On the Nature of Aesthetic Emotion
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“On the Nature of Aesthetic Emotion” (Mind,vol. 3, 1894) is a text by Bernard Bosanquet.
Full text[1]
L ON THE NATUBE OF .ESTHETIC EMOTION.
By BEENAED BOSANQUET.
IN raising the question, "What is Beauty?" we are ad- mittedly dealing with very various phenomena. Some elements, it may be, are obviously given as common through- out the whole range of the beautiful ; such, it might be alleged, are the formal feelings, those states of pleasure and pain which accompany ease or obstruction in the flow of ideas. But it will hardly be proposed to-day to restrict the feeling of beauty and the reverse to those simple elements ; and I may rely on the support of Mr. Bain and other British psychologists for the view that in considering the nature of beauty it is necessary to examine a " circle of effects "- 1 But while accepting this as a starting-point, I cannot but think it a self-contradiction for any science to acquiesce in a " plurality of causes " 2 as ultimate. " Plurality of causes " in Mill's sense, which I assume that Mr. Bain intends to adopt, means of course the recognition not of "a plurality of constituent factors " 3 or co-operating conditions resulting in a certain effect, but of a number of alternative causes from any one of which the same effect may spring.
1 Bain, Mental and Moral Science, p. 292 ; cf. Sully, Enc. Brit., i. 223, Outlines of Psychology, 538, or Human Mind, ii. 142 and 361. A comparison of these passages suggests that under pressure of the facts Mr. Sully has greatly modified his assent to Dugald Stewart's view.
2 Bain, I. c. 3 Sully, Human Mind, ii. 361.
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But in the full scientific sense it is a contradiction to say that a and b are alternative causes of the effect c. Either a common element must be detected in a and b, or c must be divided into d and e. To surrender this postulate as a matter of principle is to abandon scientific method, although an incomplete analysis must of course pass through the stage of tracing alternative causes. It is quite possible that much which has been included in the object-matter of aesthetic science does not really belong to it. Many matters have been banished from it by the self-criticism of the science, and I admit, or rather maintain, that alien con- siderations are still improperly introduced. Nevertheless, within the science, and in considering a common element which somehow attaches to the circle of effects that are its data, there can be no ultimate plurality of causes as such. This is not postulating an unreal unity. It is only requiring that if we fail to establish a coherent principle we shall admit the failure.
I now desire to suggest that the central characteristic of aesthetic emotion is an aspect of the central characteristic of aesthetic presentation.
The above admission of a prima facie diversity in the species of beauty releases me from the attempt to identify any simple given feeling or intuition as one and the same throughout all of them. In every example of aesthetic emotion we are to go behind the first undiscriminating impression, if such there be, which finds utterance in the exclamation, "How beautiful! " and we are to attempt to trace a common root in phenomena of admitted variety.
