Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/20

4 consider the relations of the lineal parts of pleasing plane surface figures; and the study of these relations has given to us such investigations as the notable ones of Fechner in respect to the 'golden section,' which have been supplemented by the more rigid tests of Dr. Witmer and Doctors Haines and Davies in our own day. In similar manner, the basis of the beauty found in symmetry and order, and the problems related to rhythm, have been closely studied, especially in late years by Lipps; and the fundamental principles of tonal relation, and of melodic succession, by Helmholtz, Stumpf, and later writers.

But all these studies of the striking characteristics found in the object are, for the psychologist, necessarily involved in the study of the distinctly subjective accompaniments in the sense of beauty aroused by the objective forms thus brought to our attention, and he is led to dwell upon the active part the mind takes in connection with æsthetic appreciation. We see this tendency in Berenson's emphasis,—and perhaps, on the whole, over-emphasis,—of the importance of the interpretation of works of art, in the group of what I would call the arts of sight, in terms of the tactile sensibilities. But we see it much more markedly in the important studies of Lipps, who shows us how far our appreciation of beauty in Nature, and in artistic products, is due to the sympathetic introjection of ourselves, as it were, into the object,—to what he calls Einfühlung. But, broad as he shows the applicability of this principle to be, it is clear that we have not in it the solution of the fundamental æsthetic problem with which the psychologist must deal when appealed to by the æsthetician. For no one would claim that all of this sympathetic introjection—this Einfühlung—is æsthetic: the æsthetic Einfühlung is of a special type. Nor, to my mind, does it seem clearly shown that there are no sources of beauty which do not involve this introjection, as would be the case if we had reached in this principle the solution of the fundamental æsthetico-psychologic problem. For instance, the sense of beauty experienced when I look at some one bright star in the deep blue of the heaven, seems to me to be inexplicable in terms of such introjection.