Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/536

 522 YRJO HIBN : STUDY OF ART. If it be admitted that the psychological interpretation of the art-impulse and the sociological interpretation of the work of art are the two important, mutually indispensable problems of evolutionistic art-theory, the order in which these problems are to be treated becomes a mere matter of convenience. In the larger work, to which this paper is intended as an introduction, I have deemed it most con- venient to begin with the psychological and end with the historical, or rather sociological, investigation. But it might possibly be quite as methodical to proceed in the inverse order. And it may even be thought unnecessary to divide the treatment into different parts. What I wish to contend is only that a clear and sustained discrimination between the two points of view is indispensable to a successful treatment of the science of art. It is naturally with a feeling of reluctance that one resorts to new abstractions in a science which has already suffered so much from overabstraction. Art, one would think, ought to be protected against the pedantry of hair-splitting analy- sis. The inconsistencies of aesthetic theory are, however, of a nature to justify insistence on what may perhaps appear to be unnecessarily subtle distinctions. I can but think that much confusion and futile discussion could be avoided if authors agreed to uphold the distinction between subjective tendencies and objective works.