Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/161

Rh the beholder think not of the present reality, but of its unseen complement. The sensualist of the wooded mountains divides the real into its parts, gets beauty out of the contrasted zones and is satisfied. The idealist blends the real into one unit and creates for himself a complement out of the unseen. Beauty is thus a relation between the seen, contrasting element with element, or it is the force that drives the beholder from the seen to the hidden background.

When I came into contact with conventional art, it took me a long time to see what made it attractive. I disliked the contrasted surfaces and the obtrusiveness of its sex and safety associations. New pictures gave me pleasure, because they evoked in me a realization of the beyond. Sculpture was even more satisfying, because the absence of a background forces the artist to rely for his effect wholly on lines, instead of on contrasted surfaces.

Furniture also has its motor and sensory effects. A chair elaborately designed makes one think of the pleasure of sitting in it; a chair with lines arouses the thought of some one you would like to have in it. A table with surfaces makes the beholder think of gorging the richly-colored food that should be on it. A table in which lines dominate arouses the thought of company and serious conversation. Lines bring in the absent. Surfaces eject from their folds a rich content. The bareness of the one and the completeness of the other give beauty.

The essence of my position is the conflict of the motor powers with the earlier formed sex and sensory centers. Adjustment at adolescence is motor; disadjustment is sexual and sensory. The normal child fights its way into motor dominance and by the struggle makes its character. The abnormal remain under sex and sensory control. This would be readily admitted in cases where the abnormalities are so marked as to unbalance the mind. The milder cases, where sex and sensory impressions exert a disjustive pressure, are viewed as natural traits. Those who exhibit them are often regarded as superior to those with complete motor control. The real test of a natural trait is its tendency to strengthen the personality of its possessor. Evolution creates unity of control. Mechanisms for expression are organic: mechanisms for repression are due to the association of ideas, and hence postnatal in origin. There are no organic repressions. They all have a social origin.

In the case of a child all repression is bad. Conscious morality should begin with maturity, and then should be a relative pressure, not an absolute prohibition. The child should be protected by an environment that prevents the formation of premature sensory associations. A man with a strong personality would result. With the change would come a simpler language and a morality that evokes character. The longer childhood and the delayed education bring compensation in a longer working period and in new forms of social activity from which would come a better art, a higher morality and a purer religion.