We speak of a comparison of two impressions when the ideas which they arouse in consciousness call up the verbal associate 'alike' or 'different.' Discrimination is used, in strictness, to express the process which termi- nates with the verbal association ' different,' but its mean- ing has been extended to include judgments of likeness as well; so that it is used synonymously with comparison. We have in this process of comparison or discrimination, then, a case of verbal association. Sometimes the associa- tion is simultaneous; the word ' comes up,' and com- parison is at an end. Sometimes the association is succes- sive, the impression being judged part by part, and the word coming only after a series of judgments has been passed. Under normal circumstances, every comparison which leads to the judgment 'like' is accompanied by the recognitive mood. A comparison which leads to the judgment ' different ' has no specific mood attaching to it.
The process of comparison, as thus depicted in outhne, is seen to be of a very simple kind. Its place in mental development, 302 Self -Consciousness and Intellection however, is a high one: for the reason that it presupposes the formation of the concepts of Hkeness and difference. Verbal association and judgment are, in themselves, comparatively simple processes; but when the word associated or predicated is a fully formed concept, we realise that the simplicity of form is decep- tive, that much mental elaboration lies behind.
We may compare two peripherally aroused ideas, two central ideas, or a peripheral with a central idea. In the first case, we turn quickly from idea to idea, having in mind at any given moment the actual presentation of the one and a direct reproduc- tive image of the other. In the second, we have in mind, as a rule, a verbally supplemented reproduction of each of the com- pared ideas, and turn the attention quickly from the one to the other as before. In the third, we have a presentation on the one side, and some memory symbol (word, part-reproduction, etc.) on the other. It seems, from laboratory experience, that we never attempt to compare a presented idea with a complete reproductive picture of another; distrust of the reproduction appears to have become ' instinctive ' with us.
It might be thought that as the mood of ' at home ' attaches to the judgment of likeness, a mood of strangeness would attach to the judgment of difference. But we must be careful not to con- fuse * difference ' with ' lack of familiarity.' If an event is differ- ent from what we expected it to be, we do have a mood of apprehension or disappointment, a mood which in its weakest form could best be described as that of ' strangeness.' But many differences are natural, matters of course; these leave us indiffer- ent. And others are desired and looked for, so that their dis- covery puts us into a pleasurable mood, that of wish fulfilled. The finding of a likeness is always, intrinsically, reassuring, and therefore pleasant {cf. what was said of recognition, § 70). On occasion, of course, it may be unpleasant. If we are comparing two molluscs, in the hope that one of them represents a hitherto unknown species, and both prove to belong to the same, the recognitive mood may be overcome by the emotion of disgust or the sentiment of unsuccessful thought (§ 90).
§ 85. Co7nparisoii or Discrimination, and Abstraction 303 Abstraction is the name given to that movement of the attention over a complex of ideas, whereby the complex is dissociated, and certain parts of it are rejoined in a judgment or constructive imagination. We are said to ' abstract from ' those portions of the complex which do not arrest the attention, while, on the other hand, the parts lifted out of the whole by the attention are termed * abstractions.'
Thus an abstract idea is an idea in which we abstract from the unessential features of the aggregate idea from which it is derived. It is itself an abstraction, because it is only a part of the aggre- gate idea. The mechanism of the process has been described above (§ TyZ~).
CHAPTER XIII Sentiment § 86. The Nature of Sentiment. — When we were ana- lysing emotion, we found that its core or centre is made up of a strong feeling, by which the current train of ideas is interrupted. The organism has to face a situation. It does this by way of passive attention; the situation over- whelms it, takes undisputed possession of consciousness. At the same time the body falls into some characteristic attitude; a characteristic group of organic sensations is aroused. And the central feeling is reinforced by a num- ber of associated ideas.
If in our description of this total process we write 'strongly affective judgment' for 'strong feeling,' we have the essentials of the sentiment. A situation has to be faced. It is in this case too complex to be faced by way of passive attention; the active attention must play upon it, and a judgment be passed. A 'situation,' as we have seen (§ 59), is a serious matter: the judgment will be strongly pleasant or unpleasant. In either case, it is reinforced by other judgments, concepts, or reproductive ideas; while at the same time expressive movements occur, and give rise to organic sensations.
