Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle  

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"Psychical Distance as a factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle" (1912) is a paper by Edward Bullough which appeared in the British Journal of Psychology. In this he set down in a reasonably complete manner the concept as it applied to the arts.

Bullough defined psychical distance as that which, in certain situations, "appears to lie between our own self and its affections, using the latter term in its broadest sense as anything which affects our being". Artistic production and appreciation are two such situations.

[Psychical Distance] has a negative, inhibitory aspect—the cutting-out of the practical sides of things and of our practical attitude to them—and a positive side—the elaboration of the experience on the new basis created by the inhibitory action of Distance.

The relation between self and object remains a personal one (it is not like the impersonal relation in scientific observation, for example) and Bullough thinks that a "concordance" between them is necessary for aesthetic appreciation. However this must not be such that psychical distance is lost: Bullough imagines a jealous husband watching a performance of Othello, who "will probably do anything but appreciate the play". This "antinomy of Distance" leads Bullough to say that what is desirable in art, "both in appreciation and production", is "the utmost decrease of Distance without its disappearance".

See also

• Aesthetics
• Presupposition (philosophy)
• Psychology
• Psychic distance
• Aesthetic distance

Full text[1]

British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 5 (1912), pp. 87-117

PSYCHICAL DISTANCE ' AS A FACTOR IN ART AND AN AESTHETIC PRINCIPLR

By EDWARD BULLOUGH.

/. 1. Meeming of the term * Distcmce.*

2. Distance as a /actor in Art.

3. Distance as an aesthetic principle. II. 1. Distance describes a personal rekUian.

2. The aTUinomy of Distcmce.

3. The variahUity of Distance.

4. Distance as the psychological formulation of the anti-

realism of Art: mUfiralisiic and idealistic Art,

5. Distance as applied to the cmtUhesis * sensual* cmd

^spirUtuUJ

6. Distance as applied to the antithesis ' individtudistic* and

• typical.*

III. Distance as an aesthetic principle :

1. as a criterion between the agreeable and the beautiful.

2. as a phase of artistic production : fcdsity of the theory of

• self -expression of the artist.*

[3. Distance and some recent aesthetic theories.^ 4. Distance as a fundamental principle of tJie * aestfietic consciousness.*

1, The coDception of ' Distance ' suggests, in connexion with Art, certain trains of thought by no means devoid of interest or of specu- lative importance. Perhaps the most obvious suggestion is that of actual q)alial distance^ i.e. the distance of a work of Art from the spectator, or that of represented spatial distance, i.e. the distance repre- sented within the work. Less obvious, more metaphorical, is the

J. of PByoh. ▼ 7

88 Psychical Distance

meaning of temporal distance. The first was noticed already by Aristotle in his Poetics; the second has played a great part in the history of painting in the form of perspective; the distinction between these two kinds of distance assumes special importance theoretically in the differentiation between sculpture in the round, and relief-sculpture. Temporal distance, remoteness from us in point of time, though often a cause of misconceptions, has been declared to be a factor of considerable weight in our appreciation.

It is not, however, in any of these meanings that 'Distance' is put forward here, though it will be clear in the course of this essay that the above mentioned kinds of distance are rather special forms of the conception of Distance as advocated here, and derive whatever aesthetic qualities they may possess from Distance in its general con- notation. This general connotation is ' Psychical Distance.'

A short illustration will explain what is meant by ' Psychical Dis- tance.' Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute unpleasantnesa Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of discomfort such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar anxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching and listening for distant and unlocalised signals. The listless move- ments of the ship and her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and that special, expectant, tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the expert seafarer no less than for the ignorant landsman.

Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and enjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea fog, for the moment, its danger and practical unpleasantness, just as every one in the enjoyment of a mountain-climb disregards its physical labour and its danger (though, it is not denied, that these may incidentally enter into the enjoyment and enhance it); direct the attention to the features ' objectively ' constituting the phenomenon — the veil sur- rounding you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outline of things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesque- ness ; observe the carrying-power of the air, producing the impression as if you could touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it lose itself behind that "white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness of the water, hypocritically rlenying as it were any suggestion of danger; and, above all, the strange solitude

Edward Bullough 89

and remoteness from the world, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops: and the experience may acquire, in its uncanny mingling of repose and terror, a flavour of such concentrated poignancy and delight as to contrast sharply with the blind and distempered anxiety of its other aspects. This contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like a momentary switching on of some new current, or the passing ray of a brighter light, illuminating the out- look upon perhaps the most ordinary and familiar objects — an impression which we experience sometimes in instants of direst extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a wire from sheer over-tension, and we watch the consummation of some impending catastrophe with the marvelling unconcern of a mere spectator.

It is a difference of outlook, due — ^if such a metaphor is permissible — to the insertion of Distance. This Distance appears to lie between our own self and its affections, using the latter term in its broadest sense as anything which affects our being, bodily or spiritually, e.g. as sensation, perception, emotional state or idea. Usually, though not always, it amounts to the same thing to say that the Distance lies between our own self and such objects as are the sources or vehicles of such affections.

Thus, in the fog, the transformation by Distance is produced in the first instance by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal needs and ends — in short, by looking at it ' objectively,' as it has often been called, by permitting only such reactions on our part as emphasise the 'objective' features of the experience, and by interpreting even our ' subjective ' affections not as modes of our being but rather as characteristics of the phenomenon.

The working of Distance is, accordingly, not simple, but highly complex. It has a negative, inhibitory aspect — the cutting-out of the practical, sides of things and of our practical attitude to them — and a positdve side — the elaboration of the experience on the new basis created by the inhibitory action of Distcmce.

2. Consequently, this distanced view of things is not, and cannot be, our normal outlook. As a rule, experiences constantly turn the same side towards us, namely, that which has the strongest practical force of appeal. We are not ordinarily aware of those aspects of things which do not touch us immediately and practically, nor are we generally conscious of impressions apart from our own self which is impressed. The sudden view of things from their reverse, usually

7—2

90 Psychical Distance

unnoticed, side, comes upon us as a revelation, and such revelations are precisely those of Art. In this most general sense, Distance is a factor in all Art.

3. It is, for this very reason, also an aesthetic principle. The aesthetic contemplation and the aesthetic outlook have often been described as 'objective.* We speak of 'objective' artists as Shake- speare or Velasquez, of * objective ' works or art forms as Homer's Iliad or the drama. It is a term constantly occurring in discussions and criticisms, though its sense, if pressed at all, becomes very question- able. For certain forms of Art, such as lyrical poetry, are said to be 'subjective'; Shelley, for example, would usually be considered a 'subjective* writer. On the other hand, no work of Art can be genuinely ' objective ' in the sense in which this term might be applied to a work on history or to a scientific treatise; nor can it be 'sub- jective ' in the ordinary acceptance of that term, as a personal feeling, a direct statement of a wish or belief, or a cry of passion is sub- jective. 'Objectivity* and 'subjectivity' are a pair of opposites which in their mutual exclusiveness when applied to Art soon lead to con- fusion.

Nor are they the only pair of opposites. Art has with equal vigour been declared alternately ' idealistic ' and ' realistic,' ' sensual ' and 'spiritual,' 'individualistic' and 'typical.' Between the defence of either terms of such antitheses most aesthetic theories have vacillated. It is one of the contentions of this essay that such opposites find their synthesis in the more fundamental conception of Distance.

Distance further provides the much needed criterion of the beautiful as distinct from the merely agreeable.

Again, it marks one of the most important steps in the process of artistic creation and serves as a distinguishing feature of what is commonly so loosely described as the 'artistic temperament'

Finally, it may claim to be considered as one of the essential characteristics of the ' aesthetic consciousness,' — if I may describe by this term that special mental attitude towards, and outlook upon, experience, which finds its most pregnant expression in the various forms of Art.

Edward Bullough .91

II.

Distance, as I said before, is obtained by separating the object and its appeal from one's own self, by putting it out of geai* with practical needs and ends. Thereby the ' contemplation ' of the object becomes alone possible. But it does not mean that the relation between the self and the object is broken to the extent of becoming 'impersonal' Of the alternatives ' personal ' and ' impersonal ' the latter surely comes nearer to the truth; but here, as elsewhere, we meet the difficulty of having to express certain facts in terms coined for entirely different nses. To do so usually results in paradoxes, which are nowhere more inevitable than in discussions upon Art. ' Personal ' and ' impersonal,' ' subjective ' and ' objective ' are such terms, devised for purposes other than aesthetic speculation, and becoming loose and ambiguous as soon as applied outside the sphere of their special meanings. In giving preference therefore to the term ' impersonal ' to describe the relation between the spectator and a work of Art, it is to be noticed that it is not impersonal in the sense in which we speak of the 'impersonal' character of Science, for instance. In order to obtain 'objectively valid ' results, the scientist excludes the ' personal factor,' i.e. his personal wishes as to the validity of his results, bis predilection for any particular system to be proved or disproved by his research. It goes without saying that all experiments and investigations are under- taken out of a personal interest in the science, for the ultimate support of a definite assumption, and involve personal hopes of success; but this does not affect the 'dispassionate' attitude of the investigator, under pain of being accused of ' manufacturing his evidence.'

