THE RELATIONS OF ESTHETICS 429 



In my view we may well state, as a valid critical principle, that, 

 other things being equal, in any art the artist does best who presents 

 in his chosen medium a source of beauty which cannot be as well 

 presented by any other art. That this principle is appreciated and 

 widely accepted (although implicitly rather than explicitly) is 

 indicated by the unrationalized objection of the cultivated critic in 

 our day to colored sculpture or to modeled painting, and in a more 

 special direction to the use of body-color in aquarelle work. The 

 objection in all cases is apparently to the fact that the artist fails to 

 bring into prominence that type of beauty which his medium can 

 present as no other medium can. 



Personally I have no objection to raise to a recombination of the 

 arts of sight, provided a fuller sense of beauty can thereby be 

 reached. But it is clear that this recombination becomes more and 

 more difficult as the ages of development pass; and I believe the 

 principle of critical judgment above enunciated is valid, based as 

 it is upon the inner sense of cultivated men. 



Better than attempts to recombine the already differentiated 

 arts of sight are attempts to use them in conjunction, so that our 

 shiftings of attention from one type of beauty to another may carry 

 with them more permanent and fuller aesthetic effects ; and such 

 attempts we see common to-day in the conjunction of architecture 

 and of sculpture and of painting, in our private and public galleries, 

 in which are collected together works of the arts of sight. 



Now if we turn to the consideration of the arts of hearing, we find 

 a correspondence which leads to certain suggestions of no little 

 importance to the critical analyst in our day. 



The arts of hearing have become differentiated on lines which 

 enable us to group them broadly as rhetoric, poetry and literature, 

 and music. Each has become important in itself, and has gradually 

 separated itself from the others; and this just so far as it has 

 shown that it can arouse in men, in a special and peculiar manner, 

 the sense of beauty. 



It is true, as with the arts of sight, that the special arts of hearing 

 still hold well together. 



But in relatively very modern times music, having discovered a 

 written language of its own, has differentiated very distinctly from 

 the other arts of hearing. Men have discovered that pure music 

 can arouse in a special manner the sense of beauty, and can bring to 

 us a form of esthetic delight which no other art can as well give. 



Poetry has long been written which is not to be sung; and it has 

 gained much in freedom of development in that fact. 



Music in our modern times is composed by the greatest masters 

 for its own intrinsic worth, and not as of old as a mere accompani- 



