring us of will, or of formative power, in sound sleep, is at hand, or likely to be reached. But,-in imperfect Dreaming.- The Dream- World. I63 sleep, mental activity, as we have seen, is quickened, and seemingly just in the degree that the actual world is abstracted, and no longer requires attention. We are aware of a passing away of the actual, and of a recovery of the ideal experience, and of the quickening of the flow of images, as we sink into sleep,-just as we are aware of the reverse process as we gradually awaken. In either case there is a consciousness of rest and relief, in the former growing more complete, in the latter becoming gradually more and more troubled. The actual world, still dimly present, we are glad is not more prominent. We rejoice at its departure, or reluctantly subside back into its imperious claims. Even the absurd and the trivial, which flow, by physiological connection only, through the consciousness, content us for a while; but even this is itself interrupted by occasional arrests, which indicate self-consciousness still, and will, consenting to be inactive, or yielding now and then to the playimpulse. And in the intelligent contemplation of this spontaneous flow, and recognition of its sometime meaning, self is implied, and that too not without feeling,-gladness at its release, or dread of the coming bondage. If then, as the actual recedes, soul-activity is quickened, there must be a point, when sound sleep is reached, when such activity is suddenly stopped, or else becomes more entirely free; and the probability seems greater of the latter than of the former. The point to be determined is, whether the attention, in that case, i64 The Beautiful and the Sublime. being withdrawn utterly from the actual, can still concentrate itself upon the ideal, or whether it is helpless before the spontaneous flow. I see no a priori probability that the latter opinion must be true, while, it must be confessed there is not much a posteriori evidence of the former. But let us regard closely what little there is. It is, I presume no uncommon experience, that,-in that transition period of consciousness just before perfect awakening, which ensures the memory of a dream,-or when the process of falling into slumber is arrested by an interjectional moment of wakeful consciousness,-there often starts into the field of vision some object, the like of which has never been seen in all our remembered, or even possible experience;-a human figure, for instance, in strange and grotesque costume, in which colors and forms are put together that have never been seen together, and with, it may be, some remarkable expression or attitude. How has such a thing become possible? Either there is a voluntary, yet instantaneous combination of the lines and colors, occurring in a space of time infinitesmally small, and which consciousness cannot follow;-or, the combining power is not our own, and the spontaneity of the presentation is ruled by an alien intelligence, (for the result is too marked in its unity, and contains too many elements to be the result of chance); or else, it is the recalled image of that which has been composed in deep sleep, the memory of some Dreamiug.- The Dream- World. i65 thing of the riotous play of Imagination which may then have occurred;-in which case we might infer that that experience can only blossom up from its depths when the attention required by our ordinary wakeful life is utterly arrested. And when there starts into the field of vision, a sentence, in written or in printed character, having grammatical unity, yet fantastic meaning, which appears as a whole suddenly, yet the constituent parts of which we mentally contemplate and remember, should the interjectional wakeful consciousness be sufficiently pronounced;-this too is a virtual image, implying foregone activity of some kind, and must have the same explanation as the other. The choice, I think, is between the first and the last solutions;-though some thinkers, in our day, seemed inclined to adopt a theory somewhat resembling the second. It seems more likely, however, that the combining intelligence which produces such fantastic results, is our own. According to the first solution, the time element may be utterly eliminated from the dreamconsciousness, and we have simply an inconceivably rapid mode of the same activity which seems so laborious and slow in our wakeful experience. According to the last solution, the soul, in deep sleep, is in perfect play, and has its own registration or memory, which the more superficial and working experience ordinarily seems entirely to obliterate, but which, thus, can bubble up from its depths still. i66 The Beautiful and the Sublime. In any case there is a world of experience which ordinary observation is too coarse to anatomize, and which alone should present too confident negative dogmatism as to the possibilities of soul life; which may come within the proper range of science, and which philosophy cannot afford to disregard. The experience of those under the influence of opium or hasheesh does not seem to differ in kind from that of ordinary dreaming. Each drug has its own particular influence upon the brain, producing a peculiar flow of images. Association is determined more entirely by the abnormal physiological condition, and the dreams take on new and wondrous forms. The will is crowded into helplessness to arrest the torrent, but not into non-existence, for it still regards and delights in the magnificent visions, and even exerts a combining power over the rushing materiel.* Nor do the facts of mania, so far as I am aware, given us any law affecting adversely the above conclusions. Here the fantastic flow, (which may originate in one part of the brain), mingles with the perceptions of the sane experience, alternating with it, or overwhelming it more or less entirely, * If De Quincy's dream experience is authentic, it indicates such combining power; but since he relates it not for the purpose of studying the law of the same, but to give himself opportunity to indulge in his marvellous descriptive ability, the record of his opium dreams can hardly be looked upon as an unbiassed narrative, and we cannot use it in confidence, to draw conclusions from it. Dreaming.- The Dream- World. I67 and presenting a hybrid, or utterly unreal world. Even here, will, though at the mercy of the existing content of consciousness, is not destroyed, but makes the most of its delusive experience, and deals with it sometimes with marvellous ingenuity. The soul, even here, has its adytum still, and in sane periods, knows how to estimate rightly the relativity of the insane experience, and to regard it as no part of its own self-development. Its character is not influenced by it, as it is not by anything in which it is not self-active. Not that the soul has any life apart from the physical experience, but its function is to unify the latter, and make of it its own world, even though it be temporarily crippled or interrupted in the task. It recovers, and lapses on to its real life, with the cure or the removal of the diseased physical organism. I doubt whether the study of their own abnormal experience by those recovered from insanity, can ever be as conclusive as that afforded by the study of our dreams, since the healthy brain is more to be trusted, than the brain diseased. In dreams that we can remember, there seems to have been a minimum of time required. This time-consciousness, then, may depend upon the fact that the sleep is imperfect, and the actual world not entirely withdrawn, since some sense is still on the alert. But if the mental activity continue when every sense is lulled, if that be possible, then it may be that the time-conditions are removed, and we have again a mode of being such as i68 The Beautiful and the Szublime. I have spoken of as likely to be when the psychical organism is released from our present physical organism with its multifarious actual relations. Thus then we can conjecture what may be the wondrous soul-activity, or the mode of its consciousness, under another set of relations, and when it can live in its own world, the world it has made for itself in the entire experience of its past career. This world, which then we may transiently possess in dreams, and in this unsatisfactory remembrance, may then furnish some hints rightly to conceive that world into which we may sink in our final sleep. That may be more than the totality of past images, and past insights summed up in synthesis. Its idea is that of the soul's subsidence into itself, recuperation, psychical re-organization. The soul has demands still for perfect being, and to resume its history and development, to re-attach itself to the physical universe, which must be found correspondent to whatever new condition it may reach. It has receded towards the centre, come to the knowledge of itself, symmetrized itself, in order to spring forward again, and find itself in a recovered universe, expanding before it, and revealing new relations, in which too its own physical organism will be recovered and glorified to begin a new career of expansion and enrichment. In that ideal world,-judging it by the gleams we have,-the materiel for Beauty must still exist. All of it in the past will then be present, to be woven into new forms at will. The artist now Dreaming.