Esthetic emotion is also distinguished from the prudential. It is disinterested. It holds itself aloof from all desires and calculations of gain. The beauties of the earth are not utilitarian conveniences. It may be objected that the abundance of blessing may itself be an element of beauty. This is not denied; it may be an element of the ideal. An example of it is in that beautiful description of the earth rejoicing under the rain in Psalm 65: 9-13. But while the poet was admiring the beauty, joyful with the rejoicing earth, if a farmer were calculating how much money the rain would put into his pocket, he must have been insensible to the beauty.

II. The emotion of beauty prompts to share it with others. When we see anything beautiful we are always impelled to point it out to others. Beauty is but half enjoyed when enjoyed alone. It seems to be an instinctive recognition of the universal and unchanging in beauty ; it is for all, not merely for one.

III. In observing the beautiful the mind is in the attitude of a Seer; it contemplates the expressiveness of things; and only when the mind is in this attitude can emotions of beauty arise. In the sphere of empirical and philosophical science the mind is occupied with observing, generalizing and classifying, with inventing and combining, with analyzing, synthesizing and inferring; its whole aim is to discover truth. The "Eureka!" of Archimedes was an investigator's shout rejoicing in discovery achieved.

In practical life the mind deals with the same subjects, but with an end beyond the discovery of truth. It is applying knowledge to the conduct of life. It is dealing with facts and truths as disclosing means to ends, as motives to action, as guides to duty, as disclosing a good to be attained and the means of attaining it, as related to God and his service.

But in æsthetic emotion the mind is no longer busied with investigation, speculative or practical. It simply opens to an object to receive what it has to express, as a flower opens itself to the sun to receive its light. It is in the attitude of a Seer. Hence the name œsthetic, that is, perceiving, seeing. Beautiful things have an ideal to show us. When we get acquainted with them and, as it were, get their confidence, they tell us their secret; they open their hearts to us. Thus in æsthetic perception we come into friendly relations with nature, and see the very heart of things. Science tears nature to pieces to find out how it is made; practical art seizes its forces and compels them into service. In æsthetics we commune with nature lovingly and confidentially as a friend; and it discloses the great thoughts and ideals of reason intrusted to its keeping; it reveals the thoughts of God and makes us know that "He is not far from every one of us."

When Kepler was studying the heavens his mind was occupied with his hypotheses, his calculations, his verifications, and there was no place for æsthetic emotion. Afterwards, as he looked on the planetary system moving in accordance with the laws which he had discovered, he saw the expressiveness of the system and exclaimed, "Oh, God, I read thy thoughts after thee."

When Napoleon was planning and executing a campaign, he was occupied with the practical combinations, and thought only of victory, not of beauty. But as we look back on it depicted in the stillness of the past, we admire the masterly combinations of genius and feel their beauty.

While an orator is speaking, his whole speech is an action convincing, persuading, inspiring, and both he and his hearers are occupied with argument and appeal, and have no time to think of beauty. But as we look on the picture given in history of Paul on Mars Hill, of Demosthenes speaking against Philip, of Webster in the Senate, or Lincoln at Gettysburg, we feel that it is sublime.

And this is the difference between eloquence and an actor's performance. The former is an action to convince, to persuade and inspire, pressing so urgently on the hearers' intellect, conscience and heart as to leave no room for æsthetic admiration. But the end and aim of an actor's performance is æsthetic. The same is the difference between a speech and a poem. When public speaking, as commonly in popular lectures, addresses itself to æsthetic ends, it becomes a play with one dramatis persona, and eloquence is impossible. The people demand the impossible, for they demand eloquence as an amusement.

IV. Esthetic emotions are frequently confounded with emotions not properly æsthetic.

1. The emotion of beauty is not mere wonder or surprise which arises on observing something new, unexpected or extraordinary, as a big squash or beet at an agricultural fair. The emotion of beauty is commonly called admiration. This, however, denotes æsthetic approval of the object and joy in it as expressing or indicating an ideal of perfection. It is true that the pleasure felt in seeing beauty is usually accompanied with wonder, because beauty is rare. But the wonder is no part of the emotion of beauty. In heaven all things will be beautiful, so that beautiful objects will cause no wonder or surprise. And yet the intensity and freshness of the delight in beauty will not be less.

2. Some miscalled emotions of beauty are merely agreeable sensations; as the feeling of velvet, simple colors, or the pleasant quality of a voice. It is not always easy to decide where the ideal or rational beauty begins. Prof. Müller, in a course of lectures at Berlin, explained the beauty of the curved line as merely an agreeable sensation resulting

from the fact that the muscles which move the eyeball are so situated that the eye can trace a curved line with less fatigue than a straight one. It admits also a rational explanation already given.

