1 58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



led forward by delight in mental facility, and the primary pleasure in 

 any clear narrative is the sense of unusual ease in realizing and cor- 

 relating objects, figures, persons and their experiences. 



In proportion as a picture surpasses the usual in the clarity with 

 which it presents its contents — things, thoughts and their relations — do 

 we react to it, feel its force in our own enhanced physical and mental 

 vision. Before a great work our powers seem so much more than ade- 

 quate that limitation vanishes, and we have a glimpse of the infinite. 



IT. Constructive Emotions 



The largest part of our pleasure in pictures is to see clearly and 

 without effort, but still it makes a difference what we see. A painter, 

 preoccupied with his craft, may care little about the subject, and a critic 

 not infrequently assumes the artisan's viewpoint ; but the people have 

 decided wishes. They require pleasantness, and their preference is 

 the result not of stupidity but of instinct. To them an unpleasant sub- 

 ject forcefully portrayed is but the more revolting; their aversion is 

 reflex, and based upon a principle they do not need to understand in 

 order to feel. It is as true in art as it is in nature, that the normally 

 pleasant is what is constructive of life, and the unpleasant is the 

 destructive. Nature's encouragements and warnings which have pre- 

 vented the animal kingdom from being wiped off the earth ages ago 

 and which have developed man, have been at work also in art among 

 all peoples at all times, producing similar results in absolutely uncon- 

 nected schools. 



Individual tastes may be warped or even perverted by prejudice of 

 education or other accident of time or place, but underneath is the 

 broad principle that men like what they feel is life-giving. The more 

 life we can get at the least expenditure of effort, the better we like it; 

 decadents and degenerates are in this respect only abnormally near- 

 sighted, looking constantly for bargains in experience, though it 

 shortly kill them. Mere suffering, for example, is an art subject for a 

 decadent; the intensest experience may be had for little effort, but is 

 inevitably followed by a loss of vitality, or by a hardening of the 

 sensibilities, which means enfeebled capacity for life. On the other 

 hand, suffering as a necessary condition of heroism may produce an 

 experience of genuine life. It is less popular than the obviously 

 pleasant only because it requires greater art to make the heroism easily 

 distinguishable as superior to the suffering and because it requires 

 greater intellectual vision to see it. In such art the principle is more 

 subtly used, but it is not ignored. 



We may see this most plainly in dramatic paintings. This " Pieta" 

 " left unfinished by Titian was reverently completed by Palma," as 

 Palma himself has inscribed it. It may stand as the type of the beauti- 