- Tze Dream- World. I69 must become, then, an artist under finer conditions, and have resources under his control of which he can only imperfectly avail himself now. Now, the artistic power slumbers for most of us, but then it will be set free, for the ideal world will be common property, and no longer require the intervening machinery now needful to possess it. And if Imagination can then find its requirements for Beauty, yet only as an ideal presentation, how much more, when the soul, organized afresh as member of a new order, and with a regenerated world, awakens to its recovered yet transfigured relations with the spiritual points of light which sparkle in the glorified universe, will it find that universe no longer repressing, but, with its acquired potence, be able to effloresce into beautiful form which shall express its own individuality; and to fix, and not lose, as it now does, its own creations; to reproduce them, not by a laborious process, but at will, and with unrestrained freedom. If we transport ourselves back to the remote periods in the past which science has uncovered for our inspection, how wonderful has been the subsequent story,-nay, but for human sin and sorrow, how inspiriting; and, is the future development likely to be any less wonderful than the past? Beauty has come, in creeping waves, and irradiated the universe with its flashing spray, and enlivened it with its sweet motions, though sometimes swept aside by the sublime thunderblasts, but only, when the storm has cleared up, to be fairer still. 170 The Beautiful and the Sublime. Let us hope that after the last tempest, there will be a final clearing, when Beauty will break " like fire" from the prolific earth, and flash in perpetual auroras, from the skies.. CHAPTER VIII. THE ETHIC OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY,-HOW AFFECTING THE QUESTION OF BEAUTY. EMPIRICISM, in its current form, or " The New Philosophy," as it is called, does not encourage the passion for Beauty, nor is it able to explain it, if the emotion, as it occurs in our consciousness, has been accurately described. It can make of the Beautiful only a higher form of the agreeable, and the suggestions which accompany the emotion, and the hopes which it engenders, it must regard as delusions. Its aesthetic culture should teach that the emotion of the Beautiful, as we have it, is visionary, and to be repressed; unless it belong to the improved earthly state, which this Philosophy anticipates, to be cheered still by delusions, whether aesthetic or religious, and to take delight in these arbitrary fancies, as we take delight in the absurd and the trivial in our dreams, things to be amused with, or to wonder at. If the emotion of the Beautiful be the captivation of Imagination by an ideal perfection, past experience alone cannot account for the materiel which it works up into its wondrous fabrics. It supplies not the forms in which Imagination lives, gives no illustration of physical freedom, keeps us within 172 The Beautiful and the Sublime. the sphere of actuality, and shuts out any sphere of possibility. The hypotheses, which even physical science avails itself of when it creates a law under which it finds afterwards its facts may be ranged; and the theories which tentatively divine the harmonies of the universe, transcend the sum of past experiences. It is the task of Imagination thus to uncover its own mental implications, and it will not rest till it has uncovered them all. We can only read the past fully by forecasting the future; and this even the new Philosophy essays to do, in spite of its principles. It needs to push its forecasting farther into that future, for no such vision of the time to come, as from its present analysis it holds out as probable or desirable for the human race, can give adequate meaning to the past. Surely that distant generation, with its purified and harmonized instincts, if it could come to exist, would be troubled still by a sense of contradiction, and of an overhanging mystery, that would be keener still than ours, and poison all its peace, unless its mental development should be arrested, or run backward. The emotion of the Beautiful yields not its secret to any such coarse anatomization as this Empiricism accomplishes, and while it remains an ineradicable instinct of humanity, it will itself confute any philosophy which derides it or denies it. This philosophy hangs a dead weight upon the soul's aspiring wings, and suffers us not even to regard its flights as harmless pastimes, but drags it to the earth in heart-sickness and despair. The Ethic of the New Philosophay. 173 As the emotion, in any analysis, is powerfully ruled by ethical conditions, which determine its highest form, so it may be seen that the ethic of the New Philosophy must dominate it to its degradation, or its destruction. And to show its influence in this respect, obliges me briefly to characterize and to criticize the new ethic. Its outlook, for many who adopt it, is confessedly pessimistic; and for others, it is still pessimistic in its avowed and seeming optimism. It appeals pleadingly to our prudence. There is no escape from the consequences of sin. Retribution is inevitable. My sin is sure to return upon myself or upon others, or upon the immediately following, or the far-off generations. Nature is inexorable. Therefore, since the race is bound together, for the sake of that far-off generation, let us rectify our instincts a little, let us cultivate the spirit of sacrifice, and transmit such a tendency to make sacrifices to the succeeding generations. There is no other repair than this for the "sin" (or the misfortune?) of the past. It is curious logic which tells us that our instincts alone determine our activity, yet calls upon our activity to rectify our instincts.* In calling * A very able and plausible endeavor to annul this contradiction, which common sense easily arrives at, is to be found in an article on "Determinism and Duty," by Miss L. S. Bevington, in the No. of Mind for January, I88o. While admitting as valid the testimony of consciousness that " will " is an efficient in human activity, her polemic is against the notion of that will's freedom, seeing that it is dependent upon antecedent conditions which 174 The Beautiful and the Sublime. upon us to make sacrifices, the results of which are so remote, it is implied that the consequences of sin may be somewhere annulled. Though events are bound together by mechanical nexus only, yet the recuperative power exists, but can only show the desired result in the distant history of the machine. Voluntary sacrifice is, then, one link in this mechanical nexus. But, evidently, this voluntary sacrifice is ruled by an ideal, nowhere or not yet actualized, but which the New Philosophy nature supplies, and for its sphere of activity upon conditions which also nature supplies; all which has always been admitted by upholders of the will's freedom, who acknowledge both facts, and also that the consequences of human volitions are not under man's control, except for subjective results, but regulated by laws, and caught up into the stream of Providence. But it escapes Miss Bevington, that, while man is not free to make conditions for his own free choice, nor is master of the content of his own action, yet he is master of its moral formn, and can give any action whatever its moral quality; that he is free to work towards one ideal, or another,-that he constructs such an ideal out of the materiel which nature supplies, and makes it subserve universal or individual purposes; and that could you convince man that he was not free, while consolation for the unselfish ones would still be left, believing that their own benevolent aims would inevitably be brought about by evolution, there would be also consolation and encouragement for the selfish ones, who believing in this fatalism, would yield to their selfish impulses without restraint, and thus present a perpetual counteracting force to the stream of tendency. And we need hardly here refer to the fact of self-reproach, which can have no justification and no origin according to this Philosophy, The above may also be taken as a reply to the article by Professor Bain, in the same No. Indeed, Libertarians often allow themselves to be vanquished by Determinists by not noting the distinction between form and content above alluded to. The Ethic of the New Philosophy. I75 has formed, simply because sacrifice is painful, and its practice by some is needed, in order to remove the need of its practice by others. This vision of a state of things where all will be willing to make sacrifice, yet where a minimum of it will be required, is its highest endeavor in constructing an ideal of the desirable. But is this ideal desirable because it is inevitable? If