Mat 31, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



523 



hope for their return. Materialism is 

 strong, but idealism, stronger still, is the 

 most powerful force in the world to-day. 

 We can not doubt the outcome of the 

 stniggle, with our tremendous resources 

 added to those of the nations with whom we 

 are associated, and with the consciousness 

 of high moral purpose to animate our 

 armies. 



Not only is idealism a force to be reck- 

 oned with now but from it we draw our 

 faith in the future. "When the nations come 

 around the conference table to adjust terms 

 of peace, the promise of the future will rest 

 in the degree to which idealism is able to 

 sway the council. Should materialism, 

 perchance, assert itself, only a truce is pos- 

 sible. The evolution of justice as between 

 man and man can be slowed and even 

 stayed for a time, but can not be long ar- 

 rested. 



If then so much depends upon this force, 

 if in it rests our faith in the present and 

 our hope in the future, we should do well 

 to investigate fully its nature and to deter- 

 mine as precisely as possible the factors 

 that contribute to its development. Such a 

 pursuit, however, does not lie within the 

 limits of this discussion ; it is appropriate 

 only to raise the question whether a love 

 for the beautiful and the cultivation of it — 

 that is, esthetics and esthetic training — are 

 not among such factors. 



Idealism in last anah'sis rests upon a 

 keen perception of truth, right and justice, 

 and this involves that which is esthetic as 

 well as that which is ethical. A recent 

 writer on esthetics- says that 

 esthetic and moral judgments are to be classed to- 

 gether in contrast to judgments intellectual. . . . 

 Esthetic judgments are mainly positive, that is, 

 perceptions of good, moral judgments are mainly 

 and fundamentally negative, or perceptions of evil. 

 . . . Esthetics deals with values which are imme- 



^ Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty" (1910), 

 pp. 23et seq. 



diate, moral values are always remote. . . . Not 

 only are the various satisfactions which morals are 

 meant to secure esthetic in the last analysis, but 

 when the conscience is formed and right principles 

 acquire an immediate authority, our attitude to 

 these principles becomes esthetic also. Honor, 

 truthfulness and cleanliness are obvious examples. 



Esthetic perception should not be con- 

 fused with artistic production, although 

 estlietic desire is back of and tinges all art. 

 Thus interpreted art is subjective, esthetics 

 objective. The study of animal life has been 

 a source of inspiration to artists of all 

 time and apparently the earliest begin- 

 nings of decorative art consisted in the 

 crude drawings of men and animals traced 

 by cave men on the walls of the caverns 

 which sheltered them. Many conventional 

 designs when traced back through the suc- 

 cessive steps which mark their evolution 

 lead to representation of animals which be- 

 cause of some peculiarity of form excited 

 the imaginations of aboriginal man. But 

 we are not concerned directly with the 

 value of animal study or the services of 

 such study to art, great as they have been. 

 It is the appeal which the study of animal 

 forms makes to our sense of the beautiful 

 that interests us here. 



In order to appreciate beauty, estheti- 

 cians tell us, we must put ourselves in the 

 place of that which excites the sensation, in 

 a certain sense project ourselves into it. 

 And as we do so "our motor activities re- 

 hearse the tensions, pressures, thrusts, re- 

 sistances, efforts, the volition, in fact the 

 life, with its accompanying emotions, which 

 we project into the form and attribute to 

 it "^ Thus the sensation of beauty is a 

 motor as well as a sensory phenomenon. If 

 this sensation is one of pleasure we ascribe 

 to the object the possession of beauty, if the 

 opposite, of ugliness. But all sensations of 



3 Lee and Anstruther-Thompson, ' ' Beauty and 

 Ugliness" (1912), p. 28. 



