Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/579

 p. i. HELWIG, Eine Theorie des Schonen. 563 Dr. Helwig attacks the problem of the nature of beauty in a very different way. Whenever we pass an aesthetic judgment, he says, we choose between quantities, but between quantities as sub- jectively symbolised (colours, tones, forms, etc.). The ugly is always the too much or the too little of these quantities. The beautiful is the average, the type, stored unconsciously in memory, and unconsciously compared with the given presentation. Beauty and the pleasure in beauty are therefore quite different things. There are four causes for individual variation in respect to the standard of beauty : individual constitution, difference of experience and environment, the number of aspects under which everything can be regarded, and difference in symbolic meaning and associa- tion. The mathematical development of the theory, and its application to certain experimental results, show that the type corresponds to the geometrical mean of the given presentations. Of the import- ance of such a conclusion there can be no doubt. But it must be remembered that the aesthetic judgments as yet procurable in the laboratory are simple in character and limited in range ; so that what holds of them need not hold of beauty in general. It is more probable, as Dr. Santayana points out, that the type is modified in the direction of pleasure ; the typical or ideal woman has a more than average stature, more than averagely large eyes, etc. Dr. Helwig has therefore laid himself open to the charge of overhasty generalisation. Moreover, the divorcement of beauty from the charm of beauty seems more than questionable ; if beauty is perceived, it is felt ; if it is not felt, it is not perceived, i.e., does not exist for the individual who is left unaffected by it. And, lastly, the extension of the theory to cover the sentiment of sublimity is arbitrary and fanciful. These defects are, however, the defects of qualities ; the book is an independent and original contribution to theoretical aesthetics. E. B. TlTCHENEB.