to æsthetic enjoyments affect us-is rendered plain by an adaptation of Schiller's assertion of the connection of æsthetic enjoyments with the universal impulse to play." Esthetic products, he says, afford substituted activities' for the higher powers of man, just as games and other forms of play do for the lower. Hence the distinction between the 'good' and the 'beautiful.' The consciousness of good arises from genuine activities pursued with a serious purpose in view; that is, when 'actions are realized to be productive of results.' The consciousness of beauty arises from substituted activities pursued merely for their own sake; that is, when 'actions are realized merely without regard to results, but as a source of pleasure.'

That is to say, together with the substituted activities there are substituted pleasures. These pleasures arise because we imagine, through association of ideas, or through less distinct psychological processes, that we are experiencing the actual results of the original activities. But in so far as this state of consciousness has a subjective reality, the imagined pleasures have a validity of their own. This validity, which constitutes æsthetic enjoyment, while it differs on the one hand from the happiness of successful effort, and, on the other, from the satisfaction of

1 Schiller resolves the impulse to play (Spieltrieb) into a union of (1) the impulse to materialize (Stofftrieb), and (2) the impulse to formalize (Formtrieb). The first of these impels us to convert our thought into substance, and the second, to give form or shape to this substance.

desire, approaches in varying degrees of closeness to both the one and the other. But the distinction is never entirely obliterated; it may be detected in the most intense form of æsthetic excitement by the application of the test of remoteness from physical impulse.

The secondary or representative element indicated by this analysis is so conspicuous and important a part of the sum of consciousness which constitutes æsthetic enjoyment, that a clear statement of Mr. Herbert Spencer's account of its character and effects is necessary.

In the first place it is present in the case of simple æsthetic feelings; that is, of sensations as opposed to perceptions. The representative element is in this case permanent or constitutional. It is due partly to inherited (or organic), and partly to acquired (or personal) experience.

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'While pleasures and pains,' says Mr. Herbert Spencer, are partly constituted of those local and conspicuous elements of feeling directly aroused by special stimuli, they are largely, if not mainly, composed of secondary elements of feeling aroused indirectly by diffused stimulation of the nervous system. From this it is a corollary that a sensorial stimulation such as is produced by a fine colour or a sweet tone, implying as we here infer a large amount of normal action of the parts concerned, without any drawback from excessive action, and thus involving a powerful diffused discharge of which no component is in excess, will tend to arouse a secondary vague pleasure. Esthetic feelings in

general are largely composed of the undefinable consciousness hence arising.''

In æsthetic perceptions-the second order of æsthetic enjoyments-both the primary or presentative, and the secondary or representative element, are present, but they are now no longer simple but complex in character. The presentative element is produced by groups of stimuli, and the representative element contains, besides the effects of diffused stimulation, more precise effects, due to a partial revival of various special qualifications connected in experience with combinations of the kind presented.' That is to say, the principle of the association of ideas is now actively brought into operation.

It is by virtue of the representative element, therefore, that both a sensation and a perception can become æsthetic.

But in an æsthetic sensation, and in an æsthetic perception, the presentative element is necessary and forms the basis of the aesthetic enjoyment. There remains a third class of æsthetic feelings in which the relative importance of the two elements is reversed. In æsthetic emotions, which Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the 'highest order' of æsthetic feelings, the representative element is essential and the presentative element incidental; for such forms of æsthetic enjoyment are experienced in states of consciousness which are exclusively re-representa

1 Ib. p. 636.

tive' and which are 'reached through sensations and perceptions.'

It will be observed that Mr. Herbert Spencer bases his classification of æsthetic pleasures-into sensational, perceptional, and emotional-upon the extent of the representative element. In those chapters in the sequel which deal with Addison's criticism it will be found that I have expressed the opinion that the application of the theory of association of ideas to the study of literature permanently differentiated modern from ancient criticism. For this application led Addison to discover a new test of poetic merit-the appeal to the imaginationand to substitute this for the Greek test of symmetry, upon which Aristotle's doctrine of the supremacy of the plot was based. The significance of this change lies in the fact that the power of appealing to the imagination is a test which touches that element of æsthetic enjoyment to which creative literature can most effectively contribute. It provided, moreover, a measure of poetic merit which could be applied not merely to tragedy or epic, but to every species of creative literature irrespective of form. In other words, whereas the Greek test of symmetry was a test of artistic merit in general, and was only applicable to creative literature in a secondary degree, the appeal to the imagination was a test not of artistic merit in general, but of that form of artistic merit of which literature was most capable; and

1 P. 59.

it was, therefore, applicable to literature primarily and specifically.

This opinion was, of course, based solely upon the study of literary methods; but it is interesting to find that it is supported by the scientific analysis of the psychological processes by which states of æsthetic enjoyment are created. Another opinion to which I have also given expression '-that prosefiction, and not verse, is destined to become the supreme vehicle for the conveyance of poetic thought —is also confirmed in the passage in which Mr. Herbert Spencer indicates the conditions under which literature, in its various forms, produces æsthetic emotion.

This passage, which I quote in full, is in other respects valuable as indicating with singular directness the part which literature plays in æsthetic consciousness, and, therefore, the relationship of criticism to æsthetics. Esthetics deal with the entire field of æsthetic enjoyment; but inasmuch as the supreme merit of literature is to produce the highest order of æsthetic feelings, no sound criticism can afford to neglect the evidence afforded by the study of the states of consciousness with which the science of the beautiful is primarily concerned.

'Recognizing the simple æsthetic pleasures derivable from rhythm and euphony, which are explicable in ways above indicated [i.e. by force of association, 'when the emotion

1 P. 236.