The sentiment, then, stands to the emotion precisely as active stands to passive attention. It is the total affective § 86. The Nature of Sentiment 305 experience which arises when we face a situation by way of active attention, — by means of a judgment.
It is the situation — the materials disjoined by the attention for re-association — which determines the affective quahty of the sentiment, as it ordinarily {cf. § 59) does that of the emotion. Hence the sentiment may be either pleasurable or unpleasiirable. The process of judging is also accompanied by affection: it will be pleasant or unpleasant according as the effort involved in the attention is moderate or excessive (§§ 37, t^^). Judgment itself, the completed re-association, is intrinsically pleasant, just as is recognition or instinctive action (§ 70). But its pleasantness is, of course, often swamped by the unpleasantness of the situation.
Active attention frequently relapses into passive. Hence it is natural that the sentiment, which is developed out of emotion, and is characteristic of a higher stage of mental differentiation, should readily slip back into emotion. Suppose, e.g., that I sit down to read a story. At first, I have various aesthetic sentiments: I linger over the beauty of the style, or the harmony of the incidents. I have, too, various intellectual sentiments: I feel that the tale is true to life, that its scenes are self-consistent. But as I read, I grow absorbed, — I cease to be '■ critical,' i.e., to be actively attentive. The story takes possession of me, and the writer '■ moves ' me as he will. Sentiment has been entirely replaced by its simpler counterpart, emotion.
It must not be supposed that every affective experience which can be referred to a judgment is a sentiment. Many of our judg- ments are not judgments at all in the psychological sense; they are ready-made formulae, received from others, not won by any exercise of the active attention on our own part. We are so thoroughly accustomed to throw our mental experience into logical form, that we may think or speak of a situation as if we had judged it, when really it has seized us, taken possession of us, and been ' felt ' as a whole, in an emotion. ' Why are you so disgusted? ' we may be asked. ' I am disgusted because I have been cheated.' The answer is psychologically misleading. It is not the judgment * I have been cheated ' that forms the centre of the emotion of dis- 3o6 Sentiment gust; it is the feeling set up by the situation. The judgment ' I have been cheated ' is due to a reflection upon the source of the emotion; it is the most convenient way of conveying to the enquirer an idea of the reason for the emotion. Here, then, it is quite possible to refer the whole experience to a judgment; and yet the experience is not a sentiment.
There is no rule more essential, and no rule more difficult to follow, when one is introspectively examining a complex mental process, than this: Do not let a judgment about the facts take the place of the facts themselves. It is all too easy to glide into a series of familiar formulae, which give a rough notion of the ex- perience under investigation. The trained and impartial observer (§ lo) will be on his guard against the temptation, and will arrest himself when he finds that his description is running smoothly, in stereotyped expressions and customary phrases. Every fact re- quires its own form of words, if it is to be adequately described.
§ 87. The Forms of Sentiment. — There are four great classes of sentiments: the intellectual or logical, the ethi- cal or social, the aesthetic and the religious.
The intellectnal sentiments are the affective experiences M^hich grow up round the judgments 'This is true' and 'This is false, as a matter of knowledge.' The ethical sentiments attach to the judgments 'This is good or right ' and ' This is bad or wrong, as a matter of my be- haviour to my fellow-men or of theirs to me '; the (esthetic to the judgments 'This is beautiful' and 'This is ugly'; and the religions to the judgments 'This is ' and 'This is not sanctioned by divine command, or in accordance with the divine plan for the government of the universe.'
