All this work, however, brings help to the practical artist and to the critic. They do not acknowledge it fully to-day; but year by year, more and more will the influence of the results of these studies be felt as they gain the attention of thinking men.
Nevertheless, we cannot but face the fact that the practical benefit to be gained from them is of a negative sort. There is no royal road to the attainment of beauty; but the psychologist is able to point out, by the methods here considered, the inner nature of certain sources of beauty, thus teaching the artist how he may avoid ugliness, and even indicating to him the main direction in which he may best travel toward the attainment of his goal.
But, after all, the relations thus discovered in the beautiful object, and the related special analyses of mental functioning which are involved with our appreciation of beauty, tell us of but relatively isolated bits of the broad realm of beauty. The objects which arouse within us the sense of beauty are most diverse, and equally diverse are the modes of mental functioning connected with the appreciation of their beauty.[1]
And this has led to the formulation of such principles as that of the 'unity of manifoldness,' of which Fechner makes so much, and that of the "monarchische Unterordnung" which Lipps has more lately enunciated.
Now it is of great interest to inquire why it is that the processes which lead to the recognition of these principles are so clearly defined in many cases where the sense of beauty is aroused. But very evidently these general principles, important though they be in themselves, are not ones upon which we can afford to rest; for clearly they apply in very many cases where beauty does not claim sway.
Our whole mental life exemplifies the unification of the manifold and "monarchic subordination," whether the processes be æsthetic or not. It does not suffice us to show, what is thus shown, that the æsthetic states conform with conditions of our
- ↑ Nothing has shown this more clearly than the investigations of Haines and Davies in reference to the 'golden section' of which we have spoken above. See Psychological Review, Vol. XI, p. 415.
