remarked, it appears to be inferrible that mental development involves a certain loss of pleasurable capacity. Is it too fanciful to conceive that the exquisite sensibility to colour which Mr. Darwin has attributed to birds, includes a susceptibility of delight scarcely equalled by any single momentary enjoyment of the cultivated human mind? According to the principle of the conservation of energy, it seems probable, as we have seen, that the few gratifications of a raw uneducated boor are, as individual and momentary pleasures, intenser than any of the delights of a cultivated scholar. Hence it may be asked how we can be certain that the development of mental faculty is accompanied with a total increase of enjoyment.

It would ill become me to seek to argue exhaustively the complicated and oft-discussed question of optimism and pessimism. Fortunately for our present object, the assumption here adopted does not involve this delicate point. It matters not for us whether or not the progress of life multiplies our pains in the same ratio in which it multiplies our pleasures. If it can only be shown that it multiplies our pleasures, art, whose object is pure pleasure, will derive all the advantage.

Now it is sufficiently evident that mental development is attended by a vast increase in the number of pleasures. Indeed, the very idea of development, involving an increase in the number of faculties, involves also an increase in the number of the pleasurable susceptibilities which are the concomitants of the several faculties, intellectual and moral. This fact becomes manifest upon the most superficial comparison of two minds respectively low and high in the scale of culture. Whereas a savage experiences only transitory delights of great intensity, interspersed among long and dreary tracts of emotional quiescence and indifference, a cultivated European experiences numberless delights, of less intensity individually, yet diffused over the whole area of conscious life.

It is but another side of the same truth, that the gratifications of a highly developed mind infinitely transcend those of a primitive mind in their variety. Not only are the enjoyments of a child or of la savage limited to certain brief and rare periods, namely, those in which the few organic wants and emotional needs make themselves felt, but they are further limited by the fact of their uniformity. That is to say, being so few they cannot be extended through long periods without producing the sense of monotony. On the other hand, the great variety of distinct pleasurable elements possessed by

a mind of high culture implies a capacity for extended and oftrepeated enjoyment.* *

Now whatever difference of degree there may be between the most intense pleasures of a savage or of a rustic swain, and the most intense pleasures of an artistically cultivated man, one may reasonably conclude from the considerations just urged, that the net result of mental development and culture is an immense increase in the quantity of pure enjoyment. And this conclusion is sufficient for our present purposes. If the great movement of evolution is a fact, it seems a reasonable course to work harmoniously with it, rather than to seek vainly to counteract it. Whether men are or are not the happier for greater knowledge and emotional susceptibility, they are apparently being carried on towards these attainments. Art, if it cares anything about a permanent value, would certainly have to recognize the tendency of progress, even though this were seen to be transporting us from the region of the highest delight. How much more will it need to recognize this tendency if it be shown to be in the direction of a fuller, more various, and more enduring pleasure! Esthetic science seeks in vain to construct a perfect esthetic type of nature, containing potentially every mode of delight in its highest intensity. It may seek to good purpose to discover what type of æsthetic nature the progress of mental evolution appears to be bringing nearer and nearer to view.

Assuming, then, that progress in aesthetic culture, regarded as a part of mental development as a whole, is in the direction of a higher delight, we have to determine the essential characters of this progress. Excluding from view, as far as possible, all that is variable and accidental in human development, and confining our attention to its large and permanent movements of progress, we have to ask in what manner, and according to what laws, the mental energies involved in the several æsthetic susceptibilities undergo transformation.

The estimation of the æsthetic value of a pleasure by a reference to its place in the line of development, has recently been attempted by

This holds good even of the pleasures of novelty, which at first sight seem to be curtailed by the advance of knowledge. Omitting any reference to the painful element of dread before the unknown, we may say that a cultivated mind experiences the sense of novelty in less intense forms, but far more frequently, than an uncultivated; for its increase of knowledge opens up a larger and larger region of conceivable novelties, and also tends to develope the observing powers, the activity of which is one condition of a fresh impression.

*

Mr. Spencer. He considers that the "height" of an aesthetic feeling may be measured by one of two standards, which, in the largest number of cases, give the same result. The highest æsthetic pleasure is, under the first aspect, that which is due to a pleasureable activity of the greatest number of mental powers; under the second aspect, that which arises from a grateful exercise of the most complex emotional faculty. That is to say, an aesthetic enjoyment is to be ranked as high when it is voluminous, composed of many distinct gratifications, and when it involves a great degree of the representative and ideal, as distinguished from the immediate and sensuous. According to this double method of estimation, Mr. Spencer arranges the aesthetic pleasures in the following hierarchy. The lowest are the pleasures of simple sensation, namely, those of single colours and tones. Next to these are the gratifications which attend more or less complex perceptions, such as the pleasures of combined forms, and melodic sequences. The highest place is filled by the pleasures of aesthetic sentiments, strictly so called, which contain no presentative elements: namely, the highly composite and ideal feelings indirectly called up by landscape, musical tones, etc.

This conception (the consequences of which Mr. Spencer has only very faintly indicated), seems to be pregnant with fruitful results for the science of art. In the following suggestions I shall adopt in a modified form the principles Mr. Spencer here lays down.