3. Esthetic emotion must be distinguished from the pleasure of mere excitement. In tragedy, comedy or novels, in theatrical and other exhibitions, there may be the enjoyment of beholding ideals. The plays of children are a mimicry of a life higher than their own. In their plays they are lifted out of the life of children into the life of men and women; by the "make-believes" which are the creations of a child's imagination they surround themselves with ideals of the pursuits and interests of mature life. Their pleasure in their plays is a sort of æsthetic enjoyment of the ideals of a life higher than their own. A drama is fitly called a play. A good theatrical performance, like the plays of children, lifts the spectators into a life higher than their own. The same is true of reading a good tragedy, or comedy, or novel. We are lifted out of our prosaic commonplace life into contact with heroism and beauty, with sweetness and grace; we see life in a higher intensity; we are admitted to the halls of nobility and the palaces of kings; we see men realizing the highest ideals in the lowest circumstances and under the greatest difficulties; we are compassed with the ideals of a life higher than our own. So far our emotions are largely aesthetic, and we are recreated, refreshed and healthily inspired and stimulated. But the danger in these cases is of substituting the pleasure of mere excitement for the aesthetic inspiration. Men enjoy being excited. They like to be played on as a musical instrument by some master mind who pulls out all the stops and brings out the feelings in their utmost capacity and variety. It is mental exhilaration after the monotony and labor of daily life. Hence men may come to seek excitement in the drama, the theatre and the novel. Their minds become drunk with them and at last the victims of a habit of mental intoxication. They seek and must have the excitement; and in the thirst for excitement they lose their interest both in the beauty of the ideals of genius and in the simplicity and reality of actual life. In coarse natures the desire of excitement can be satisfied only with the bloodand-thunder stories of the sensational paper and the dime novel; or with bull-fights as in Spain, or the gladiatorial conflicts with men and beasts in the Amphitheatre of ancient Rome.

V. The emotion awakened by sublimity is joy and admiration, like that awakened by beauty, but it is a joy and admiration penetrated and made solemn with awe. It takes on a tone of solemnity and awe in the presence of what is above us. Great genius has a tone usually

even of sadness.

It is sometimes said that terror belongs to emotions of sublimity.

On the contrary terror, being an emotion pertaining to personal interest, is entirely excluded from the aesthetic emotions. The painter Vernet in a storm at sea had himself lashed to the mast in order that he might contemplate the grandeur of the scene. If he had been frightened, the terror so far as it controlled him, would have excluded the emotion of sublimity.

VI. The emotions awakened by ugliness are those of the ludicrous, the ridiculous and the disgusting. An elephant "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait," is ludicrous, because he is clumsy, as if with all his strength he could not use his own limbs. Drollery is ludicrous as a man's acting beneath himself. A monkey is ludicrous probably from suggesting the human form; "Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis." A fall is ludicrous as a sudden departure from the normal attitude. A combination of incongruous objects is ludicrous, exemplified in a squib on George IV.,

"The breakfast table spread with tea and toast,
Death-warrants and the Morning Post."

The ridiculous means more than the ludicrous as implying disesteem and depreciation. We laugh with the person who is in a ludicrous position, we laugh at one who is ridiculous. We get beyond laughter in the emotion of disgust. The lower orders of living beings are disgusting as revealing a low organization, an almost death in life; so is a heap of rubbish, or a mass of corruption as revealing disorder and decay.

44. Esthetic Culture.

Even with high aesthetic culture the perception of beauty depends on the mood of the spirit. The world is always full of beauty but we do not always see it. A pebble does not commonly awaken æsthetic emotion. But as I gaze on it and think that it has been floated and washed and worn by Titanic forces through measureless geological epochs, I feel the emotion of the sublime. So in the striking of a clock may be heard the voices of eternity. In everything is a door that opens into the infinite. To the eye of the Seer that door opens, and his spirit is awed. In ordinary moods we do not see the grandeurs and glories which nature, rightly contemplated, is always revealing.

"As one who looks on glass,

On it may rest his eye;

Or let his vision through it pass

And then the heavens espy."

But in any mood the degree of this power of seeing the beautiful and

sublime depends on culture. The aesthetic mind sees a soul looking out through all nature's forms.

"He sees them feel or links them with some feeling."

But nature little finds its way into the heart of the uncultured man. The need of culture for æsthetic perception is analogous to the similar need of it for the knowledge of the True and the Right already considered, and needs no further explanation.

Esthetic culture is promoted by intellectual culture in the knowledge of the truth and ethical culture in the knowledge of the Right. For the knowledge of the Perfect presupposes the knowledge of the True and of the Right. All spiritual culture is helpful to æsthetic culture. Direct esthetic culture is also needed. This is best effected by the study of the great works of genius. But æsthetic culture does not stop in itself; it reacts in prompting all spiritual culture. In studying the works of art we are made partakers of " the vision and faculty divine of genius;" for we have revealed to us what seers in the light of genius have seen in nature and in men. In reading a poem or in examining any work of art we are examining nature and life as genius has seen and revealed their "open secret." We are waked to the consciousness of the wonderful and sublime realities in them. We are lifted from the level to which conventionalism has smoothed us. We see the ideals which make life noble, nature beautiful and the spirit of a man of more worth than a world.

Of this kind of influence we have an historically renowned example in the statue of Zeus by Phidias. It was itself suggested, it is said, by Homer's famous lines:

"Then beneath his raven eyebrows

Zeus Kronion gave the nod,

And the locks ambrosial started
From the temples of the God;

Huge Olympus reeled beneath him,

Root and summit, rock and sod."

Its powerful effect on Greeks and Romans who saw it is described by Winckelmann in his "History of Art." Goethe says of it in his "Winckelmann:"

"If a work of art is once produced, and does it stand in enduring reality before the world, then it produces an enduring effect the highest possible. For inasmuch as it develops itself spiritually out of the collective powers, it resumes into itself everything noble, or worthy of reverence and love, and raises man above himself by embodying a soul in a human form; expands the sphere of his life and acts and divinizes