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    The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
    The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
    The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics

    By Vernon Lee

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    Violet Paget (1856–1935), also known under the pseudonym Vernon Lee, was a French-born British writer famous for her supernatural fiction and contributions to the field of aesthetics. She also wrote more than a dozen books on a variety of subjects ranging from music to travel, and today she is best remembered for her original ideas and amusing use of irony. First published in 1913, “The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics” is a collection of classic essays by Paget that explore the issue of beauty from a variety of angles, analysing the very nature of beauty and why it is enjoyed. Contents include: “The Adjective 'Beautiful'”, “Contemplative Satisfaction”, “Aspects Versus Things”, “Sensations”, “Perception of Relations”, “Elements of Shape”, “Facility and Difficulty of Grasping”, “Subject and Object”, “Empathy”, “The Movement of Lines”, “The Character of Shapes”, etc. Other notable works by this author include: “The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet Show in Narrative” (1883), “The Countess of Albany” (1884), and “Miss Brown” (1884). Read & Co. Science is proudly republishing this collection of classic essays now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead & Co. Science
    Release dateSep 8, 2020
    ISBN9781528791281
    The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics
    Author

    Vernon Lee

    Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was the pen name of Violet Paget, a British author of supernatural fiction. Born in France to British expatriate parents, Paget spent most of her life in continental Europe. A committed feminist and pacifist, she joined the Union of Democratic Control during the First World War to express her opposition to British militarism. A lesbian, Paget had relationships with Mary Robinson, Amy Levy, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson throughout her life. Paget, a dedicated follower of Walter Pater’s Aesthetic movement, lived for many years in Florence, where she gained a reputation as a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance. In addition to her work in art history, Paget was a leading writer of short fiction featuring supernatural figures and themes. Among her best known works are Hauntings (1890), a collection of four chilling tales, and “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” a story which appeared in an 1895 issue of The Yellow Book, a controversial periodical that featured the works of Aubrey Beardsley, George Gissing, Henry James, and William Butler Yeats. Although Paget was largely forgotten by the mid-twentieth century, feminist scholars have rekindled attention in her pioneering work as a leading proponent of Aestheticism.

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      Book preview

      The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics - Vernon Lee

      1.png

      THE BEAUTIFUL

      AN INTRODUCTION TO

      PSYCHOLOGICAL AESTHETICS

      By

      VERNON LEE

      First published in 1913

      Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Science

      This edition is published by Read & Co. Science,

      an imprint of Read & Co.

      This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

      way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available

      from the British Library.

      Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

      For more information visit

      www.readandcobooks.co.uk

      Contents

      Vernon Lee

      CHAPTER I

      THE ADJECTIVE BEAUTIFUL

      CHAPTER II

      CONTEMPLATIVE SATISFACTION

      CHAPTER III

      ASPECTS VERSUS THINGS

      CHAPTER IV

      SENSATIONS

      CHAPTER V

      PERCEPTION OF RELATIONS

      CHAPTER VI

      ELEMENTS OF SHAPE

      CHAPTER VII

      FACILITY AND DIFFICULTY OF GRASPING

      CHAPTER VIII

      SUBJECT AND OBJECT

      CHAPTER IX

      EMPATHY

      CHAPTER X

      THE MOVEMENT OF LINES

      CHAPTER XI

      THE CHARACTER OF SHAPES

      CHAPTER XII

      FROM THE SHAPE TO THE THING

      CHAPTER XIII

      FROM THE THING TO THE SHAPE

      CHAPTER XIV

      THE AIMS OF ART

      CHAPTER XV

      ATTENTION TO SHAPES

      CHAPTER XVI

      INFORMATION ABOUT THINGS

      CHAPTER XVII

      THE CO-OPERATION OF THINGS AND SHAPES

      CHAPTER XVIII

      AESTHETIC RESPONSIVENESS

      CHAPTER XIX

      THE STORAGE AND TRANSFER OF EMOTION

      CHAPTER XX

      AESTHETIC IRRADIATION AND PURIFICATION

      CHAPTER XXI

      CONCLUSION (EVOLUTIONAL)

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      Vernon Lee

      Violet Paget—who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Vernon Lee’—was born at Château St Leonard, Boulogne, France in 1856.

      She spent most of her life in Continental Europe, although she published most of her work in Britain, and made many trips to London.

      Lee’s literary output was hugely varied; covering nearly forty volumes, it ranged from music criticism and travelogues to novels and academic essays.

      Her first major work was Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880), and at her peak she was considered a major authority on the Italian Renaissance.

      She also contributed much to the philosophical study of aesthetics. However, she is probably best-remembered for her supernatural short fiction, most notably her 1890 collection Hauntings.

      Lee died in 1935.