1. Distance does not imply an impersonal, purely intellectually interested relation of such a kind. On the contrary, it describes a personal relation, often highly emotionally coloured, but of a peculiar character. Its peculiarity lies in that the personal character of the relation has been, so to speak, filtered. It has been cleared of the practical, concrete nature of its appeal, without, however, thereby losing its original constitution. One of the best-known examples is to be found in our attitude towards the events and characters of the drama : they appeal to us like persons and incidents of normal experience, except that that side of their appeal, which would usually affect us in a directly personal manner, is held in abeyance. This difference, so well known as to be almost trivial, is genemlly

/

92. Psychical Distance

explained by reference to the knowledge that the characters and situations are ' unreal/ imaginary. In this sense Witasek^ operating with Meinong's theory of AnnahTnen, has described the emotions involved in witnessing a drama as ScheingefuMe, a term which has so frequently been misunderstood in discussions of his theories. But, aa a matter of fact, the ' assumption ' upon which the imaginative emotional reaction is based is not necessarily the condition, but often the consequence, of Distance ; that is to say, the converse of the reason usually stated would then be true: viz. that Distance, by changing our relation to the characters, renders them seemingly fictitious, not that the fictitiousness of the characters alters our feelings toward fchem. It is, of course, to be granted that the actual and admitted unreality of the dramatic action reinforces the effect of Distance. But surely the proverbial unsophisticated yokel whose chivalrous interference in the play on behalf of the hapless heroine can only be prevented by impressing upon him that ' they are only pretending,' is not the ideal type of theatrical audience. The proof of the seeming paradox that it is Distance which primarily gives to dramatic action the appearance of unreality and not vice versd, is the observation that the same filtration of our sentiments and the same seeming ' unreality ' of actual men and things occur, when at times, by a sudden change of inward perspective, we are overcome by the feeling that all the world's a stage."

2. This personal, but * distanced ' relation (as I will venture to call this nameless character of our view) directs attention to a strange fact which appears to be one of the fundamental paradoxes of Art : it is what I propose to call 'the antinomy of Distance.'

It will be readily admitted that a work of Art has the more chance of appealing to us the better it finds us prepared for its particular kind of appeal. Indeed, without some degree of predisposition on our part, it must necessarily remain incomprehensible, and to that extent unappreciated. The success and intensity of its appeal would seem, therefore, to stand in direct proportion to the completeness with which it corresponds with our intellectual and emotional pecu- liarities and the idiosyncracies of our experience. The absence of such a concordance between the characters of a work and of the spectator is, of course, the most general explanation for differences of 'tastes.'

^ H. Witasek, *Zar psyehologisohen Analyse der aesthetiaohen Einfiihlnng,' Ztseh, /. Psychol, u. Phyiiol. der Sinnetorg, 1901, xxv. 1 ff.; QrundsUge der AettheHk, Leipzig, 1904.

Edward Bullough 93

At the same time, such a principle of concordance requires a qualification, which leads at once to the antinomy of Distance.

Suppose a man, who believes that he has cause to b^ jealous about his wife, witnesses a performance of 'Othello.' He will the more perfectly appreciate the situation, conduct and character of Othello, the more exactly the feelings and experiences of Othello coincide with his own — at least he ought to on the above principle of concordance. In point of fact, he will probably do anything but appreciate the play. In reality, the concordance will merely render him acutely conscious of his own jealousy ; by a sudden reversal of perspective he will no longer see Othello apparently betrayed by Desdemona, but himself in an /' analogous situation with his own wife. This reversal of perspective is v the consequence of the loss of Distance.

If this be taken as a typical case, it follows that the qualification required is that the coincidence should be as complete as is compatible with maintaining Distance. The jealous spectator of 'Othello' will indeed appreciate and enter into the play the more keenly, the greater the resemblance with his own experience — provided that he succeeds in keeping the Distance between the action of the play and his personal feelings : a very difficult performance in the circumstance& It is on account of the same difficulty that the expert and the professional critic make a bad audience, since their expertness and critical professionalism are practical activities, involving their concrete personality and con- stantly endangering their Distance. [It is, by the way, one of the reasons why Criticism is an art, for it requires the constant interchange from the practical to the distanced attitude and vice versd, which is characteristic of artists.]

The same qualification applies to the artist. He will prove artistically most effective in the formulation of an intensely personal experience, but he can formulate it artistically only on condition of a detachment from the experience qud personal. Hence the statement of 80 many artists that artistic formulation was to them a kind of catharsis, a means of ridding themselves of feelings and ideas the acuteness of which they felt almost as a kind of obsession. Hence, on the other hand, the failure of the average man to convey to others at all adequately the impression of an overwhelming joy or sorrow. His personal implication in the event renders it impossible for him to formulate and present it in such a way as to make others, like himself, feel all the meaning and fulness which it possesses for him.

94 Psychical Distance

What is therefore, both in appreciation and production, most desirable is the utmost decrease of Distance without its disappearance:

3. Closely related, in fact a presupposition to the ' antimony/ is the variability of Distcmce. Herein especially lies the advantage of Distance compared with such terms as * objectivity ' and * detachment.' Neither of them implies a personal relation — indeed both actually preclude it ; and the mere inflexibility and exclusiveness of their opposites render their application generally meaningless.

Distance, on the contrary, admits naturally of degrees, and differs not only according to the nature of the object^ which may impose a greater or smaller degree of Distance, but varies also according to the individuals capaxdty for maintaining a greater or lesser degree. And here one may remark that not only do persons differ from each other in their habitual measure of Distance, but that the same individual differs in his ability to maintain it in the face of different objects and of different arts.

There exist, therefore, two different sets of conditions affecting the degree of Distance in any given case : those offered by the object and those realised by the subject. In their interplay they afford one of the most extensive explanations for varieties of aesthetic experience, since loss of Distance, whether due to the one or the other, means loss of aesthetic appreciation.

In short, Distance may be said to he variable both axicording to the distancing-power of the individual, and a^ccording to the character of the object

There are two ways of losing Distance : either to ' under-distance ' or to ' over-distance.' ' Under-distancing ' is the commonest failing of the subject, an excess of Distance is a frequent failing of Art, especially in the past. Historically it looks almost as if Art had attempted to meet the deficiency of Distance on the pai-t of the subject and had overshot the mark in this endeavour. It will be seen later that this is actually true, for it appears that over-distanced Art is specially designed for a class of appreciation which has diiSculty to rise spontaneously to any degree of Distance. The consequence of a loss of Distance through one or other cause is familiar : the verdict in the case of under-distancing is that the work is * crudely naturalistic,' * harrowing,' * repulsive in its realism.' An excess of Distance produces the impression of improbability, artificiality, emptiness or absurdity.

The individual tends, as I just stated, to under-distance rather than to lose Distance by over-distancing. Theoretically there is no limit to

Edward Bullough 95

the decrease of Distance. In theory, therefore, not only the usual subjects of Art, but even the most personal affections, whether ideas, percepts or emotions, can be sufficiently distanced to be aesthetically appreciable. Especially artists are gifted in this direction to a remark- able extent. The average individual, on the contrary, very rapidly reaches his limit of decreasing Distance, his * Distance-limit,' i.e. that point at which Distance is lost and appreciation either disappears or changes its character.

In the practice, therefore, of the average person, a limit does exist which marks the minimum at which his appreciation can maintain itself in the aesthetic field, and this average minimum lies considerably higher than the Distance-limit of the artist. It is practically impossible to fix this average limit, in the absence of data, and on account of the wide fluctuations from person to person to which this limit is subject. But it is safe to infer that, in art practice, explicit references to organic affections, to the material existence of the body, especially to sexual matters, lie normally below the Distance-limit, and can be touched upon by Art only with special precautions. Allusions to social institutions of any degree of personal importance — in particular, allusions implying any doubt as to their validity — the questioning of some generally recognised ethical sanctions, references to topical subjects occupying public attention at the moment, and such like, are all dangerously near the average limit and may at any time fall below it, arousing, instead of aesthetic appreciation, concrete hostility or mere amusement.