This point of view, so far from being a difficulty to me, is all-important for my argument. It is possible, in con- sidering the data of beauty, to start from a passive or from an active attitude. We may take a presentation more as it affects us, and ask what enjoyable feelings it awakens in us, when we regard ourselves as spectators or auditors to whom a perception comes ab extra. This has, as I think, been to a great extent the attitude of British psychologists. Or we may start from a more active frame of mind, such as without special gifts we may all experience in simple or familiar regions of beauty, while in its higher forms it is the produc- tive or creative state which we attribute to the poet or artist. The commonest and most homely experience, together with attention to the moods demanded by the greatest and most genuine art, bear strongly in favour of the contention that this latter is the natural and normal condition of the mind in enjoying beauty. Empirical facts have been neglected, I
ON THE NATUBE OF .ESTHETIC EMOTION. 155
should maintain, not by those who support this view, but by those who oppose it. Wherever the mind of the work- man has been appreciatively considered, wherever the sim- plest phases of art and their connexion with natural impulses of the ordinary human being have been drawn into account, there the explanation of beauty has tended to start from an active rather than a passive attitude of mind. 1
The "plurality of causes," as a datum of aesthetic theory at starting, is in favour of this view. We do not, at the first feeling of a charm or pleasure in a beautiful thing, fully enter into its peculiar and individual character. And in the same degree we remain, no doubt, passive or receptive. But in proportion as through continued attention we are seized by the special delight or emotion which the percep- tion in question has power to produce, so far, that is, as we appreciate the diversity of the beautiful in all the depth of its individuality, we depart from the attitude of the mere spectator, and assume that of the mind which is impelled to expression and utterance, the mind of the "maker". That is to say, we no longer feel ourselves in face of the presentation as something given ab extra, but rather enter into it as something which embodies for us the emotion that craves utterance. This emotion, of course, the pre- sentation has itself in the commonest instances occasioned. But none the less, when we enjoy it fully, we seem to have made the presentation transparent or organic through and through, as the vehicle of our emotion. The simple facts of rhythm, metre, the dance and song, in their continuity with the formative impulse in all its phases, seem to me a mass of experience strongly favourable to this point of view. And I grant that any one impressed by experience of this kind is greatly influenced by it in his whole treatment of aesthetic science. Those who lean to regarding the mind as mainly receptive 2 in aesthetic enjoyment naturally tend to think of aesthetic science as an analysis of given pleasur- able effects. They are therefore apt to explain a beautiful presentation by a congeries of pleasurable suggestions in a way which impresses others as hostile to the purity and coherence of aesthetic emotion. In as far as this danger is avoided, I think that every explanation of beauty reduces itself to expressiveness.
1 It is impossible not to observe that the theories of the British psy- chological school date from just about the low water-mark of the aesthetic consciousness in this country. In saying this, of course I do not refer to living writers. The endurance of a theory is quite a different problem from that of its origin.
2 Mr. Sully's insistence on this is noticeable, Human Mind, ii. 135-6.
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I may point out also the serious dualism between beauty and fine art which arises from regarding the former as coincident in principle with pleasurable effect as such. For a good observer will hardly admit that fine art, of the greater periods at any rate, makes any effect of this kind its pur- pose, and though it may be said with plausibility that beauty is the result but not the aim of art, still it is a serious matter to define the beautiful in a way that wholly neglects the essence of the artist's impulse. 1
I suggest therefore as the most fundamental and universal feature, from which all the common characteristics of aesthetic emotion may be deduced, the simple fact that it is expressed. And I propose to consider what consequences affecting its nature may be derived from this condition.
An ambiguity meets us at once. All emotion is expressed; perhaps indeed emotion may be found to consist in little more than the psychical side of the movements or organic changes which in part constitute its expression. For plainly there is no distinction of principle between an inward phy- sical effect and one which happens to be visible or audible. So, if all emotion is expressed, in virtue of effects which either are external or differ in no essentials from external effects, it would seem that expression is no differentia of aesthetic emotion.
Here no doubt we must admit a gradation, and the true nature of expression may be very conveniently taken up from this point of junction. There is plainly a distinction of principle between the mere physical side of the bodily resonance by which an emotion discharges itself, and any forms of action that aim at prolonging the resonance of the emotion for the sake of the enjoyment it affords. " Jump- ing for joy " may pass into the dance ; the manifestation of anger may pass into poetical invective; love and admiration at first displayed by look and attitude constantly lead up to a graphical or poetical representation of their object. An interesting remark arises at this point. Expression in the form of an object (including a definite action) seems to be the only healthy means by which feeling can be purposely dwelt upon. To brood over feelings because we enjoy doing so, without trying to embody them, is the note of senti- mentalism. In making the distinction however between
1 See Volkmann, Lehrbuch d. Psych., ii. 359. Volkmann accepts this dualism, and thinks that it is confirmed by Greek aesthetic, finding, e.g., a complete severance between beauty and art in Plato. But the truth is the other way. The art which Plato rejected was that which he could not bring under an expressive theory of beauty.
