Qualities

The Tertiary Qualities or Values

raise similar problems, but it may well be doubted whether it is altogether happy to suggest, as the name does, that values belong to things in the same sense as the primary and secondary qualities do. Beauty is the only one of them which belongs directly to things; for truth attaches to propositions, and goodness to actions; and it will be convenient to speak principally of it. It has been held that beauty belongs to the beautiful object itself, a statement which, plausible enough when made of works of art, seems at first only the obvious one to make of a beautiful sunset or any form of natural beauty. Beauty, according to this view, is real and objective like shape or colour. In like manner goodness is held by some to belong to the person or act which is good ; and it may be noted that even a writer like Kant treats good as ob jective though belonging to the intelligible or supra-phenomenal world. The statement that beautiful things have beauty apart from mind is, however, difficult to accept, because in a work of art beauty depends so largely on characters imputed to the work by the artist or the spectator. Thus dead marble looks alive and full of character, or in a picture stable forms are seen, aes thetically, to be in motion, for instance, to be dancing ; and in a poem, the words are chosen not merely to describe but to endow : "two voices are there, one is of the sea, one of the mountains," though neither sea nor mountains have voices. There is so far always an element of illusion in art, a character being imputed to the material which it does not possess of itself. Even in natural beauty, the beauty may be seen to depend on selection on our part, or it may be addition; for instance, we may select in the sunset the shades which harmonize, or in the landscape the features which suit our own mood.

It would seem to follow that beauty is really dependent on the mind, and would not exist either in art or nature except for our interference. And it is not difficult to carry this line of reflection further and maintain that goodness and truth are human con structions, as, with respect to goodness, was held by Spinoza. Truth is not so obviously a human invention, but it is, in fact, different from reality itself, though it is guided and controlled by reality. Truth as in science is really a semi-artistic product in which the seeker blends himself with reality and does so by selection. His difference from the artist is that, though he im putes and interprets, he imputes nothing that he cannot verify in the reality. The artist introduces himself into his art giving the work characters which it only has so far as seen with the aesthetic eye. The enquirer who attains truth possesses reality for himself, but he keeps his human imputations out of the product.

The same thing may be concluded from observing that beauty satisfies a specially human impulse which has to make the object which is to satisfy it. Animals, including men, live by using the food which they find ; but the impulse to beauty is a creative impulse, which the present writer (Art and Instinct, 1927) identi fies as the impulse of constructiveness (such as animals and bees or ants also have) but used without regard to a practical pur pose. In the same way truth appeals to an impulse of curiosity,

and goodness to a social impulse. The values accordingly possess value because they satisfy these special impulses, and bring a peculiar satisfaction.

Such a conception of beauty and the other values has been held by some critics to be inconsistent with the view that the secondary qualities are independent of mind. If beauty is so dependent, why not colour? The question is really irrelevant, for the same explanation does not necessarily apply to situations which may seem superficially similar. And, as has been indicated, the action in virtue of which we discover colour is entirely dif ferent from the creative action by which we become aware of beauty and goodness and truth.

The values therefore rest on a different basis from primary and secondary qualities. Men produce works of art and good societies and true knowledge. But these products have these qualities only on sufferance from their makers. Remove men, and beauty would disappear. But red would remain; though, unless there are creatures with the appropriate organs, it would not be perceived.

At the same time in declaring the values to be qualities only of the new realities which are held upon human tenure, we do not declare them to be mere figments of men. On the contrary, good ness belongs, in the sense described, to acts which bring out what is best in human nature, and true knowledge, being controlled throughout by reality, admits us to the secrets of that reality. And art embodies, in stone or sound, the constructive visions of men and reveals the deeper relations between us and nature.

The separation of tertiary qualities from those which do not depend on human interference helps us to set in a clearer light the quality of things which is their "worshipfulness" and becomes, when considered as abiding in them, the object of religion. It is commonly spoken of as a value along with beauty, goodness, and truth, and may consistently be so regarded, if value is thought to be inherent in what is valuable. If, however, the above con siderations are valid, it would be treated, whether under the name of deity, or worshipfulness, or as Otto calls it (in The Idea of the Holy, Eng. trans., 1923), "numinousness," not as a value or tertiary quality at all, but, just because it belongs to its possessor intrinsically, without need of human intervention, as a quality, on the line of the primary and secondary qualities, independent of man and actually belonging to the world of things, which world includes, of course, man and man-made values. This topic is, however, raised here only for completeness, and it falls beyond the scope of this article to examine further the nature of deity and its possessor. (S. A.)