ESTHETIC EMOTION. 417 



the other elements ah-eady mentioned, and to think of them as lyiug 

 outside the field of art proper. But the artists who are of the broader 

 view readily admit the importance in painting of these extra-artistic 

 features. From the point of view of craft, of technical skill in paint- 

 ing, these matters of line, and color, and light and shade, and arrange- 

 ment, and method of applying paint, all are of great importance. But 

 only with the craftsman who is unduly interested in the question of 

 skill do these purely artistic matters seem of greater importance than 

 the factors of enjoyment already mentioned. 



If I have been right in this analysis of the pleasures gained from 

 pictures, we may describe the picture-gazing of the average person 

 somewhat as follows : He likes the color ; he likes to look because others 

 look; he likes to look because he enjoys seeing an old friend; because 

 he has the habit of looking; because he enjoys seeing the curious; be- 

 cause he enjoys the sympathy with his fellows which comes from enjoy- 

 ing the same objects with them; because he enjoys the story of the pic- 

 ture; because the picture renews for liim an incident in history; because 

 considered simply as a design the picture is to his thinking well made 

 and he finds agreeable the relation of its lines and its colors and their 

 arrangement, their harmonies and their contrasts; and because, having 

 skill as a painter, or knowing of that skill, he is interested in the man- 

 ner in which the artist in question laid on his paint. 



These remarks on some of the simpler elements of esthetic emotion 

 as shown in picture-gazing may seem commonplace, may seem too 

 obvious to be worth the saying. But the obvious and the commonplace 

 — these very often escape us. They are particularly ready to do so 

 when we speak of beauty, art and esthetics. In this field words are 

 very often merely counters, not real coin. All of us have our pleasur- 

 able emotions when we look upon beautiful things, else why do we call 

 them beautiful? And the very words in which we speak of things of 

 beauty seem themselves to have a power to move us ; and we ascribe to 

 them meanings when in fact they are often only meaningless echoes, 

 faint, but still able to stir our emotions. 



Beauty as a factor in the pleasures of picture-gazing, this I have not 

 named. Yet the whole discussion is concerning it. For, if a picture, 

 or any other object gives us the pleasure described it must possess the 

 subtle quality of beauty. That quality itself cannot be described. 

 \\Tien we see a beautiful thing we know it. What more can be said? 

 If experts, who are careful observers of the things which people say 

 they find beautiful, if experts in esthetics say the beauty of a certain 

 object is of the better kind, their statement is worthy of attention. It 

 is difficult to say of beauty and the critics more than this. 



VOL. Lxm. — 27. 



