The taste and emotion for the characteristic as such, whenever and however acquired, is certainly a peculiar and definite mode of emotion. It is far from being the feeling of discipleship, and is often excited by that which is most remote and opposite to ourselves. We say of a certain person, “He is a _character_,” and he interests and pleases us as such, though entirely foreign to us in either sympathy or antipathy. As an entirely disinterested emotion, the æsthetic is beyond the range of common naïve consciousness. The enjoyment of the characteristic _per se_ is specially for the analytically super-conscious cosmopolite and for the cultured critic. The pleasure comes partly from the novelty and the contrast reflectively understood, partly from admiration for the forcefulness of creative personality, its plastic power in forming its material of expression, and largely a teleologic pleasure in perceiving fulness and purity of type. The emotion for style as characteristic expression is plainly one of those which is not due to the utility in the struggle for existence, but has arisen when experience comes to be cultivated for its own sake. When, as in eras like our own, personality weakens, and the inner plastic and creative force of conviction and emotion decreases, the writer is driven to technical treatment. The _littérateur_, as he has little or nothing to say, contents himself with playing tricks on language, and elaborating rhythms and cadences. Style becomes finicky; a race of prinking poetasters and priggish prosaists arise, punctiliously formal, and superlatively dainty, who attain the art of saying nothing very elegantly, elaborately, and brilliantly. An over-conscious, over-subtle technique destroys the grand style as transmitter of characteristic quality. * * * * * I trust I have, in this brief study, made it clear that the psychology of literary style is far from simple, and that a number of factors are involved, which are slighted by Herbert Spencer and others of that school. I believe that any one at all conversant with literature who will reflect upon the pleasures he receives from reading, will perceive that the pleasure of smoothness and facility, of moving along rapidly and easily, is but one, and that generally a minor factor in literary enjoyment. Beside this, he often has the pleasure of difficulties overcome, of ideas grasped, and delicate emotional touches appreciated by triumphant attentive effort. Again, he receives pleasure in perceiving literary skill, the adaptation of artistic means to the artistic end. But, as I have maintained, the chief mode of pleasure is through style as transmitter of æsthetic emotion and as expression of the characteristic, achieving its acme when both these functions are simultaneously performed most fully and perfectly. CHAPTER XIX _ETHICAL EMOTION_