(3) The art of the BEAUTIFUL PLAY OF SENSATIONS (externally
stimulated), which admits at the same time of universal communication,
can be concerned with nothing else than the proportion of the
different degrees of the disposition (tension) of the sense, to which
the sensation belongs, _i.e._ with its tone. In this far-reaching
signification of the word it may be divided into the artistic play of
the sensations of hearing and sight, _i.e._ into _Music_ and the _Art
of colour_.--It is noteworthy that these two senses, besides their
susceptibility for impressions so far as these are needed to gain
concepts of external objects, are also capable of a peculiar sensation
bound up therewith, of which we cannot strictly decide whether it is
based on sense or reflection. This susceptibility may sometimes be
wanting, although in other respects the sense, as regards its use for
the cognition of Objects, is not at all deficient but is peculiarly
fine. That is, we cannot say with certainty whether colours or tones
(sounds) are merely pleasant sensations or whether they form in
themselves a beautiful play of sensations, and as such bring with them
in aesthetical judgement a satisfaction in their form. If we think
of the velocity of the vibrations of light, or in the second case
of the air, which probably far surpasses all our faculty of judging
immediately in perception the time interval between them, we must
believe that it is only the _effect_ of these vibrations upon the
elastic parts of our body that is felt, but that the _time interval_
between them is not remarked or brought into judgement; and thus that
only pleasantness and not beauty of composition is bound up with
colours and tones. But on the other hand, _first_, we think of the
mathematical [element] which enables us to pronounce on the proportion
between these oscillations in music and thus to judge of them; and by
analogy with which we easily may judge of the distinctions between
colours. _Secondly_, we recall instances (although they are rare) of
men who with the best sight in the world cannot distinguish colours,
and with the sharpest hearing cannot distinguish tones; whilst for
those who can do this the perception of an altered quality (not merely
of the degree of sensation) in the different intensities in the scale
of colours and tones is definite; and further, the very number of these
is fixed by _intelligible_ differences. Thus we may be compelled to see
that both kinds of sensations are to be regarded not as mere sensible
impressions, but as the effects of a judgement passed upon the form
in the play of divers sensations. The difference in our definition,
according as we adopt the one or the other opinion in judging of the
grounds of Music, would be just this: either, as we have done, we
must explain it as the beautiful play of sensations (of hearing), or
else as a play of _pleasant_ sensations. According to the former mode
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