THEORT OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN 2^ 



to be beautiful ; but this overlooks the fundamental fact that the 

 standards for each observer come from his own experience of the 

 world, depend on the constitution of his own mind, and are therefore 

 inevitably different for each observer. 



When a man has perceived objects of the same class many times. Types 

 he discovers (not necessarily consciously) that there are certain char- 

 acteristics always pertaining to examples of this particular class of 

 object, while other characteristics are only occasionally and, as it were, 

 accidentally present. Thus he forms in his mind a type * of this 

 particular object, that is, a memory of the average, a sort of composite 

 photograph, which he uses thereafter in perceiving examples of the 

 class. But the characteristics of this type are not a mathematical 

 average of the observed essential characteristics of all examples ; they 

 are modified, exaggerated, in the direction in which the attention and 

 interest of the observer lies ; commonly, therefore, they are modified 

 in the direction of their ability to give pleasure. 



A type the characteristics of which have been modified as far as is Ideals 

 possible for the observer in the direction of perfect unity, consequently 

 in the direction of pleasure, is called an ideal.* This ideal may be en- 

 tirely the product of the experience of the individual observer, but each 

 man observes what are the ideals of his fellow-men, and it is a human 

 characteristic for each individual to be deeply influenced by these ideals, 

 and to modify his own ideals toward accordance with them. Thus 

 there arise class or social ideals, but it is plain that there is nothing uni- 

 versal or ultimate about them ; they are merely composites of individ- 

 ual ideals, which in turn are merely modified composites of individual ex- 

 periences. There can therefore be in the ideal no characteristic which 

 has not been perceived in some degree in the experience of the observer. 



This ideal or idealized type, we may observe, is the result of per- 

 ceptive synthesis according to some definite scheme ; in a sense, indeed, 

 we might say that the ideal itself is another name for the best scheme 

 of organization of the qualities of the object and their mental effect 

 which the observer knows. The ideals, therefore, in each man's mind, 

 being the results of his own modes of synthesis, differ from man to 

 man as men's modes of synthesis differ. 



* Santayana, Sense of Beauty. 