so, then any inevitable may be also desirable, and will afford equal opportunity for sacrifice. Or, is it inevitable because it is desirable? If so, then any desirable is equally inevitable, which is absurd. The philosophy requires to assume that this ideal of sacrifice must ultimately take captive the whole human race. Voluntary effort may work towards it, but whether enthusiastically, or in despondency and gloom, cannot affect the ultimate result, and it is hard to see how it can hasten or postpone it. After all, this ideal is simply a tentative of the forecasting Imagination, ruled by what past experience has led it to hope for in the future. If no confidence is to be placed in such an effort of Imagination, the ideal must drop, and we are in our pessimistic atmosphere still. But if it is trustworthy, why stop short of such an ideal? Why not use other materiel to construct it, than that afforded by the meagre conception of the human race, as a race of fine animals, whose instincts all coalesce, and who have no need of sacrifice, or of only a minimum of it, and before whom, then, would be no further moral effort required, no further development? Why not 176 The Beautiful and the Sublime. enlarge the ideal, and work towards a commonwealth of souls, whom no mere animal contentment will satisfy, upon whom no gloom will rest, since hopeful of the permanence of their own conscious life, and of the infinite possibilities before them? But, indeed, supposing that this race of fine animals is at length procreated, if nature, the external universe, is not also correspondent and harmonized, pain will still be possible, and effort and struggle must still be needful, to overcome the obstacles which she will present. Can the volitions of these animals be always consentaneous in finding the means to overcome these impediments? If not, then sacrifice will still be needful, and how then decide from which side the sacrifice must come? If each strives to overcome each other in the purity and entirety of his sacrifice, on account of its intrinsic excellence, then this race will ipsofacto still find the world painful and contradicting, and vie with each other in the endeavor to prolong that contradiction, as alone affording opportunity for the spirit of sacrifice to nurse itself to strength. And if nature is not, then, correspondent to the perfecting moral state, and still rules her subject man, and inflicts upon him blows destroying the integrity or the health of his physical being, must not these hostile physical influences generate diseased instincts again, and produce counter currents of tendency, and the race oscillate between conflicting tendencies forever; or else, (what can insure us against it but faith in a higher The Ethic of the New Philosophy. I77 optimism than this Philosophy furnishes?) begin a downward development, and run back into degration and the homogeneous chaos? Besides, will this race of fine animals have lost its instinct of sympathy? The theory requires, rather, that it shall have improved, for a time, in exquisiteness. But if so, can the thought of the wasted generations, of the past agonies, of the terrific shadows which have overhung its development in the main, be missed? Will not this trouble its delight? Every sad, sweet memory must be crushed down; and to save itself from needless suffering, this generation must turn away from and forget to read the history of the past, or regard it with a cold aesthetic sense, stoically indifferent to its suffering, or amused at it, as at a puppet play. And if the latter, must not the instinct of sympathy over existing suffering deteriorate, and the downward course towards selfishness, of necessity then commence? Is the human race likely to be cheerful in its effort after such an ideal as this; or likely, rather, to abandon the pursuit in despair? (for, according to the theory, the result can only be reached by voluntary efforts). Will it not rather trust to nature's spontaneous flow to bring about what results it may? Does the theory, then, furnish, as a lever for the moral improvement of the race, anything but a most frangible staff? Why not rather think, that, as spring succeeds winter, as wounds heal up, and show nothing but 178 The Beautiful and the Sublime. their memory in the scar, as repentance changes the unloving to the loving (and often suddenly), so there is escape from the consequences of sin, and retribution is not inevitable, and consolation and hope are left; that, as men groan after deliverance, so nature groans within herself, and longs for deliverance, and that with hers alone can come man's relief; that a perfected organism will be required to maintain man in that looked-for Paradise of our posterity; that, since nature utilizes her materiel, and knows no waste, and hints of her own elevation, these, the most precious of all her phenomena, human joys and sufferings, and struggles, and longings, have not been wasted, but wrought up into a consciousness still. The alleged superiority of the moral motive set forth by the New Philosophy is spurious. It claims to be defecated of all desire for one's own individual well-being, and thus to show a purer form of sacrifice. But why, if its own condition is the highest, and its motive the purest, and delight in this sacrifice the greatest, not aim that all others shall reach the same height? and if all do, then this pure pain is the highest excellence, and the highest ideal end for the totality. All outward delight is to be held for naught, and this self-complacency alone remain. The instinct of well-being will thus be transmuted into an instinct of ill-being, save in this fine spiritual characteristic. Surely the absolute worth of each individual soul is the same as that of any other, even in this The Ethic of the New Philosophy. 179 Philosophy, and if the well-being of any other is to be desired and striven for-well-being, physical and intellectual as well as thus finely moral-one's own well-being must equally be striven for; and the well-being of the totality must include one's own. It is not desirable, then, to perpetuate sacrifice. Sacrifice is needful in order that there may be sacrifice no longer, in order that it may be transmuted into pure love, into joyful and not painful giving and receiving. The highest moral aim, then, must include its own physical and intellectual perfection in the ideal after which it strives. It dares not despise itself, or hope to be anything less than the perfected creature, perfect in bliss, perfect in knowledge, perfect in its physical organism, as well as in moral integrity and strength; nor can it consent to ignore the environing universe and its delights, and seat itself on the pinnacle of its own spiritual self-complacency. Such an ideal is a pure abstraction, never to be realized in this concrete world, where no delight is in itself despicable, since it, as well as pain, is required to elicit the full potentialities of the creature, and to make the most of existence. That moral aim, then, is alone the highest, which seeks its own perfection also, but only as included in that of the totality. In either aspect of the ideal of the New Philosophy, whether of a race of fine animals, steeled to suffering as an abnormality to be despised, or of a race of spiritualized ascetics, there is no encouragement to the passion for Beauty. I80 The Beautiful and the Sublime. The dull content of the ideal in its first aspect would fret at such disturbing stimulus; and the complacency of the latter aspect would seat itself upon its own solitary pillar forever; or would rather, in sheer weariness, plunge down, and seek to try its own strength in a world of confusion and strife. This dream of a uniformly progressive improvement in human instincts is a purely fanciful reading of human history. It can be better interpreted by quite another key. That would show us, rather, the presence of sharper and sharper antagonisms;the selfish instinct purifying itself, and becoming more adroitly selfish on the one hand, and the benevolent instinct becoming stronger and tenderer and wiser on the other; the task of mediation, of the moral element, on the social arena, becoming more and more difficult, and with no prospect of harmonization before it, until some cataclysm shall occur, such as has often occurred hitherto, which will dissipate the fabric which the ultimate selfishness will think it has constructed with confidence in its firmness and permanence. Then, perhaps, it may abandon its dream in despair. But till then, these spiritual conflicts will make human history more and more sublime, and the moral endeavor will grow stronger by having to put forth its strength. And out of the mist of this ultimate confusion which threatens to destroy, the spirit of Beauty will arise. She has covered every ruin hitherto with a new luxuriance, and her most wondrous blossoming is:yet to come. The Ethic of the New Philosophy. xI8 Beauty, then, will survive Sublimity, but will show herself as a real and eternal thing only when Sublimity shall have reached its climax. Like the phenix she must rise out of the fire that threatens to destroy her. Only some tremendous agitation can shake this Psyche from her chrysalis, and let her brilliant wings expand. CHAPTER IX. THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMPULSE.