This Project Gutenberg Etext prepared by Tony Adam
Anthony-adam@tamu.edu
The Psychology of Beauty
by Ethel D. Puffer
PREFACE
THE human being who thrills to the experience of beauty innature and in art does not forever rest with that experienceunquestioned. The day comes when he yearns to pierce thesecret of his emotion, to discover what it is, and why, thathas so stung him—to defend and to justify his transport tohimself and to others. He seeks a reason for the faith thatis in him. And so have arisen the speculative theories ofthe nature of beauty, on the one hand, and the studies ofconcrete beauty and our feelings about it, on the other.Speculative theory has taken its own way, however, as apart of philosophy, in relating the Beautiful to the othergreat concepts of the True and the Good; building up anarchitectonic of abstract ideas, far from the immediatefacts and problems of the enjoyment of beauty. There hasgrown up, on the other hand, in the last years, a greatliterature of special studies in the facts of aestheticproduction and enjoyment. Experiments with the aestheticelements; investigations into the physiological psychologyof aesthetic reactions; studies in the genesis and developmentof art forms, have multiplied apace. But these are stillmere groups of facts for psychology; they have not been takenup into a single authoritative principle. Psychology cannotdo justice to the imperative of beauty, by virtue of which,when we say "this is beautiful," we have a right to implythat the universe must agree with us. A synthesis of thesetendencies in the study of beauty is needed, in which theresults of modern psychology shall help to make intelligiblea philosophical theory of beauty. The chief purpose of thisbook is to seek to effect such a union.
A way of defining Beauty which grounds it in general principles,while allowing it to reach the concrete case, is set forth inthe essay on the Nature of Beauty. The following chapters aimto expand, to test, and to confirm this central theory, byshowing, partly by the aid of the aforesaid special studies,how it accounts for our pleasure in pictures, music, andliterature.
The whole field of beauty is thus brought under discussion;and therefore, though it nowhere seeks to be exhaustive intreatment, the book may fairly claim to be a more or lessconsistent and complete aesthetic theory, and hence toaddress itself to the student of aesthetics as well as to thegeneral reader. The chapter on the Nature of Beauty, indeed,will doubtless be found by the latter somewhat technical, andshould be omitted by all who definitely object to professionalphraseology. The general conclusions of the book aresufficiently stated in the less abstract papers.
Of the essays which compose the following volume, the first,third, and last are reprinted, in more or less revised form,from the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "International Monthly."Although written as independent papers, it is thought thatthey do not unduly repeat each other, but that they serve toverify, in each of the several realms of beauty, the truthof the central theory of the book.
The various influences which have served to shape a work ofthis kind become evident in the reading; but I cannot refrainfrom a word of thanks to the teachers whose inspiration andencouragement first made it possible. I owe much gratitudeto Professor Mary A. Jordan and Professor H. Norman Gardinerof Smith College, who in literature and in philosophy firstset me in the way of aesthetic interest and inquiry, and toProfessor Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University,