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In this connection, however, we have not to dwell on the philosophical importance of pain. We are here only concerned with its significance for the immediate sense of life. And in this respect we believe that an artificial creation of pain may play some part not only in anger, but in the expression of all high-strung emotions. It is well known that the orgiastic state of mind, whether originally caused by religious exaltation or by erotic delirium, may often, when it has reached its highest stage, express itself in self-laceration. These facts are no doubt difficult to interpret. But it seems justifiable to assume that a tendency towards the creating of pain-sensations may have been derived from the emotional process itself. Explained in this way, orgiastic self-tortures may be adduced as the most remarkable proofs of this desire for an enhanced sense of life which lies at the bottom of all our appetence.

However energetically strong emotions may accentuate our existence, and however deeply we may enjoy the "realisation of ourselves" which we find in the violent excitement accompanying them, high-strung states are naturally bound to be followed by exhaustion and stupor. And thus even the intoxication of life, this most powerful of sensations, sooner or later passes its climax and sinks into dull insensibility. The lower the function by the incitement of which the exaltation is produced, the greater probably is its orgiastic power. But its duration is also so much the shorter. A wild dance, for instance, invariably ends in impotent prostration, during which the power of function and sensation is completely exhausted. As long as the mental desire for increased excitement is unsatisfied, this state must be distinctly disagreeable. Hence all the frenetic manifestations by which man, when raging in insatiable exaltation, strives to awake and rouse his failing powers of enjoyment.

There are various kinds of orgiastic exaltation connected with self-torture--as that of the tarantella dancers, of the dervishes, of the shamans, and others--in which the creation of pain-sensations may be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of the emotional state. Acute pain often makes it possible to overcome momentarily the exhaustion or the dulness which unfits us for work. And it is evident that pain may produce a similar excitement when we require an increase of energy, not for the sake of obtaining the greatest possible result from a working activity, but for the sake of extracting the greatest possible enjoyment out of an emotional state.

But if this interpretation be admitted as possible, there will be ample room for discussion as to its application to individual cases. For it is to be remembered that even pain may fulfil the task of relieving a nervous tension. In cases of bodily suffering counter irritation may thus bring about a wholesome diversion of the attention from an otherwise unbearable pain. And it is unquestionable that self-inflicted lacerations during violent emotion often subserve the same purpose. When a savage scarifies himself on receiving bad news, or at a funeral feast, his action is an instinctive effort to procure relief from the overpowering feelings. That he is not simply performing a sacrificial rite, but is merely seeking the relief which experience has taught him may be afforded by pain as well as by the subsequent exhaustion , is proved by the fact that the same expedient is employed in order to overcome humiliation or bodily pain. It is not stimulation, but a lulling of the senses, which is here aimed at.

It must also be admitted that even the other orgiastic manifestations may serve as purely cathartic means of relieving emotional pressure. It is, as has already been remarked, impossible to decide in individual cases whether an activity of expression--a dance, for instance--serves to enhance a pleasurable feeling or to relieve a pain. Suffering, sorrow, and despair may often, in their outward reactions, borrow the forms of expression which are usually connected with joy. Thus frenetic games and dances are often met with on occasions when we should least of all expect them, as, for instance, in time of famine, epidemic, or war. Such paradoxical manifestations, in which an overstrained despair attempts to obtain some kind of relief, are externally not to be distinguished from the genuine expression of joy. On the other hand, an abnormally strong emotion, which is primarily caused by the objective conditions of pleasure, may in its excess be perceived as a pain. Joy itself can thus be felt as an oppressive burden, which we try with all our power to get rid of. The motor discharges, by which we seek relief from such a "Noth der F?lle und der ?berf?lle," can, however, only indirectly offer us any real deliverance. A wild dance, for instance, will inevitably accentuate the original feeling as a conscious state, and thereby increase its intensity. But with this increase the craving for relief will also become stronger. As long as expression is unable to satisfy the ever-growing nervous tension, there must remain an element of "never enough" in the orgiastic exaltation. It is only when repeated solicitation has brought on bodily exhaustion that a real release is attained.

There is no doubt that such a relief-bringing exhaustion was the ultimate aim of all those exalted manifestations to which the poor tarantuli and the Vitus dancers abandoned themselves. But the problem presented by the similarity between the pathological despair which constitutes the initial stage of such epidemic mental disorders, and the oppressive feeling of joy whose expression has been thwarted, is so difficult that we can hardly expect to obtain a decisive answer to such questions as whether, for example, the maenadic exaltation is to be considered as a melancholic or a cheerful state of mind. And in most cases it would probably be equally impossible to ascertain whether in a given manifestation we have to do with pleasure that seeks enhancement, or with pain that seeks relief in exhaustion.