-ART CRITICISM.THE FUTURE OF ART. THE constructive impulse is to be found in animals. Some mammals have it, as the beaver, but with little result of beauty. The structures of many insects have beauty of form and color, though the aim of the animal be merely the useful. As such they are the result of the organizing intelligence of nature, the same which gives beauty to the animal form itself, and which thus is a wondrous artist. Birds make their nests beautiful in form and arrangement, but warmth and convenience seem to be the sole aim, and there is no evidence of any higher appreciation. Birds, too, feel the fascination of color, and some of them gratify this taste by decking their habitats with gaudy or brilliant objects, but show no artistic power in dealing with this materiel. In their songs, however, we have a fact somewhat more complex. Many of these have more than simple sweetness, and nature, through the throats of birds, is melodious, and utters sound that is beautiful and interpretive of emotion. Whether the imitative birds do anything more than reproduce the sound, whether The Constructive Impulse. I83 they appreciate the melody, may be questioned. And the fact that all song-birds have their own repertory, beyond which they do not go, except from suggestion from without, would seem to indicate that they have no artistic power, for that would show itself in new combinations. They utter still nature's voice only. The evidence is not yet that birds are artists, or any animal but man. The Constructive Imagination, in him alone, draws out of the well of the possible, and emulates the creative intelligence of nature. The constructive impulse in man has other aims than the beautiful, but in the artist proper, this is the dominant one, and hence, the extremest activity of Imagination, and abstraction as complete as possible from all other uses, are required for his work, and he lives in his ideal forms, or in his combinations of colors, or of sounds, or of thoughts and images. In these, his mental structures, Imagination is still, however, determined by the ruling ideal of the artist, which may have all degrees of truth. The same taste which he shows in his appreciation of Beauty as nature supplies it, the same subjective bias towards Beauty of one kind or another, will be apparent in the results of his artistic work. Hence, his work cannot but indicate character, and reveal to some extent the ideal for which he lives. His work, then, is liable to the same criticism as his life, and may be relatively false or true. I have given in the foregoing chapters what 184 The Beautiful and the Sublime. I think the right key for the higher criticism of all works of art. They rise in excellence according as they are the more perfect expression of the ideas of the Beautiful or the Sublime, and as they indicate that the higher forms of Beauty have their supremacy over the lower. When the ideal is high, failure to reproduce it, however, may be utter, and all result of Beauty or Sublimity be unattained; or incomplete success may arouse a mixed appreciation, containing along with the sense of disappointment, elements of satisfaction higher in kind than that given by completer success in the lower forms of art. In this, which I call the higher criticism, the intelligence of the expert, in any art, is not required, as it is when we regard its special tecnique. Here we are willing to be led, and the common taste is not sufficiently sharp-eyed to be trusted. But the taste of the expert may be vitiated, however, in so far as he, dealing too exclusively with his specialty, may underrate the importance of the higher criticism, or for other subjective reasons, may undervalue or overvalue merits or faults. But acquaintance with works of art alone, does not make the expert. Not only the cultivated taste is needed, to be strongly stirred by the higher technical excellences in art, but the fine sensory is required to appreciate them, as well as to produce them. The dulness of the physical organism leaves the capacity of the psychical organism undeveloped; hence, the exquisite delight of harmony The Constructive Impulse. I85 in music, of rhythm and other excellence of sound in poetry, of purity and harmony of color in painting, is missed, or feebly felt by many; and hence, criticism must have positive value in proportion to the capacity of the critic to deal with such characteristics, to reproduce in himself the delight of the artist who can impart these excellences, and thus, to give them their relative worth. All this might be illustrated at great length. But so much has been written upon this fascinating topic of Art, such fine intelligence brought to bear upon it, its historic development has been so satisfactorily displayed, in Hegel's aesthetic, and in numberless other works, that I must run no risk of repeating or reproducing any of this, but only indicate, as I have done, how all appreciation, and criticism of artistic work would be guided and influenced by the results of my examination in this treatise, leaving the task of particular application to the reader. It is sometimes said that Art is superior to nature, inasmuch as it detects and exhibits the ideal which nature never fully actualizes. But in so doing, Art only subjectively combines what nature has fragmentarily furnished. The landscape-painter adds nothing to his magnificent tree, with any result of Beauty, which nature has not somewhere suggested. It is an amazing triumph, to be sure, thus to penetrate nature's intent, and seize her secret of form. It is because man is nature's favorite that she thus withholds herself, that he I86 The Beautiful and the Sublime. may be urged to look earnestly at her face; but if he does so, he will find something else than form, he will learn that pure physical form is cold, and needs something else to elevate even itself to its highest. In her mysteries of color, which warm and enliven life more than pure form, she is his superior still, and with his pigments he cannot approach her superb combinations, and the depth and the play of her exhaustless light. Hence it is that sculpture alone can be perfect Art, which abstracts thus the one element with which man can deal with entire success. When physical form is lifted up into the realm of higher ideas, and the concrete humanity, as transfigured by intellectual and moral beauty, is her aim, here sculpture shows her inadequacy, and yields the palm to her sister arts. But sculpture in Romantic Art, some may think to be grander or more touching in its failure, than Classic sculpture in its success; and that we have no right to require of the sculptor that he shall confine himself to the lower aims, if his passion is for the higher ideas, and if he knows himself lacking in the special capacity to deal with them by colors, or sounds, or words. The future of Art is a most interesting problem, and our conviction about it must depend upon our interpretation of the stream of tendency, and the indications we find, of the final cause of man's earthly history. Any speculation concerning it would find apter place in another connection. APPENDIX, I I APPENDIX. NOTE A. THE INDIAN VEDAS,-THE ETHIC OF THE EASTERN RELIGIONS. THE ascent in the scale of ideas in the development of the individual soul may illustrate and be illustrated by the stages of advance in the philosophic and religious speculations of peoples. The Indian Vedas may be studied for this end with profit. We note that in the earliest Vedic hymns, various natural objects or influences were addressed as all-powerful, as divinities with different namesthe sun, the sky, fire, etc.,-with no appearance of jealousy or contest among the authors and adherents of the several worships;-showing that each was locating the Supreme One somewhere, yet tentatively, and with no strong assurance, perhaps, of the adequacy of his own solution. They were struggling after a First Principle, under the guise of a religious service. It was not Monotheism proper, though implicitly such for each individual effort, nor was it Polytheism.* As we follow in the history, we discover attempts to unite these divinities by twos, or threes, or all together,-which indicates an advance in thought, and an apprehension of a complex princi* See Article by Professor Max Miller, in Contemporary Review for November, 1878. 