CHAPTER VII. REALITY AND THE BEAUTIFUL.

53. THE CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIENCE.—Truth and Goodness characterize reality as related to intellect and to will. Intimately connected with these notions is that of _the beautiful_,(193) which we must now briefly analyse. The fine arts have for their common object the expression of the beautiful; and the department of philosophy which studies these, the philosophy of the beautiful, is generally described as _Esthetics_.(194)

Like the terms “true” and “good,” the term “beautiful” (καλόν; _pulchrum_, _beau_, _schön_, etc.) is familiar to all. To reach a definition of it let us question experience. What do men commonly mean when, face to face with some object or event, they say “That is _beautiful_”? They give expression to this sentiment in the presence of a natural object such as a landscape revealing mountain and valley, lake and river and plain and woodland, glowing in the golden glow of the setting sun; or in contemplating some work of art—painting, sculpture, architecture, music: the _Sistine Madonna_, the _Moses_ of Michael Angelo, the Cathedral of _Notre Dame_, a symphony of Beethoven; or some literary masterpiece: Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_, or Dante’s _Divina Commedia_, or Newman’s _Apologia_, or Kickham’s _Knocknagow_. There are other things the sight of which arouses no such sentiment, but leaves us indifferent; and others again, the sight of which arouses a contrary sentiment, to which we give expression by designating them as “commonplace,” “vulgar,” “ugly”. The sentiment in question is one of _pleasure_ and _approval_, or of _displeasure_ and _disapproval_.

Hence the first fact to note is that _the beautiful pleases us_, _affects us agreeably_, while the commonplace or the ugly leaves us indifferent or _displeases us_, _affects us disagreeably_.

But the _good_ pleases us and affects us agreeably. Is the beautiful, then, identical with the good? No; the really beautiful is indeed always good; but not everything that is good is beautiful; nor is the pleasure aroused by the good identical with that aroused by the beautiful. Whatever gratifies the lower sense appetites and causes organic pleasure is good—_bonum delectabile_—but is not deemed beautiful. Eating and drinking, resting and sleeping, indulging the senses of touch, taste and smell, are indeed pleasure-giving, but they have no association with the beautiful. Again, the deformed child may be the object of the mother’s special love. But the pleasure thus derived from the good, as the object of appetite, desire, delight, is not esthetic pleasure. If we examine the latter, the pleasure caused by the beautiful, we shall find that it is invariably a pleasure peculiar to _knowledge_, to apprehension, perception, imagination, contemplation. Hence in the domain of the senses we designate as “beautiful” only what can be apprehended by the two higher senses, seeing and hearing, which approximate most closely to intellect, and which, through the imagination, furnish data for _contemplation_ to the intellect.(195) This brings us to St. Thomas’s definition: _Pulchra sunt quæ visa placent_: those things are beautiful whose vision pleases us,—where vision is to be understood in the wide sense of apprehension, contemplation.(196) The owner of a beautiful demesne, or of an art treasure, may derive pleasure from his sense of proprietorship; but this is distinct from the esthetic pleasure that may be derived by others, no less than by himself, from the mere contemplation of those objects. Esthetic pleasure is disinterested: it springs from the mere _contemplation_ of an object as beautiful; whereas the pleasure that springs from the object as good is an interested pleasure, a pleasure of _possession_. No doubt the beautiful is really identical with the good, though logically distinct from the latter.(197) The _orderliness_ which we shall see to be the chief objective factor of beauty, is itself a perfection of the object, and as such is good and desirable. Hence the beautiful can be an object of interested desire, but only under the aspect of goodness. Under the aspect of beauty the object can excite only the disinterested esthetic pleasure of contemplation.

But if esthetic pleasure is derived from contemplation, is not this identifying the beautiful with the true, and supplanting art by science? Again the consequence is inadmissible; for not every pleasure peculiar to knowledge is esthetic. There is a pleasure in seeking and discovering truth, the pleasure which gratifies the scholar and the scientist: the pleasure of the philologist in tracing roots and paradigms, of the chemist in analysing unsavoury materials, of the anatomist in exploring the structure of organisms _post mortem_. But these things are not “beautiful”. The really beautiful is indeed always true, but it cannot well be maintained that all truths are beautiful. That two and two are four is a truth, but in what intelligible sense could it be said to be beautiful?

But besides the scientific pleasure of seeking and discovering truth, there is the pleasure which comes from contemplating the object known. The aim of the scientist or scholar is _to discover truth_; that of the artist is, through knowledge to derive complacency from _contemplating the thing known_. The scientist or scholar may be also an artist, or _vice versa_; but the scientist’s pleasure proper lies exclusively in discovering truth, whereas that of the artist lies in contemplating something apprehended, imagined, conceived. The artist is not concerned as to whether what he apprehends is real or imaginary, certain or conjectural, but only as to whether or how far the contemplation of it will arouse emotions of pleasure, admiration, enthusiasm; while the scientist’s supreme concern is to know things, to see them as they are. The beautiful, then, is always true, either as actual or as ideal; but the true is beautiful only when it so reveals itself as to arouse in us the desire to see or hear it, to consider it, to dwell and rest in the contemplation of it.

Let us accept, then, the _a posteriori_ definition of the beautiful as _that which it is pleasing to contemplate_; and before inquiring what precisely is it, on the side of the object, that makes the latter agreeable to contemplate, let us examine the subjective factors and conditions of esthetic experience.

