There are some authors, however, who have felt the need of a dynamic explanation of the art-impulse, which should trace the motive force to its origin. It was so with Aristotle when he interpreted artistic production as a manifestation of the desire to imitate. By this theory art is indeed brought into connection with a general animal impulse, the æsthetic importance of which can scarcely be overestimated. It is only by reference to the psychology of imitative movements that we shall be able to explain the enjoyment of art. But it seems, nevertheless, somewhat strained to make imitation the basis and purpose of artistic activity, seeing that there are various forms of art, as, for instance, architecture and purely lyrical music or poetry, in which we can scarcely detect any imitative element at all. The theories of Aristotle, of Seneca, and all their modern followers, can only be upheld if the word “imitation” is used in a much wider sense than that which it generally bears. But even those who, with Engel, would consider the bodily movements as “imitating the thoughts,”[26] or those who in æsthetic would speak of “circulary reaction”[27] as a phenomenon of imitation, would find it hard to discover in any of these relatively automatic manifestations such a mental compulsion as that which impels to artistic activity. Moreover, as we need scarcely point out, art in all its forms always strives after something more than a mere likeness. It seems equally superfluous to emphasise the fact that no genuine artist has made it his sole object to please. The fatal confusion between art-theory and the science of beauty has indeed led some writers on æsthetic to derive artistic activities from an impulse to “produce objects or objective conditions which should attract by pleasing.”[28] Such views will especially recommend themselves to those who believe in an animal art called forth by sexual selection. Nor can it be denied that the means of attraction employed in the competition for the favour of the opposite sex supply a part of the material which is used in the various arts.[29] With the artistic impulse itself, which, according to its very definition, is independent of external motives, the various means of attraction have no connection whatever.[30] From the theoretical point of view it is undoubtedly easier to defend Professor Baldwin’s way of stating the case, in which the “self-exhibiting impulse” takes the place of the “instinct to attract by pleasing.”[31] Figuratively speaking, an element of self-exhibition is involved in every artistic creation which addresses itself to a public. And without a public—in the largest sense of the word—no art would ever have appeared. But it seems somewhat difficult to make this self-exhibiting—in a sense which implies an actual audience—the aim and purpose of, for instance, the most intimate and personal examples of lyrical poetry.