Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/207

ÆSTHETICS. side of ssthctic appreciations, thus exalting the artistic consiiou>-ni'ss t'runi the position of hcing an imperfectly developed logic and metaphysics. Kut Kant's views are too completely determined by the idiosyncrasies of his philosophy ever to have become generally acceptable. His philo- sophy is dominated by the thought of a great breach between noumena and phenomena. (See Appearance.) The datum of philosophy is this apparent breaih, but the jiroblem is in large measure the healing of it. Hut this Kant could never succeed in eti'ecting. In his first two Critiques — those of Pure Reason and of Prac- tical Reason — he deals with iihenomena and noumena in their antithesis and separation. In his Critique of the Facultij of Judgment ( 1790), he attempts to bring about a ciuinection and synthesis. In his definition of beanty. he fol- lows his division of categories into those of quality, quantity, relation, and modality. Quali- tatively, the beautiful is the disinterestedly pleasing; quantitatively, it is the universally pleasing; relationally. it is that which has the form of purposiveness without the reality.of pur- pose, and, modallv, it is the necessarily pleasing. Thus, disinterested, universal, and necessary pleasure in simulated design is for Kant the essence of beauty. The sublime is that which pleases because of a reaction, after an inhibition of vitality, — a reaction which gives rise to a higher degree of vitality. The ridiculous is also a reaction against tension, being "the sudden change of a tense expectation into notliingness." As in the case of Kant, so in those of Schelling (q.v.) and Hegel (q.v. ), the philosophy of the beautiful has its part assigned to it in accord- ance with a comprehensive view of t)ie universe. Sehelling's absolute was one of utter indifference of subject and object. Therefore, in artistic appreciation it is this ultimate unity of abso- lute indifference which is perceived as the beau- tiful. In Hegel the absolute is not the indif- ferent, but the diflerentiated unity of subject and object, and art is a form of the absolute consciousness, i.e., it is such an attitude of con- sciousness toward its objects as does not eject them into an existence independent of itself; yet it does not fail to observe the distinction be- tween consciousness and objects. Tlierc are three forms of absohite consciousness, of which art is the first. In the art-consciousness the unity of subject and object is relatively simple. Although subject and object are not reflectively identified, they are not held apart, as in scien- tific knowledge. The beautiful is thus the abso- lute idea immediately perceived. Hegel's fol- lowers Rosenkranz, Sehasler. and Vischer. worked along these lines and elaborated a very detailed a'stheties. Schiller (q.v.) returns to Kant and differentiates the material and the formal impulses, which, working in conjunction, produce the beautiful.

In England, Shaftesbury (q.v.) worked in a Platonic spirit, and Hutcheson (q.v.) makes "all beauty relative to some mind perceiving it." The mind has a faculty, "an internal sense," which is capable of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is ini- formity in variety. Reid (q.v.), on the con- trary, gives an objective value to beauty, claim- ing that it exists apirt from our perception of it. Henry Home calls beauty the pleasure connected with sight and hearing. Hogarth (q.v.) makes a great advance in paying attention to details. He went back to the ultimate sensitiveness of the mind to certain geometrical forms and colors, and in this respect was the forerunner of recent psychological a-sthetics; while ISurke (q.v.) goes further and looks for the explanation of beauty in certain physiological elleets produced by the beautiful object. The, relaxation of nerves by appropriate stimuli has a soothing effect, which is the basis of a-sthetic pleasure. Hence the lieautiful must be petite. Alison (q.v.) is distinguislied by the lliorough-going way in which he applies Associa- tionism to the explanation of pleasing a"sthctic cll'ects. The deliglit wc take in a beautiful object is due to its delightful stiggestions. Bain (q.v.) elaborates this Assoeiationism and dill'erentiates the lesthetic pleasures from others by their disinterestedness, purity, and sympa- thetic value, as being sharable in a way in which others are not. Spencer (q.v.) introduces Evo- lutionism into testhetics, and thus accounts for the iFsthetic pleasures that in the individual seem to arise from congenital dispositions, by claiming that these dispositions are the survi- vals by heredity of associations formed in the history of the race. He also makes much of the distinction between work and play. Play is ac- tivity prompted by i^urplus of vigor, and the play of our higher faculties gives itsthetic pleasure. Consult: Gayley and Scott. Guide to the Literature of .1<!sthetie>i (Berkeley. Cal., 1S9D); W. Knight, Philosophy of the Beautiful (New York, I89I); B. Bosanquet. Ilistorii of .T.sthetic (London, 1802); Walter, Cenehichte der Aerithrtil.- iiii Altertum (T.eipzig, 180.3).

ÆSTHETICS, Experimental. Experiment made its way into the field of lesthetics from psychology on the one side and from philosophy and mathematics on the other. About the middle of the last century, while experiment was young in psychology, a dispute arose among theoretical writers concerning the asthetic value of simple space-forms. A. Zeising. professor of philosophy in Munich, urged that formal beauty demands a simple proportionality: while others sa%y, in both nature and art. a preference for equality, balance, or the relations given by the vibration ratios of consonant musical intervals, or the heptagon, or the square. Zeising carried out his theory most methodically of all. He meant by proportionality the division of an object in such a way that the smaller part, the minor, stands to the greater, the major, as the greater to the whole. This division is called the Golden Secti(Ui. Zeising made the most extravagant claims for the importance of his law. He maintained that it furnished the pattern for the human body, the structure of plants, the forms of crystals, the arrangement of planetary systems: and that it determined the proportions of buildings, sculptures, and paintings.

It occurred to G. T. Eechner (q.v.) to test the claims of Zeising and his opponents, in so far as a-sthetical preference was concerned, by observing series of divided lines and of simple forms — rectangles, ellipses, and crosses — under experimental conditions. He made use of a large number of persons, asking each to state his preference within each series. Eechner also performed an important service in discriminating between the associational factors in the lesthetie judgment (those furnished by the use. purpose, rareness of objects), and the direct effect produced upon the feelings by the form or the color