54. THE ESTHETIC SENTIMENT. APPREHENSION OF THE BEAUTIFUL.—We have seen that both the appetitive and the cognitive faculties are involved in the experience of the beautiful. Contemplation implies cognition; while the feeling of pleasure, complacency, satisfaction, delight, indicates the operation of appetite or will. Now the notion of the beautiful, like all our notions, has its origin in sense experience; but it is itself suprasensible for it is reached by abstraction, and this is above the power of sense faculties. While the senses and imagination apprehend beautiful objects the intellect attains to that which makes these objects beautiful, to the _ratio pulchri_ that is in them. No doubt, the perception or imagination of beautiful things, in nature or in art, produces as its natural concomitant, a feeling of sensible pleasure. To hear sweet music, to gaze on the brilliant variety of colours in a gorgeous pageant, to inhale delicious perfumes, to taste savoury dishes—all such experiences gratify the senses. But the feeling of such sensible pleasure is quite distinct from the esthetic enjoyment which accompanies the apprehension of the beautiful; though it is very often confounded with the latter. Such _sentient_ states of agreeable feeling are mainly _passive_, organic, physiological; while esthetic enjoyment, the appreciation of the beautiful, is eminently _active_. It implies the operation of a suprasensible faculty, the _intelligence_; it accompanies the reaction of the latter faculty to some appropriate objective stimulus of the suprasensible, intelligible order, to some “idea” embodied in the object of sense.(198)

The error of confounding esthetic enjoyment with mere organic sense pleasure is characteristic of all sensist and materialist philosophies. A feeling of sensible gratification always, no doubt, accompanies our apprehension and enjoyment of the beautiful; for just as man is not a merely sentient being so neither is he a pure intelligence. Beauty reaches him through the senses; in order that an object be beautiful for him, in order that the contemplation of it may please him, it must be in harmony with his whole _human_ nature, which is both sentient and intelligent; it must, therefore, be agreeable to the senses and imagination as well as to the intellect. “There is no painting,” writes M. Brunetière,(199) “but should be above all a joy to the eye! no music but should be a delight for the ear!” Otherwise we shall not apprehend in it the order, perfection, harmony, adaptation to human nature, whereby we pronounce an object beautiful and rejoice in the contemplation of it. And it is this intellectual activity that is properly esthetic. “What makes us consider a colour beautiful,” writes Bossuet,(200) is the secret judgment we pronounce upon its adaptation to the eye which it pleases. Beautiful sounds, songs, cadences, have a similar adaptation to the ear. To apprehend this adaptation promptly and accurately is what is described as having a good ear, though properly speaking this judgment should be attributed to the intellect.

According to some the esthetic sentiment, the appreciation and enjoyment of the beautiful, is an exclusively subjective experience, an emotional state which has all its sources within the conscious subject, and which has no real, extramental correlative in things. According to others beauty is already in the extramental reality independently of any subjective conditions, and has no mental factors in its constitution as an object of experience. Both of these extreme views are erroneous. Esthetic pleasure, like all pleasure, is the natural concomitant of the full, orderly, normal exercise of the subject’s conscious activities. These activities are called forth by, and exercised upon, some _object_. For esthetic pleasure there must be in the object something the contemplation of which will elicit such harmonious exercise of the faculties. Esthetic pleasure, therefore, cannot be purely subjective: there must be an objective factor in its realization. But on the other hand this objective factor cannot provoke esthetic enjoyment independently of the dispositions of the subject. It must be in harmony with those dispositions—cognitive, appetitive, affective, emotional, temperamental—in order to evoke such a mental view of the object that the contemplation of the latter will cause esthetic pleasure. And it is precisely because these dispositions, which are so variable from one individual to another, tinge and colour the mental view, while this in turn determines the quality of the esthetic judgment and feeling, that people disagree and dispute interminably about questions of beauty in art and nature. Herein beauty differs from truth. No doubt people dispute about the latter also; but at all events they recognize its objective character and the propriety of an appeal to the independent, impersonal standard of evidence. Not so, however, in regard to beauty: _De gustibus non est disputandum_: there is no disputing about tastes. The perception of beauty, the judgment that something is or is not beautiful, is the product of an act of _taste_, _i.e._ of the individual’s intelligence affected by numerous concrete personal dispositions both of the sentient and of the spiritual order, not only cognitive and appetitive but temperamental and emotional. Moreover, besides this variety in subjective dispositions, we have to bear in mind the effects of artistic culture, of educating the taste. The eye and the ear, which are the two main channels of data for the intellect, can be made by training more delicate and exacting, so that the same level of esthetic appreciation can be maintained only by a constantly increasing measure of artistic stimulation. Finally, apart from all that a beautiful object _directly conveys_ to us for contemplation, there is something more which it may _indirectly suggest_: it arouses a distinct activity of the imagination whereby we fill up, in our own individual degree and according to our own interpretation, what has not been actually supplied in it by nature or art.

All those influences account sufficiently for the subjectivity and variability of the esthetic sentiment, for diversity of artistic tastes among individuals, for the transitions of fashion in art from epoch to epoch and from race to race. But it must not be concluded that the subjective factors in the constitution of the beautiful are wholly changeable. Since human nature is fundamentally the same in all men there ought to be a fund of esthetic judgments and pleasures common to all; there ought to be in nature and in art some things which are recognized and enjoyed as beautiful by all. And there are such. In matters _of detail_ the maxim holds: _De gustibus non disputandum_. But there ar