anything corresponds in play save where games of skill take on something of the dignity of a fine art.[1]
So far as to the preliminary delimiting work in aesthetic science. Only a bare indication can be made as to the methods of research by which its advance can be furthered, and as to the several directions of inquiry which it Methods of research in aesthetics.will have to follow. With regard to the former the method of investigation will consist in a careful inquiry into two orders of fact: (1) Objects which common testimony or the history of art show to be widely recognized objects of aesthetic value; (2) records of the aesthetic experience of individuals, whether artists or amateurs.
Since aesthetic experience is brought about and its modes determined by objects possessing certain qualities, it seems evident that scientific aesthetics must make an examination and comparison of these a fundamental part of its problem. These objects will, as already hinted, Examination of aesthetic objects.
Nature as supplying aesthetic objects.include both natural ones in the inorganic and organic worlds, and works of art which can be shown to be objects of general or widely recognized aesthetic value. Without attempting here to discuss adequately the relation of natural beauty to that of art we may note one or two points. Some contemplation and appreciation of the beautiful aspects of nature is not only prior in time to art, but is a condition of its genesis. The enjoyment of the pleasing aspects of land and sea, of mountain and dale, of the innumerable organic forms, has steadily grown with the development of culture; and this growth, though undoubtedly aided by that of the feeling for art—especially painting and poetry—is to a large extent independent of it.[2] Some of the finest insight into the secrets of beauty has been gained by those who had only a limited acquaintance with art. What is still more important in the present connexion is that the aesthetic experience gained by the direct contemplation of nature includes varieties which art cannot reproduce. It is enough to recall what Helmholtz and others have told us about the limitations of the powers of pictorial art to represent the more brilliant degrees of light; the admissions of painters themselves as to the limits of their art when it seeks to render the finer gradations of light and colour in such common objects as a tree-trunk or a bit of old wall. Nature, moreover, in spreading out her spaces of earth, sea and sky, and in exhibiting the action of her forces, does so on a scale which seems to make sublimity her prerogative in which art vainly endeavours to participate.
On the other hand, it is coming to be seen that the construction of a theory of aesthetic values must be assisted by a much more precise examination than aestheticists are commonly content to make, of works of art. The importance of including these is that they are well-defined Use of works of
art by the theorist.objective expressions of what the aesthetic consciousness approves and prefers. In inquiring, for example, into the pleasing relations of colour we might have to wait long for a theory if we were dependent on what even so gifted a writer as Ruskin can tell us about nature's juxtapositions: whereas if it can be shown that throughout the history of chromatic art or during its better period there has been a tendency to prefer certain combinations, this fact becomes a piece of convincing evidence as to their aesthetic value. Even here, however, there are sources of uncertainty. Difficulties in
using works of
art as material.It is not true to say that a work of art is a pure outcome of the aesthetic feeling of the artist. even if we take this in a comprehensive sense. It is subject to the influence of all the temporary feelings and tendencies of the time which produced it. The aesthetic motive which is supposed to originate it is apt to be complicated and disguised by other motives, e.g. utility in architecture,[3] an impulse to instruct if not to reform in modern fiction. Again, if it is said that a certain degree of permanence assures us of the aesthetic value of a feature of art, we are met by the difficulty that custom plays an important part in art, the result of convention fixed by tradition often Effects of custom on artistic preference.simulating the aspect of a deep-seated aesthetic preference. In this connexion it is to be remarked that even so permanent an element as symmetry may owe its quasi-aesthetic value to custom, by which is understood its wide and impressive display in the organic and even the inorganic world.[4] Yet the influence of custom taken in this larger sense need not greatly disturb us. In aesthetics, as in ethics, the question of validity has to be kept distinct from that of origin. If symmetry (in general) is appreciated as aesthetically pleasing, the question of its genesis becomes immaterial. Another difficulty, not peculiar to aesthetic investigation, is that of reconstructing the modes of aesthetic consciousness represented by forms of art which differ widely from those of our own age and type of culture.
In utilizing art material for aesthetic theory the theorist will need to note the work recently done by English and German writers on primitive art. And this not merely because of the value of the early forms of art for a theory of the evolution of the aesthetic consciousness; but Value of primitive
art for aesthetics.because the embryonic stages of art are likely to have a peculiar interest as illustrating in a comparatively isolated form some of the simpler modes of aesthetic appreciation, e.g. in the grouping of colours, in the mode of covering a surface with linear ornament. Yet it is not necessary to give primitive art a considerable place in a general aesthetics. As a normative science, it is to be remembered, this is much more immediately concerned with the higher stages of aesthetic culture. In seeking to establish norms or regulative principles, we must, it is evident, make a special study of objects of art which belong to our own level of culture. For these reasons it would appear necessary to include in a general aesthetic theory some reference to the evolution of art and of the aesthetic consciousness.Evolution as criterion of
aesthetic height. A further reason for including it is that the evolution of art supplies a most valuable auxiliary criterion of degree or height of aesthetic value. Provided that we distinguish what is a real process of evolution from one of mere change of fashion in taste, and that we confine ourselves to the larger features of the process, we may make the principle of evolution a serviceable one by regarding those forms and features of art as higher in respect of aesthetic value which grow distinct and relatively fixed in the later and better stages of the evolution of art.[5] This part of aesthetic investigation should be made as exact as possible. Thus Exact measurement of characteristics of art-work.in dealing with the triads of colour said to be most frequently employed in the best period of Italian painting the observer should note and record as far as this is possible not only the precise tints, but also the precise degrees of their several luminosities. With regard to elements of form in art, the judicious use of photography and careful measurement would probably help us to understand the practices of art in its better periods. This examination of art material by the aesthetic theorist should be supplemented by a study of what artists have written about their methods, of the rules laid down for students of art, and lastly of the generalizations reached by the more scientific kind of writer upon art.[6]
A proper methodical inquiry into aesthetic objects aided by a
- ↑ Plato had a glimpse of the resemblance of art to play (see Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 54). Among modern writers the idea is specially connected with the names of Schiller and Herbert Spencer. In recent works the subject is touched on by S. Wittasek, Grundzüge der allgem. Ästhetik, pp. 223 ff.; Bray, Du Beau, pp. 62 ff., and by Rutgers Marshall and others referred to below in Bibliography.
- ↑ Hence to say, as Bosanquet says (op. cit. pp. 3-4), that art is to nature as the scientific conception of the world to that of the ordinary observer, seems wide of the mark.
- ↑ K. Lange goes very far in attributing a practical motive to features of architecture commonly supposed to have aesthetic value, e.g. a regular series of similar forms (Das Wesen der Kunst, Bd. i. pp. 277 ff.).
- ↑ K. Lange thinks that even symmetry probably has a technical origin (op. cit. pp. 283-284).
- ↑ The question of the place of the historical development of art in aesthetic theory is carefully considered by J. Volkelt, System der Ästhetik, Bd. i. 5ᵉˢ Kap.
- ↑ See, for example, a little work, The Genesis of Art-From, by G. L. Raymond.
