Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/22

6 mental life that have a broad significance, although it is of great importance to demonstrate the fact; for our mental functioning in the appreciation of beauty appears thus as in truth an important type of, but for all that but a special and peculiar type of, the functioning which we thus bring into prominence.

The problem then remains: What is the special nature of this functioning which yields to us the sense of beauty?

And here, in my view, we have the problem which is of prime importance to Æsthetics to-day, and which Psychology alone can answer, viz.: What is the characteristic that differentiates the sense of beauty from all other of our mental states? Until this question is answered, all else must seem of secondary importance from the standpoint of theoretical psychology, however important other forms of inquiry may be from a practical point of view.

When the psychologist turns his attention to this problem, he at once perceives that he is unable to limit his inquiry to the experience of the technically trained artist, or even to that of the man of culture who gives close attention to æsthetic appreciation.

Beauty is experienced by all men. That beauty is very clearly of varied types, and the sense of beauty is evidently called out by impressions of most varied nature; but the fields of what is considered beautiful by different people so far overlap that we can rest assured that we all refer to an experience of the same characteristic mental state when we proclaim the existence of beauty. For when we by general agreement use a special term as descriptive of an objective impression, we do so because this impression excites in us certain more or less specific mental states; and when different people use the same term in reference to objects of diverse nature, we are wont to assume, and are in general correct in assuming, that these objects affect these different people in approximately the same way.

It seems probable, therefore, that if the child, who has learned how to apply words from his elders, speaks of having a 'beautiful time' at his birthday party; and if the grown man speaks of a 'beautiful day'; and if the pathologist speaks of his preparation of morbid tissue as 'beautiful'; and if the artist or connoisseur