Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/522

508 interest. They were dependent on my way of response to shapes of certain size, material, and position, in relation to my size and position. The inner harmony is only my "perfect moment," after all, and those ways of response can be identified and evaluated only by a psychological æsthetics.

In the field of strictly immediate interpretation discourse is impossible because there are no common terms. Thus, a distinguished exponent of this view, using the illustration of a swan on a quiet pool, which "Floats double, swan and shadow," speaks of the single noble line enveloping the swan form. But we must ask—what is a 'noble' line? What is there in its quality that can make us feel it so, and how does it do so? Is this line really an adequate example? That single term of the immediate interpretation assumes a tremendous funded content of psychological analysis and physiological explanation which certainly does not yet exist, although we may work it out in time. No doubt I do feel that line noble by virtue of a funded content of experience—but the term merely sets the problem for æsthetics. Any complete 'immediate' interpretation of a work of art would now constitute not an answer to the æsthetic problem, but a program of long work, for the laboratory of last resort.

Indeed the 'immediate' interpretation can stand only so long as there is no demurrer. If one asserts 'I will with that volute an upward spring,' and the other rejoin 'and I a slow resistance to crushing weight,' there can be no court of last resort except the laboratory, which shall clear up, how, and how much response of what kind takes place, and must take place, under given stimulation of shapes of a certain size, shape, and material. Only that method in æsthetics which can answer—and settle—such disputes can guarantee progress; and therefore I would venture to propound the view that the only part of the problem of beauty that is not solved in strictest connection with the system of pure philosophy—in brief the only part of the problem of beauty which demands to be differentiated as a special field, is the field of the last resort, psychological and physiological analysis.