This difference in the Distance-limit between artists and the public has been the source of much misunderstanding and injustice. Many an artist has seen his work condemned, and himself ostracized for the sake of so-called ' immoralities ' which to him were bond fide aesthetic objects. His power of distancing, nay, the necessity of distancing feelings, sensa- tions, situations which for the average person are too intimately bound up with his concrete existence to be regarded in that light, have often quite unjustly earned for him accusations of cynicism, sensualism, morbidness or frivolity. The same misconception has arisen over many 'problem plays' and 'problem novels' in which the public have per- sisted in seeing nothing but a supposed 'problem' of the moment, whereas the author may have been — and often has demonstrably been — able to distance the subject-matter sufficiently to rise above its practical problematic import and to regard it simply as a dramatically and humanly interesting situation.

The variability of Distance in respect to Art, disregarding fur the

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96 PsychiccU Distance

moment the sabjective complication, appears both as a general feature in Art, and in the differences between the special arts.

•It has been an old problem why the ' arts of the eye and of the ear ' should have reached the practically exclusive predominance over arts of other senses. Attempts to raise ' culinary art ' to the level of a Fine Art have failed in spite of all propaganda, as completely as the creation of scent or liqueur ' symphonies.' There is little doubt that, apart from other excellent reasons^ of a partly psycho-physical, partly technical nature, the actual, spatial distance separating objects of sight and hearing from the subject has contributed strongly to the development of this monopoly. In a similar manner temporal remoteness produces Distance, and objects removed from us in point of time are ipso facto distanced to an extent which was impossible for their contemporarie& Many pictures, plays and poems had, as a matter of fact, rather an expositary or illustrative significance — as for instance much ecclesiastical Art — or the force of a direct practical appeal — as the invectives of many satires or comedies — which seem to us nowadays irreconcilable with their aesthetic claims. Such works have consequently profited greatly by lapse of time and have reached the level of Art only with the help of temporal distance, while others, on the contrary, often for the same reason have suffered a loss of Distance, through ov^-distancing.

Special mention must be made of a group of artistic conceptions which present excessive Distance in their form of appeal rather than in their actual presentation — ^a point illustrating the necessity of distinguishing between distancing an object and distancing the appeal of which it is the source. I mean here what is often rather loosely termed 'idealistic Art,' that is, Art springing from abstract conceptions, expressing allegorical meanings, or illustrating general truths. Generalisations and abstractions suffer under this disadvantage that they have too much general applic- ability to invite a personal interest in them, and too little individual concreteness to prevent them applying to us in all their force. They appeal to everybody and therefore to none. An axiom of Euclid belongs to nobody, just because it compels everyone's assent ; general conceptions like Patriotism, Friendship, Love, Hope, Life, Death, concern as much Dick, Tom and Harry as myself, and I, therefore, either feel unable to get into any kind of personal relation to them, or, if I do so, they become at once, emphatically and concretely, my Patriotism, my Friendship, my

^ J. Volkelt, 'Die Bedeutung der niederen Empfindungen fflr die aeethetisohe Ein- fUhloDg/ Ztich. fUr Ptyehol. u, Phytiol, der Sinnesorg, xzxn. 15, 16; Syttem der Aeathetik, 1905, i. 260 £F.

Edward Bullofgh 97

Love, my Hope, my Life and Death. By mere force of generalisation, a general truth or a universal ideal is so far distanced from myself that I fail to realise it concretely* at all, or, when I do so, I can realise it only as part of my practical actual being, i.e. it falls below the Distance- limit altogether. * Idealistic Art' suffers consequently under the peculiar difficulty that its excess of Distance turns generally into an under- distanced appeal — all the more easily, as it is the usual failing of the subject to under- rather than to over-distance.

The different special arts show at the present time very marked variations in the degree of Distance which they usually impose or require for their appreciation. Unfortunately here again the absence of data makes itself felt and indicates the necessity of conducting observations, possibly experiments, so as to place these suggestions upon a securer basis. In one single art, viz. the theatre, a small amount of information is available, from an unexpected source, namely the proceedings of the censorship committee^ which on closer examination might be made to yield evidence of interest to the psychologist. In fact, the whole censor- ship problem, as far as it does not turn upon purely economic questions, may be said to hinge upon Distance ; if every member of the public could be trusted to keep.it, there would be no sense whatever in the existence of a censor of plays. There is, of course, no doubt that, speak- ing generally, theatrical performances eo ipso run a special risk of a loss of Distance owing to the material presentment' of its subject-matter. The physical presence of living human beings as vehicles of dramatic art is a difficulty which no art has to face in the same way. A similar, in many ways even greater, risk confronts dancing : though attracting perhaps a less widely spread human interest, its animal spirits are frequently quite unrelieved by any glimmer of spirituality and con- sequently form a proportionately stronger lure to under-distancing. In the higher forms of dancing technical execution of the most wearing kind makes up a great deal for its intrinsic tendency towards a loss of Dis- tance, and as a popular performance, at least in southern Europe, it has retained much of its ancient artistic glamour, producing a peculiarly subtle balancing of Distance between the pure delight of bodily move- ment and high technical accomplishment. In passing, it is interesting to observe (as bearing upon the development of Distance), that this art,

^ Beport from the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship), 1909.

' I shall use the term * presentment* to denote the manner of presenting, in distinction to 'presentation' as that which is presented.

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once as much a fine art as music and considered by the Greeks as a particularly valuable educational exercise, should — except in sporadic cases — have fallen so low from the pedestal it once occupied. Next to the theatre and dancing stands sculpture. Though not using a living bodily medium, yet the human form in its full spatial materiality con- stitutes a similar threat to Distance. Our northern habits of dress and ignorance of the human body have enormously increased the difficulty of distancing Sculpture, in part through the gross misconceptions to which it is exposed, in part owing to a complete lack of standards of bodily perfection, and an inability to realise the distinction between sculptural form and bodily shape, which is the only but fundamental point distinguishing a statue from a cast taken from life. In painting it is apparently the form of its presentment and the usual reduction in scale which would explain why this art can venture to approach more closely than sculpture to the normal Distance-limit. As this matter will be discussed later in a special connexion this simple reference may suffice here. Music and architecture have a curious position. These two most abstract of all arts show a remarkable fluctuation in their Distances. Certain kinds of music, especially ' pure ' music, or ' classical ' or ' heavy ' music, appear for many people over-distanced ; light, 'catchy ' tunes, on the contrary, easily reach that degree of decreasing Distance below which they cease to be Art and become a pure amusement. In spite of its strange abstractness which to many philosophers has made it comparable to architecture and mathematics, music possesses a sensuous, frequently sensual, character: the undoubted physiological and muscular stimulus of its melodies and harmonies, no less than its rhythmic aspects, would seem to account for the occasional disappearance of Distance. .To this might be added its strong tendency, especially in unmusical people, to stimulate trains of thought quite disconnected with itself,folIowing channels of subjective inclinations, — day-dreams of a more or less directly personal character. Architecture requires almost uniformly a very great Distance ; that is to say, the majority of persons derive no aesthetic appreciation from architecture as such, apart from the in- cidental impression of its decorative features and its associations. The causes are numerous, but prominent among them are the confusion of building with architecture and the predominance of utilitarian purposes, which overshadow the architectural claims upon the attention.

4. That all art requires a Distance-limit beyond which, and a Dis- tance within which only, aesthetic appreciation becomes possible, is the psychological formulation of a general characteristic of Art, viz. its

Edward Bullough 99

anti-realistic nature. Though seemingly paradoxical, this applies as much to ' naturalistic ' as to ' idealistic ' Art. The difference commonly expressed by these epithets is at bottom merely the difference in the degree of Distance ; and this produces, so far as ' naturalism ' and * ideal* ism ' in Art are not meaningless labels, the usual result that what appears obnoxiously ' naturalistic ' to one person, may be * idealistic ' to another. To say that Art is anti-realistic simply insists upon the fact that Art is not nature, never pretends to be nature and strongly resists any con- fusion with nature. It emphasizes the ar^-character of Art : 'artistic' is synonymous with ' anti-realistic ' ; it explains even sometimes a very marked degree of artificiality.