The development of aesthetic susceptibility may be regarded, under one of its principal aspects, as a concomitant of intellectual culture. Emotional activity is of course a perfectly different thing from intellectual; and under another of its aspects, that of intensity, seems rather to be opposed to, than to be assisted by, the development of the intellectual energies. Yet all progress of feeling towards refinement consists in the action of mental forces which are at the very root of intellect. Hence, in studying the successive transformations of the aesthetic susceptibilities from their crudest to their most refined forms, we may conveniently regard these processes as conditioned by the development of intellectual quality.

Adopting this view of emotional progress, we may remark, first of all, that the aesthetic feelings grow in number, subtlety and variety, that is, become more refined and frequent enjoyments, pari passu with the development of the Discriminative and the Assimilative functions. In the second place, it may be observed that these

Principles of Psychology, Vol. ii., p. 643, et seq.

feelings grow in range or amplitude with the development of the Retentive power of the mind, that is to say, its capability of ideal aggregation and of ideal revival.

In the first place, in proportion as the mind is capable of finely distinguishing between different impressions and ideas, and of clearly noting their points of resemblance, its æsthetic enjoyments are multiplied. This proposition seems to be too obvious to need anything like distinct proof. Every additional attainment in the discrimination of pleasurable qualities clearly opens up a new possibility of enjoyment. Further, this multiplication of pleasurable impressions involves an increase in the variety of pleasurable feelings. produced. In other words, a fine recognition of aesthetic quality necessitates the development of new elements of emotional susceptibility.

This truth may be illustrated throughout the several varieties of æsthetic pleasure. For instance, the increase in number and variety of sensuous gratifications, those of light, colour and tone, involves an addition of discriminative and assimilative power. The artist's eye notes myriads of points of diversity and of resemblance among visual forms and shades of tint which wholly escape the attention of ordinary men. Few persons reflect, perhaps, what an exquisite delicacy of sensuous discrimination and assimilation is involved in the appreciation of perfect purity of colour. Similarly, with respect to the perception of pleasing combinations of impressions. It is obvious, indeed, that the perceptions of unity and of variety rest immediately on these intellectual activities. As the sense of differ ence and of likeness grows more acute and certain, the scope for the discovery of subtle shades of unity and contrast becomes vastly enlarged, and in this way the mind acquires the capability of appreciating the numerous phases of the like and the various which mark such a complicated artistic creation as a symphony of Beethoven, a colossal yet well-proportioned fresco of Michael Angelo, or a har moniously tinted picture of Tizian. Finally, the same thing may be observed in the growth of the emotional ingredients in æsthetic. feeling. The enjoyments which accompany the impulses of admiration and laughter, the sentiment of sublimity and so on, obviously become more numerous as the discriminating and recognizing power increases in delicacy and force. The poet finds shades of the admirable and beautiful where the uncultivated person fails to find them, just because the emotional vision of the former is finer and more discriminating. Similarly, a highly humorous mind is able to detect

so many ludicrous aspects in things because its peculiar emotional susceptibility has grown in discriminating and assimilating power.

It follows from this that the higher aesthetic appreciation is always a process of some delicacy. Pleasurable qualities which obtrude themselves on the observer's attention cannot afford a cultivated mind any appreciable delight. An essential ingredient in the more refined enjoyments of the beautiful, the ludicrous, etc., is the exercise of a certain intellectual activity. This mode of delight is the result of an extended activity of mind in discovering what is hidden, and in distinguishing elements which are closely interwoven.

In the second place, we may consider the development of æsthetic susceptibility as a progress towards depth and range of feeling, as determined by the quantity of its ideal or mediate elements. This corresponds pretty nearly to Mr. Spencer's second standard of æsthetic height, namely, the "complexity" of the emotion exercised. It is obvious that the growth of an aesthetic sensibility in delicacy implies an increase of complexity of enjoyment. As sensational and emotional appreciation increases in discriminating and assimilating power, the mind becomes susceptible of aesthetic enjoyment from larger and more complex objects. An extensive work of art, such as an epic poem or an elaborate opera, supplies a highly complex emotional delight through a vast number of distinct appreciations of pleasurable quality. Further, in so far as the total pleasure results from a comparison of the several parts of a complex object, it involves a certain degree of retentive power and facility of ideal revival. We have now to pass to another aspect of emotional complexity, which depends on the compass or range of the mind's retentive and reproductive power, that is to say, the quality of an aesthetic sentiment as determined by the number and variety of its ideal ingredients. A feeling clearly gains in depth and in range when it involves, in addition to a few confined effects of direct stimulation, a large number of indirect and associated effects. Although each separate pulsation in this ideal agitation is fainter than a direct sensuous impression, yet extended and complex aggre gates of these ideal feelings constitute volumes of pleasurable consciousness, with which the limited effects of sensation are incommensurable.

The influence of the growth of this retentive power on æsthetic pleasure may be illustrated thronghout the several classes of susceptibilities. It is highly probable, as Mr. Spencer says, that even the sensuous ingredients of æsthetic pleasure owe some part of their