THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF AESTHETICS 441 



pletely, so extraordinarily various and manifold are the factors 

 which enter here. What these are and how they are bound together 

 is the question which is for the moment occupying the scholars with 

 a leaning toward psychology. 



The aesthetic impression is an emotion. According to the well- 

 known sensualistic theory of the emotions, it must therefore, in so 

 far as it is more than mere perception or idea, be composed of organic 

 sensations. G. Sergi and Karl Lange see, in fact, the peculiar mark 

 of the aesthetic experience in the general sensations which appear 

 with changes in the circulation, breathing, etc. Unprejudiced ob- 

 servation must satisfy every one that much in all this is true. On the 

 other hand, it is to be recalled that we do not reckon the organic 

 sensations to the objective qualities of aesthetic things, and that we 

 cannot explain in this way every artistic enjoyment. In regard to 

 the sensations of taste, smell, and touch, it is generally granted that 

 they play a certain role, even if but as reproduced ideas and only 

 corresponding to natural beauty. Among the most important are 

 the attitudes and imitative movements, finely investigated by Karl 

 Groos. To this must be added the sensuous pleasantness of visual 

 and auditory perceptions. Yet attempts to construct the aesthetic 

 enjoyment in its entirety out of such pleasure-factors have so far 

 failed. The undertaking is already wrecked by the fact that elements 

 displeasing to sense are demonstrably present, not only as negligible 

 admixtures, but also as necessary factors. The relations of similarity 

 between the contents of a sense-field, and the spatial and temporal 

 connections between them, are in any case incomparably more 

 important; we devote to them, therefore, a closer consideration. 

 Finally, alongside all these ideas and the emotions immediately 

 attaching to them, there must be arrayed the great multitude of as- 

 sociated ideas and connecting judgments. While scientific interest 

 in the associations is now greatly diminished, explanations of the 

 part played by the element of really active thought are many. A 

 universally satisfactory theory is still to appear, for the reason, 

 above all, that here the higher principles referred to in the second 

 section enter into the problems. 



Elementary aesthetics, therefore, willingly turns aside from the 

 shore of the very complex emotions, of association, Einfuhlung and 

 illusion in aesthetic experience, in order to become independent of 

 general philosophical fundamental conceptions. Its own field lies 

 in the general province of the perception-feelings determined im- 

 mediately by the object: more exactly, of the feelings which are 

 induced partly by the relations of similarity, partly by the outer 

 connections of the content, partly by the linking of inner and outer 

 reference. The qualitative relation of tones and colors arouses the 

 so-called feelings of harmony; the arrangement in space and time 