Art is an imitation of nature," was the. current art-conception in the 18th century. It is the fundamental axiom of the standard-work of that time upon aesthetic theory by the Abb^ Du Bos, Reflexions critiques sur la poisie et la peinture^ 1719; the idea received strong support from the literal acceptance of Aristotle's theory of fd^rjai^ and produced echoes everywhere, in Lessing's Laocoon no less than in Burke's famous statement that all Art is great as it deceives." Though it may be assumed that since the time of Kant and of the Romanticists this notion has died out, it still lives in unsophisticated minds. Even when formally denied, it persists, for instance, in the belief that " Art idealises nature," which means after all only that Art copies nature with certain improvements and revisions. Artists them- selves are unfortunately often responsible for the spreading of this conception. Wliistler indeed said that to produce Art by imitating nature would be like trying to produce music by sitting upon the piano, but the selective, idealising imitation of nature finds merely another support in such a saying. Naturalism, pleinairism, impressionism, — even the guileless enthusiasm of the artist for the works of nature, her wealth of suggestion, her delicacy of workmanship, for the steadfastness of her guidance, *only produce upon the public the impression that Art is, after all, an imitation of nature. Then how can it be anti-realistic ? The antithesis. Art versits nature, seems to break down. Yet if it does, what is the sense of Art ?

Here the conception of Distance comes to the rescue. The solution of the dilemma lies in the ' antinomy of Distance ' with its demand : utmost decrease of Distance without its disappearance. The simple observation that Art is the more effective, the more it falls into line with our predispositions which are inevitably moulded on general experience and nature, has always been the original motive for

100 Psychical Distance

'naturalism/ 'Naturalism/ 'impressionism' is no new thing; it is only a new name for an innate leaning of Art, from the time of the Chaldeans and Egyptians down to the present day. Even the Apollo of Tenea apparently struck his contemporaries as so startlingly ' naturalistic ' that the subsequent legend attributed a superhuman genius to his creator. A constantly closer approach to nature, a perpetual refining of the limit of Distance, yet without overstepping the dividing line of art and nature, has always been the inborn bent of a.rt. To deny this dividing line has occasionally been the failing of naturalism. But no theory of naturalism is complete which does not at the same time allow for the intrinsic idealism of Art : for both are merely degrees in that wide range lying beyond the Distance-limit. To imitate nature so as to trick the spectator into the deception that it is nature which he beholds, is to forsake Art, its anti-realism, its distanced spirituality, and to fall below the limit into sham, sensationalism or platitude.

But what, in the theory of antinomy of Distance requires expla- nation is the existence of an idealistic y highly distanced Art. There are numerous reasons to account for it ; indeed in so complex a phenomenon as Art, single causes can be pronounced almost a priori to be false. Foremost among such causes which have contributed to the formation of an idealistic Art appears to stand the subordination of Art to some extraneous purpose of an impressive, exceptional character. Such a subordination has consisted — at various epochs of Art history — in the use to which Art was put to subserve commemorative, hieratic, generally religious, royal or patriotic functions. The object to be commemorated had to stand out from among other still existing objects or pei*sons ; the thing or the being to be worshipped had to be distinguished as markedly as possible from profaner objects of reverence and had to be invested with an air of sanctity by a removal from its ordinary context of occurrence. Nothing could have assisted more powerfully the intro- duction of a high Distance than this attempt to differentiate objects of common experience in order to fit them for their exalted position. Curious, unusual things of nature met this tendency half-way and easily assumed divine rank ; but others had to be distanced by an exaggeration of their size, by extraordinary attributes, by strange combinations of human and animal forms, by special insistence upon particular char- acteristics, or by the careful removal of all noticeably individualistic and concrete features. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast, for example, in Egyptian Art between the monumental.

Edward Bullough 101

stereotyped effigies of the Pharaohs, and the startlingly realistic render- ing of domestic scenes and of ordinary mortals, such as " t\^ Scsibe " or " the Village Sheikh." Equally noteworthy is the exceeding artificiality of Russian eikon-painting with its prescribed attributes, expres9i<^n8 and gestures. Even Greek dramatic practice appears to have aimed, fat similar purposes and in marked contrast to our stage-habits, at an increase rather than at a decrease of Distance. Otherwise Greek Art, even of a religious type, is remarkable for its low Distance value ; and it speaks highly for the aesthetic capacities of the Greeks that the degree of realism which they ventured to impart to the representations of their gods, while humanising them, did not, at least at first', impair the reverence of their feelings towards them. But apart from such special causes, idealistic Art of great Distance has appeared at intervals, for apparently no other reason than that the great Distance was felt to be essential to its ar^-character. What is noteworthy and runs counter to many accepted ideas is that such periods were usually epochs of a low level of general culture. These were times, which, like childhood, required the marvellous, the extraordinary, to satisfy their artistic long- ings, and neither realised nor cared for the poetic or artistic qualities of ordinary things. They were frequently times, in which the mass of the people were plunged in ignorance and buried under a load of misery, and in which even the small educated class sought rather amusement or a pastime in Art; or they were epochs of a strong practical common- sense too much concerned with the rough-and-tumble of life to have any sense of its aesthetic charms. Art was to them what melodrama is to a section of the public at the present time, and its wide Distance was the safeguard of its artistic character. The flowering periods of Art have, on the contrary, always borne the evidence of a narrow Distance. Greek Art, as just mentioned, was realistic to an extent which we, spoilt as we are by modem developments, can grasp with difficulty, but which the contrast with its oriental contemporaries sufficiently proves. During the Augustan period — which Art historians at last are coming to regard no longer as merely ' degenerated ' Greek Art — Roman Art achieved its greatest triumphs in an almost naturalistic portrait-sculpture. In the Renaissance we need only think of the realism of portraiture, sometimes amounting almost to cynicism, of the ddsinvolture with which the mistresses of popes and dukes were posed as madonnas, saints avid goddesses apparently without any detriment to the aesthetic appeal of

^ That this praotioe did, in coarse of time, andermine their religious faith, is dear from the plays of Earipides and from Plato's condemnation of Homer's mythology.

102 -.V •* Psychical Distance

the works/and'of the remarkable interpenetration of Art with the most

ordiD^/«fOjtttine of life, in order to realise the scarcely perceptible

divijft>(]f[-lii]e between the sphere of Art and the realm of practical

.^ Qjn^ence. In a sense, the assertion that idealistic Art marks periods of

'•/"/^'generally low and narrowly restricted culture is the converse to the

• • oft-repeated statement that the flowering periods of Art coincide with

epochs of decadence: for this so-called decadence represents indeed

in certain respects a process of disintegration, politically, racially, often

nationally, but a disruption necessary to the formation of larger social

units and to the breakdown of out-grown national restrictions. For

this very reason it has usually also been the sign of the growth of

personal independence and of an expansion of individual culture.

To proceed to some more special points illustrating the distanced and therefore anti-realistic character of art, — both in subject-matter and in the form of presentation Art has always safeguarded its distanced view. Fanciful, even phantastic, subjects have from time immemorial been the accredited material of Art. No doubt things, as well as our view of them, have changed in the course of time : Polyphemus and the Lotus-Eaters for the Greeks, the Venusherg or the Magnetic Mountain for the Middle Ages were less incredible, more realistic than to ua But Peter Pan or LOiseau Bleu still appeal at the present day in spite of the prevailing note of realism of our time. 'Probability' and 'im- probability ' in Art are not to be measured by their correspondence (or lack of it) with actual experience. To do so bad involved the theories of the 15th to the 18th centuries in endless contradictions. It is rather a matter of consistency of Distance. The note of realism, set by a work as a whole, determines intrinsically the greater or smaller degree of fancy which it permits ; and consequently we feel the loss of Peter Pan's shadow to be infinitely more probable than some trifling improb- ability which shocks our sense of proportion in a naturalistic work. No doubt also, fairy-tales, fairy-plays, stories of strange adventures were primarily invented to satisfy the craving of curiosity, the desire for the marvellous, the shudder of the unwonted and the longing for imaginary experiences. But by their mere eccentricity in regard to the normal facts of experience they cannot have failed to arouse a strong feeling of Distance.

Again, certain conventional subjects taken from mythical and legendary traditions, at first closely connected with the concrete, practical, life of a devout public, have gradually, by the mere force of convention as much as by their inherent anti-realism, acquired Distance

Edwaed Bullough 103

for us to-day. Our view of Greek mythological sculpture, of early Cbnstian saints and martyrs must be considerably distanced, compared with that of the Greek and medieval worshipper. It is in part the result of lapse of time, but in part also a real change of attitude. Already the outlook of the Imperial Roman had altered, and Pausanias shows a curious dualism of standpoint, declaring the Athene Lemnia to be the supreme achievement of Phidias's genius, and gazing awe-struck upon the roughly hewn tree-trunk representing some primitive Apollo. Our understanding of Greek tragedy suffers admittedly under our mability to revert to the point of view for which it was originally written. Even the tragedies of Racine demand an imaginative effort to put ourselves back into the courtly atmosphere of red-heeled, powdered ceremony. Provided the Distance is not too wide, the result of its intervention has everywhere been to enhance the ar^-character of such works and to lower their original ethical and social force of appeal. Thus in the central dome of the Church (Sta Maria dei Miracoli) at Saronno are depicted the heavenly hosts in ascending tiers, crowned by the benevolent figure of the Divine Father, bending from the window of heaven to bestow His blessing upon the assembled community. The mere realism of foreshortening and of the boldest vertical perspective may well have made the naave Christian of the 16th century conscious of the Divine Presence — but for us it has become a work of Art.

