Furthermore, a subjective esthetics need not necessarily identify beauty with pleasantness. The old psychological hedonism which made all the keys of human interest strike one of the twin strings of pleasure and pain is no longer upheld by any respectable authority. It is quite possible that the seat of the dispute between the claims of sensual pleasure and of beauty is within us, and that they are equally parts of our nature. Therefore it is no answer to the subjectivist in aesthetics to say that the beauty of an object is introspectively other than the pleasure it may induce in us, and is often in compatible therewith.
It is through this method of introspection or self-examination; however, that the true nature of the beautiful is to be discovered, and the question of its internality or externality to be solved. Does recognition of the beautiful enter the mind after the manner of our perception of a quality in an external object — as we per ceive that a tree is green and leafy or bare and brown—or after the manner of an awareness of our own emotions, such as anger, satisfac tion, contrition, etc.? This is the attitude which should be kept in the mind of the reader throughout the following discussion.
Now, it is a familiar experience that one may be blind to beauty with much more readiness than to an ordinary sensory impression. Words worth's Peter Bell found that "A primrose by a river's brim, A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more." It is obvious that the essential thing which Peter Bell lacked was not sensory acuity. He probably saw as much of the color, form, etc., of the primrose as the poet himself. What was wanting in him was a certain emotional re sponse to the color and form. Furthermore, once this emotional response is present, machine shops or traveling cranes may be beautiful, as is shown by the work of Mr. Pennell, or city slums or barren deserts or in fact anything whatever. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the emotion excited by any object and only in that emotion does its beauty lie.
If we accept this view, we shall be subjectiv ists, and indeed the trend of the age is in this direction. There are still, however, many di verging types of subjectivism possible. One might say with Kant that though the seat of beauty is in the impression made by an object on the subject, this impression is bound by fixed a priori laws. Yet the very diversity of the beautiful and the fact that nothing appears ugly to him who considers it in the proper light, seem to exclude this view from being a real solution of the problem. But even if we admit that the connection between the beautiful object and the emotion it excites is a de facto one and not a priori, we have not yet pinned our esthetics down to a single theory. Many maintain that beauty consists in the ex citation of some peculiar esthetic emotion. If we accept the James-Lange theory of the emotions—which has been seriously questioned of late — and maintain thit an emotion is indi viduated only through the physiological re sponse which characterizes it, it will be very difficult to attribute a separate existence to the esthetic emotions. We react to different works
of art in very different ways; one excites awe, another pity; we laugh at the comedy and weep at the tragedy, we exhibit the physical symp toms of admiration for this work and those of the enjoyment of that. It is impossible for a single physiological reaction to be found that is compatible at once with those of awe, pity, laugh ter, tears, pleasure, admiration, which is not also found in our reactions to things not beautiful. Even apart from the James-Lange theory, the multifariousness of the esthetic emotions seems to contradict their possession of any common element. It seems, then, that the esthetic senti ments are qualitatively identical with those of non-esthetic character. Whatever distinction may subsist between them must be sought else where than in their quality. Perhaps the dis tinction is to be found here; many of our emotions, such as desire, fear, hatred, satisfac tion, etc., have a certain polarity about them— they are either emotions of approval or of disapproval. These emotions do not always agree in their direction at different times, or even at one and the same time, we may fear what we desire, or even hate it. Nevertheless, owing to the de facto uniformity of our nature, certain types of things will attract us in the long run and in general, and others repel us, even though these rules may be broken in a large number of particular instances. That is, we possess what may be known as a taste, which changes very slowly, if at all. Further more, we are able to recognize whether or not a thing will satisfy our taste, regardless of the conflicting promptings of our immediate emotions or of the presence or absence of the thing in question. Now, there are two ways in which we may apply our taste to an object or process; we may consider in its environment in the causal chain, or by a more or less volun tary act we may blot out its actual associates, and look at it in complete isolation. The first is the method of the moral agent, while the second is that of the artist. Here we see why art and morality may differ in their promptings, and also why the artistic attitude has been called disinterested by Kant and so many other writers. If the whole world were summed up in one picture or one symphony, the artist would necessarily be a good man, but it is not, and the very disregard for the loose ends of causality which bind his activities to the rest of the world which makes the artist a genius is likely to interfere with his being completely good. Or to put it otherwise, the artist may have many masterpieces, but the good man only one—his life.