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mere discharge of feeling, and its expression as such, we must not lay exclusive stress on the involuntary or volun- tary nature of the means adopted. When rhythmical, musical, or metrical form begins to qualify the utterance of joy, grief, or anger, it is plain that new elements of pre- sentation are being employed as a way of dwelling upon the emotion, whether the agent is conscious of any such purpose or no. Emotion in such a case is not merely dis- charged but expressed ; that is to say, the original feeling is prolonged and accentuated by help of positive symbols and presentations, so that the mind may dwell upon it, not merely brooding over it, but portraying its nature in more or less definite actions and perceptions. Here we may fairly say that we no longer have mere discharge, or acci- dental expression through mere discharge, but expression as such, or expression for expression's sake.
Now in such expression or embodiment of an emotion, how is the expression related to the emotion? How are the presentative elements of rhythm, metre and musical sound related to the emotion of joy or anger which finds utterance through them ? The primary answer appears to be that the two sides cannot be separated ; the emotion simply is the whole presentation, including both its sensu- ous and its ideal elements, in so far as it qualifies the pleasure or pure feeling which accompanies it. The in- dividual action or object and the emotion which is expressed or embodied in it are psychologically speaking precise cor- relatives, and no question can intelligibly be asked which implies that the one could be given to a normal mind without the other. This is an important point, because it saves us from a dualism which has very absurd results. We speak in general terms of a content of presentation as if it, the same content death, for example could be treated or embodied so as to be the object of different emotions. This is true if we mean to contrast the abstrac- tion " death " with the various ways in which it may be concretely brought before us, but not otherwise. In being differently " treated," sadly, humorously, indignantly, the content is differently filled in, is itself modified by the manner of presentation, and, as object of different emotions, does not remain the same content. We cannot say, " Here is the content, and now we will add the ' expression,' or elements which more particularly correspond to the emo- tion " : the content, so far as it goes, actually in that degree is or constitutes the expression of emotion, being simply that which is felt, because it must be felt, in a certain way.
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Even an abstract idea, death, ruin, fate, triumph, has no doubt its correlative element of emotion, a way in which it is felt ; but so far as the idea is indeterminate, the feeling, considered as qualified only by that idea, is also indeter- minate, while if the idea is individualised the feeling which it qualifies is ipso facto individualised along with it.
Feeling then is only articulate through that of which it is the feeling, viz., a presentation more or less individual, and every presentation has its correlative emotion (pure feeling as qualified by the presentation itself), and if this emotion appears to be indeterminate this is merely because the presentation in question, being highly abstract, is not sufficient to determine the character of an entire psychosis, and is in fact variously filled in by the accidental content of the mind from moment to moment. None but a highly individual presentation, it would therefore seem, can be the expression of such an emotion as constitutes a principal or dominant element in any entire psychosis. Yet there is no complete contrast between an abstract idea and the ex- pression of emotion, but only between an abstract idea as an expression of slightly determinate emotion, and an indi- vidual idea as an expression of highly determinate emotion. The nexus between presentation and emotion is then, speaking generally, that such and such a presentation must be felt, by a normal mind, in such and such a way. All that we can do by analysis to explain a nexus of this kind would seem to consist in drawing out the content which is implied in the more individual among the presented ele- ments say a " springing curve," or a certain sequence of notes and showing how this content is related to larger ideal characters which it modifies and reinforces. When this has been done, so far as it can be done, it will be found that the pure feeling accompanying the whole its degree of pleasure or pain has also, in the same measure, been accounted for. Whether we start from emotion or from content, what we are analysing is in the last resort the same matter, the relation of content, as expressed, to life ; this of course including the success or failure of expression which constitutes, as we have seen, a modification of the content expressed.