90o Appendix. pie, yet having unity in reciprocity. But these seem to be arbitrary connections of the same representative divinities that at first were addressed separately. Gradually the Supreme One comes to be conceived as distinct, and sufficient, and all-inclusive, and is addressed as one God, but still identified with the informing life-principle of the world, -which indicates a still higher conception. But presently the conviction rested upon them that life does not and cannot maintain itself against the disintegrating forces of nature, and they begin to doubt the adequacy of their own conception, and a period of reaction commences. They fall back into Atheism, in order to spring forward again with a new solution, and a true Polytheism emerges. In a cooler and less religious atmosphere, as in Greece, the parallel process is discoverable in the philosophic progress, and Thales' First Principle, water, doubtless had its analogue among the early worships of India. I am tempted to say here, that I have read somewhat concerning the religions of India, but with very little profit to the speculative process, at the point of present attainment in our Western thought. The value is chiefly historical, as illustrating the vagaries of human thought, and their influence upon character and social life. The conditions never existed for a true advance in philosophic thinking, as among the Western peoples. It is a record of crude fancies, and more earnest gropings after the truth, yet all disconnected. There is no general intellectual atmosphere, where each may share the full possession of each other, and by which aberrancies may be corrected. The problems of existence trouble them, but there is no concert in the effort to solve them, as under our conditions. And we have had, we think, aid for Appendix. I91 comprehensive and correct thinking such as they have not. Besides, the end in view in their religious speculation, and resultant worships, though identical with that which characterizes many of the Western schemes, is distinct from that which now dominates modern thought, and may ultimately harmonize it. The end set by each founder of a new religion, or reformer of the same, has been merely the attainment of the supreme end, or highest possible destiny of the individual. The so-called moral duties and prohibitions, and religious practices are prescribed and observed for this purpose solely. In Brahminism and its developments this is clearly seen, and is illustrated by the caste system, which is the very fibre of the religion as distinctive. But even Buddhism, and others which advocate extremest self-sacrifice, rise no higher in conception than this. Nirvana, if one can attain it, is for himself alone. There appears to be no recognition of the organic unity, and consequent ethical unity of the human race, and of all rational existence, hence, no true ethic, no progressive moral science. This is the thought missed in Buddha's wonderful first sermon.* Christian Theology, with all its vagaries, is a progressive science, and is founded on a profound ethical philosophy, and has been, in the long run, perpetually correcting itself by the same. If the fruitful intellectual life of India can ever be brought into interpenetrative contact with that of the Western nations, it will receive just that impetus it needs, to waste itself no longer, and to attain fixed results; and it is quite possible that the obligation may be mutual. * This may be found, and an able commentary upon it, in an Article in the Fortnightly Review for December, 1879, by T. W. Rhys Davids. I92 Appendix. NOTE B. RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. A distinction is made between rudimentary. and abortive organs. They are two and opposite movements of the basic idea. In its fluctuations we have advance indicated by the former, and recession by the latter. An abortive organ is the struggle to recover the normal idea, therefore still rudimentary. A rudimentary organ is a feeling forth for a new relation, therefore so far abortive. Some such organs furnish an important key to read the remote history of the animal, and are therefore worthy of study. We may instance the mammillce in male animals, seemingly useless resemblances to the female structure. Their explanation, probably, depends upon the question whether, in the origin of sex, the male is the modified female, or the reverse. If the former, they are abortive; if the latter, rudimentary. The question of the origin of sex has not been settled by scientific evidence, and, in default of any facts justifying an a posteriori method, we may see what light upon it a priori probabilities may shed. The fact that the female is the more complex structure, and alone fitted for reproduction, would indicate that it is the differentiated form of the idea, which only by this development and structural change actualizes the reciprocity at first indicated, and all the implications of the norm. We see that when an animal is not to exist in singleness, but to be multiplied, this may be done without introducing any reciprocal relations, as by fissure merely. The idea, however, is elevated in the scale by the introduction of the sexual rela Appendix. 193 tion. Here the unital tie, with its consequent access of enjoyment, is created, and strengthened by the required interdependence. The fact that in animal life generally the male is stronger than the female, and more fitted for protection (the energy of the latter being drained by the task of reproduction), would seem to show that the former, as individual, is the completer structure, which has to be specially modified in the female, hence subordinated, and abated somewhat in the intensity of other relations, in order to relate its posterity. These rudimentary organs, (as the mamnmill), hint of the primal unity, and of the implied multiplicity. The male can only find his own life enriched, and cause the finer potentialities of the idea to germinate, by othering himself in the female; and that reproduction, interdependence, and organic unity were indicated in the idea, is shown by the presence of these organs in the male. The idea receives still elevation in those forms of animal life where we find sexual constancy; and still another impulse higher, when this is a life-constancy. Ethical relations issue and acquire strength at each step. The obscure, and unexpressed feeling is, that each has its own other; in the male showing itself as protection, in the female as dependence; yet the dependence is mutual, for only by virtue of the female can the male amplify himself, and perpetuate himself. The male must, then, part with something of his independence, in order to actualize these finer relations. Something must be taken from his own life that his life may be finer in kind and richer in experience. He must recede from his actualization as an independent physical being, in order that he may advance as an improved being. "A deep sleep" must fall upon 194 Appendix. the male in order that he may awaken and find himself "male and female." I do not care, in this connection, to follow out this speculation; but only to indicate that rudimentary organs, (as in this case), are full of significance, and not meaningless, or purely abortive, but helps toward the right understanding of the creature. Some soul instincts are truly, as I have said, rudimentary organs, and enable us to scrutinize the normal idea of man; and they are meaningless, unless we have a future history. That is an inadequate method which does not seek after the objective correlations of these instincts, but regards them as abortive and wasted. CRITICAL SUPPLEMENT. IQ I CRITICAL SUPPLEMENT. CHAPTER I. EARLY GERMAN AND OTHER WRITERS,-BURKE, ALISON, OERSTED, RUSKIN, COUSIN, ALLSTON, -DEFINITIONS OF ELEGANCE, GRANDEUR, AND MAJESTY,-PRETTINESS. ALL theories hitherto aiming to explain Beauty and Sublimity are predominantly subjective or objective, the former failing to see that Beauty is inherent in the constitution of the universe, the latter establishing it, but failing to analyze completely the subjective element, or the emotion. I propose to notice -a few of these briefly, dwelling at any length only on those which may still retain hold from the present standpoint of thought. Cousin's lectures on the Beautiful contain a valiant protest against the explanations of certain earlier writers, who resolve the emotion into the sense of possession, or into the pathetic, or into the useful, or into the mere copying of nature. His criticism is sufficiently valid, and I need not repeat it. These have their analogues among English writers, and the views of Adam Smith, Lord Kames, Dugald Stewart, and Alison are liable to similar criticism, and have failed to satisfy. If I have analyzed rightly the emotion of Sublimity, it is a sufficient exhibition of the inadequacy of Burke's theory. The same may be said of Alison's I98 Appendix. explanation of Beauty, from the principle of association. It is worth while to notice, however, that association, while not constituting the emotion, may be conjoined with it, and diversify it, and hence increase or diminish its intensity; may even suggest what may arouse the feeling of intellectual or moral Beauty. Especially is this true of the beauty of sounds, when association does come in play, connecting the sound with the tones used to express feeling. Association, as a law of mental movement, thus, like voluntary recollection, furnishes the materiel upon which Imagination displays its activity, which consists primarily in dissociating, and abstracting the element in which it*finds the beauty. Alison makes the remark that curvilinear motion is expressed by the active voice, and angular motion by the passive; which would suggest my own explanation, that curvilinear motion is a freer activity, while angular motion indicates repression, and an opposing force., Lord Kames says that it is'more agreeable to follow a river down, than up. The reverse may be often true, yet the truth in the remark is that the imaginative movement is more unrestrained in the one case than in the other. Oersted, in his " Soul in Nature," assumes the objectivity of Beauty, but confounds it with the True, a conclusion he might have avoided had he analyzed the subjective element. Ruskin confounds the Beautiful with the agreeable, does not analyze the emotion, nor define the Sublime, but contents himself with an enumeration of beautiful objects, and their typical significance, in which he is wonderfully keen-sighted, and exhibits an unusual vividness of Imagination. Cousin's lectures seem to have been a hasty Critical Supplement. 