Chapter 8

SUBJECT AND OBJECT

BUT before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception, namely that of Empathic Interpretation, I require to forestall an objection which my Reader has doubtless been making throughout my last chapters; more particularly that in clearing away the ground of this objection I shall be able to lay the foundations of my further edifice of explanation. The objection is this: if the man on the hill was aware of performing any, let alone all, of the various operations described as constituting shape-perception, neither that man nor any other human being would be able to enjoy the shapes thus perceived.

My answer is:

When did I say or imply that he was _aware_ of doing any of it? It is not only possible, but extremely common, to perform processes without being aware of performing them. The man was not _aware,_ for instance, of making eye adjustments and eye movements, unless indeed his sight was out of order. Yet his eye movements could have been cinematographed, and his eye adjustments have been described minutely in a dozen treatises. He was no more aware of _doing_ any measuring or comparing than we are aware of _doing_ our digestion or circulation, except when we do them badly. But just as we are aware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of being aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate performance, so he was aware of his measuring and comparing, inasmuch as he was aware that the line A--B was longer than the line C--D, or that the point E was half an inch to the left of the point F. For so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called upon to make a choice between two possible proceedings, nor forced to do or suffer something difficult or distressing, in fact so long as we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our processes of attending, those processes are replaced in our awareness by the very facts--for instance the proportions and relations of lines--resulting from their activity. That these results should not resemble their cause, that mental elements (as they are called) should appear and disappear, and also combine into unaccountable compounds (Browning's "not a third sound, but a star") according as we attend to them, is indeed the besetting difficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it studies. But it is so because it is one of Psychology's basic facts. And, so far as we are at present concerned, this difference between mental processes and their results is the fact upon which psychological aesthetics are based. And it is not in order to convert the Man on the Hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception, nor even to explain why he was not aware of them, that I am insisting upon this point. The principle I have been expounding, let us call it that of the _merging of the perceptive activities of the subject in the qualities of the object of perception,_ explains another and quite as important mental process which was going on in that unsuspecting man.

But before proceeding to that I must make it clearer how that man stood in the matter of _awareness of himself._ He was, indeed, aware of himself whenever, during his contemplation of that landscape, the thought arose, "well, I must be going away, and perhaps I shan't see this place again"--or some infinitely abbreviated form, perhaps a mere sketched out gesture of turning away, accompanied by a slight feeling of _clinging,_ he couldn't for the life of him say in what part of his body. He was at that moment acutely aware that he _did not want_ to do something which it was optional to do. Or, if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of going away, aware that he _wanted to come back,_ or at all events wanted to carry off as much as possible of what he had seen. In short he was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing himself away, or, if some other person or mere habit, saved him this effort, he was aware of himself making another effort to impress that landscape on his memory, and aware of a future self making an effort to return to it. I call it _effort_; you may, if you prefer, call it will; at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a verb to _cling to,_ (in the future tense) _return to,_ to _choose as against some other alternative_; as nominative of a verb briefly, _to like_ or _love._ And the accusative of these verbs would be the landscape. But unless the man's contemplation was thus shot with similar ideas of some action or choice of his own, he would express the situation by saying "this landscape _is_ awfully beautiful."

This IS. I want you to notice the formula, by which the landscape, ceasing to be the accusative of the man's looking and thinking, becomes the nominative of a verb _to be so-and-so._ That grammatical transformation is the sign of what I have designated, in philosophical language, _as the merging of the activities of the subject in the object._ It takes place already in the domain of simple sensation whenever, instead of saying "_I_ taste or _I_ smell something nice or nasty" we say--"_this thing_ tastes or smells nice or nasty." And I have now shown you how this tendency to put the cart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex and active processes called perception; turning "I measure this line"--"I compare these two angles" into "this line _extends_ from A to B"--"these two angles _are equal_ to two right angles."

But before getting to the final inversion--"this landscape _is_ beautiful" instead of "_I_ like this landscape"--there is yet another, and far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the qualities of the object. This further putting of the cart before the horse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what only the horse can be doing!) falls under the head of what German psychologists call _Einfuehlung,_ or "Infeeling"--which Prof. Titchener has translated _Empathy._ Now this new, and comparatively newly discovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which, leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound sensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever satisfaction we connect with the word Beautiful. And I have already given the Reader an example of such Empathy when I described the landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline "_dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves_"; to which I might have added that there was also a plain which _extended,_ a valley which _wound along,_ paths which _climbed_ and roads which _followed_ the _undulations_ of the land. But the best example was when I said that opposite to the man there was a distant mountain _rising_ against the sky.