While every one is thus free to interpret the facts according to his optimistic or pessimistic bias, it must nevertheless be considered as a confusion of ideas to make the quest of unconsciousness a universal and fundamental impulse in man. It is impossible for us to assign any psychological importance to commonplaces on the enviable state of the insensible and the happiness to be found in unconsciousness. It is only when it delivers us from pain that a state of partial insensibility and cessation of function may be perceived as relatively agreeable. That an absolute absence of feeling could afford us any pleasure is a psychological contradiction in terms.

This illusion of unconsciousness can, however, be easily explained by the fact that intense emotional states are generally dominated by a single preoccupation. A strong feeling, by reason of the limitations of our consciousness, annihilates external sensations and ideas. Ecstasy, that "over-conscious" state of highly concentrated activity, rises above space and time to a state in which we feel liberated from all forms of perception. But the highest pleasure which we may thus experience is not, as Wagner in his pessimistic period would have it, a sinking and drowning of ourselves in unconsciousness; it is far rather--

"endlos ewig einbewuszt."

To enjoy so rich and complete a sensation of life has, we believe, been the object for which, each in his own manner, all men of strong vitality have striven. Even if there are individuals so unfortunate that for them a cessation of life and function appears as the highest end of desire, such negative instances need hardly be taken into account in a survey of universal human impulses. The longing for unconsciousness is moreover so passive a condition of mind, that by itself it could never explain expressional activities of the more violent or elaborate sort. And it is even more insufficient as an explanation of all those secondary expressions which are to occupy us in the sequel. Art production would never have reached so high a development if it had served only as a sedative for human feelings. But neither does art, any more than the direct activities of expression, involve mere excitement; it too fulfils, and with even greater efficacy, a relieving and cathartic mission. While supplying man with a means of intensifying the feelings connected with all the varied activities of the soul, art at the same time bestows upon him that inward calm in which all strong emotions find their relief.

Every interpretation of art which does not pay due attention to both of these aspects must needs be one-sided and incomplete.

SOCIAL EXPRESSION

In order to find an explanation of the nature and origin of the art-impulse we were compelled to enter upon a digression on the general psychology of feeling. It appeared from this hasty examination that in the motor concomitants of physical as well as of mental feeling we have to do with a form of activity which, taken by itself, is independent of all external motives. It was shown that the diffusion of a feeling-tone always corresponds to some active manifestation, generally outward, which increases in the same degree as the state of consciousness gains in intensity and distinctness. Besides these immediate transformations of energy which, owing to the law of inertia, follow the primary enhancement or inhibition of function, we met with reactions of a more conscious kind, by which the organism strives to overcome the inhibition of pain, and to keep up the excitement of pleasure. And it was also found that the universal animal desire to increase every pleasure and to relieve every pain has given rise to a multitude of secondary manifestations, by which we try to sustain every pleasure, to make it more distinct for consciousness, and thus enhance it by expression, while, during states of pain, we strive for relief in diversion or in violent motor discharge. Finally it was remarked that by the side of this expressional impulse we must take account of a yearning after increased consciousness, which leads us to pursue, even at the risk of some passing pain, all feelings and emotions by which our sensation of life is reinforced and intensified. All these impulses, accompanied by higher or lower degrees of conscious endeavour, are psychical phenomena of fundamental importance. They are not restricted to any particular stage of culture. And their coercive force is equal--nay, even superior to that of the imitative impulse, the play-impulse, and the impulse "to attract by pleasing." If we could deduce the desire for artistic creation from the activities connected with feeling, we should here find the explanation of its universality as well as of its force.

That this is the case, is the fundamental hypothesis upon which this work is based. It was impossible to prove its validity as long as emotional manifestations were treated as phenomena in the psychical life of the individual. For art is in its innermost nature a social activity. In order to elucidate the connection between art-impulse and emotional activities, we must therefore examine the latter as they appear in the social relations of mankind. We do not believe that any new principles are necessary for this purpose. We need only apply to social phenomena the same laws which were found to be valid for the emotional life of the individual. As, however, the legitimacy of such a course may be questioned, we must first devote some pages to a treatment of what we may call--if the expression is allowed--the interindividual life.