199 performance, and it hardly advances the science. He fails rightly to distinguish the agreeable and the Beautiful, does not analyze the emotion, gives a faulty definition of Imagination, and, while he asserts ideal Beauty, confounds it with the moral ideal so entirely as to leave physical Beauty unexplained. It certainly is a crude and confused statement that " unity, proportion, regularity, grandeur and generality appear more or less in objects that we call beautiful," and that " variety, motion, pliantness, energy, and individuality are modes of the / agreeable."* And I hardly know how to meet on the plane of argument one who says that in "a rose," or " a stormy cloud, with its edges fearfully distinct, with its gold and purple tints which streak the deep blue of the sky," he can only see two kinds of the agreeable! Imagination, he makes a compound faculty, and a curious compound it is, of " memory, reason, will, and the sentiment of the beautiful"-the sentiment being the very thing to be explained by Imagination. He seems to have had in mind the secondary, or Constructive Imagination, and fails to distinguish it in its primary or pure form. Indeed I think that many authors, who have thought more about Beauty in works of art than in nature, make this confusion, and neglect to endeavor a complete analysis. Cousin says many good and true things, but the thoughts are huddled together, and we are left without a clear notion even of what Ideal Beauty is. Washington Allston, in the Introduction to his "Lectures on Art," follows the true method, by examining first the emotion, to find its conditions, and to describe it, but does not produce a satisfactory analysis. He says that what we call self has * I have not the original before me, and quote from the translation by Jesse Cato Daniel. 200 Appendix. no part in the spontaneous feeling, meaning, perhaps, that it is not a sefish one, which is true, seeing that the activity is not teleological, but it is, nevertheless, a mode of self-activity, a spring of the soul to meet its congener, rejoicing in the correspondence, and in its own activity;-as Schiller says of the Constructive Imagination" Sweet toil, in toil itself delighting." One is said, indeed, to go out of one's self, but it is to find one's self in the ideal. He says that the emotion is always "pure and holy, " not perceiving that holiness is to be found only in the character of the ideal, and is wanting in the ideal of merely physical Beauty, freedom from restraint, etc, and that we have no right to deny the name of Beauty to low ideals, if the emotion is recognized, seeing that the ideal is ever expanding and enriching itself, and that the passage from any ideal towards the perfect one is characterized by an emotion similar in kind at every part of the process. Allston, too, does not note that vividness and frequency of the emotion are dependent not only upon character, but upon the degree of native imaginative power; that it may either strongly stimulate the soul to rise above the attainable ideal, or, if existing more feebly, allow it more readily to sink back bound into it, so that it no longer seeks the symbols of the perfect life, and the emotion becomes faint or infrequent. In answer to the question, "What is the common ground which makes different objects alike beautiful," he replies, " Simply Harmony, an undiscoverable condition independently applicable to the physical, intellectual, and moral, which is all we do or can know of it;" thus declining to Critical Supplement. 201 examine the relations involved in this so-called Harmony, and failing to find the unity constituted by these relations. Objective Beauty is not, therefore, followed to its last definition. Nor are the conceptions intermediate between Beauty and Sublimity, such as Elegance, Grandeur, Majesty, accurately analyzed and defined. "Elegance" is a vague term, and, as used, dependent on conventional tastes. We do not apply the epithet to natural objects, but to such artificial combinations as have dealt so successfully with beautiful elements as to excite surprise. It is thus an impure form of the Beautiful. " Grandeur " is another vague and conventional term. Sometimes it is used as identical with mathematical Sublimity; and sometimes it means wealth of resources, surrounding the object with a bewildering array, tasking Imagination to follow. It is thus an impure form of the Sublime. "Majesty" is the Sublime, whether physical, intellectual, or moral, disguising itself. It is power self-restrained, and toned down to the repose of Beauty; or, it is the Beautiful which may become the Sublime. I may add here, that " Prettiness" is another vague term, of fluctuating meaning. Many use the word "pretty" who mean " beautiful," and truly feel it. Those who use it with more discriminating judgment mean by it a certain arrangement of form and agreeable color, hinting of the possibility of Beauty, but which stops short of symbolic significance, and therefore does not kindle the Imagination. The instant any meaning is detected, and such imaginative activity starts, the thought is no longer " It is pretty," but "It is beautiful." CHAPTER II. KANT, ---SCHILLER,-HEGEL,-PROF. H. N. DAY. ACCORDING to Kant, the proper place for the Asthetic judgment is between the speculative and the practical reason. The conception of the oneness of the supra-sensible element which underlies nature with that which is practically implied in the conception of freedom renders possible the transition from purely theoretical to purely practical philosophy. '"The reflective judgment, when aesthetic and not teleological, has to do with subjective or formal adaptation, and not with objective or material." This is not precisely identical with Schiller's endeavor to find place between the passive condition of perception, and the active one of reflection and volition, for the aesthetic freedom, or " play-impulse," but doubtless the former is implied in the latter. Kant's is the reflective judgment of the philosopher. Schiller's the empirical judgment of the poet. Then, with Kant, the Beautiful is that which, through the harmony of its form with the human faculty of knowledge, arouses a disinterested, universal, and necessary satisfaction. Again, he says that natural Beauty is the concrete manifestation of the conception of formal, or merely subjective adaptation. Again, in judging of the Beautiful, we bring our notion of it, through the faculty of imagination, in Critical Siupplement. 203 relation to the percipient subject, and the feeling of pleasure or aversion which it excites in the latter is aesthetic judgment. Again, the satisfaction derived from the Beau tiful does not depend on conditions peculiar to the individual, but only on that which each can suppose as existing in all others. Again, the necessity of a judgment of the Beautiful is that it is viewed as an example of a universal rule, which cannot yet be formulated. And he says that the Beautiful is a symbol of the morally good. Schiller, reproducing Kant with his own end in view, says: the play impulse is both passive and active; that we advance into the realm of idea without leaving the sensuous world, as is the case with truth; that Beauty is both object, and a condition of the subject; that through Beauty we become esthetically free, and that it cannot result from freedom; that the aesthetic impulse has been started by a favoring antecedent. Now, in criticising the above there are two embarrassments. First, Kant speaks of the aesthetic "judgment," showing that he had in mind, chiefly, the mental activity when we discriminate between objects to decide whether they are beautiful or not; whereas there should first have been analyzed the spontaneous feeling, or appreciation of a beautiful object, to discover its implications, after which the voluntary process of judging should have been examined. Secondly, Schiller, half the time, seems to have in mind the process of the Creative Imagination, to discover its conditions. Nevertheless, when it is clear that he has the emotion of the Beautiful in mind, he does regard it as an elementary feeling to be explained, rather than as a judgment. 