If this is so, it would seem that every emotion exists only as correlative to its expression ; or that strictly speaking we do not first have an emotion and then proceed to express it ; but that an emotion assumes its character, or becomes what it is, through the mode and degree of its expression ; and therefore that aesthetic emotion first arises in and is
ON THE NATURE OF .ESTHETIC EMOTION. 159
essentially constituted by, expression for expression's sake, or in other words, when its discharge takes the form of a positive production or action which has no purpose beyond that of uttering the content of our feeling.
The modification which a feeling necessarily goes through in being ' expressed ' in the sense thus suggested, has never, if I am right, been more fruitfully analysed than in Aristotle's account of tragic emotion, as explained and ex- panded by Lessing and Bernays. This interpretation, with unessential 'modifications, is accepted, so far as I know, by the best judges to-day. l Omitting detail, the principle comes to this. There is a form of art called Tragedy which produces pleasure by means of two painful emotions, pity and fear. How this is possible is a problem that answers itself when we consider the conditions of artistic expression or representation. By a typical portrayal of human life in some story that forms an individual whole, the feelings in question are divested of their personal reference, and acquire a content drawn from what is serious and noteworthy in humanity, and thus alone, it seems clearly to be Aristotle's view, can their quintessence be fully uttered and drawn out and find its pleasurable discharge free from morbid elements of mere shock and personal sensibility. The connexion of pity and fear, which is the centre of his doctrine, really indicates that fear, for art, is a fear idealised by expression or objective embodiment, while free utterance is not aided but lamed and obstructed by any intrusion of the dumb shock of personal terror. Thus then, and thus alone, can fear be made an aesthetic emotion, a source of artistic en- joyment or the pleasure of tragedy. It is not, and this is a fundamental point, it is not merely that the emotion is " refined," in the sense that its bodily resonance is rendered less intense. A modified resonance will attend a modified emotion, but the intensity of feeling is not a question of principle in relation to its aesthetic character. The aesthetic character lies in the dwelling on and drawing out the feeling, in its fullest reference, by help of a definite presentation which accents its nature. Refinement, in the sense of mere diminution of intensity, cannot make an unaesthetic emotion into one which is aesthetic. Sensuous pleasure as such, however remotely suggested, is no more aesthetic than personal terror.
The accepted distinctions between the aesthetic and other points of view might be easily read off from the foregoing
1 See Prof. S. H. Butcher's Aspects of the Greek Genius, 1st edition ; and Snsemihl, Aristotle's Poetics, Introduction.
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account. That which is " expression for expression's sake" is ex Tiypothesi secured from subservience to other ends whether ethical, intellectual or sensual.
But a word remains to be said about the limit imposed on the factors of aesthetic emotion by the demand that it shall be expressed. " How much," it may be asked, "is in fact expressed by any given presentation ? Is there any limit? Does it express whatever any one feels when it comes before him?" Here we must recur to the contrast of abstract contents and contents individualised 'by concrete presentation.
"Two bits of wood nailed crosswise" (Browning) may suggest anything from the spokes of a wheel to the usual associations of a cross. Such a presentation, it may be urged, is capable of calling up any conceivable emotion. And no doubt this is so, but only because it is capable of calling up any conceivable presentation. It is not that the same presented content may call up different emotions, but that a content indeterminate in itself may be differently determined in the context of the mind. The emotions which may pass through the mind on seeing so bare a symbol, are not, in relation to it as it stands, "expressed" or " embodied " emotions, and therefore cannot qualify it aesthetically, and are not, so far as their suggestion by it is concerned, aesthetic emotions. Of course if they come into the mind with poetical or other imaginative matter, of the nature of expressive embodiment, that is accidental rela- tively to the seeing of the wooden cross, which alone was in question. Emotion brought up by mere associated con- tent, irrelevant to a real or universal connexion with pre- sented elements, is not aesthetic emotion.
