I will next advert to the applied science of Art or Aesthetics, long a
barren ground, so far as scientific handling was concerned, but now a
land of promise. The old thesis, "What is Beauty?" a good debating
society topic, is, I hope, past contending about. The numerous
influences that concur in works of art, or in natural beauty, present a
fine opening for delicate analysis; at the same time, they implicate the
vaguest and least advanced portion of psychology--the Emotions. The
German philosophers have usually ranked aesthetics as one of the
subjective sciences; but, it is only of late that the department has
taken shape in their country. Lessing gave a great impulse to literary
art, and originated a number of pregnant suggestions; and the German
love of music has necessarily led to theories as well as to
compositions. We are now in the way to that consummation of aesthetics
which may be described as containing (1) a reference to psychology as
the mother science, (2) a classification, comparison, and contrast of
the fine arts themselves, and (3) an induction of the principles of art
composition from the best examples. Anything like a thorough sifting of
fine-art questions would strain psychology at every point--senses,
emotions, intellect; and, if criticism is to go deep, it must ground
upon psychological reasons. Now the mere artist can never be a
psychologist; the art critic may, but seldom will; hence, as they will
not come over to us, some of us must go over to them. The Art discussion
of the greatest fountains of human feeling--love and anger--would react
with advantage upon the very difficult psychology of these emotions, so
long the sport of superficiality.
[AESTHETICS: HEDONICS.]
But I hold that aesthetics is but a corner of a larger field that is
seldom even named among the sciences of mind; I mean human happiness as
a whole, "eudaemonics," or "hedonics," or whatever you please to call
it. That the subject is neglected, I do not affirm; but it is not
cultivated in the proper place, or in the proper light-giving
connection--that is to say, under the psychology of the human feelings.
It should have at once a close reference to psychology, and an
independent construction; while either in comprehending aesthetics, or
in lying side by side with that, it would give and receive illumination.
The researches now making into the laws and limits of human sensibility,
if they have any value, ought to lead to the economy of pleasure and the
abatement of pain. The analysis of sensation and of emotion points to
this end. Whoever raises any question as to human happiness should refer
it, in the first instance, to psychology; in the next, to some general
scheme that would answer for a science of happiness; and, thirdly, to an
induction of the facts of human experience; the three distinct appeals
correcting one another. If psychology can contribute nothing to the
point, it confesses to a desideratum for future inquirers.
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