204 Appendix. But in all this, the problem is not solved, and the question of Beauty is confessedly unanswered, if I interpret rightly the phrase, " which cannot yet be formulated." The analysis of each is incomplete. In the first place, not every harmony of form with the human faculty of knowledge, awakens the required satisfaction, and if so, this satisfaction cannot be " necessary." In a square box there is an entire harmony of form with knowledge, yet no such sentiment is awakened. The immediate judgment is teleological, and only the reflective judgment, detecting symmetry and fitness of function, discovers the esthetic quality. In a sunset, the teleological judgment, that the sky indicates bad weather, drowns, in the practical mind, the feebler sense of its Beauty. Kant has not told us the distinctive harmony of form with knowledge which makes the Beautiful. What is wanting here, is to regard Imagination as another mode of soul activity than mere representation, and to notice its variant activity in detecting the symbols of its ideal. According to Kant, it would seem that anyone might be educated not only to judge rightly about Beauty, but to feel rightly, which he seems to imply by saying that the satisfaction derived from the Beautiful does not depend upon conditions peculiar to the individual. But the degree of this satisfaction does so depend. It may, indeed, depend upon the truth of "the oneness of the supra-sensible element which underlies nature with that practically implied in the conception of human freedom," but the spontaneous apprehension of this oneness does also depend upon inborn subjective conditions, as well as upon conditions superinduced by culture. And the universal rule upon which the necessity of a feeling of the Beautiful in some degree depends, can Critical Supplement. 205 be formulated so far as to say, that the universe is framed according to such laws, as to appeal to man's native longing after perfection, physical, intellectual, and moral. And hence it is not true that the Beautiful (subjectively apprehended), is "a symbol of the morally good," inasmuch as the idea of moral perfection can be subjectively divorced from that of physical perfection. The Beautiful is rather the symbol of the good in the absolute sense, i. e., as the synthesis of the three elements of the perfect life. This criticism will apply equally to Schiller, who does not undertake to discover what is the condition of the subject upon which the " play impulse " depends. And if the account which the author has given in the earlier chapters of this treatise of the genesis of the emotion be correct, it is true that freedom is implied in the first experience of the emotion, and is in the soul activity which leaps upon the symbol. Schiller presupposes Beauty, leaves it unexplained by any synthesis of the objective and the subjective elements, and uses it as a means to awaken freedom, or the consciousness of self; whereas, freedom, in this sense, is awakened by teleological judgments, before it furnishes the conditions for esthetic judgments: (for mere agreeableness to the sensory is here out of the question). While recognizing that the activity of Imagination is required to carry out the "play impulse," he does not note that this presupposes the spontaneous activity of Imagination in the emotion, which is that which gives birth to the impulse; and thus he neglects to note the symbolism of nature. Ideal Beauty hovers before him, but he does not trace out the subjective processes, by which it is historically reached in a form of increasing complexity and amplitude. Schiller is dom 206 Appendix. inated throughout by his own aim, which is "aesthetic culture," and so does not keep separate the theoretical and the practical. In the treatment of the Sublime, I am obliged to differ from both still more widely. Kant says, " While the Beautiful in nature appertains to the form of an object, hence to its circumscribed limits, the Sublime, on the contrary, is to be found also in formless objects; a want of limitation attaches to it. It is, however, represented as a whole, and not as something merely fragmentary. The Beautiful may, therefore, be regarded as a portrayal of an idea of the understanding (not a mere concept), but the Sublime is rather a portrayal of an idea of the reason, which from, its nature cannot be adequately represented by material things. The Sublime, in its proper form is not presented in a sensuous manner, but contains only ideas of the reason, whose very incommensurability with sensuous forms, being exhibited, stirs the heart." If by "form" above, Kant means shape or figure, the converse is often true; that the Beautiful stirs before objects, where the form is indefinite, as before a sunset; and Sublimity is often attached to a definite form, as to an Alpine peak, If by ' form " he mean, that wherein the idea is seized, then the idea in the sum of its implications is never completely seized, yet the impression may be either of Beauty or Sublimity. Moreover, the beauty of color, in subtle gradation, is not dependent on any idea of the understanding, but as much upon an idea of the reason, upon that which Kant calls " the infinite," as in any case of Sublimity. Allston has perceived this when he says that we have in Beauty a numerical or intensive infinity, and in Sublimity a dynamical or extensive one. But, in truth, there is not always an intensive infinity im Critical Supplement. 207 plied in Beauty, nor an extensive one in Sublimity, unless in the Hegelian sense that the infinite is always implied in any finite. There is no such characterization, therefore, of Beauty and Sublimity by ideas of understanding and of reason. If ideas of reason are implied and given, and ideas of understanding be formed, (for surely Kant's a priori forms are not here meant), then both mental states or activities are to be traced in either emotion. Kant acknowledges that there must be a resistance to the interest of the senses in order that the emotion of Sublimity may be awakened, yet he says that no natural object can properly be called sublime; that the Sublime, properly so called, can be contained in no sensible form, being confined solely to the ideas of reason, which, though insusceptible of adequate embodiment, are yet by this very inadequateness, which is susceptible of sensible representation, excited and called into the mind. It is not, for example, so much the storm-lashed ocean that is sublime, as rather the feeling which the sight of it naturally excites in the mind, inciting the soul to quit in thought the bounds of sense, and to occupy itself with ideas of higher adaptation. For the Beautiful in nature we must seek for a ground without us, but for the Sublime, only within us, and in the nature of thought, which introduces Sublimity into the idea of nature. He recognizes the fact, too, that as Imagination vanquishes magnitudes, they cease measurably to inspire the emotion. Hence the sentiment of the Sublime involves a feeling of dissatisfaction on account of the inadequateness of imagination, yet, at the same time, a feeling of pleasure consequent upon finding every standard of measurement incommensurate with the ideas of reason. Nature is dynamically sublime for the aesthetic judgment 208 Appendix. when viewed as a power which yet has no power over us. The power of nature calls into activity a force in us which does not belong to nature, and which enables us to look upon all that pertains to our life in the senses as trivial, and hence to regard the power of nature as not being a power before which we must yield, and thus the mind is made conscious of the exaltation of its destiny as independent of nature. Because, too, to have a sublime emotion, an effort is required, it resembles, in that respect, the effort required by the moral idea. Schiller adds nothing new to Kant's exposition, and amplifies the notion that the disappointed cognition after the failure of Imagination, causes us to fall back upon the consciousness of freedom as an indemnity, and a safe refuge from all difficulties and disorders in the intellectual and material world. So, too, the emotion of moral sublimity is resolved into the sense of the dignity of our common spirituality, which we see thus annihilating all opposing influences, and asserting its eternal origin and immortal destiny. A reviewer of Ruskin in the Foreign Quarterly Review for July, 1845, gives a variation of Schiller's explanation, and makes a sublime emotion to consist in the sense of our own magnanimity at an imaginary self-sacrifice we feel willing to make when the vast agencies of the universe threaten to destroy us. To return to Kant. It is true that the idea of "infinite " or boundless space is implied in every emotion of the mathematical Sublime. But it is not always suggested, so that we fall back upon that for our satisfaction, as Kant would indicate. So, too, the idea of the numerical or intensive infinite is implied, though not suggested, in many an emotion of the Beautiful, as in gradation of color. Critical Supplement. 