We cannot attempt here to trace the formation of the abstract ideas of 'truth,' 'goodness,' 'beauty,' etc.; we must take it for granted that they have been formed, after the fashion of the ideas of ' self ' and ' relation ' § 88. The Esthetic Sentiments 307 (§§ 81, 84). Taking the concepts for granted, we can see how natural it is that the intellectual, moral and re- ligious judgments should be strongly affective processes. It is of the utmost practical importance to know whether facts agree or do not agree with our opinions, whether reports are true or false, whether an action is good or bad, whether our friends will regard our behaviour, under certain circumstances, as right or wrong, whether a line of conduct is approved or disapproved by the supreme power of the world. The practical importance of the aesthetic judgment is not so obvious. Indeed, the aes- thetic sentiment, the power of the beautiful and the ugly to attract the attention, has always been something of a puzzle to psychologists; and it cannot be said that the puzzle has even yet been satisfactorily solved.
§ 88. The iEsthetic Sentiments. — Modern psychology has devoted more attention to the aesthetic sentiments than to the other three groups. This is partly due, no doubt, to the difficulty which they present to psychological analysis; the intellectual, ethical and religious sentiments are more matters of course. But it is also due, in part, to the fact that the aesthetic sentiments can be examined under experimental conditions and with comparatively simple materials.
It is customary to distinguish five aesthetic sentiments: those of beauty, ugliness, the sublime, the comic and the tragic. The two first are of a purely aesthetic character; the third may be either mixed or pure; the two last are never wholly aesthetic in nature.
I. Under the heading of 'beauty' and 'ugliness' there are five principal forms of the aesthetic judgment: the judg- ment of visual form (architecture, and line in the plastic 308 Senthnent and graphic arts), colour scheme (colour in the plastic and graphic arts), rhythm (dancing, musical form), harmony (music) and melody (music). We need here speak only of the first, second and fourth of these {cf. §§ 47, 48).
(i) Visual figures present two aspects for aesthetic appreciation: articulation or division, and contour or outline.
The most pleasing division of a simple visual form was, originally, the symmetrical division. Symmetry is repe- tition with reversal: the two hands, two eyes, two halves of a circle, etc., are symmetrical. The proportion of parts, in a symmetrical figure, is accordingly that of equality, 1:1.
At a higher level of aesthetic development, the symmet- rical division is replaced by what is known as the golden section: a division of the figure at a point so chosen that the dimensions of the whole are to those of the larger part as the dimensions of the larger part are to those of the smaller. The proportion of parts in a figure divided at the golden section is, approximately, 3:5.
Even to-day symmetry holds its own as a principle of aesthetic division. A great deal of decorative work (on walls, ceilings, porcelain, etc.) is of the symmetrical type. And we see traces of its influence in the duplication which is so common a feature of graphic composition. One poplar in a landscape looks ugly; two make the picture a 'good composition.' So with two cows in a meadow, two human figures on a sea-coast, etc.
Method. — Prepare long series of simple geometrical figures, — crosses, ovals, rectangles, etc., — varying the proportions little by little throughout the series. Lay them before the observer, and let him pick out the most pleasing. The first few chosen will be figures whose proportions are in the near neighbourhood of the golden section; the last will, in all probability, be symmetrical. All the rest will be indifferent or displeasing.
It must be remembered that the eye is subject to certain illu- sions: vertical distances, e.g., are always overestimated (§ 50). Hence in deciding whether the subject has chosen a figure in accordance with the rule of the golden section, or of symmetry, the experimenter must make allowances for possible illusion. The subjective square is not objectively symmetrical; but it is chosen because of its subjective symmetry. The amount of illusion in a given case can easily be determined by a few preliminary experi- ments.
As regards contours, not much more can be said than that curved lines are, on the whole, more pleasing than straight lines. The meeting of two straight lines in a right angle seems to be particularly displeasing; the eyes 'feel' the jerk involved in the abrupt change of direction.
(2) Nature presents us with so many and so various colour schemes, and painting consists so largely of an imitation of nature, that it is impossible to formulate gen- eral principles of aesthetic grouping in the sphere of col- our. Rules are laid down, in practice, for the guidance of the art-student, as they are for the student of musical composition. Thus we may mention the rule of grada- tion: sharp contrasts are to be avoided, — unless, of course, it is the purpose of the picture to bring them out, — by the use of intermediate shades; the juxtaposition of complementaries is especially undesirable. The principle of compensation requires that a penetrating colour be balanced by a less penetrating; a spot of vermilion must be compensated by a large area of dull bluish green, placed somewhere in the picture to 'relieve' the red. The principle of duplication also holds; a painting which contains a large mass of some particular colour is im- proved by the introduction of a smaller patch of the same colour in a different quarter; and so on. But although 3IO Seittiment these and similar rules are doubtless indicative of ultimate aesthetic principles, they do not take us very far towards an understanding of these latter.
