PLEASURE IN PICTURES 165 



should seem to be supporting the central one, we should begin to be 

 interested. As the complexity increases the eye finds exercise; as the 

 simplicity increases the eye finds ease: it is the comparative simplicity 

 of the exercise that is our experience of harmony. When our percep- 

 tion of this simplicity is so effortless as to give us a sense of unused 

 capacity we feel an influx of life which we call an esthetic experience; 

 its cause we call harmony. 



We may consider the work of art as a fraction in which the denomi- 

 nator is the number and variety of the elements presented to us, and 

 the numerator is the simplicity of their relationship; the effectiveness 

 varies as the value of the fraction. Of course each of the elements of 

 the harmony must in its turn be considered as a fraction, and so on. 



When in place of an influx or life we have from harmony the pleas- 

 urable languor of an artificial nervous fatigue, the design will certainly 

 at some time be called decadent. I once went in to the Alhambra in 

 company with a keen-minded physician. For a moment he looked about 

 the sensuously lovely court, and then said, " Dope ; that is the explana- 

 tion of all this. The delight of those old sultans was in the nervous 

 fatigue caused by this infinite, inextricable, beautiful detail. We have 

 the same effect in certain modern music. 



" But after all this talk about harmony," says some student of 

 theory, " the effectiveness of this picture by Michael Angelo is caused 

 as much by rhythm." Bhythm is one form of harmony. We find it 

 simplest in a swinging walk or easy run, in which we feel that the left 

 foot treads stronger than the right. A child makes the form clearer 

 by elaboration when he puts in a little shuffling hop after each step, and 

 calls the movement " skipping." Ehythm is no more nor less than 

 harmony between groups of impulses. The principle is the same in 

 the simplest drum-beat and the most elaborate rhythms of Richard 

 Straus, Botticelli, Isadora Duncan, or Shakespeare; the feeling of it 

 communicated to you through your ear, your eye, physical action, or 

 pure thought. The excitement of movement is changed to the stimula- 

 tion of rhythm by the principle of harmony. 



As with rhythm, so with all harmony — it may be expressed in lines, 

 colors, sounds, ideas. Different systems of harmony in these and other 

 realms, are caused by the thought-habits of their authors; and so with 

 the different theories which explain conflicting systems. We have 

 most of us had this difference between senses of order brought home to 

 us. Our books and papers are arranged according to their contents; 

 the maid comes in to clean ; when we return we find everything nicely 

 arranged according to size and color. There is some such difference 

 between the classical painter and the impressionist ; both are right and 

 neither can hope to enjoy the harmony of the other. 



But the design in "The Creation of the Sun and Moon" is not 



