Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/19

3 For, on the one hand, even the least talented of men has some little tendency to give part of his strength to artistic creation in one form or another; the creative artist is guided by a truly racial instinct, which, under favorable conditions, will appear in any man who is not defective; each of us thus, in the appreciation of beauty, throws himself to some degree into the attitude of the creative artist.

And, on the other hand, the artist, when not in creative mood, falls back into the ranks of men who keenly appreciate beauty, but who are not productive artists; he thus alternately creates and appreciates, and with difficulty separates his diverse moods. We may well consider these two distinguishable mental attitudes separately.

In asking what is the nature of the experience which we call the 'sense of beauty,' we are stating what may well be held to be the most important problem in Æsthetics that is presented to the psychologist.

Man is practical before he deals with theory, and his first theoretical questionings are aroused by practical demands in connection with his failures to reach the goal toward which he strives. The development of modern aesthetic theory has in the main quite naively followed this course, and we may properly consider first the psychological inquiries which seem to have the most direct bearing upon practical questions.

The artist asks why his efforts so often fail, and thus he is led to inquire what are the qualities in his work which he so often misses, but now and again gains, with the resulting attainment of beauty.

It is thus that we naturally find the æsthetician appealing to the psychologist, asking him what special types of impression yield beauty, what special characteristics of our mental states involve the fullest æsthetic experience. The psychologist is naturally first led to consider certain striking relations found within the beautiful object which impresses us, and to inquire into the nature of the psychic functioning which is involved with the impressions thus given. He thus comes to