Writers upon colour decoration, ornamentation, recognise two types of colour scheme: the dominant and the contrasted. The dominant scheme employs a single key-colour, and obtains an aesthetic effect by the arrangement of different ' shades ' and ^ tints ' of this colour (mixtures of the pure with white hght, at different intensities and in different proportions: § 12). Thus if red were chosen as the key-colour, the scheme would be com- posed of red, and of pinks and dark reds. The contrasted scheme employs two key-colours, and interweaves these with their shades and tints into an aesthetic whole.
Method. — The most pleasing juxtapositions and arrangements of colours could be investigated by the help of a long series of coloured papers. Strips must be cut, and pasted side by side on a constant background (black or white cardboard). It would probably be found that the subject, though very sure of what was positively ugly, would be in considerable doubt as to the compara- tive beauties of the '■ pretty ' combinations.
(3) The most pleasing musical harmony v^as, originally, that of the octave. As the aesthetic judgment developed, however, the place of the octave was taken by other, less unitary tone mixtures. To us the octave sounds 'thin' and 'poor'; the major third (the union of tonic and medi- ant of a major scale) is the harmony which brings with it the greatest amount of aesthetic pleasure. The octave, then, may be compared to the symmetrical division of a simple visual form, and the major third to its division at the golden section.
Method. — Experiments can be made with tuning-forks or piano clangs, as described in § 49. The subject is required to judge of the aesthetic effect of the chords and intervals sounded.
2. The sentiment of sublimity is more complex than that of beauty or ugliness. It contains two central judg- ments: 'This is beautiful' and 'This is great.' The total experience may be pleasant or unpleasant, according to the meaning of the second of these judgments. If 'great' means * so great that my attention cannot grasp it,' the experience is unpleasant: the pleasure of beauty is over- come by the unpleasantness of the emotion of fear, or the sentiment of awe. If 'great' means 'splendid' or 'magnificent,' the whole experience is pleasurable; the sentiment of beauty is simply enhanced. Under these circumstances, the sublime is to the beautiful as a ' handsome ' is to a ' pretty ' face.
3. The sentiments of the ludicrous and the tragic are also complex. The latter combines the judgment 'This is beautiful' with the judgment 'This is undeserved'; there is a mixture of the aesthetic sentiment of beauty with the ethical sentiment of injustice. The total experience may be pleasant or unpleasant, according as the one or the other sentiment predominates.^ — The pleasurable effect of a 'comic' situation is difficult to explain. The situation appears to call forth the judgments 'This is beautiful,' or rather 'This is pretty,'and 'This is contradictory.* There is a quick oscillation of the pleasure of the former and the unpleasantness of the latter judgment.
One is tempted to compare the sentiment of the ludicrous with the complex of organic sensations which we call tickling (§§ 19, 59). On its cutaneous side, tickling consists of light pressures 1 It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to state that the scientific meaning of the terms ' tragedy ' and ' tragic ' differs from their popular meaning. The news- papers speak of a murder or a fire as a * tragedy,' when as a matter of fact the situation described arouses the emotion of horror or disgust, not the tragic sen- 312 Sentiment 312 Sentiment (pleasant) which are intermittent (unpleasant: § 34). As there are no such things as mixed feelings (§ 32), we must have in tick- ling, cutaneously regarded, an alternation of pleasantness and un- pleasantness. A '■ comic ' situation would seem to give rise to just such an alternation, a sort of mental tickling. It is ' pretty ' (pleas- ant), but self-contradictory (logical sentiment of contradiction; unpleasant). Neither the pleasantness nor the unpleasantness is very intensive: if * prettiness ' rises to beauty, we are jarred by the contradictory element, and if the self-contradiction is too pro- nounced, no aesthetic sentiment is aroused at all. We may note that laughter is the natural expression of the comic sentiment, and that some psychologists derive all laughter from that which follows upon tickling (§ 59).