209 But disengage the naked idea from all symbol, and it arouses no emotion at all. It must have concretion of some kind to do that. Sublimity is reached by feeling, not by this abstracting, mental process, and must exist in symbol. God himself as the Infinite, disengaged for thought, arouses no feeling of Sublimity, but in any adequate symbol, he does. The physical universe is such a symbol. God is most sublime, not as the idea of the Infinite, but when we have reached the ultimate of our conception of any one of his attributes, and all his attributes are relative to the existing universe. Therefore an activity of Imagination to penetrate the symbol, and impart its own life to it, is needful for the emotion. The "still, small voice," is more sublime than the " thunder," and the " earthquake," because of its suggestion of hidden power, sometimes manifesting itself in outward agitation, but now showing immense self-restraint. The idea is reproduced by Imagination, as it best can, in the form of its own life. It is not, then, because the idea of the infinite is " called into the mind " by the inadequate sensible representation, but because the sensible representation is the occasion for the internal stimulus of Imagination to escape into a larger life, that the emotion is felt. Nor do we, when we look upon "the storm-lashed ocean," quit the symbol in thought, and occupy ourselves with " ideas of higher adaptation," but struggle, rather, to measure the symbol, and live in the unaccustomed life. The ground for the Sublime, therefore, is as much without us as within us, and the ground for the Beautiful as much within us as without us. Again, in a case of the dynamical Sublime, the emotion is not in the calm refuge in our spiritual being, when the force of nature threatens us, for 210 Appendix. the emotion is aroused when the force is not threatening; and we can in meditation, dwell upon our spiritual being, without experiencing any sublime emotion. Here, too, the opposing force is a symbol of mastery over the physical universe, not in idea, or notion, but by reproduced imaginative experience; and for the time being we dominate in realms where we are not accustomed to dwell. It is not because nature has no power over us, but because we long to wield her power that the delight is experienced. No perfection of concrete existence that is merely moral and intellectual is possible. It must include physical perfection as well; and this is the thought missed by both Kant and Schiller. The defect in their explanation was perceived by Jean Paul Richter, who describes the experience of the emotion more accurately, and therefore states the problem more correctly, but he does not analyze the emotion to explain it, nor show the unity in the various kinds of sublimity. As for the reviewer on the Foreign Quarterly, we may simply remark that the capacity for sublime emotions is not measured by our disinterestedness, and that a certain independency of needful self-sacrifice is necessary for the emotion. Nor can Imagination be said to be sad and dis-. satisfied at its failure, but rather, to rejoice in its freedom, and the revealed possibility for an expansion of being. It fulfils its uttermost when it flames its way to the verge of the infinite, and sinks back wearied, to recuperate for a new attempt. Hegel says: "The sublime arises in an attempt to express the infinite without finding in the domain of physical phenomena an object capable of representing it. The infinite elevates itself Critical Supplement. 211 above particular existences, considered either in themselves, or in their totality. They are as nothing before it. And the positive relations which objects have to be Beautiful, in the sublime, change to a negative relation which is more in conformity with the Divine nature. God is thus represented as purified of all content and participation with visible experiences." He seems to have in mind the activity of the Constructive Imagination to "portray" the sublime; but I doubt, even here, whether this is always an attempt to express the infinite; rather one to stimulate Imagination to its unusual tension to measure the symbol, which transcends in magnitude or in power the symbols in which it finds the Beautiful. The "infinite" is often implied, as I have shown in " the positive relations which objects have to be beautiful,"and if these disappear, and a pure negative relation alone remains, Sublimity also disappears. It is not in the negation, but in the affirmation, that the emotion is aroused. God, "purified of all content, and participation with visible experiences," is a thought reached by abstraction, and which cannot be " represented," and which as such would arouse no emotion of Sublimity. The dynamical Sublime refuses to come under the terms of this definition. Hegel always speaks of the Sublime as " separating idea and form." But surely in the genesis of the emotion there is an endeavor to combine and not to separate, to find the idea in the form, to annul the separation. The form eludes an adequate perception, hence the idea eludes the insight. The implications are not seized. And the idea to be seized, in the actual case, is not the infinite, though the infinite be implied, and indeed, ever hovers in the beyond, even as it is implied in the 12 Appendix. appreciation of Beauty. A new symbol of that idea is offered for Imagination to master, and in the struggle to expand its own ideal is that dilatation of being which is the emotion of Sublimity. According to Hegel himself, all symbols represent an idea by their analogy with it, yet without expressing it completely, yet in such a manner that the idea is inseparable from the emblem," which symbols, therefore, may express either Beauty or Sublimity. In sublime objects there is an eluding idea, separable in thought from the emblem, and so there is in beautiful objects likewise. After the utmost abstraction, we are not left in the presence of the Sublime, as Hegel would indicate, but of the Beautiful. God contemplated apart from the universe is not Sublime, but Beautiful. The Hebrew poets, who are generally sublime, point towards, and hint of a Beauty as the end of all. The New Testament Scriptures end with beautiful symbols. Beauty will survive Sublimity. Since the whole of this treatise which precedes this paragraph was written, I have read the work of Professor H. N. Day, on " The Science of ~Esthetics." I recognize in him a worthy collaborateur, and regard his book as an admirable compend of knowledge, and guide to just criticism in the several arts,-most suitable as a text-book for study. Our aims, however, have been widely different, and in dealing mainly, and almost exclusively, with the fundamental questions which underlie the science, I have reached, in my analysis of the emotion of the Beautiful, a somewhat different Critical Supplement. 213 definition of Imagination, giving it a more distinctive function. That which he calls " the active imagination," is, with me, the Constructive Imagination, and is a complex mode of mental activity. What he calls "the passive imagination," is, with me, Imagination in its primary function, which I regard rather as a mode of supreme activity, and the subjective condition for the emotion; which faLt has escaped the observation, or has not been followed out to its implications, by most analysts hitherto. Not every synthesis of idea, matter, and form is beautiful. That alone is beautiful which starts a special activity of Imagination, as appears in my treatise. The pleasing is not, indeed, the Beautiful, but as the Beautiful is always pleasing, the ground of that pleasure must be sought out, and its character determined. Hence I take issue with those philosophers who say that the emotion of the Beautiful is devoid of all subjective interest. It is, indeed, in the teleological sense, but not, as the aim of all higher aspiration is not devoid of all subjective interest. There is the same distinction here as in ethics. In the final and true form of the science, the interested and the disinterested coalesce; which, too, is shown in my treatise. Thus I have endeavored to set forth fn language what Professor Day says is, perhaps, impossible to conceive fully in thought, " the precise nature of this modification of the sensibility," which apprehends Beauty. And I have also endeavored to search out and define " the essential nature of this relationship between idea and matter which is presupposed in the very notion of Beauty, of which" he says, " we know nothing," M-uch in this book, therefore, as I heartily respond to, I find still a divergence which, perhaps, 214 Appendix. is most apparent in his and my respective treatment of the question of the Sublime. I find, too, that his acumen has rendered needless some critical work that I might otherwise have superadded. 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