THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF AESTHETICS 439 



however, like the Einfiihlung-iheory, take an independent place. 

 For the former, therefore, a mere indication will suffice. The prin- 

 ciple of "semblance" or illusion, for instance, takes very easily a 

 subjectivistic turn. The question then runs: Wherein consists the 

 peculiarity of the conscious processes which are set up by the 

 semblance? The answer as given by Meinong and Witasek starts 

 from the fact that the totality of psychical processes falls into two 

 divisions. Every process in one division has its counterpart in the 

 other. To perception corresponds imagination, to judgment assump- 

 tion, to real emotion ideal emotion, to earnest desire fancied desire. 

 The aesthetic emotions attached to assumptions, the semblance-emo- 

 tions, that is, are held to be scarcely distinguished, so far as feeling 

 goes, from other emotions, at most, perhaps, by less intensity. The 

 chief difference lies rather in the premise or basis of emotion; and 

 this is but a mere assumption or fiction. 



A critical treatment of the foregoing cannot be given here; nor 

 of that view which explains the psychical condition in receiving an 

 aesthetic impression as a conscious self-deception, a continued and 

 intentional confusion of reality and semblance. The aesthetic pleas- 

 ure, according to this, is a free and conscious hovering between 

 reality and unreality; or, otherwise expressed, the never successful 

 seeking for fusion of original and copy. The enjoyment of a good 

 graphic representation of a globe would then depend on the specta- 

 tor's now thinking he sees a real globe, now being sure he views a flat 

 drawing. 



While this theory has found but small acceptance, comparatively 

 many modern ajstheticians admit the doctrine of Einfilhlung. Its 

 leading exponent, Theodor Lipps, sees the decisive characteristic 

 of aesthetic enjoyment in the fusion of an alien experience with one's 

 own: as soon as something objectively given furnishes us the pos- 

 sibility of freely living ourselves into it, we feel aesthetic pleasure. 

 In the example of the Doric column, rearing itself and gathering 

 itself up to our view, Lipps has sought to show how given space- 

 forms are interpreted first dynamically, then anthropomorphically. 

 We read into the geometrical figure not only the expression of energy, 

 but also free purposiveness. In so far as we look at it in the light of 

 our own activity, and sympathize with it accordingly, in so far do 

 we feel it as beautiful. 



Could we enter upon a critical discussion at this point, it would 

 appear that the Einfiihlung-iheory, like its fellows, is open to well- 

 founded objections. The belief in an all-explaining formula is a 

 delusion. In truth, every one of the enumerated principles is rela- 

 tively justified. And as they all have points of similarity with one 

 another, it is not hard for the past-master of terminology and the 

 technique of concepts to epitomize the common element in a single 