We indicated two modes of classifying the emotions (§ 58): they may be divided into two groups, as emotions of the present and the future, or emotions of subject and emotions of object. The aesthetic sentiments appear to be always sentiments of the present. And they appear, also, to be always objective. If the sentiment of beauty is sub- jectified, we have not a sentiment but an emotion: the beautiful scene or object 'charms' or 'entrances' or 'in- toxicates * us, takes possession of consciousness; the hideous object sets up the emotion of repugnance or disgust.
There is a possible exception to this rule in the dignity which is the subjective side of sublimity (sublimity in its second sense, as splendid beauty). Dignity would seem to be a sentiment rather than an emotion.
We may note that there are degrees of the aesthetic sentiment, as there are of emotion (§ 60). A landscape is pretty, beautiful or sublime; a face comely or handsome, plain, ugly or hideous; a situation funny, ludicrous or ' excruciatingly ' funny, § 89. The Basis of JEsthetic Sentiment. — We said above that no completely satisfactory account of the origin of the aesthetic sentiment, no adequate explanation of the power of the beautiful and the ugly to hold the attention, has as yet been given. We may now look briefly at some of the suggestions which have been made.
(i) It has been asserted that the five forms of the aes- thetic sentiment proper can all be traced to peculiarities of human structure or function. Thus the human figure is symmetrically built; hand repeats hand, and foot, foot. Moreover, waist repeats neck, abdomen repeats chest, legs repeat arms. The proportions of height and girth are approximately those of the golden section: a height of 5 feet goes with a girth of 3. Rhythm, again, is given in walking and breathing; melody, in the natural rise and fall of the voice (§§ 47, 50). Inharmonic combinations of tones produce beats, jarring intermittences of sound, which are intrinsically unpleasant (§ 34). Lastly, the apprecia- tion of colour schemes may have its basis partly in the existence of complementary or contrasting colours (§ 12), partly in the characteristic colour patterns of animals lower in the scale of organic development than our- selves.
(2) The polar opposite of this mode of explanation is found in a general principle of beauty, accepted by many writers upon aesthetic questions, — the principle of * unity in multiplicity.' The beautiful impression is that which is at the same time one and more than one. A colour scheme or a melody is a single whole; yet it is an articulated whole, a whole whose division is as noticeable as its singleness. The primitive aesthetic judgment is unable to cope with any but the most simple articulation: symmetry and the octave are therefore found beautiful at a time when the major third would be dissonant, and division at the golden 3 14 Sentiment section a division which forbade any appreciation of the unity of the divided figure.
(3) It has been suggested that the aesthetic sentiment develops from what we have called the 'feeling' (§ 56), a complex composed of an idea and a strong affection. Since an idea represents an object or process in the out- side world, the affection which attaches to it will, it is said, be made up not only of the affections attaching to its component sensations, but of these plus an affection aroused by attention to the idea as a whole; contents and form of the idea will both alike be affectively toned. Out of the pleasantness or unpleasantness which characterises every idea, -regarded not as a mass of sensations but as an idea, as a form, grow the higher aesthetic sentiments.
The first explanation is evidently imperfect. Granted that the proportions and activities of the form peculiar to one's own species are pleasant, there seems to be no reason in the fact for the progress of aesthetics, the extreme attention devoted to aes- thetic influences by civilised peoples. The second is logical, a reflection upon the facts, not psychological (§ 86). The third does not account for the origin of the aesthetic attitude: it simply puts that attitude back as early as the idea, whereas we have dated it from the appearance of the judgment, an association of ideas. The problem, therefore, is no nearer solution than it was in our mere statement of it.