This digression brings us into a field of inquiry--that of the psychical conditions of social life--which during recent years has been the object of certain most important scientific researches. The investigations into the psychology of masses, as well as the experiments on suggestive therapeutics, have proved to how great an extent mental states may be transmitted from individual to individual by unconscious imitation of the accompanying movements. The doctrine of universal sympathy, a clear statement of which was given long ago in the ethical theory of Adam Smith, has thus acquired a psychological justification in the modern theories of imitative movement. Contemporary science has at last learned to appreciate the fundamental importance of imitation for the development of human culture. And some authors have even gone so far as to endeavour to deduce all sociological laws from this one principle. At the same time natural history has begun to pay more and more attention to the indispensability of imitation for the full development of instincts, as well as for training in those activities which are the most necessary in life.

It is fortunate for the theory of art that the importance of the imitative functions has thus been simultaneously acknowledged in various departments of science. Whatever one may think of the somewhat audacious generalisations which have been made in the recent application of this new principle, it is incontestable that the aesthetic activities can be understood and explained only by reference to universal tendency to imitate. It is also significant that writers on aesthetic had felt themselves compelled to set up a theory of imitation long before experimental psychologists had begun to turn their attention in this direction. In Germany the enjoyment of form and form-relations has since Vischer's time been interpreted as the result of the movements by which not only our eye, but also our whole body, follows the outlines of external things. In France Jouffroy stated the condition for the receiving of aesthetic impressions to be a "power of internally imitating the states which are externally manifested in living nature." In England, finally, Vernon Lee and Anstruther Thompson have founded a theory of beauty and ugliness upon this same psychical impulse to copy in our own unconscious movements the forms of objects. And in the writings of, for instance, Home, Hogarth, Dugald Stewart, and Spencer, there can be found a multitude of isolated remarks on the influence which is in a direct way exercised on our mental life by the perception of lines and forms.

In most of these theories and observations, however, the imitative activity has been noticed only in so far as it contributes to the aesthetic delight which may be derived from sensual impressions. But its importance is by no means so restricted as this; on the contrary, we believe it to be a fundamental condition for the existence of intuition itself. Without all these imperceptible tracing movements with which our body accompanies the adaptation of the eye-muscles to the outlines of external objects, our notions of depth, height, and distance, and so on, would certainly be far less distinct than they are. On the other hand, the habit of executing such movements has, so to say, brought the external world within the sphere of the internal. The world has been measured with man as a standard, and objects have been translated into the language of mental experience. The impressions have hereby gained not only in emotional tone, but also in intellectual comprehensibility.

It may, however, be objected that the above-mentioned instances refer only to a particular class of individuals. In other minds, it will be said, the world-picture is entirely built up of visual and acoustic elements. It is also impossible to deny that the classification of minds in different types, which modern psychology has introduced, is as legitimate as it is advantageous for the purposes of research. But we can hardly believe that such divisions have in view anything more than a relative predominance of the several psychical elements. It is easily understood that a man in whose store of memory visual or acoustic images occupy the foremost place may be inclined to deny that motor sensations of unconscious copying enter to any extent into his psychical experience. But an exclusively visual world-image, if such a thing is possible, must evidently be not only emotionally poorer, but also intellectually less distinct and less complete, than an intuition, in which such motor elements are included.

