The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics. Vernon Lee

employing that word, but add to this information the name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion of admiration. For the selfsame object or proceeding may sometimes be called good and sometimes beautiful, according as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. While we admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it good, we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic coachman as beautiful, anglicè fine or splendid, because there is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely being contemplated with admiration. Similarly, we have all of us heard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon to an operation, the apparently far-fetched adjective Beautiful, or one of the various equivalents, fine, splendid, glorious (even occasionally jolly!) by which Englishmen express their admiration. The change of word represents a change of attitude. The engineer is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon estimating the advantages of the operation. Each of these highly practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical estimation or even of practice itself. The machine or operation, the skill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being considered apart from action, and advantage, means and time, to-day or yesterday; platonically we may call it from the first great teacher of aesthetics. They are being, in one word, contemplated with admiration. And admiration is the rough and ready name for the mood, however transient, for the emotion, however faint, wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because contemplation happens to give satisfaction. The satisfaction may be a mere skeleton of the "I'd rather than not" description; or it may be a massive alteration in our being, radiating far beyond the present, evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate it; storing itself up for the future; penetrating, like the joy of a fine day, into our animal spirits, altering pulse, breath, gait, glance and demeanour; and transfiguring our whole momentary outlook on life. But, superficial or overwhelming, this hind of satisfaction connected with, the word Beautiful is always of the Contemplative order.

      And upon the fact we have thus formulated depend, as we shall see, most of the other facts and formulae of our subject.

      This essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the word Beautiful has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous, and I think, quite misleading theories. The first of these defines aesthetic appreciation as disinterested interest, gratuitously identifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we have not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such appreciation implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested. The second philosophical theory (originally Schiller's, and revived by Herbert Spencer) takes advantage of the non-practical attitude connected with the word Beautiful to define art and its enjoyment as a kind of play. Now although leisure and freedom from cares are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For although it may be possible to watch other people playing football or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part of the players themselves an eminently practical state of mind, one diametrically opposed to contemplation, as I hope to make evident in the next section.

      CHAPTER II

      CONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION

      WE have thus defined the word Beautiful as implying an attitude of contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes amounting to an emotion, of admiration; and so far contrasted it with the practical attitude implied by the word good. But we require to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of contemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not merely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one.

      Let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching the behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary wayfarers in front of a view, which they severally consider in the practical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. The view was from a hill-top in the neighbourhood of Rome or of Edinburgh, whichever the Reader can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers halted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts.

      "It will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot"—began one of the three. "We might have been back for tea-time if only there had been a tram and a funicular. And that makes me think: Why not start a joint-stock company to build them? There must be water-power in these hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter to town. Also houses could be built for people whose work takes them to town, but who want good air for their children; the hire-purchase system, you know. It might prove a godsend and a capital investment, though I suppose some people would say it spoilt the view. The idea is quite a good one. I shall get an expert—"

      "These hills," put in the second man—"are said to be part of an ancient volcano. I don't know whether that theory is true! It would be interesting to examine whether the summits have been ground down in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic action at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been under the sea at no very distant period. It is also interesting to notice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural harbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable meeting-place of seafaring and pastoral populations. These investigations would prove, as I said, remarkably full of interest."

      "I wish"—complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to himself—"I wish these men would hold their tongues and let one enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to what might be done or to how it all came about. They don't seem to feel how beautiful it all is." And he concentrated himself on contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab of reluctance to leave.

      Meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there really was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for both tramway and funicular, and where the necessary capital could be borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of stratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical data about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country.

      "I suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your sketching materials?" said the scientific man, always interested in the causes of phenomena, even such trifling ones as a man remaining quiet before a landscape.

      "I reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out where you can use up a description of this place"—corrected the rapid insight of the practical man, accustomed to weigh people's motives in case they may be turned to use.

      "I am not a painter, and I'm not a writer"—exclaimed the third traveller, "and I thank Heaven I'm not! For if I were I might be trying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely enjoying all this beauty. Not but that I should like to have a sketch or a few words of description for when I've turned my back upon it. And Heaven help me, I really believe that when we are all back in London I may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your tramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action, because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me—"

      "That's what it is to be aesthetic"—said the two almost in the same breath.

      "And that, I suppose"—answered the third with some animosity—"is what you mean by being practical or scientific."

      Now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of science, though differing so obviously from one another (the first bent upon producing new and advantageous results, the second examining, without thought of advantage, into possible causes), both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. They were, as he complained, thinking of what might be done and of how it had all come about. That is to say they were both thinking away from that landscape. The scientific man actually turned his back to it in examining first one