Where there is so much disagreement as to general principles, it will be readily understood that there is little agreement upon special points. It is not w^orth while, at present, to enumerate the special hypotheses proposed by different authors. For although it may be true that there is no single psychological law which will explain all the phenomena of the aesthetic sentiment, but that a number of distinct laws are at work to produce the final result, still a list of the special laws hitherto formulated would be just as unsatisfactory as is each of the general principles stated in the text.
§ 90. TJie IntcUcctital Sentiments 315 § 90. The Intellectual Sentiments. — The intellectual or logical sentiments are the affective experiences which cluster round judgments of truth or falsehood. The situ- ation which evokes the judgment is, in this case, not a concurrence of processes in the outside world, but a con- currence of associations in consciousness; thought itself, a mental situation, is disjoined by the attention for re- association. We have, therefore, in the intellectual senti- ments another instance of that ' projection outwards ' or 'objectification' which we have seen to be illustrated by the formation of the ideas of affection (§ 59) and of self The intellectual sentiments can be classified, in part, upon the same principles as the emotions (§58). (i) They fall into two great groups as sentiments of the present and sentiments of the future. Thus curiosity (§ i) is a senti- ment of the future, which may become a sentiment of the present in the form of successful thought (curiosity ful- filled), unsuccessful thought (curiosity unfulfilled) or baffled thought (curiosity deferred).
(2) The intellectual sentiments fall also into two great groups as objective and subjective sentiments. Each occurs in a more objective and a more subjective form. Thus we have: OBJECTIVE SENTIMENTS SUBJECTIVE SENTIMENTS ( Contradiction. ( Falsehood.
(Difficulty. (Disbelief.
(3) There are, however, certain sentiments which have no emotive counterparts. These are the oscillatory senti- ments, which accompany a rapid alternation of the atten- 3i6 Sentiment tion between the two possible predicates of the judgment. Thus midway between the sentiments of agreement and contradiction Hes the oscillatory sentiment of obscurity; between ease and difficulty of thought lies confusion; between truth and falsehood, ambiguity; and between be- lief and disbelief, doubt. This form of experience is, of course, impossible in cases where only the passive atten- tion is exercised, i.e., in the emotion: oscillation between pleasantness and unpleasantness can take place only when the active attention is present to oscillate.
Each one of these sentiments has a corresponding mood. Thus the mood of belief is acquiescence; that of disbelief, incre- duUty; that of doubt, indecision. And each one of them may, in course of time, lose its affective tone, and give place to a state of indifference.
Method. — The intellectual sentiments might be investigated in the following way. Prepare a number of reasoned statements, — or select them from the lists given in the text-books of formal logic, — some of which are correct, while others contain various logical fallacies. Let the subject give a careful introspective ac- count of the ' feelings ' aroused by their reading. — It is possible that a systematic employment of this method would enable us to distinguish a greater number of special intellectual sentiments than have hitherto been described.
A rough notion of the number and forms of the intellectual sen- timents can be obtained by introspection of consciousness during the reading of a piece of scientific reasoning, or the hearing of a scientific lecture. The array of arguments as ' first,' ' secondly,' ' thirdly,' etc., arouses the mood of acquiescence; an emphatic ' if,' the sentiment of doubt; a ' but,' the sentiment of contradiction; a '^Now, then, we can see..." the sentiment of truth; etc.
Literature. — Literature, prose and poetry is, perhaps, the form of art which gives rise to the most complex sentiments. We have in reading it (i) the aesthetic sentiments of rhythm and § 91- Social or Ethical^ Religioiis Sentiments 317 musical harmony; (2) the intellectual sentiments of agreement and truth; (3) oftentimes an ethical or religious sentiment, at- taching to the contents of the passage read; and (4) oftentimes a secondary aesthetic sentiment, accompanying the reproductive ideas which supplement the printed words in our minds. We can understand this many-sided effect of literature when we remember the large part played by verbal ideas in every type of consciousness.
§ 91. The Social or Ethical and the Religious Sentiments.
— The situation which arouses an ethical sentiment is any action or group of actions, performed by oneself or an- other, of which the term 'good,' 'bad,' 'right' or 'wrong' may be predicated.