Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/532

 516 E. H. DONKIN : as "adverse medium"; I merely seek to mark out an ob- scure subject and to indicate a point where it seems a little less impenetrable than elsewhere. There is an interesting class of questions which may be referred to here, though they do not seem to belong to the same category as the last. There is a certain kind of beauty of natural scenery, the taste for which is perhaps modern, and which may be called expressive. A view catches the eye as interesting, suggestive ; it is not so much a sym- metrical whole as a fragment or glimpse suggestive of a symmetrical whole which is not all seen. The analysis of this kind of attractiveness is well worth attempting. When I am surveying a landscape, and call it as a whole beautiful, I do so because here as in every case of the beauti- ful there is a certain dualism, with part matching part. In the conventionally beautiful view there will probably be a certain degree of actual symmetry, one feature correctly balancing another. In the suggestive "bit" I do not see this actual symmetry ; I see a glimpse which seems incom- plete and suggests something more. Yet even taken alone it pleases me. Now the " bit " has features in itself, though they do not seem to match one another ; taken together, they might match some other feature not now visible : as it is they have to do duty as the mutually ill-adapted parts of one whole. I accept these, however, as sufficient equiva- lents for one another ; as symmetrical, though they do not really balance ; as displaying true sameness in difference, though they lack sameness. And why ? If the view is in a painting, and I am a spectator of it, I have no hesitation in giving my answer. I am ready to believe, in such a case, that there must be a symmetry or sameness in the features, not perceived by me but perceived by the artist, which led him to select just that portion of the view for his picture. Belief in an unperceived symmetry or balance or relevance, on the ground that the artist, our fellow-man, must surely have perceived it since he so com- posed his work, has, I am convinced, enormous influence on our aesthetic appreciations in art. But as to the artist himself; what leads him to select one fragmentary view and reject another? Does he in truth perceive a symmetry where we do not? On this difficult question I can but make suggestions. Possibly the artist, where he pre-eminently succeeds in such compositions, does violence to symmetry only in some definite and distinct manner, marking off his unsymmetry and making it specific ; perhaps introducing copious subordinate symmetries, so that