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Book I. CH. II. PART III.

$ 18. Emotions arising from the form.

and the combination of this kind of harmony with melody, is that in which these reflective emotions arise.

8. Music is not an imitative art. Its sounds imitate nothing; for, if you say that they imitate the sounds of the human voice, this is not imitation but repetition of sound; singing is itself music. Speech may in some cases be imitative, as for instance in onomatopoeic names; but usually it is not imitative but simply designative, the sound being, at present at least, whatever it may have been in the origin of language, arbitrarily attached to the representation of the thing. Music then is not imitative. Painting, on the other hand, really imitates objects which differ from it in the nature of the space they occupy; a surface is made to resemble a solid; and the correctness of the imitation is often a great part of the æsthetic pleasure. In painting you have a language with a meaning, the meaning lying in the representations of the object imitated, or called up by means of the picture. A piece of music on the contrary is the thing itself, contains its own meaning; the succession and combination of its notes are picture and thing pictured in one; there are no images behind them; they are the framework of the emotion and its only framework. Bearing this fundamental difference in mind, let us turn to the examination of objects of sight. Since they include representation by requiring time to perceive them in all their parts, we shall find in them the two modes statical and dynamical, just as in the case of music. But in objects of sight it is the statical element which is first offered to us; not the dynamical, as in hearing, where we have to isolate a

portion of the movement from the rest, as an air, a
piece of eight bars, a verse, a foot, in order to treat
it statically at all. In objects of sight we see the
representations at rest; in natural objects they move
of themselves, in works of art the movement is im-
plied and inferred; this is what is technically called
the "motive" of the picture or statue, namely, the
point or incident in it which determines the action.
The past and the future of the visible object is al-
ways present to the thought of the spectator. In
works of architecture this element is wanting; they
have no movement except such as we import into
them by imagining arches as springing, spires as
shooting upward, and so forth. Their life is to stand
at rest, in contrast with the living beings which sur-
round them; and this kind of permanency is shared
with them by other works of art. It may be re-
marked too that architecture is not an imitative art,
differing therein from painting and resembling music.
Sculpture must be regarded as imitative, though in
a far less degree than painting. It has a beauty of
its
own, which allies it to architecture and allows us
to take pleasure in statues treated stiffly and non-
realistically, either as accompaniments to architec-
ture or as standing alone. Its being actually in
three dimensions, a solid capable of standing alone,
makes a statue truly less imitative instead of more,
as we might at first expect from its being thus more
similar to the objects which it imitates. It acquires
an independence, some of the independence of music
and architecture, and disdains to serve merely as a
language with a meaning behind it. Hence the re-
pugnance excited by statues which are coloured so
as to imitate the figures of real life. The slightest

BOOK I. CH. II. PART III.

§ 18. Emotions arising from the form.

BOOK I.
CH. II.

PART III.

$18. Emotions arising from the form.

$ 19. Emotions

arising from comparison.

tinge of colour, purposely introduced, upon a statue makes it to some extent produce the effect of a beautiful toy; and the more so, the more completely it is coloured.

9. The movements of living beings are what answer to melody in music. These combine pleasure of enjoyment with pleasure of admiration, the former arising from ease and uninterrupted facility or power overcoming obstacles with little effort, the latter from proportion and beauty of shape preserved in the successive forms assumed in the movement. Dances are one of the chief modes in which these two pleasures are combined. But in pictures and statues which do not move it is a chief point of excellence that the movements antecedent and subsequent which are implied, and between which the moment given in the picture or statue stands, should be such as to be easy and natural consequences of that moment. In this respect, the aesthetic emotion of beauty in painting and sculpture passes over into one which is an imagination as well as a direct emotion. I conclude these remarks by repeating, that the aesthetic emotions, whether arising in sights or sounds, are carried up into reflection and combined with the reflective emotions, which constitute their poetry. They begin in the sensations of sight and hearing; then in direct representation they receive their emotional character as æsthetic emotions; and finally in combination with reflective emotions, such as love, revenge, pride, pity, and so on, they become the basis of poetry in all its kinds.

§ 19. 1. We now come to emotions which include a comparison between the objects in their framework. When one of these objects is comparatively

BOOK I.

CH. II. PART III.

$19. Emotions

comparison.

new to us, or if a presentation entirely new, and at the same time unlike what we have seen before, the two objects together are the framework of the emotion of Surprise. When this unlikeness continues, arising from so that both objects are familiar but unlike, there is Wonder. Astonishment is a great degree or intensity of surprise. When the new and unlike object. is of such a kind in some of its features as to excite grief or aversion, there is Dread or Terror. When it is such as to excite joy or fondness, it is the object of Mirth, or joyful surprise, and to this belongs the phenomenon of laughing for joy. The comparison of new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, is the basis of the character of all these objects, and of the emotions which they are said to excite. When the two objects are familiar and old but incongruous in juxtaposition, being at the same time not such as to excite dread, there arises the simply laughable, the comic, or absurd. But of this incongruity there are two kinds; either the incongruity lies in the framework, the formal relations of the two objects which are brought forcibly together by some one or more points of relation in which they are congruous or by extraneous causes, or it lies in their emotional element, the one being an object of admiration, esteem, or fondness, the other of the reverse. In the former case, the contrast of thought or conception, there arises the sense of the witty; in the latter, the contrast of emotion, there arises the sense of the humorous. The interest of wit lies solely in the intellectual incongruity of the congruous, or congruity of the incongruous, that is, in a play of intellect. The interest of humour lies in the incongruity of the emotions, serious feelings with gay, important

BOOK I. CH. II. PART III.

$19. Emotions

comparison.

with trifling emotions, which are brought together under one intellectual conception or image. But wit and humour and their subdivisions must be rearising from served for treatment under the imaginative division of the direct emotions; for it is as actions, or when purposely invented or created, that their nature is best seen; when the desire for them prompts the imagination to pursue them. As passions or desires, wit and humour, the foundations of which have been now described, pass over into imaginative emotions. To return now to surprise or wonder, their common

source.

2. Wonder is an emotion arising in contrast or dissimilarity of the familiar with the unfamiliar. This is an uneasy emotion; there arises then in it a desire to bring the two dissimilar objects into agreement; ease or the absence of effort in holding the two objects together in the mind is the motive, or thing desired, and is thus the foundation of the logical law of Parcimony, "frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora," a law for Conation. The desire to assimilate the dissimilar, to equate the unequal, to measure the disproportioned, is the desire or passion which arises in the emotion of wonder; an intellectual desire, as the emotion is intellectual, an emotion of comparison. For it is not the particular feeling or emotion pervading each of the dissimilar objects which is ground or object of wonder or of its desire, but merely the fact of their dissimilarity or contrast. Anything or everything may be the object of wonder and of the desire for removing it; the desire and the emotion are general, universal, in reference to all objects whatever. The desire therefore is intellectual and general, a desire for knowledge. Hence the

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