THE 'ESTHETIC ARTS.
aesthetic arts are those designed to give pleasure. Their aim is primarily to affect the senses in an agreeable manner, and by association the emotions and the intellect. Hence a philosophical exam ination of them could with propriety classify them in a physiological scheme as they are addressed to one or other of the senses, sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch, in the forms of color, tone, flavor, odor, or tact; and this has been adopted by some writers; but for the present study it will be more convenient to arrange them under their objective expres sions, as, I. Decorative Designs in Line and Color; 2. Sculpture and Modelling; 3. Music and Musical Instruments; 4. Scents and Flavors; 5. Games and Festivals.
These are the "arts of pleasure" with which man seeks to intensify the sense of existence by bringing into enjoyable activity the various faculties with which he is endowed. The effort is by no means confined to the human species, though in none other does it approach the devel opment there observed. The germs of most of the arts named are easily recognized in numbers of the lower animals. So many examples to this effect have been furnished by those who have studied the development of mind in the inferior species that it is needless to go into detail on this point. The domestic cat illustrates the love of games and frolic common to the young of most of the higher animals, and in its fondness for the taste and scent of valerian it seeks a stimulation of its gustatory and olfactory nerves for the sake of pleasure only. Not only the birds, but some species of mice and monkeys, have a correct musical ear, and sing in strict accordance to the rules of harmony. In the homes of the house building rodents and the mud-wasps there is an attention to proportion and to smoothing and trimming the outside of their structures which has no obvious impulse except in a sense of the harmony of related parts. Many quadrupeds manifest not merely a perception of colors, but strong preferences and aversions for them, as in the common example of the irri tating effect of a red rag on a bull. The gorgeous plumage of the peacock is most obviously appreciated by himself and his fellows; and some of the bower-building birds tastefully ornament the "playing-passages" they construct by fastening bright feathers and gaudy leaves along their walls (Darwin). The scent-bags possessed by various species of animals emit odors agreeable to their own kind.
Their Relation to Sexual Instinct. —Many of these developments of the msthetic powers are intended, according to naturalists, especially as allure ments to the opposite sex. Whatever their ultimate aim, their proximate
object is to excite pleasurable sensations in the sense to which they are addressed. Most of the "arts of pleasure" to which man devotes himself are also indirectly ministers at the same shrine. The ideal of beauty which inspires the painter and sculptor, the figures of dances, and the vibrating tones of music have most frequently direct reference to the love of man to woman, the devotion of woman to man. They are stimulants to the emotions, but they nearly all revolve around the central emotion of the sexual passion.
Their Influence on Social is from this intimate natural and genetic association with the laws of the continuance of the species that they become of such moment to the study of history and ethnology. The arts of pleasure, properly cultivated, increase the happiness of a column nity and favor its life and growth, but misapplied, or pursued as ends in themselves, bring about the decadency of nations. The relations of resthetics to ethics are altogether too extensive to be discussed in this connection; but whoever has studied the history of the fine arts must acknowledge that when their products have been signally impure it was always during the decline of national vigor, and that their grand est triumphs have been in nations struggling nobly for freedom and power.
The Theory of the ethnologist will also note national and race characteristics in other tendencies of art than where it touches morality. The theory of the beautiful is not altogether one of caprice, as some philosophers would have us believe. There are certain laws underlying the proportions of the human body which define what is sym metry and what is not, within close limits. They are not inflexible, like those of geometry, but adaptable, like all those of organic life.
These laws were intuitively perceived in their greatest clearness by the ancient Greeks, and the models of art wrought by that nation have ever served as prototypes to later generations. The remains of their art contrast forcibly with the products of Mongolian workmen, usually inclin ing to exaggeration and caricature ; with the examples from ancient Egypt, characterized by conventional elements ; and with those of most uncultivated peoples, which are generally aimed to incite terror or laughter rather than to cultivate the conception of beauty.