Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/540

 E. H. DONKIN : see or believe) just what they needed to be. But the difficulty of fulfilling the conditions is no longer the same as in the case of the geometrical figure. In that case it was difficult, but not impossible, for the conditions to be fulfilled. In the region of expressive beauty we have difficulties rang- ing up through an ascending scale and often reaching im- possibility, as to the fulfilment of the conditions. The poet gives me five-syllabled-ness to balance nine-syllabled-ness ; they match ; they are the same, that is, some hidden quality fulfils the impossible condition of being nine and yet five. And this fulfilling of adverse or even impossible conditions is possible if the items may take refuge in what they imply ; if potential or inferred sameness in difference, as well as what is actual, may count as making for beauty. To recur to a former instance, it seems impossible that bereavement and the breaking of waves should do mutual duty like the two symmetrical sides of a Gothic arch ; you might as well prop one half of the arch against a tree and call that beauti- ful. But let bereavement and the breaking of waves each imply the All that each does imply, and there is common ground between them. One great quality, one ultimate meaning, persists in spite of the (to us) inscrutable antag- onism, from one to the other. But, once more, why is beauty of these highest kinds acceptable ? May we say that we believe that an inconceiv- ably great extension of our faculties would enable us actually to perceive that the breaking of waves and bereavement are perfectly symmetrical phenomena, presenting a "beautiful" sameness in difference ; and that just as actual sameness in difference is acceptable because Ego is yielded thence with a minimum of thwarting, so potential sameness in difference is acceptable because there is the utmost yield thence of potential unthwarted Ego? The problem of acceptableness of beauty may be dealt with by psychology as forming part of the general subject of pleasure-pain. Some interesting lines of thought seem suggested if we apply to the case of aesthetic pleasure Mr. Stout's formula that pleasure accompanies a re-establish- ment of disturbed equilibrium (Analytic Psychology, vol. i.). Take a simple type of symmetrical beauty, e.g., a geometrical figure. In aesthetic pleasurableness of this kind, where is there a re-establishment of disturbed equilibrium, or where, again, in a more complex case such as the aesthetic effect of Archimedes' theorem? In answer, let us remember what seemed to be the essence of aesthetic effect, viz., quality holding its own in face of