Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/240

Rh 222 T H E T I C S ground of common sense, that beauty must exist in objects independently of our minds. As to the nature of the Beautiful, he taught that all beauty resides primarily in the faculties of the mind, intellectual and moral. The beauty which is spread over the face of visible nature is an emana tion from this spiritual beauty, and is beautiful because it symbolises and expresses it. Thus the beauty of a plant resides in its perfection for its end, as an expression of the wisdom of its Creator. Reid s theory of beauty is thus purely spiritual. iii W. The celebrated Lectures on Metaphysics of SirW. Hamilton lamilton. d o no t ? unfortunately, contain more than a slight prelimin ary sketch of the writer s theory of the emotional activities. He defines pleasure, following very closely the theory of Aristotle, as &quot; a reflex of the spontaneous and unimpeded exertion of a power of whose energy we are conscious&quot; (vol. ii. p. 440). And, in perfect agreement with this con ception, he divides the various feelings according to the faculties or poAvers, bodily or mental, of which they are the concomitants. In the scheme thus faintly shadowed forth, the sentiments of Taste are regarded as subserving both the subsidiary and the elaborative faculties in cognition, in other words, the Imagination and the Understanding. The activity of the former corresponds to the element of variety in the beautiful object, while that of the latter is concerned with its unity. A beautiful thing is accordingly denned &quot; as one whose form occupies the Imagination and Under standing in a free and full, and, consequently, in an agree able activity&quot; (p. 512). In this way, the writer conceives, he comprehends all pre-existing definitions of beauty. He explicitly excludes all other varieties of pleasure, such as the sensuous, from the proper gratification of beauty. The aesthetic sentiment is thus regarded as unique and not resolvable into simpler feelings. Similarly, he denies any proper attribute of beauty to fitness. The essence of the sentiment of sublimity he finds, much in the same way as Kant, in a mingled pleasure and pain; &quot;of pleasure iu the consciousness of the strong energy, of pain in the conscious ness that this energy is vain.&quot; He recognises three forms of Sublimity : those of Extension or space, of Pretension or time, and of Intension or power. Finally, he thinks that the Picturesque differs from the Beautiful in appealing simply to the imagination. A picturesque object is one whose parts are so palpably unconnected that the under standing is not stimulated to the perception of unity, luskin. A very like interpretation of beauty, as spiritual and typical of divine attributes, has been given by Mr Ruskin in the second volume of his Modern Painters. This part of his work, bearing the title &quot; Of Ideas of Beauty,&quot; has a very systematic appearance, but is in fact a singularly desultory series of aesthetic ideas put into a very charming language, and coloured by strong emotion. Mr Ruskin distinguishes between the theoretic faculty concerned in the moral per ception and appreciation of ideas of beauty and the imaginative or artistic faculty, which is employed in re garding in a certain way and combining the ideas received from external nature. The former, he thinks, is wrongly named the aesthetic faculty, as though it were a mere operation of sense. The object of the faculty is beauty, which Mr Ruskin divides into typical and vital beauty. The former is the external quality of bodies that typifies some divine attribute. The latter consists in &quot;the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things.&quot; The forms of typical beauty are (1.) Infinity, the type of the divine incomprehensibility; (2.) Unity, the type of the divine comprehensiveness; (3.) Repose, the type of the divine permanence; (4.) Symmetry, the type of the divine justice; (5.) Purity, the type of the divine energy; and (G.) Moderation, the type of government by law. Vital beauty, again, is regarded as relative when the degree of exaltation of the function is estimated, or generic if only the degree of conformity of an individual to the appointed functions of the species is taken into account. Mr Ruskin s wide knowledge and fine aesthetic perception make his works replete with valuable suggestions, though he appears wanting in scientific accuracy, and lacks, as Mr Mill has pointed out, all appreciation of the explanatory power of association with respect to the ideal elements of typical beauty. Of the more analytic writers on the effects of the Beautiful, The ai Addison deserves a passing mention, less, however, for the * ical * scientific precision of his definitions, than for the charm *^f ( of his style. His Essays on the Imagination, contri buted to the Spectator, are admirable specimens of popular aesthetic reflection. Addison means by the pleasures of im agination those which arise originally from sight, and he divides them into two classes ( 1. ) Primary pleasures, which entirely proceed from objects before our eyes; and (2.) Secondary pleasures, flowing from ideas of visible objects. The original sources of pleasure in visible objects are great ness, novelty, and beauty. This, it may be said, is a valu able distinction, as pointing to the plurality of sources in the aesthetic impression, bi;t the threefold division is only a very rough tentative, and destitute of all logical value, novelty of impression being always a condition of beauty. The secondary pleasures, he rightly remarks, are rendered far more extended than the original by the addition of the proper enjoyment of resemblance, which is at the basis of all mimicry and wit. Addison recognises, too, the effects of association in the suggestion of whole scenes, and their accompaniments by some single circumstance. He has some curious hints as to the physiological seat of these mental processes, and seeks, somewhat naively, to connect these pleasures with teleological considerations. In the Elements of Criticism of Lord Kaimes, another Lord attempt is made to affiliate aesthetic phenomena to simpler Kaim&amp;lt; pleasures of experience. Beauty and ugliness are simply the pleasant and the unpleasant in the higher senses of sight and hearing. By &quot;higher&quot; he means more intel lectual, and he conceives these two senses to be placed midway between the lower senses and the understanding. He appears to admit no more general feature in beautiful objects than this pleasurable quality. Like Hutcheson, he divides beauty into intrinsic and relative, but understands by the latter ideas^ of fitness and utility, which were excluded from the Beautiful by Hutcheson. He illustrates the English tendency to connect mental processes with physiological conditions, by referring the main elements of the feeling of sublimity to the effect of height in objects in compelling the spectator to stand on tiptoe, by which the chest is expanded and muscular movements produced which give rise to the peculiar emotion. Passing by the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose Hogar theory of beauty closely resembles that of Pere Buffier, we come to the speculations of another artist and painter, Hogarth. He discusses in his Analysis of Beauty all the elements of visible beauty, both form and colour, often manifesting great speculative skill, and always showing a wide and accurate knowledge of art. He finds altogether six elements in beauty, namely (1.) Fitness of the parts to some design, as of the limbs for support and movement; (2.) Variety in as many ways as possible, thus in form, length, and direction of line, shape, and magnitude of figure, &c. ; (3.) Uniformity, regularity, or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4.) Simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5.) Intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, ever eager for pursuit, and leads the eye &quot; a wanton kind of chase&quot;; (6.) Quantity