Everyday experience affords many examples of the way in which feelings are called into existence by the imitation of their expressive movements. A child repeats the smiles and the laughter of its parents, and can thus partake of their joy long before it is able to understand its cause. Adult life naturally does not give us many opportunities of observing this pure form of direct and almost automatic transmission. But even in adult life we may often meet with an exchange of feeling which seems almost independent of any intellectual communication. Lovers know it, and intimate friends like the brothers Goncourt, to say nothing of people who stand in so close a rapport with each other as a hypnotiser and his subject. And even where there is no previous sympathetic relation, a state of joy or sadness may often, if it is only distinctly expressed, pass over, so to say, from the individual who has been under the influence of its objective cause, to another who, as it were, borrows the feeling, but remains unconscious of its cause. We experience this phenomenon almost daily in the influence exerted upon us by social intercourse, and even by those aspects of nature--for instance, blue open sky or overhanging mountains--which naturally call up in us the physical manifestation of emotional states. The coercive force with which our surroundings--animate or inanimate--compel us to adopt the feelings which are suggested by their attitudes, forms, or movements, is perhaps as a rule too weak to be noticed by a self-controlled, unemotional man. But if we want an example of this influence at its strongest, we need but remember how difficult it is for an individual to resist the contagion of collective feeling. On public occasions the common mood, whether of joy or sorrow, is often communicated even to those who were originally possessed by the opposite feeling. So powerful is the infection of great excitement that--according to M. F?r?--even a perfectly sober man who takes part in a drinking bout may often be tempted to join in the antics of his drunken comrades in a sort of second-hand intoxication, "drunkenness by induction." In the great mental epidemics of the Middle Ages this kind of contagion operated with more fatal results than ever before or afterwards. But even in modern times a popular street riot may often show us something of the same phenomenon. The great tumult in London in 1886 afforded, it is said, a good opportunity of observing how people who had originally maintained an indifferent attitude were gradually carried away by the general excitement, even to the extent of joining in the outrages. In this instance the contagious effect of expressional movements was undoubtedly facilitated by their connection with so primary an impulse as that of rapine and destruction. But the case is the same with all the activities which appear as the outward manifestations of our strongest feeling-states. They all consist of instinctive actions with which every one is well familiar from his own experience. It is therefore natural that anger, hate, or love may be communicated almost automatically from an individual to masses, and from masses to individuals.

In point of fact we can observe in the manifestations of all strong feelings which have not found a satisfactory relief in individual expression, a pursuit of social resonance. A happy man wants to see glad faces around him, in order that from their expression he may derive further nourishment and increase for his own feeling. Hence the benevolent attitude of mind which as a rule accompanies all strong and pure joy. Hence also the widespread tendency to express joy by gifts or hospitality. In moods of depression we similarly desire a response to our feeling from our surroundings. In the depth of despair we may long for a universal cataclysm to extend, as it were, our own pain. As joy naturally makes men good, so pain often makes them hard and cruel. That this is not always the case is a result of the increased power of sympathy which we gain by every experienced pain. Moreover, we have need of sympathetic rapport for our motor reactions against pain. All the active manifestations of sorrow, despair, or anger which are not wholly painful in themselves are facilitated by the reciprocal influence of collective excitement. Thus all strong feelings, whether pleasurable or painful, act as socialising factors. This socialising action may be observed at all stages of development. Even the animals seek their fellows in order to stimulate themselves and each other by the common expression of an overpowering feeling. As has been remarked by Espinas, the flocking together of the male birds during the pairing season is perhaps as much due to this craving for mutual stimulation as to the desire to compete for the favour of the hen. The howling choirs of the macaws and the drum concerts of the chimpanzees are still better and unmistakable instances of collective emotional expression. In man we find the results of the same craving for social expression in the gatherings for rejoicing or mourning which are to be met with in all tribes, of all degrees of development. And as a still higher development of the same fundamental impulse, there appears in man the artistic activity.

The more conscious our craving for retroaction from sympathisers, the more there must also be developed in us a conscious endeavour to cause the feeling to be appropriated by as many as possible and as completely as possible. The expressional impulse is not satisfied by the resonance which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able to afford. Its natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings under the influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish the refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful echo--that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead to artistic production. The work of art presents itself as the most effective means by which the individual is enabled to convey to wider and wider circles of sympathisers an emotional state similar to that by which he is himself dominated.

We propose in the next chapter to indicate the way in which art in its various forms has served the expressional craving.

DEDUCTION OF ART-FORMS

The purest and most typical expression of simple feeling is that which consists of mere random movements. Those activities, whether of the whole body or of special parts,--the larynx, for instance,--which follow immediately upon, or rather accompany, a state of pleasure or pain, are in themselves entirely non-aesthetic. Thus it is impossible to see anything artistic in the spectacle of a man leaping or shouting for joy. Yet the lowest kind of lyrical music and lyrical "gymnastic" dance may be almost as directly connected with the original state of feeling as these purely expressional activities. The only difference is that in music and dance the movements have been limited and restrained by the adoption of a fixed sequence in time. This fixed sequence in time--the rhythm--must therefore, from our point of view, be considered as the simplest of all art-forms.

