The Beautiful, Vernon Lee [good ebook reader TXT] 📗

and is so far the very reverse of disinterested. The second philosophical theory (originally Schiller's, and revived by Herbert Spencer) takes advantage of the non-practical attitude connected with the word Beautiful to define art and its enjoyment as a kind of play. Now although leisure and freedom from cares are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For although it may be possible to watch other people playing football or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part of the players themselves an eminently practical state of mind, one diametrically opposed to contemplation, as I hope to make evident in the next section.

CHAPTER II

CONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION

WE have thus defined the word Beautiful as implying an attitude of contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes amounting to an emotion, of admiration; and so far contrasted it with the practical attitude implied by the word good. But we require to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of contemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not merely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one.

Let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching the behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary wayfarers in front of a view, which they severally consider in the practical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. The view was from a hill-top in the neighbourhood of Rome or of Edinburgh, whichever the Reader can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers halted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts.

"It will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot"—began one of the three. "We might have been back for tea-time if only there had been a tram and a funicular. And that makes me think: Why not start a joint-stock company to build them? There must be water-power in these hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter to town. Also houses could be built for people whose work takes them to town, but who want good air for their children; the hire-purchase system, you know. It might prove a godsend and a capital investment, though I suppose some people would say it spoilt the view. The idea is quite a good one. I shall get an expert—"

"These hills," put in the second man—"are said to be part of an ancient volcano. I don't know whether that theory is true! It would be interesting to examine whether the summits have been ground down in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic action at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been under the sea at no very distant period. It is also interesting to notice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural harbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable meeting-place of seafaring and pastoral populations. These investigations would prove, as I said, remarkably full of interest."

"I wish"—complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to himself—"I wish these men would hold their tongues and let one enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to what might be done or to how it all came about. They don't seem to feel how beautiful it all is." And he concentrated himself on contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab of reluctance to leave.

Meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there really was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for both tramway and funicular, and where the necessary capital could be borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of stratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical data about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country.

"I suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your sketching materials?" said the scientific man, always interested in the causes of phenomena, even such trifling ones as a man remaining quiet before a landscape.

"I reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out where you can use up a description of this place"—corrected the rapid insight of the practical man, accustomed to weigh people's motives in case they may be turned to use.

"I am not a painter, and I'm not a writer"—exclaimed the third traveller, "and I thank Heaven I'm not! For if I were I might be trying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely enjoying all this beauty. Not but that I should like to have a sketch or a few words of description for when I've turned my back upon it. And Heaven help me, I really believe that when we are all back in London I may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your tramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action, because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me—"

"That's what it is to be aesthetic"—said the two almost in the same breath.

"And that, I suppose"—answered the third with some animosity—"is what you mean by being practical or scientific."

Now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of science, though differing so obviously from one another (the first bent upon producing new and advantageous results, the second examining, without thought of advantage, into possible causes), both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. They were, as he complained, thinking of what might be done and of how it had all come about. That is to say they were both thinking away from that landscape. The scientific man actually turned his back to it in examining first one rock, then another. The practical man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he was on, since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and that the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a funicular. But besides the different items of landscape, and the same items under different angles, which were thus offered to these two men's bodily eyes, there was a far greater variety, and rapider succession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their spirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills, plain, and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time, but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress, dairy-products, pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices, advertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and the scientific man's inner vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and seas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals under the microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let alone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries. Moreover, most, if not all these mental images (blocking out from attention the really existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy, swished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just enough seen to know what it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all, mere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought. So that what satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly scampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next one, and to a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to wit, pounds, shillings, and pence in the one case, and a coherent explanation in the other. In both cases equally there was a kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of aspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed. Or, more strictly speaking, there was no interest whatever in aspects as such, but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied; whether actions future and personally profitable, like building tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and quite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or prehistoric civilisations.

Now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the two others had first mistaken for an artist or writer, and then dismissed as an aesthetic person.

CHAPTER III

ASPECTS VERSUS THINGS

HAVING settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked best, he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded him. Had he descended another twenty minutes, or looked through powerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a juxtaposition of emerald green, raw Sienna, and pale yellow, whereas, at the distance where he chose to remain, its colours fused into indescribably lovely lilacs and russets. Had he moved freely about he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of sharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their various angles, must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges, and roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate. Also that the foothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains behind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the attention by their aggressive projection. While, as if to spoil the aspect still more, he would have been forced to recognise (as Ruskin explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the Matterhorn peak) that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely to rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. But to how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope, that man did not give one thought, any more than to how they might look after a hundred years of tramways and funiculars or how they had looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial action. He was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light and colour, the pattern (more and more detailed, more and more co-ordinated with every additional exploring glance) of keenly thrusting, delicately yielding lines, meeting as purposefully as if they had all been alive and executing some great, intricate dance. He did not concern himself whether what he was looking at was an aggregate of things; still less what might be these things' other properties. He was not concerned with things at all, but only with a particular appearance (he did not care whether it answered to reality), only with one (he did not want to know whether there might be any other) aspect.

For, odd as it may sound, a Thing is both much more and much less than an Aspect. Much more, because a Thing really means not only qualities of its own and reactions of ours which are actual and present, but a far greater number and variety thereof which are potential. Much less, on the other hand, because of these potential qualities and reactions constituting a Thing only a minimum need be thought of at any given time; instead of which, an aspect is all there, its qualities closely interdependent, and our reactions entirely taken up in connecting them as whole and parts. A rose, for instance, is not merely a certain assemblage of curves and straight lines and colours, seen as the painter sees it, at a certain angle, petals masking part of stem, leaf protruding above bud: it is the possibility of other combinations of shapes, including those seen when the rose (or the person looking) is placed head downwards. Similarly it is the possibility of certain sensations of resistance, softness, moisture, pricking if we attempt to grasp it, of a certain fragrance if we breathe in the air. It is the possibility