An early answer to the question would have been, that the eye
is so hung in its muscles as to move most easily in curved
lines, and this easy action in following the curve is felt as
favorable stimulation. But recent experiment<1> has shown
that the eye in fact moves by most irregular, angular leaps
from point to point of the figure. The theory is therefore
remodeled by substituting for the movement sensations of the
eye, the tendencies corresponding to those early movements of
touching imitative of the form, by which we learned to know a
form for what it is, and the reproduction of feeling-tones
belonging to the character of such movement. The movements
of touching and feeling for a smooth continuous curved object
are themselves pleasant. This complex of psychical factors
makes a pleasurably stimulating experience. The greater the
tendency to complete reproduction of these movements, that is,
the stronger the "bodily resonance," the more vivid the pleasure.
Whether we (with Groos) designate this as sympathetic reproduction,
or (with Lipps) attribute to the figure the movements and the
feelings which resound in us after this fashion, or even (with
Witasek) insist on the purely ideal character of the reproduction,
seems to me not essential to the explanation of the pleasing
character of the experience, and hence of the beauty of the
object. Not THAT we sympathetically reproduce ("Miterleben"),
or "feel ourselves into" a form ("Einfuhlen"), but HOW we do so,
is the question.
<1> G.M. Stratton, _Philos. Studies_, xx.
All that Hogarth says of the beauty of the serpentine line, as
"leading the eye a kind of chase," is fully in harmony with this
view, if we add to the exploiting movements of the eyes those
other more important motor innervations of the body. But we
should still have to ask, WHAT kind of chase? Sharp, broken,
starting lines might be the basis of a much more vivid experience,
--but it would be aesthetically negative. "The complete sensuous
experience of the spatial" is not enough, unless that experience
is positively, that is, favorably toned. Clear or vivid seeing
made possible by the form of the object is not enough. Only as
FAVORABLY stimulating, that is, only as calling up ideal
reproductions, or physical imitations, of movements which in
themselves were suited to the functions of the organs involved,
can forms be found positively aesthetic, that is, beautiful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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