As evidence of the irresistibility with which a rhythmical expression may rouse an audience to an almost unvoluntary imitation, one may refer to the familiar effects of the southern dances. The tarantella, as is well known, often entices the unwilling as well as the willing to join in its wild movements. And the same is said of several other Spanish and Italian dances. We need only refer to the apologue of the Fandango, so often used as a motive of ballets, in which the dance, brought into court for causing disturbance, compels judge and jury to yield to its temptations and dissolve the sitting for a fierce gambade. Such stories give an exaggerated yet typical example of the great influence which the sight of dancing exercises on the lively Latin nations. An impassive Northerner can indeed always master the impulse to join actively in a wild dance. But even he cannot avoid sharing the excitement by internal imitation.

It is, however, impossible to decide with any exactitude whether the effects which a dance-performance exercises on the spectators are mainly due to the movements themselves or to the rhythm by which they are regulated. In order, therefore, to estimate at its proper value the importance of time, it is necessary to examine it as it appears when isolated from bodily movement. The lowest types of music, in which the element of melody is of no importance, show us rhythm in its simplest and purest form. Such instruments as drums, tom-toms, and castanets may serve as a most effective means of emotional excitation. The same exaltation or depression, which in a dance is conveyed by a series of varied expressive movements, may be transmitted with almost equal effectiveness by a simple sequence of sounds. Any group of acoustic impressions following each other in a fixed rhythm may, independently of their character, arouse in the listener the same modifications of functions and activities, and hence also the same emotional state, as was originally expressed by this particular time-sequence. Thus pure feeling, as it appears when abstraction has been made of all intellectual elements, can be as it were exteriorised in rhythmical form. And, which is of still greater importance, a pure feeling can in this exteriorisation be fixed down for future repetition. Even in its simplest manifestations art is thus capable of raising an emotional state beyond the limitations of space and time.

It is most natural, when speaking of the connection between feeling and rhythm, to refer to dance and the simplest vocal and instrumental music. But it goes without saying that the effects are the same in kind, although less in degree, when the time-sequence is impressed upon our mind in some more indirect way. Thus, by appropriating the element of rhythm, which enters into all poetry, we may in reciting or reading a verse partake of an emotional state in the same way as we do when joining, actively or "internally," the movements of a dance. Similarly, the formative and decorative arts may, by compelling our eye to follow a regular arrangement of lines and figures, transmit to us an emotional excitement by the mediation of rhythm. Ornament, that purely popular art, may therefore be compared as to its psychological effects with simple popular dances and melodies.

In these three logically most primordial arts, viz. gymnastic dance, geometric ornament, and unmelodic, simply rhythmical music or singing, the unmotived "objectless" feeling is expressed in a medium which directly conveys to us its accompanying modifications of activity. Notwithstanding the meagreness of their intellectual content, these purely lyrical forms, if we may so call them, are therefore emotionally suggestive to a high degree. General and indistinct moods, such as a feeling of ease, of liberation from restraint, of assurance and power, etc., may by them be transmitted with unsurpassable fidelity. But their expressive power is also confined to such purely hedonic states. Whenever, therefore, the feeling forms a part of a differentiated and fully formed emotion, the impulse to social expression must avail itself of some more adequate means of transmission.

In point of fact there will nearly always, even in the most impulsive outburst of pleasure or pain, enter an element of simple dramatic representation, by which some of the mental qualities distinctive of the various emotions are communicated. With regard to dancing, for instance, we can only speak in the abstract of any simply "gymnastic" forms. Even if the movements originally aim at nothing but enhancement or relief for an indistinct emotional state, they will unavoidably take the character of such movements as have been connected with some emotion, and thereby, in spectators as well as in performers, awaken some faint revival of this complex state of feeling. This process can be very clearly observed in the case of the pseudo-pantomimes which are so general among lower tribes. When a savage is in a high-strung state of feeling, he generally resorts to the same movements which have served him to express the greatest and most frequent excitements of his life. Among warlike tribes the dances of joy, as well as their developments, salutation dances, and complimentary dances, generally have a distinct military character. No doubt it may be contended that the particular character of these pantomimes was originally a result of political considerations. In a military state of society it is perhaps simply a measure of safety to receive strangers with threats. But however important this utilitarian aspect may be, it seems more probable that a great part of these apparently unmotived pantomimes, which are executed when we should expect only a simple outburst of joy, are best interpreted as real instances of borrowed expression, necessitated by the limitations of our means of expression and furthered by associative processes.

