i8o SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



since that idea is more or less common to the human race, it helps 

 explain the superior force of the Greek play. But Freud's concept 

 is an hypothesis, based on clinical data and subject to modification 

 in the light of subsequent experimentation; and Sophocles' 

 drama is a finished work of art, coming from a world of myth, 

 poetry, and religious ceremonial. Freud's analysis adds to the 

 'truth' of the play (in a roundabout sense he may be said to have 

 'verified' it), but, of course, he is not concerned with the aesthetic 

 elements which make the play effective dramatically.^ 



Since the universals of art differ from those of science in both 

 these respects (the double abstraction and the more indirect cul- 

 tural and aesthetic influences involved in the former) how may 

 the two be expected to meet? Surely this happens, if at all, in the 

 world of experience which is common to both, and to which the 

 artist and scientist are constantly returning for their materials — 

 ultimately, because they are both men. As Professor Guerard 

 writes in his most recent discussion of Taine: 'The Zeitgeist, the 

 spirit of the age, is no abstraction, but a confused and potent 

 reality.' 9 Taine's emphasis on psychology and the Master Faculty, 

 considered as the product of Race, Environment, and Time, 

 though overly abstract and rigid, is a basically sound recognition 

 of this centrality of experience. ^ ^ 



Universals of Content and Form 



A third major difference between type analysis in science and 

 in the arts is that, in the latter, it is customary to distinguish 

 between content and form,ii and universals in the arts may be 

 classified on that basis. Universals oi^ content include treatments of 

 the same natural objects, i.e. the species 'horse'; but these may range 

 in quality from a wild Rubens horse, as portrayed in the 'Castor 

 and Pollux' painting; through the dignified, stylized statues of 

 horses in St. Mark's, Venice; to the agonized, distorted horse in 

 Picasso's 'Guernica' mural. In literature, we may compare treat- 

 ments by various poets of the same theme, such as a Greek myth, 

 or the Fall of Man. Universals of form include such familiar con- 

 ventions as the sonnet in poetry and the sonata in music; in the 

 pictorial arts, such universals are usually referred to as styles, for 

 example, the 'baroque'. ^^ 



However, since it is generally difficult or undesirable in the arts 

 to separate form from content, a number of concepts have arisen 

 which may be used to signify universals of both form and content, 