A more individualised presentation than that just taken as an example has more power to ensure a determinate mode of feeling, in other words, is more nearly such as by a normal mind must necessarily be felt in a particular way. Therefore, although no presentation can be so imperiously dominant as wholly to exclude accidents of feeling in different persons, yet as a matter of principle plurality of causes the production of the same emotion by different contents is impossible. Cause and effect are shown to be, as strictly they always must be, precisely correlative ; and although, or because, individual consequents correspond to individual causes, there can be no common property residing in or attendant on the "circle of effects" which is not matched by a common property pervading the diversity of causes. Thus it is not true that presentations, sharing no identical
ON THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC EMOTION. 161
property, can be alike qualified as beautiful by emotions the identical element of which in that case would be accidental, or independent of the definite presentative elements which really make them what they are.
The attempt to determine the sources of beauty by ex- amining the pleasurable feelings liable to be suggested by beautiful objects or actions, has, of course, led to many valuable observations respecting the connexion of expression with feeling. As a method of aesthetic science, however, I cannot but think it disabled by the general defect of associa- tionism, that is to say, the attempt to explain general con- nexions of content by the chance conjunction of particular experiences. This leads, if I am right, to two errors of principle.
The first of these errors is the obliteration of the line between what is beautiful, and what interests me personally. Though undoubtedly difficult to draw in practice, this dis- tinction must surely be maintained in principle and on the whole. No doubt I may have associated experiences which cause me to enjoy the croaking of frogs l or the cawing of rooks, 2 but does that make them beautiful ? Are there ele- ments within the sounds themselves which in any sense or by any kind of analysis can be said to be symbolic of country life? My old travelling trunk reminds me delightfully of many pleasant experiences, but does that make it beautiful ? Surely even the "ideal" element of beauty must be founded in some universal connexion, indicated within the four corners of the beautiful object, and not on a wholly un- analysed conjunction, which, as taken, is an accident of my personal history.
This first error, however, though as I am convinced a matter of principle, is also, just round the margin of the beautiful, a matter of degree. But the second, which is an aggravated case of the first, seems to me an absolute reversal of the aesthetic point of view. It arises when among the pleasurable feelings brought up by association are counted, however indirectly, the dumb gratifications of sense.
Refinement of allusion, as I tried to show above, does not help the matter so long as it merely means disguised or remote suggestion. The view which Bain 3 for example finds him-
1 Cf. Ward in Encycl. Brit., art. " Psychology ".
2 Sully, Human Mind, ii. 78. This enjoyment is not ranked under the head " ^Esthetic," but I do not see how it is differentiated.
3 Emotions and Will, 3rd ed., p. 227. "The ideal representation of the sensual pleasures comes strictly under the province of Art, but, for prudential and moral reasons, is kept within narrow limits, varying in different ages and countries."
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self obliged to take of the range of art in these respects, restricting it, as I understand, by mere convention, and by no principle, 1 is a very serious matter indeed. "But," it may be retorted, "if these gratifications can be expressed in art, according to your own conceptions they are aesthetic ; while if they cannot be expressed, cadit qucestio." Here, however, we must bear in mind that there is such a thing as bad art, and that this largely consists of art which leans over and strains to do that which it cannot, by the law of its exist- ence, really achieve. In presenting the pure sensuous gratifications art cannot indeed achieve expression ; but it may, and thoroughly vicious art most frequently does, attain suggestion. Let us think of the mere sensuous grati- fication of drinking to intoxication. No artistic presenta- tion will reproduce the taste and the peculiar excitement which constitute this sensuous enjoyment. Nothing will do this but the process itself. But it can of course be easily suggested or recalled in painting or poetry through its ac- companiments or its effects. Now to treat such reference as a suggestion of an associated pleasure, and therefore as an element in beauty, seems to me not a blunder of taste but a contradiction in principle. It is a sin against the in- dependence or purity (of course not meant in a moral sense) of aesthetic form, which is stated (e.g., by Schiller) as the law that aesthetic pleasure as such is incapable of enhance- ment by the real existence of the object represented. This is involved in the formula of " expression for expression's sake " and on this or other grounds commonly accepted. On the other hand, it is quite in accordance with this law that those elements in passion or intoxication, which are emphasised when the emotion has been made objective in a presentation, form that quintessence of feeling which finds utterance in the true poetry of love or wine. This is wholly different in prin- ciple from something which draws its pleasurableness from a faint reproduction of stronger actual pleasures. It is better and greater and deeper than the ordinary feelings of the normal man, and is not a mere suggestion of them. And it is noteworthy that though the art or poetry of passion is not to be judged by ethical standards, yet in practice morality has little to fear from it. But this is not at all the case with the art which depends on refined suggestion.
