Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/528

 512 E. H. DONKIN I moment, would evoke a maximum of sameness and a mini- mum of difference in consciousness, but would not give a sensation of beauty; it would rather tend to coma. The differentiation must be of a further kind. More than one colour, for instance, seems needed. And there are in all cases similar limits to the minimising of the difference. I do not here inquire into the laws of such limits ; I merely offer this account of the reason why sameness in difference commends itself to us, viz., because on the one hand the Ego is maintained, there being fulfilled the indispensable condition of a certain differentiation in consciousness ; and on the other hand this differentiation is reduced to the least degree that suffices, so that the Ego is as it were maintained with the least friction. If the friction, the duality, is further diminished, Ego begins to vanish into unconsciousness. Passing on from this subject, I will state the general view which my various suggestions are intended to support. It is (1) that all beauty is essentially the same, whether it be the beauty of a geometrical pattern, a rainbow, a waterfall, a cliff, a poem, a statue, or a tragic drama : (2) that the formula " unity in variety " is as applicable to all such cases as it is to the simplest instance of formal beauty. These statements, however, will seem to conflict with recognised authority. The so-called beauty of individual expressiveness seems to be dwelt on with great emphasis by writers, and is apparently set over against formal beauty as different from it, nay, as in some sense opposed to it ; and this beauty of expressiveness seems to be regarded as the higher, and as being the beauty of the future : the beauty that is to supersede the bygone formal types. The account of the matter which I would offer is different. I would make the fact of " expressiveness," the fact that, e.g., a statue " expresses " some aspect of humanity, and the like, secondary. I would make unity in variety the para- mount feature, the essence of beauty of every kind. I would find two exactly parallel forms of unity in variety in, say, a symmetrical ornamental pattern, and a statue : the two halves of the pattern, though different, are yet precisely symmetrical and the same; the real man and the stone statue, though different, are yet precisely similar and the same. This is a crude statement, and needs much ampli- fication, but it will for the present make my meaning clear. My view is as follows : Both races and individuals in their earliest stages love those modes of beauty in which extreme sameness in difference predominates ; in which there is a pair of items that perfectly match (or, of course,