In the life of self-contained educated men we do not generally meet with this phenomenon in so distinct a form. But even here the fragmentary pantomimes into which a man often falls when mastered by a quite indistinct feeling--we need only refer to the erotic character of embraces and other gestures of joy--show us that expression always adds an element of definiteness to the psychical state expressed. When treating of the reactions consequent upon bodily pain, we have already had to take into account the species of imaginative materialisation, as though pain were a concrete thing, a shirt of Nessus, by which a sufferer is generally induced to explain his automatic movements. Here we need only point out that a similar, so to speak, mythogenic influence, a natural tendency to personification, results not only from reactions to pain, but also from all expressive activities. An indistinct mood of pleasure thus generally passes over into a joy--that is, a feeling which is referred to some cause, imaginary or real--when the functional enhancement has reached our voluntary muscles. An oppression, which in its origin may be purely physiological, is transformed, when the bodily modifications become more differentiated, into fear of something unknown--for instance, some impending danger.

Since it is so difficult for the individual himself to perceive a mental state as one of pure sensation with no element of thought, we need not wonder that his expression always transmits to the spectator something more than the mere excitement or depression of simple feeling. However strictly we try to isolate the pure rhythm of a lyrical performance, there will always slip into it an element of mimetic expression--we do not know of a better adjective--which suggests a mental state, distincter and better defined than that of pure feeling. In reality, therefore, the dramatic forms of dancing are no less primordial than those purely rhythmical manifestations which the necessities of treatment have compelled us to consider as a separate group. It is also evident that the dramatic or mimetic element will increase in importance as the endeavour to represent mental states and transmit them to outsiders becomes more conscious and deliberate.

It may be thought that the above described processes occur only in those arts which can be called dramatic in the proper sense of the word. If this were the case, the principle of emotional transmission by direct imitation would of course be of very restricted aesthetic importance. We think, however, that a histrionic element can be noticed, with greater or less distinctness, no doubt, in all the various forms of artistic production. It certainly enters into literature, where popular authors, especially of the sentimental class, always possessed the secret of suggesting feelings by representing their manifestations in "contagious" description. And it plays an important part in all the arts of design, formative as well as decorative.

We may often catch ourselves faintly imitating movements or attitudes represented in sculpture. And this influence of suggestion is felt not only, as Professor Lange thinks, in the case of melodramatic sculpture--expressive of the most violent passions--it contributes also, in no slight degree, to our enjoyment of the forms which represent the gentler moods. However calm and impassive the facial expression of a statue may be, the attitude of the body will always communicate to us a feeling of some kind, of strength and assurance, or perhaps of settled melancholy.

In the art of painting this mimetic principle tends to be lost among the descriptive elements. The direct transmission of feeling is replaced by an indirect and associative one. Still, there are few works, if any, in which the histrionic factor is entirely lacking. It may be detected with especial clearness in sentimental or comic figure-painting, which often literally infects us with the emotions it represents. When looking at a Japanese caricature, for instance, of the gods of happiness, we often laugh with the laughter of the picture long before we have realised the cause of it, or formulated any judgment as to the artistic merits of the representation.

It is true that pictorial art has many branches in which the human figure does not appear at all. But this absence does not by any means entail a complete loss of mimetic suggestiveness. As our perceptions, whether of animate or inanimate objects, are always accompanied by a complete or abortive imitation, any kind of form or movement may call forth in us activities distinctive of some emotional mood. Just as a rhythmic series of simple acoustic or visual impressions may occasion in us the functional modifications accompanying simple feeling, and thereby arouse in us the mental state of which this rhythm is an exteriorisation, so the mimic movements which are the physiological counterparts of distinct emotion may be, so to speak, translated into lines and forms, by which the emotion is reproduced in other minds. Thus even an object of handicraft--a vase, for instance--may, by the suggestiveness of its shape, affect our emotional life in an almost immediate way. And geometric ornament has an equal, if not even greater, power of conjuring up in us emotional states, which we read into the angles and volutes. Finally, the concrete objects of nature are full of "expressive qualities" which make them available as a means of conveying our feelings. The whole world of visual reality can thus be used in a kind of indirect mimetism,--a dramatic expression, so to speak, in which natural and abstract forms replace the human body.

