The Psychology of Beauty

Now, in truth, the real lover of beauty knows that no one art is superior to another. "Each in his separate star," they reign alone. In order to be equal, they must depend on th...

THE Idea of Beauty has been greatly widened since the age of Plato. Then, it was only in order, proportion, unity in variety, that beauty was admitted to consist; to-day we hold...

Yes, this breaking down of barriers, this melting of the personality into its surroundings, this strange and sweet self- abandonment must have its source in just the disappearan...

All that Hogarth says of the beauty of the serpentine line, as "leading the eye a kind of chase," is fully in harmony with this view, if we add to the exploiting movements of th...

The holders of this view, however, ignore the history and significance of language. Our sight and hearing are given to us prior to our understanding or use of them. In a way, we...

The vibration rates per second of the vibrating bodies, strings, steel rods, etc., which produce those musical tones which are consonant, are in definite and small mathematical...

Now it is not hard to see how this antithesis has come about. But that the work of a master is always capable of logical analysis does not prove that our apprehension of it is a...

THE human being who thrills to the experience of beauty in nature and in art does not forever rest with that experience unquestioned. The day comes when he yearns to pierce the...

But it is, after all, the formal nature of the phenomenon that gives us light. If variation in the degree of self-feeling is the common factor, and the disappearance of the tran...

The view of confrontation as the dramatic principle is confirmed by dramatic literature. We emphasize in our study of Greek plays their simplicity of plot, their absence of intr...

Yet this method, as it works out, does not exhaust the problem the solution of which was affirmed to be the aim of every aesthetics. The aesthetic experience is very complex, an...

This beauty of literature, because it is a hierarchy of beauties more and less essential, exists in all varieties and in all shades. If the old comparison and contrast of ideali...

Thus we may regard the elements as both attracting attention to a certain spot and dispersing it over a field. Those types which are of a static character (landscapes, altar-pie...

But it may be said that stimulation and repose are contradictory concepts, and we must indeed admit that the absolute repose of the hypnotic trance is not aesthetic, because emp...

But there is a body of scientific facts respecting the elements of music, in which we may well seek for clues. As facts alone they are of no value. They must be explained as com...

We can see in this definition the possibility of an aesthetic which shall have objective validity because founded in the eternal properties of human nature, while it yet allows...

But before finally relegating the idea to its place in the aesthetic scheme, we must ask whether the specific emotional content can claim independent aesthetic value; for we can...