Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/534

 520 YRJO HIBN : feel in comparative psychology we may take it for granted that the same way of looking at art has prevailed in other stages of culture as well. However cautious one may be in drawing conclusions from analogies between higher and lower forms, a closer study of primitive art must needs compel every one to admit that these dances, poems and ornaments, even if they originally served practical, religious or political aims, may at least have come by degrees to be enjoyed in the same way as we enjoy our art. By denying such subjective independence in the creation and enjoyment of art, we should be guilty of the same one-sidedness as those authors who deny that genuine art has ever been influenced by " foreign purposes ". If it is presumptuous to adduce any particular works or manifestations in proof of free and independent production, it may be no less audacious to contend that even the most primitive form of art has flourished in tribes destitute of all aesthetic cravings. There is room for discussion on the degree of influence which self- motivated artistic activity has exercised in particular works and manifestations. It may also be made an object of re- search to determine at which precise stage of development aesthetic attention becomes so emancipated as to entitle us to speak of a pure and free art-life. But we do not think that such inquiries can ever lead to any positive result. The more one studies art, especially primitive art, from a com- parative and historical point of view, the more one is com- pelled to admit the impossibility of deciding where the non-sesthetic motives end and the aesthetic motives begin. The only result we can reach is the somewhat indefinite one that it is as impossible to explain away the artistic purpose as it is to detect its presence in a pure state in any concrete work of art. For art-philosophy as a science of its own even this non- committal conclusion is of vital importance. It gives us a right to regard all the forms and developments of art as witnesses to an activity which tends to become more and more independent of the immediate necessities of life. But on the other hand an historical study of art shows us that this activity can never be explained by examining concrete works, as we meet with them in reality. Whenever we have to deal with art as a "self-purpose" the need of theoretical abstraction forces itself upon us with irresistible cogency. It is of no avail to argue from the data of art- history, because we can never fully know the psychical origin of the works. The problem presented to us by the tendency to engage in artistic production and artistic enjoyment for