      PREFACE

      AND APOLOGY

      I HAVE tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference, particularly as regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science. But my explanation is addressed to readers in whom I have no right to expect a previous knowledge of psychology, particularly in its more modern developments. I have therefore based my explanation of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts familiar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader. Now mental facts thus available are by no means the elementary processes with which analytical and, especially experimental, psychology has dealings. They are, on the contrary, the everyday, superficial and often extremely confused views which practical life and its wholly unscientific vocabulary present of those ascertained or hypothetical scientific facts. I have indeed endeavoured (for instance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from sensation) to impart some rudiments of psychology in the course of my aesthetical explanation, and I have avoided, as much as possible, misleading the reader about such fearful complexes and cruxes as memory, association and imagination. But I have been obliged to speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader, and I am fully aware that these terms correspond only very approximately to what is, or at present passes as, psychological fact. I would therefore beg the psychologist (to whom I offer this little volume as a possible slight addition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses) to understand that in speaking, for instance, of Empathy as involving a thought of certain activities, I mean merely that whatever happens has the same result as if we thought; and that the processes, whatever they may be (also in the case of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating), translate themselves, when they are detected, into thoughts; but that I do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the processes, the thoughts, the measuring, comparing etc. exist on subordinate planes of consciousness or whether they are mainly physiological and only occasionally abutting in conscious resultants. Similarly, lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me to write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed process of ocular perception, instead of being due, as is doubtless most often the case, to every kind of associative abbreviation and equivalence of processes.

      Vernon Lee

      Maiano near Florence,

      Easter 1913.

      CHAPTER I

      THE ADJECTIVE BEAUTIFUL

      THIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it is an introduction, makes no attempt to form the taste of the public and still less to direct the doings of the artist. It deals not with ought but with is, leaving to Criticism the inference from the latter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how things can be made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things are beautiful. It takes Beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks to analyse and account for Beauty's existence and enjoyment. More strictly speaking, it analyses and accounts for Beauty not inasmuch as existing in certain objects and processes, but rather as calling forth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental activities and habits. It does not ask: What are the peculiarities of the things (and the proceedings) which we call Beautiful? but: What are the peculiarities of our thinking and feeling when in the presence of a thing to which we apply this adjective? The study of single beautiful things, and even more, the comparison of various categories thereof, is indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics, but only inasmuch as it adds to our knowledge of the particular mental activities which such Beautiful (and vice versa Ugly) things elicit in us. For it is on the nature of this active response on our own part that depends the application of those terms Beautiful and Ugly in every single instance; and indeed their application in any instances whatsoever, their very existence in the human vocabulary.

      In accordance with this programme I shall not start with a formal definition of the word Beautiful, but ask: on what sort of occasions we make use of it. Evidently, on occasions when we feel satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction, satisfaction meaning willingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience which has called forth that word; and meaning also that if it comes to a choice between two or several experiences, we prefer the experience thus marked by the word Beautiful. Beautiful, we may therefore formulate, implies on our part an attitude of satisfaction and preference. But there are other words which imply that much; first and foremost the words, in reality synonyms, USEFUL and GOOD. I call these synonyms because good always implies good for, or good in, that is to say fitness for a purpose, even though that purpose may be masked under conforming to a standard or obeying a commandment, since the standard or commandment represents not the caprice of a community, a race or a divinity, but some (real or imaginary) utility of a less immediate kind. So much for the meaning of good when implying standards and commandments; ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is, however, no such implication, and good means nothing more than satisfactory in the way of use and advantage. Thus a good road is a road we prefer because it takes us to our destination quickly and easily. A good speech is one we prefer because it succeeds in explaining or persuading. And a good character (good friend, father, husband, citizen) is one that gives satisfaction by the fulfilment of moral obligations.

      But note the difference when we come to Beautiful. A beautiful road is one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at; its being devious and inconvenient will not prevent its being beautiful. A beautiful speech is one we like to hear or remember, although it may convince or persuade neither us nor anybody. A beautiful character is one we like to think about but which may never practically help anyone, if for instance, it exists not in real life but in a novel. Thus the adjective Beautiful implies an attitude of preference, but not an attitude of present or future turning to our purposes. There is even a significant lack of symmetry in the words employed (at all events in English, French and German) to distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the way of weather. For weather which makes us uncomfortable and hampers our comings and goings by rain, wind or mud, is described as bad; while the opposite kind of weather is called beautiful, fine, or fair, as if the greater comfort, convenience, usefulness of such days were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our mere contemplation.

      Our mere contemplation! Here we have struck upon the main difference between our attitude when we use the word good or useful, and when we use the word beautiful. And we can add to our partial formula beautiful implies satisfaction and preference—the distinguishing predicate—"of a contemplative kind." This general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our use of the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming exception will not only exemplify what I have said about our attitude when employing that word, but add to this information the name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion of admiration. For the selfsame object or proceeding may sometimes be called good and sometimes beautiful, according as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. While we admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it good, we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic coachman as beautiful, anglicè fine or splendid, because there is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely being contemplated with admiration. Similarly,

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