EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii 



necessary division of consciousness between reality and 

 '^ make-believe ^' in the aesthetic, in that Lange thinks 

 there must be a continual oscillation between the two poles 

 of the divided consciousness, while Groos thinks there 

 is rather a settling down in the state of illusion, as in 

 an artist's preoccupation with his creations, a novelist 

 with his characters, and a child with her doll. In 

 art the other great motive of play, " experimenting,'' is 

 also prominent, and is even more fundamental from a 

 genetic point of view. 



Here again the question left in my mind is this: 

 whether the '^ make-believe " motive is really the same as 

 the art motive. Do we not distinguish between the 

 drama (to take the case most favourable to the theory) as 

 amusement and the drama as art? And does the drama- 

 tist who is really an artist write to bring on a conscious- 

 ness of self-illusion in the spectator by presenting to him 

 a " make-believe " scene ? Does he not rather aim to pro- 

 duce an " inner imitation " in him which shall arouse 

 the emotional and volitional attitudes of full reality? 

 There does seem to be, in a work of fine art, a strenuous 

 outreach not only toward the imitation of truth, but 

 toward the actual conviction of truth. It may be that 

 we should distinguish with Aristotle between truth 

 which comes to us didactically and truth which comes 

 artistically, and find in the method of the latter, and in 

 that alone, the source of aesthetic impression; but even 

 then we should not have to feel the aesthetic creation 

 to be " make-believe." In any case the theory of Pro- 

 fessor Groos, which has its roots in the views of Lange 

 and Von Hartmann, is extremely interesting and 

 valuable, especially as contrasted with the recent psy- 

 chological theory of Mr. H. E. Marshall. As to Pro- 

 fessor Groos' theory, musical art would present diffi- 