The theory which relies on expressiveness is no doubt con- fronted with a certain difficulty in dealing with the splendours
1 For, as Bain points out, the mere requirement of universality (con- strued as generality) does not exclude sensuous suggestion in art or nature.
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of colour or tone when wholly isolated (if this is ever true), or at any rate very slightly moulded by arrangement and combination. The inquiry at this point is one of extreme interest and difficulty, involving a good deal of criticism upon alleged facts of aesthetic perception. It is impossible to go into it in detail on the present occasion ; but I will indicate the class of considerations which induce me to think that this region of phenomena is capable of furnish- ing a signal example in favour of the point of view which I have been urging. In the first place, I do not think that difficulties of distinction which meet us in tracing a certain element to its admitted vanishing-point are ever very strong arguments against a continuity well established in clearer phases. The lower limit of morality or of judgment shows closely parallel uncertainties. Does beauty, traced down to single colours or tones, suddenly become mere pleasant- ness to sense ? Does morality, traced down to the actions of a savage, suddenly become mere impulse or mere dread of a superior? There is always the possibility that the element which is being tracked tends to vanish in some- thing else, but that in as far as it survives at all, it retains the essential nature which it displayed throughout. Secondly then, starting from this idea, I should point to the impro- bability that sensations of the aesthetic senses are devoid of the pleasurable element, whatever it is, which characterises all the sensations acknowledged to be unaesthetic taste, warmth, touch, and the like. It is therefore extremely likely, prima facie, that the higher sensations have in some sort a double aspect, adding to the pleasurable quality of the "lower" sensations a source of pleasure in which as a rule those lower sensations do not share. It might further be pointed out that this higher or, at least, peculiar pleasure does not seem to attend the sensations of eye and ear in proportion as they give the gratification which is most analogous to what we roughly call a "physical pleasure," but seems rather to increase as they leave this character aside, and assume degrees and combinations which are not of interest to untrained perception. Again, by a correlative set of instances it might be shown that when, by exception, something which recalls aesthetic pleasure attaches to sensa- tions of the " lower" senses, this does not consist in their " physical " pleasantness or any modification of it, but in some chance relation by which they are enabled to mimic the expressive power of the aesthetic sensations. And lastly, if I am attacked with direct instances and challenged to say whether my aesthetic enjoyment does not actually
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depend in many prominent cases on the purely sensuous quality of a yellow or a red, a trumpet-note or violin-tone, I reply with absolute conviction, so far as my own ex- perience goes, that the mind undoubtedly revels in the splendours of the sensation, but always in the way of plunging into its peculiarity, of dwelling on and drawing out that which makes it what it is, so as very soon to pass into the beauty of combination, even if this is not, owing to constant experience (and, in sound, to its composite nature), really inherent in the whole process from the first. I maintain, then, that even an enjoyable colour is not a mute gratification of sense, but is felt as an utterance. We dwell on its nature, but it is its nature, positive though not definable, on which we dwell. As Mr. Gurney felt with melodies, I feel with colours ; they say something to me, though if I could know what they say instead of seeing it they would be colours no longer. The difference between the lower sensations and the " aesthetic " sensations is so universally accepted that I think I am entitled to press it home as I have done, although I am not prepared with a rationale of it if I am bound to consider both as sensations pure and simple. My suggestions rather point to the conception that it is not as sensations that sounds or sights can have aesthetic value ; and any one who affirms that the whole pleasurable effect of bright light on a young child is of a nature truly continuous with aesthetic feeling proper, is bound, I think, to show the difference at that early stage between pleasure in light and pleasure in warmth or soft- ness. I should not shrink, on the other hand, from admitting that in the sensations which are commonly classed as un- aesthetic there is a vanishing element of aesthetic feeling in so far as pleasure in them arises from appreciation of a distinct individual quality which leads us to dwell upon its nature with a more or less genuine interest. 1
Inherited associations need hardly be discussed until they are shown to be a vera causa in the definite form which alone could make them serviceable in explaining aesthetic emotion. We are born with many pre-dispositions ; and a few more, unless singularly positive and definite, would merely be an addition to the general stock of material out of which our mind organises itself. A definite inherited forest-emotion is imaginable, but could it ever be verifiable among the strong and various components which are easily seen to enter into our feeling for woodland scenery and