The unusual, exceptional, has found its especial home in tragedy.. It has always— except in highly distanced tragedy — been a popular objection to it that ' there is enough sadness in life without going to the theatre for it.' Already Aristotle appears to have met with this view among his contemporaries clamouring for ' happy endings.' Yet tragedy is not sad ; if it were, there would indeed be little sense in its existence. For the tragic is just in so far different from the merely sad, as it is distanced ; and it is largely the exceptional which produces the Distance of tragedy : exceptional situations, exceptional characters, exceptional destinies and conduct. Not of course, characters merely cranky, eccentric, palthological. The exceptional element in tragic figures— that which makes them so utterly different from characters we meet with in ordinary experience — is a consistency of direction, a fervour of ideality, a persistence and driving-force which is far above the capacities of average men. The tragic of tragedy would, transposed into ordinary life, in nine cases out of ten, end in drama, in comedy, even in farce, for lack of steadfastness, for fear of conventions, for the dread of ' scenes,' for a hundred-and-one petty faithlessnesses towards a belief or an ideal :

J. of Pqroh. ▼ 8

104 Psychical Distance

even if for none of these, it would end io a compromise simply because mao forgets aod time heals'. Again, the sympathy, which aches with the sadness of tragedy is another such confuBioD, the undeF-distancing of tragedy's appeal Tragedy trembles always on the knife-edge of a personal reaction, and sympathy which finds relief in tears tends almoiit always towards a loss of Distance. Such a loss naturally renders tragedy unpleasant to a degree : it becomes sad, dismal, harrowing, depressing. But real tragedy (melodrama has a very strong tendency to speculate upon sympathy), truly appreciated, is not sad. " The pity of it — oh, the pity of it," that essence of all genuine tragedy is not the pity of mild, regretful sympathy. It is a chaos of tearless, bitter bewilder- ment, of upsurging revolt and rapturous awe before the ruthless and inscrutable fate ; it is the bomage to the great and exceptional in the man who in a last eETort of spiritual tension can rise to confront blind, crowning Necessity even in his crushing defeat.

As I explained earlier, the form of presentation sometimes en- dangers the maintenance of Distance, but it more frequently acts as a considerable support. Thus the bodily vehicle of drama is the chief &ctor of risk to Distance. But, as if to counterbalance a confusion with nature, other features of stage-presentation exercise an opposite influence. Such are the general theatrical milieu, the shape and arrangement of the stage, the artificial lightiog, the costumes, mtw-«n- seine and make-up, even the language, especially verse. Modem reforms of staging, aiming primarily at the removal of artistic incon- gruities between excessive decoratiou and the living figures of the actors and at the production of a more homogeneous stage-picture, inevitably work also towards a greater emphasis and homogeneity of Distance. The history of staging and dramaturgy is closely bonnd up with the evolution of Distance, and its fluctuations lie at the bottom not only of the greater part of all the talk and writing about ' dramatic probability ' and the Aristotelian ' unities,' bat also of ' theatrical illusion.' In sculpture, one distancing factor of presentment is its lack of colour. The aesthetic, or rather inaesthetic effect of realistic

■ The tunoai ■ anit^ ot time,' m •SDielen m a 'nanon,' U kit Ibe mum ottau an idispenubU oondition ot tnged;. For in muij t, tnged; the otMlropbe would be PSD intiiUBlOBll; imponibla, if ht&lit; did not overtake the hero with that nuh which VM no time to forget aod none to heal. It ie in oaeea aooh aa theoe that oritioiam baa ten blamed the work for ' improbability ' — the old oonlnaioD between Art and nattm — fgMtlng that the dwtth ol the hero ii the oonTsntion ot the art-fbtm, aa much aa vaplag In a pletare ii laob a ooDTeution and that probability i* not the oomopondenee ith average eiperiano^ bnt eonalitenoy of Diitanos.

Edward Bullough 105

colouring, is in no way touched by the controversial question of its use historically ; its attempted resuscitation, such as by Elinger, seems only to confirm its disadvantages. The distancing use even of pedestals, although originally no doubt serving other purposes, is evident to anyone who has experienced the oppressively crowded sensation of moving in a room among life-sized statues placed directly upon the floor. The circumstance that the space of statuary is the same space as ours (in distinction to relief sculpture or painting, for instance) renders a distancing by pedestals, i.e. a removal from our spatial context, imperative ^ Probably the framing of pictures might be shown to serve a similar purpose — though paintings have intrinsically a much greater Distance — because neither their space (perspective and imaginary space) nor their lighting coincides with our (actual) space or light, and the usual reduction in scale of the represented objects prevents a feeling of undue proximity. Besides, painting always retains to some extent a ^o-dimensional character, and this character supplies eo ipso a Distance. Nevertheless, life-size pictures, especially if they possess strong relief, and their light happens to coincide with the actual lighting, can occasionally produce the impression of actual presence which is a far from pleasant, though fortunately only a passing, illusion. For decora- tive purposes, in pictorial renderings of vistas, garden-perspectives and architectural extensions, the removal of Distance has often been con- sciously striven after, whether with aesthetically satisfactory results is much disputed.

A general help towards Distance (and therewith an anti-realistic feature) is to be found in the ' unification of presentment' ' of all art- objects. By unification of presentment are meant such qualities as symmetry, opposition, proportion, balance, rhythmical distribution of parts, light-arrangements, in fact all so-called * formal ' features, ' com- position' in the widest sense. Unquestionably, Distance is not the only, nor even the principal function of composition ; it serves to render our grasp of the presentation easier and to increase its intelligibility. It may even in itself constitute the principal aesthetic feature of the object, as in linear complexes or patterns, partly also in architectural designs. Yet, its distancing effect can hardly be underrated. For, every kind of

^ Ad instance which might be addaoed to disprove this point only shows its correctness on closer inspection : for it was on purpose and with the intention of removing Distance, that Bodin originally intended his cUoyem de CiUaU to be placed, without pedestals, upon the market-place of that town.

• See note 2, p. 97.

8—2

y

106 Psychical Distance

visibly intentional arrangement or unification must, by the mere fact of its presence, enforce Distance, by distinguishing the object fi*om the confused, disjointed and scattered forms of actual experience. This function can be gauged in a typical form in cases where composition produces an exceptionally marked impression of artificiality (not in the bad soDse of that term, but in the sense in which all art is artificial) ; and it is a natural corollary to the dif]erences of Distance in different arts and of different subjects, that the arts and subjects vary in the degree of artificiality which they can bear. It is this sense of artificial finish which is the source of so much of that elaborate charm of Byzantine work, of Mohammedan decoration, of the hieratic stiffness of so many primitive madonnas and saints. In general the emphasis of composition and technical finish increases with the Distance of the subject-matter : heroic conceptions lend themselves better to verse than to prose ; monu- mental statues require a more general treatment, more elaboration of Betting and artificiality of pose than impressionistic statuettes like those of Troubetzkoi ; an ecclesiastic subject is painted with a degree of symmetrical arrangement which would be ridiculous in a Dutch interior, and a naturalistic drama carefully avoids the tableau impression characteristic of a mystery play. In a similar manner the variations of Distance in the arts go hand in hand with a visibly greater predomin- ance of composition and ' formal ' elements, reaching a climax in archi- tecture and music. It is again a matter of ' consistency of Distance.' At the same time, while fix)m the point of view of the artist this is undoubtedly the case, from the point of view of the public the emphasis of composition and technical finish appears frequently to relieve the impression of highly distanced subjects by diminishing the Distance of the whole. The spectator has a tendency to see in composition and finish merely evidence of the artist's 'cleverness,' of his mastery over his material. Manual dexterity is an enviable thing to possess in everyone's experience, and naturally appeals to the public practically^ thereby putting it into a directly personal relation to things which intrinsically have veiy little personal appeal for it. It is true that this function of composition is hardly an aesthetic one: for the admiration of mere technical cleverness is not an artistic enjoyment, but by a fortunate chance it has saved from oblivion and entire loss, among much rubbish, also much genuine Art, which otherwise would have completely lost contact with our life.

