Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/578

 562 CRITICAL NOTICES : intelligence, form as form caught the attention of man, we shall probably never know ; but the forms that did so must have been striking, and are therefore more likely to have been sensibly unpleasant than sensibly pleasant. The beauty of form, " the most remarkable and characteristic problem of aesthetics," being thus explained, psychological difficulties are over ; the chapter runs smoothly in theoretical and hortatory channels. There are good discussions of the principle of unity in variety, and of the relation of utility to beauty. Perhaps the most important sections are those that treat of the origin and value of types, and of the special shaping of aesthetic ideals : " the generic image has been constructed under the influence of a selective attention, bent upon aesthetic worth". The relativity of beauty is strongly insisted on. Literary form is illustrated by reference to plot and character drawing. The concluding chapter is occupied with aesthetic expression. " Whereas in form or material there is one object with its emo- tional effect, in expression there are two, and the emotional effect belongs to the character of the second or suggested one. . . . The value of the second term must be incorporated in the first." Here the author has to face the problems of tragedy and comedy, wit and humour, the sublime and the grotesque. Of all he has something pertinent and suggestive to say. He sets out from the thesis that art does not seek " the pathetic, the tragic, and the absurd ; it is life that has imposed them upon our attention, and enlisted art in their service ". The tragic emotion is complex : we suffer w r ith the sufferer, but our suffering is overbalanced by aesthetic pleasure, pleasure in beauty of material, beauty of form, and " the continual suggestion of beautiful and happy things, which no tragedy is sombre enough to exclude ". To this must be further added the intellectual interest in truth. Tragedy rises to sublimity with the final assertion of self over against an uncon- trollable world ; the mind recoils upon itself, conscious of its independence ; self-liberation is the essence of sublimity. Through- out, the writer keeps his psychology well in view. Such, in brief outline, is a theory which a finished presentation makes as pleasurable to read as condensation and range of topics make it difficult to summarise. A notice of it should not end without reference to the many quasi-aphoristic sentences that force the reader's attention from time to time. "A grateful environ- ment is a substitute for happiness ; " " the simplest thing becomes unutterable if we have forgotten how to speak ; " " theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact ; " these and similar sayings are not mere purple patches, but the natural culminations of definite arguments. The book as a whole may be cordially recommended to the notice of psychologists. In a second edition the author will, perhaps, do well to bring out more explicitly the element of value in the logical judgments of truth and falsehood, and to draw more largely for his illustrations upon music, the most detached and, in a sense, the youngest of all the arts.