The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Gosse - Ethnologic und Aesthetik
Although many of the mental sciences have been enriched and extended by the study of Ethnology, yet Æsthetics has not yet taken advantage of the vast mass of material which this science has presented. The time, however, seems near when students of Æsthetics will perceive that many of its problems can only be solved with the help of Ethnology. Æsthetic feelings, the subject-matter of Æsthetics, are feelings of pleasure and pain, which are distinguished from other such feelings, in being immediately called up either by some sense-perception or by a representation. The task of Æsthetics consists in discovering the essence, conditions, and development of the æsthetic feelings. For the first of these problems the ethnological method will not prove helpful. Every aesthetic feeling is (1) the function of a subject in whom it is excited, and (2) of an object perceived or represented by which it is excited. The question of the objective conditions can only expect a result when it addresses itself to the simplest possible cases. A universally valid objective condition for the æsthetic feelings cannot be found by investigating the objects which belong to any limited circle, or grade of civilization, but only when we have before us the full results of ethnological studies. Objects pleasing to one person are often indifferent to another. The objective factor is the same, the difference lies in the æsthetic receptivity of the persons concerned. We can, however, speak of a typical aesthetic sensibility of a race and of a time.