5. This discussion, necessarily sketchy and incomplete, may have helped to illustrate the sense in which, I suggested, Distance appears

Edward Bullough 107

as a fundamental principle to which such antitheses as idealism and realism are reducible. The difference between ' idealistic ' and ' realistic ' Art is not a clear-cut dividing-line between the art-practices described by these terms, but is a difference of degree in the Distance-limit which they presuppose on the part both of the artist and of the public. A similar reconciliation seems to me possible between the opposites ' sensual ' and ' spiritual/ ' individual ' and ' typical.' That the appeal of Art is sensuous, even sensual, must be taken as an indisputable, fact. Puritanism will never be persuaded, and rightly ^o, that this is not the case. The sensuousness of Art is a natural implication of the 'antinomy of Distance/ and will appear again in another connexion. The point of importance here is that the whole sensual side of Art is purified, spiritualised, * filtered ' as I expressed it earlier, by Distance. The most sensual appeal becomes the translucent veil of an underlying spirituality, once the grossly personal and practical elements have been removed from it. And — a matter of special emphasis here — tkU spiritual aspect of the appeal is the more penetrating^ the more personal and direct its sensual appeal would have been but for the presence of Distance. For the artist, to trust in this delicate transmutation is a natural act of faith which the Puritan hesitates to venture upon : which of the two, one asks, is the greater idealist ?

6. The same argument applies to the contradictory epithets ' individual * and ' typical,' A discussion in support of the fundamental individualism of Art lies outside the scope of this essay. Every artist has taken it for granted. Besides it is rather in the sense of ' concrete^ or ' individualised/ that it is usually opposed to ' typical.' On the other hand, ' t3rpical,' in the sense of ' abstract/ is as diametrically opposed to the whole nature of Art, as individualism is characteristic of it It is in the sense of 'generalised' as a 'general human element' that it is claimed as a necessary ingredient in Art. This antithesis is again one which naturally and without mutual sacrifice finds room within the conception of Distance. Historically the ' typical ' has had the effect of counteracting unc2er-distancing as much as the ' individual ' has opposed ov^-distancing. Naturally the two ingredients have constantly varied in the history of Art ; they represent, in fact, two sets of conditions to which Art has invariably been subject: the personal and the social factors. It is Distance which on one side prevents the emptying of Art of its concreteness and the development of the typical into abstractness ; which, on the other, suppresses the directly personal element of its individualism ; thus reducing the antitheses to the peaceful interplay

\

108 Psychical Distance

of these two factors. It is just this interplay which constitutes the ' antinomy of Distance.'

ni.

It remains to indicate the value of Distance as an aesthetic principle: as criterion in some of the standing problems of Aesthetics ; as repre- senting a phase of artistic creation ; and as a characteristic feature of the ' aesthetic consciousness.'

1. The axiom of ' hedonistic Aesthetics ' is that beauty is pleasure. Unfortunately for hedonism the formula is not reversible: not all pleasure is beauty. Hence the necessity of some limiting criterion to separate the beautiful within the 'pleasure-field' from the merely agreeable. This relation of the beautiful to the agreeable is the ever recurring crux of all hedonistic Aesthetics, as the problem of this relation becomes inevitable when once the hedonistic basis is granted. It has provoked a number of widely different solutions, some manifestly wrong, and all as little satisfactory as the whole hedonistic groundwork upon which they rest : the shareableness of beauty as opposed to the ' monopoly ' of the agreeable (Bain)^ the passivity of beauty-pleasure (Grant Allen)^ or most recently, the ' relative permanence of beauty- pleasure in revival ' (H. R. Marshall)^

Distance offers a distinction which is as simple in its operation as it is fundamental in its importance: the agreeable is a non-distanced pleasure. Beauty in the widest sense of aesthetic value is impossible without the insertion of Distance, The agreeable stands in precisely the same relation to the beautiful (in its narrower sense) as the sad stands to the tragic, as indicated earlier. Translating the above formula, one may say, that the agreeable is felt sa an affection of our concrete, practical self; the centre of gravity of an agreeable experience lies in the self which experiences the agreeable. The aesthetic experi- ence, on the contrary, has its centre of gravity in itself or in the object mediating it, not in the self which has been distanced out of the field of the inner vision of the experiencer : " not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end." It is for this reason that to be asked in the midst of an intense aesthetic impression " whether one likes it," is like a somnambulist being called by name : it is a recall to one's concrete self, an awakening of practical consciousness which throws the

1 Bain, The Emotioru and the Will, 2nd ed. 1850.

' G. Allen, Phytiologieal AestheticM, 1897.

s H. B. Marahall, Pain, PUature and AeaUietict, 1894; AeBtheHc Prineiplet, 1895.

Edwaed Bullough 109

whole aesthetic mechaDism out of gear. One might almost venture upon the paradox that the more intense the aesthetic absorption, the less one likes/' consciously, the experience. The failure to realise this fact, so fully borne out by all genuine artistic experience, is the fundamental error of hedonistic Aesthetics.

The problem of the relation of the beautiful and the agreeable has taken more definite shape in the question of the aesthetic value of the so-called 'lower senses' (comprising sensations of taste and temperature, muscular and tactile, and organic sensations). Sight and hearing have always been the 'aesthetic senses' par excellence. Scent has been admitted to the status of an aesthetic sense by some, excluded by others. The ground for the rejection of the lower senses has always been that they mediate only agreeable sensations, but are incapable of conveying aesthetic experiences. Though true normally, this rigid distinction is theoretically unfair to the senses, and in practice often false. It is undoubtedly very difficult to reach an aesthetic appreciation through the lower senses, because the materialness of their action, their proximity and bodily connexion are great obstacles to their distancing. The aroma of coffee may be a kind of foretaste, taste etherialised, but still a taste. The sweetness of scent of a rose is usually felt more as a bodily caress than as an aesthetic experience. Tet poets have not hesitated to call the scents of flowers their " souls." Shelley has trans- formed the scent to an imperceptible sounds We call such conceptions ' poetical ' : they mark the transition from the merely agreeable to the beautiful by means of Distance.

M. Quyau, in a well-known passage', has described the same trans- formation of a taste. Even muscular sensations may present aesthetic possibilities, in the free exercise of bodily movement, the swing of a runner, in the ease and certainty of the trained gymnast ; nay, such diffuse organic sensations as the buoyancy of well-being, and the elasticity of bodily energy, can, in privileged moments, be aesthetically enjoyed. That they admit of no material fixation, such as objects of sight and hearing do, and for that reason form no part of Art in the narrower sense ; that they exist as aesthetic objects only for the moment and for the single being that enjoys them, is no argument against their aesthetic character. Mere material existence and permanence is no aesthetic criterion.

^ Cf. *<The Sensitive Plant."

' M. Guyaa, Problhnea de VEsthitique eontemparaititf Parie, 1897, 4"** ed. Livre i. ohap. Ti.

110 Psychical Distance

This is all the more true, as even among the experiences of lasting things, such as are generally accounted to yield aesthetic impressions, the merely agreeable occurs as frequently as the beautiful.

To begin with the relatively simple case of colour-appreciation. Most people imagine that because they are not colour-blind, physically or spiritually, and prefer to live in a coloured world rather than in an engraving, they possess an aesthetic appreciation of colour as such. This is the sort of fallacy which hedonistic art-theories produce, and the lack of an exchange of views on the subject only fosters. Everybody believes that he enjoys colour — and for that matter other things — just like anyone else. Tet rather the contrary is the case. By far the greater number, when asked why they like a colour, will answer, that they like it, because it strikes them as warm or cold, stimulat- ing or soothing, heavy or light. They constitute a definite type of colour-appreciation and form about sixty per cent, of all persons. The remainder assumes, for the greater part, a different attitude. Colours do not appeal to them as effects (largely organic) upon themselves. Their appreciation attributes to colours a kind of personality : colours are energetic, lively, serious, pensive, melancholic, affectionate, subtle, reserved, stealthy, treacherous, brutal, etc. These characters are not mere imaginings, left to the whim of the individual, romancing what- ever he pleases into the colours, nor are they the work simply of accidental associations. They follow, on the contrary, definite rules in their applications ; they are, in fact, the same organic effects as those of the former type, but transformed into, or interpreted as, attributes of the colour, instead of as affections of one's own self. In short, they are the result of the distancing of the organic effects : they form an aesthetic appreciation of colour, instead of a merely agreeable experi- ence like those of the former kind^

A similar parallelism of the agreeable and the beautiful (in the widest sense of aesthetic value) occurs also within the sphere of recognised art-forms. I select for special notice comedy and melodrama (though the same observation can be made in painting, architecture and notably in music), firstly as counterparts to tragedy, discussed earlier, secondly, because both represent admitted art-forms, in spite of their at least partially, inadequate claims to the distinction, and lastly because all these types, tragedy, comedy and melodrama, are usually grouped together as * arts of the theatre ' no less than as forms of * literature.'