1 Cp. Dr. Middleton's remarks on wines in The Egoist.
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surroundings? Would it not necessarily be so overlaid and denned by other matter as to be of little more ex- planatory value than our primitive sensitiveness to light or to musical sound in general? A superfluous hypothesis, not shown to rest on a vera causa, can hardly claim attention.
Much of the foregoing argument, it may be thought, could be summed up by saying that aesthetic emotion is " impersonal ". But the word is a dangerous one, and gives rise, I think, to serious fallacies in art-theory to-day. I should prefer to borrow the expression of a recent writer on a different subject, and call it " super-personal ". In becom- ing aesthetic, emotion does not become something less but something more ; it does not forfeit the depth of personality, but only throws off its narrowness, and modifies it by an en- largement which is also a reinforcement. The impersonality of art has recently come to be thought of as approaching a critical or intellectual attitude. This I take to be a grave error, having its root in a confusion between the existence of feeling in a person which is necessary to its existence at all and the restriction of its content to his narrowest self, which the nature of feeling or of its qualifying accompani- ments does not in any way demand.
I suggest then that aesthetic emotion is emotion which in creating, or adapting itself to, its pure expression "pure " as expression for expression's sake has undergone a definite change of character. It has become " objective " in the sense of being attached to presentations which are as a rule highly individualised and are related to entire psychoses much as abstract language is related to abstract thought. Its impersonal or super-personal character is deducible from these conditions ; while the typical aspect of the pleasure which attends it must be looked for within the general field of that enjoyment which accompanies the discharge of any and every emotion. It is however, as aesthetic, confined to cases where, in the discharge, there suggest themselves presentative elements ideal or sensuous, or in perfect examples both together in complete fusion, such as sustain and justify and individualise the main emotion by charging it with the deeper and wider ideal contents of the self. I start from such simple comparisons as that of the anger of a common man, which in serious cases may impart a certain dignity to his bearing and sometimes a certain nobility to his expressions, with the indignation of Burns when he wrote the epigrams on the Earl of Galloway, or, at a higher level, with Milton's sonnet on the Vaudois or Dante's satire on Florence in the Inferno. If we follow such instances.
166 B. BOSANQUET : ON NATUEE OF ESTHETIC EMOTION.
into detail, noting how passion tends to purify and harmonise its utterance as its content more deeply involves the issues of human life, we shall, I believe, be on the right track of aesthetic analysis. All modes of pleasurable suggestion which truly iall within aesthetic limits, can be shown, I think, to be organic to such self-utterance as this, and we begin at the wrong end when we reckon them up as aesthetic elements because per se suggestions of pleasure. x On the contrary, their pleasurableness will be found to centre in some property or condition as, for example, in the condition of "efficient attention" which makes them conducive to expressiveness.
1 See this point trenchantly stated by Ward, Encycl. Brit., art. -" Psychology," p. 70, col. 1.