1 Of. E. Bullongb, < The Perceptive Problem in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Single Goloars,* this Journal, 1908, ii. 406 fF.

Edward Bullough 111

From the point of view of the present discussion, the case of comedy is particularly involved. What we mean by comedy as a class of theatrical entertainment covers several different kinds^ which actually merge into each other and present historically a continuity which allows of no sharp lines of demarcation (a difiSculty, by the way, which besets all distinctions of literary or artistic species, as opposed to artistic genera). The second difficulty is that the 'laughable' includes much mpre than the comic of comedy. It may enter, in all its varieties of the ridiculous, silly, nai've, brilliant, especially as the humorous, into comedy as ingredients, but the comic is not coextensive with the laughable as a whole.

The fact to be noted here is, that the different types of comedy, as well as the different kinds of the laughable, presuppose different degreel9 of Distance. Their tendency is to have none at all. Both to laugh and to weep are direct expressions of a thoroughly practical nature, indicating almost always a concrete personal affection. Indeed, given suitable circumstances and adequate distancing- power, both can be distanced, but only with great difficulty ; nor is it possible to decide which of the two offers the greater difficulty. The balance seems almost to incline in favour of tears as the easier of the two, and this would accord with the acknowledged difficulty of producing a really good comedy, or of maintaining a consistent aesthetic attitude in fads of a comic situation. Certainly the tendency to ttncldrdistance is more felt in comedy even than in tragedy ; most types of the former present- ing a non-distanced, practical and personal appeal, which precisely implies that their enjoyment is generally hedonic, not aesthetic. In its lower forms comedy consequently is a mere amusement and falls as little under the heading of Art as pamphleteering would be considered as belles-lettres, or a burglary as a dramatic performance. It may be spiritualised, polished and refined to the sharpness of a dagger-point or the subtlety of foil-play, but there still clings to it an atmosphere of amusement pure and simple, sometimes of a rude, often of a cruel kind.

^ Comedy embraoes saHrical comedy, i.e. dramatic inTeotives of all degrees of personal directnesB, from the attack on actually existing persons (saoh as is prohibited by the censorship, but has flourished everywhere) to skits upon existing professions, customs, evils, or society; secondly, farce, rarely unmixed with satire, but occasionally pure nonsense and horseplay; thirdly, comedy proper, a sublimation of farce into the pore comedy of general human situation, or genuine character-oomisdy, changing easily into the fourth class, the type of play described on the Gontinent as drama (in the narrower sense), i.e. a play involving serious situations, sometimes with tragic prospects, but having an happy, if often unexpected, ending.

112 PsycMeal Distance

This, together with the admitted preference of comedy for generalised types rather than for individualised figures, suggests the conclusion that its point of view is the survival of an attitude which the higher forms of Art have outgrown. It is noteworthy that this tendency decreases with every step towards high comedy, character-comedy and drama, with the growing spiritualisation of the comic elements and the first appearance of Distance. Historically the development has been slow and halting. There is no doubt that the I7th century considered the Misanthrope as amusing. We are nowadays less harsh and less socially intoleraut and AlcesU appears to us no longer as frankly ridiculous. The supreme achievement of comedy is unquestionably that ' distanced ridicule ' which we call humour. This self-contradiction of smiling at what we love, displays, in the light vein, that same perfect and subtle balance of the 'antioomy of Distance' which the truly tragic shows in the serious mood. The tragic and the humorous are the genuine aesthetic opposites ; the tragic and the comic are contradictory in the matter of Distance, as aesthetic and hedonic objects respectively. A similar hedonic opposition in the other direction is to be found between tragedy and melodrama. Whereas comedy tends to under- distance, melodrama suffers from o&erdistancing. For a cultivated audience its overcharged idealism, the crude opposition of vice and virtue, the exaggeration of its underlined moral, its innocence of Tzuanctf, and its sentimentality with violin-accompaniment are sufficient cause to stamp it as inferior Art. But perhaps its excessive distance is the least Distance obtainable by the public for which it is designed, and may be a great help to an unsophisticated audience in distancing the characters and events. For it is more than probable that we make a mistake in assuming an analogy between a cultivated audience at a serious drama, and a melodramatic audience. It is very likely that the lover of melodrama does not present that subtle balance of mind towards a play, implied in the ' antinomy of Distance.' His attitude is rather either that of a matter-of-fact adult or of a child: i.e. he is either in a frankly personal relation to the events of the play and would like to cudgel the villain who illtreats the innocent heroine, and rejoices loudly in his final defeat — ^just as he would in real life— or, he is completely lost in the excessive distance imposed by the work and watches naively the wonders he sees, as a child listens enchantedly to a fairy-tale. In neither case is his attitude aesthetic; in the one the object is under-y in the other overdistanced ; in the former he confuses it with the reality he knows (or thinks he knows) to exist, in the other

/

Edward Bullough 113

with a reality whose existence he does not know, hU accepts. Neither bears the twofold character of the aesthetic state in which we know a thing not to exist, but accept its eadstenoe. From the point of view of moral advantage — in the absence of any aesthetic advantage — the former attitude might seem preferable. But even this may be doubted ; for if he believes what he sees in a great spectacular melodrama^ every marble-lined hall of the most ordinary London hotel that he passes after the play must appear to him as a veritable Hell, and every man or woman in evening-dress as the devil incarnate. On either supposition, the moral effect must be deplorable in the extreme, and the melodrama is generally a much more fitting object of the censor's attention than any usually censored play. For in the one case the brutalising effect of the obtrusively visible wickedness cannot possibly be outweighed by any retaliatory poetic justice, which must seem to him singularly lacking in real life; in the other, the effect is purely negative and narcotic ; in both his perspective of real life is hopelessly outfocussed and distorted.

2. The importance of Distance in artistic creation has already been briefly alluded to in connexion with the ' antinomy of Distance.'

Distancing might, indeed, well be considered as the especial and primary function of what is called the ' creative act ' in artistic produc- tion : distancing is the formal aspect of creation in Art. The view that the artist ' copies nature ' has already been dismissed. Since the ' imitation-of-nature ' theory was officially discarded at the beginning of the 19th century, its place in popular fancy has been taken by the / conception of the ' self-expression of the artist,' supported by the whole v/ force of the Romantic Movement in Europe. Though true as a crude statement of the subjective origin of an artistic conception, though in many ways preferable to its predecessor and valuable as a corollary of such theories as that of the ' organic growth ' of a work of Art, it is apt to lead to confusions and to one-sided inferences, to be found even in such deliberate and expert accounts of artistic production as that of Benedetto Croce\ For, to start with, the ' self-expression ' of an artist is not such as the 'self-expression' of a letter-writer or a public speaker: it is not the direct expression of the concrete personality of the artist ; it is not even an indirect expression of his concrete personality, in the ' sense in which, for instance, Hamlet's ' self-expression ' might be sup- \ posed to be the indirect reflexion of Shakespeare's ideas. Such a ' denial, it might be argued, runs counter to the observation that in the

1 Benedetto Crooe, Aesthetic, translated by Doaglas AinsUe, MacmiUan, 1909.

114 Psychical Distance

works of a literary artist, for example, are to be found echoes and mirrorings of his times and of his personal experiences and convictions. But it is to be noted that to. find these is in fact impossible, unless you previously know what reflexions to look for. Even in the relatively most direct transference from personal experiences to their expres- sion, viz. in lyrical poetry, such a connexion cannot be established backwards, though it is easy enough to prove it forwards: Le. given the knowledge of the experiences, there is no difficulty in tracing their echoes, but it is impossible to infer biographical data of any detail or concrete value fironi an author's works alone. Otherwise Shakespeare's Sonnets would not have proved as refractory to biographical research as they have done, and endless blunders in literary history would never have been committed. What proves so impossible in literature, which after all offers an exceptionally adequate medium to 'self-expression,' is a fortiori out of question in other arts, in which there is not even an equivalence between the personal experiences and the material in which they are supposed to be formulated. .The fundamental two-fold error of the 'self-expression' theory is to speak of 'expression' in the sense of ' intentional communication,' and .to identify straightway the \l artist and the man. An intentional communication is as far almost from the mind of the true artist as it would be from that of the ordinary respectable citizen to walk about naked in the streets, and the idea has repeatedly been indignantly repudiated by artists. The second confusion is as misleading in its theoretical consequences, as it is mischievous and often exceedingly painful to the ' man ' as well as to the 'artist.' The numberless instances in history of the astonishing difference, often the marked contrast between the man and his work b one of the most disconcerting riddles of Art, and should serve as a , ' manifest warning against the popular illusion of finding the ' artist's ' mind' in his prod notions \ ,

Apart from the complication of technical necessities, of conventional art-forms, of the requirements of unification and composition, all imped- ing the direct transference of an actual mental content into its artistic formulation, there is the interpolation of Distance which stands between the artist's cpnception and the man's. For the ' artist ' himself is already distanced from the concrete, historical personality, who ate and drank and slept and did the ordinary business of life. No doubt here also are degrees of Distance, and the ' antinomy ' applies to this case too.

1 Some well-known examples of this difference are, for instanoe: Mozart, Beethoven, Wattean, Marillo, Molidre, Sohiller, Verlaine, Zola.

Edward Bullough 115

Some figures in literature and other arts are unquestionably self- portraits ; but even self-portraits are not, and cannot be, the direct and faithful cast taken from the living soul. In short, so far from being

• self-expression/ artistic prodiLction is the indirect formtUation of a ^

distanced mental content.

I give a short illustration of this fact. A well-known dramatist described to me the process of production as taking place in his case in some such way as follows :

The starting-point of his production is what he described as an

• emotional idea/ i.e. some more or less general conception carrying

with it a strong emotional tone. This idea may be suggested by an actual experience ; anyhow the idea itself is an actual experience, i.e. it occurs within the range of his normal, practical being. Gradually it condenses itself into a situation made up of the interplay of certain characters, which may be of partly objective, partly imaginative descent. Then ensues what he described as a " life and death struggle " between the idea and the characters for existence : if the idea gains the upper hand, the conception of the whole is doomed In the successful issue, on the contrary, the idea is, to use his phrase, sucked up" by the N characters as a sponge sucks up water, until no trace of the idea is left y outside the characters. It is a process, which, he assured me, he is quite powerless to direct or even to influence. It is further of interest

to notice that during this period the idea undergoes sometimes profound, often wholesale changes. Once the stage of complete fusion of the idea with the characters is reached, the conscious elaboration of the play can proceed. What follows after this, is of no further interest in this connexion.

This account tallies closely with the procedure which numerous dramatists are known to bave followed It forms a definite type. There are other types, equally well supported by evidence, which proceed along much less definite lines of a semi-logical development, but rather show sudden flash-like illuminations and much more sub- conscious growth.

The point to notice is the " life and death struggle " between the idea and the charactera As I first remarked, the idea is the ' maris! it / is the reflexion of the dramatist s concrete and practical self. Yet this is precisely the part which must *' die." The paradox of just the germ- part of the whole being doomed, particularly impressed my informant as a kind of life-tragedy. The ' characters ' on the other hand belong to the imaginary world, to the ' artist's/ Though they may be partially

116 Pmfchiml Distance

suggested by actuality, their full-grown development is divorced from it. This process of the ' idea ' being " sucked up " by the characters and being destroyed by it, is a phase of artistic production technically known as the ' objectivation ' of the conception. In it the *■ man ' dies and the ' artist ' comes to life, and with him the work of Art. It is a change of death and birth in which there is no overlapping of the lives of parent and child. The result is the distanced finished production. As elsewhere, the distancing means the separation of personal affections, whether idea or complex experience, from the concrete personality of the experiencer, its filtering by the extrusion of its personal aspects, the throwing out of gear of its personal potency and significance.

The same transformation through distance is to be noticed in acting. Here, even more than in the other arts, a lingering bias in favour of the ' imitation of nature ' theory has stood in the way of a correct interpre- tation of the facts. Yet acting supplies in this and other respects exceptionally valuable information, owing to its medium of expression and the overlapping — at least in part — of the process of producing with the finished production, which elsewhere are separated in point of time. It illustrates, as no other art can, the cleavage between the concrete, normal person and the distanced personality. [The acting here referred to is, of course, not that style which consists in ' walking on.' What is meant here is ' creative ' acting, which in its turn must be distinguished from ' reproductive ' acting — two different types traceable through the greater part of theatrical history, which in their highest development are often outwardly indistinguishable, but nevertheless retain traces of differences, characteristic of their procedures and psychical mechanism.] This cleavage between the two streams or layers of consciousness is so obvious that it has led to increasing speculation bom the time when acting first attracted intelligent interest, since the middle of the 18th century. From the time of Diderot's Paradoxe sur le ComMien (itself only the last of a series of French studies) down to Mr William Archer's Masks or Faeces (1888) and the controversy between Coquelin and Salvini (in the nineties), theory has been at pains to grapple with this phenomenon. Explanations have differed widely, going from the one extreme of an identification of the acting and the normal personality to the other of a separation so wide as to be theoretically inconceivable and contradicted by experience. It is necessary to offer some concep- tion which will account for the differences as well as for the indirect connexion between the two forms of being, and which is applicable not merely to acting, but to other kinds of art as well. Distance, it is here

Edward Bullough 117

contended, meets the requirement even in its subtlest shades. To show this in detail lies outside the scope of this essay, and forms rather the task of a special treatment of the psychology of acting.

[3. In the interest of those who may be familiar with the develop- ments of aesthetic theories of late years, I should like to add that Distance has a special bearing upon many points raised by them. It is essential to the occurrence and working of ' empathy ' {EinfiMung), and I mentioned earlier its connexion with Witasek's theory of Schein* gefaJile which forms part of his view on * empathy.' The distinction between sympathy and 'empathy' as formulated by Ltpps^ is a matter of the relative degree of Distance. Yolkelt's' suggestion of regarding the ordinary apprehension of expression (say of a person's face) as the first rudimentary stage of Einfvhlung, leading subsequently to the lowering of our consciousness of reality (*' Herabaetzung des Wirklichkeitsgefuhls "), can similarly be formulated in terms of Distance. K. Lange's' account of aesthetic experience in the form of ' illusion as conscious self-deception ' appears to me a wrong formulation of the £Eu;ts expressed by Distance. Lange's 'illusion' theory seems to me, among other thing8^ to be based upon a false opposition between Art and reality (nature) as the subject-matter of the former, whereas Distance does not imply any comparison between them in the act of experiencing and removes altogether the centre of gravity of the formula firom the opposition.]

4. In this way Distance represents in aesthetic appreciation as well as in artistic production a quality inherent in the impersonal, yet so intensely personal, relation which the human being entertains with Art, either as mere beholder or as producing artist.

It is Distance which makes the aesthetic object ' an end in itself.' It is that which raises Art beyond the narrow sphere of individual interest and imparts to it that ' postulating ' character which the ideal- istic philosophy of the 19th century regarded as a metaphysical necessity. It renders questions of origin, of influences, or of purposes almost as meaningless as those of marketable value, of pleasure, even of moral importance, since it lifts the work of Art out of the realm of practical systems and ends.

^ Th. liipps, Aetthetikf Hamburg and Leipzig, 1903, i.; * Aesthetisohe Einfiihlang/ ZUch. f&r Ptyehol. u, PhytioU der Sinnetorg, zxii. 415 ff.

' J. VoUcelt, Syitem der Aetthetik, 1905, i. 217 ff. and 4S8 ff.

' K. Lange, Det We$en der Kutut, 1901, 2 toIs.

^ J. Segal, 'Die bewosste Selbsttansohong als Kern des aeathetisohen GteniesaenB Areh. /. d. gea. Psychol, ti. 254 ff.

118 Psychical Distance

In particular, it is Distance, which supplies one of the special criteria of aesthetic values as distinct from practical (utilitarian), scientific, or social (ethical) values. All these are concrete values^ either directly personal as utilitarian, or indirectly remotely personal, as moral valuea To speak, therefore, of the ' pleasure value ' of Art^ and to introduce hedonism into aesthetic speculation, is even more irrelevant than to speak of moral hedonism in Ethics. Aesthetic hedonism is a compromise. It is the attempt to reconcile for public use utilitarian ends with aesthetic values. Hedonism, as a practical, personal appeal has no place in the distanced appeal of Art. Moral hedonism is even more to the point than aesthetic hedonism, since ethical values, quA social values, lie on the line of prolongation of utili- tarian ends, sublimating indeed the directly personal object into the realm of socially or universally valuable ends, often demanding the sacrifice of individual happiness, but losing neither its practical nor even its remotely personai character.

In so far, Distance becomes one of the distinguishing features of the ' aesthetic consciousness,' of that special mentality or outlook upon experience and life, which, as I said at the outset, leads in its most pregnant and most fully developed form, both appreciatively and productively, to Art.

{Manuscript received March 17, 1912.)