The course of our argument has led us to emphasise the lyrical and dramatic elements in artistic activity. But we do not by any means wish to underrate the fact that it is only a very small minority of works the nature of which can be exhaustively described by these two qualities. With increased importance of the intellectual elements accompanying the emotional states, direct emotional suggestion must unavoidably appear an inadequate means of communication. A joy or a sorrow, together with a notion of some objective cause of it, rapture or admiration, anger, hate, or despair,--all these and similar states can be completely conveyed to an outsider only in so far as they have been accounted for to his intellect. As the theoretically latest manifestation of the craving for social expression there will thus appear an impulse to represent or describe objective events or things, by which a feeling similar to that of the producing artist may be called forth in his audience. And thus in almost all art-forms, in ornament and music as well as in painting and novels, there will be found an imitation of nature which serves what in the widest use of the term we may call an epic purpose.

The intellectual justification of a feeling by representation of a cause and the orderly form of its direct or secondary expression are, however, in themselves insufficient to secure a response; the attention and goodwill of the audience must first be conciliated. A sympathetic rapport always presupposes a state of compliance in at least one of the parties involved. When seeking by means of a work of art to obtain a response to an overmastering feeling the artist is thus constrained to exercise persuasion upon his real or fictitious public. As M. Sully-Prudhomme has finely remarked, it is only by first caressing our senses that art rouses our feelings and awakens our thoughts. Besides that element of beauty which can be immediately derived from the expressed content, and that element of gracefulness which follows as result of the psychical freedom attained by expression, there are in nearly all works of art qualities whose aim is exclusively to please. If we may risk a somewhat audacious parallel, we may say that the work of art, in the same way as a living organism, an animal or a plant, entices the attention and charms the senses with the beauty of its "means of attraction," not for the sake of these attractions themselves, but for the secret they at the same time conceal and disclose. All these allurements might easily cause a superficial observer to lose sight of the simple fact which lies at the bottom of the artistic work, viz. the feeling-state which demands expression and response. We thus see why the impulse to attract by pleasing has been considered as synonymous with the art-impulse.

As has already been remarked, such an interpretation cannot account for the coercive force of the artistic impulse. And equally with the theories based upon the epic or descriptive elements in art, it is incompatible with the principle of the unity of art. If the logical evolution of the art-forms is conceived in the way we have described, all the various manifestations of artistic activity can be derived from one common principle. And by the aid of this one principle we are able to explain the force of that impulse which, with similar coercive force, urges to creation within the various art-forms.

However much the artistic impulse may become differentiated with the progress of culture, its innermost nature will always remain the same. However complex its manifestations, their aim is always to secure a faithful response to an overmastering feeling. The more accomplished the work of art, the more its creator will become independent of the chance audience, which by its sympathetic expression produces an enhancing retroaction on his feeling. He learns to give his mental states an embodiment which facilitates their reproduction in wider surroundings. Thus the expressional impulse directs him to place himself in sympathetic rapport with a fictitious public. He creates, that is to say, expresses himself, for an ideal spectator,--for posterity or for himself. With a proud indifference to his most immediate social environment, he may thus consider his own production as perfectly exempt of any social motivation. The aphorism of Mill, "All poetry is a soliloquy," would no doubt be accepted by many of the most eminent poets. But the psychological observer cannot help remarking that in such soliloquies the ego serves as a substitute for an external public. The artist has in a sense a double capacity; and artistic creation in solitude may be always explained by the fact that the creator exists also as his own spectator.

The production of even the most individualistic and most isolated artists can therefore be explained only by sociological considerations. And the same is the case with those artists who work only for posterity. It would be wrong to say that art in any one of its higher manifestations aims at transmitting a feeling. Its purpose is far rather an immortalisation. But this very desire to perpetuate a mental state, this desire which constrains the artist to strive indefatigably for the attainment of a form, capable of imparting to all men of every country and every age the same enhancement and the same rapture which he has himself experienced--this highest manifestation of the expressional impulse--can be fully explained only by reference to the enhancing and relieving power of social expression. In whatever light the art-impulse may appear to the reflecting consciousness of the producing artist, this is the only consistent interpretation at which we can arrive by an examination of the artistic activity on psychological grounds.

ART THE RELIEVER

In the endeavour to secure the transmission and perpetuation of a feeling, the expressional activity gradually loses its purely impulsive character. From an almost reflex outlet for abnormal nervous pressure, it is more and more transformed into deliberate artistic production, which is conscious of its aim as well as of the means for attaining it. The elaboration of a work of art, in which the expression of a feeling-state is to be concentrated, and concentrated in a way which not only facilitates but even enforces in the spectator the assimilation of this state, is a complicated operation which cannot of course take place without the effectual co-operation of intellectual and volitional activities. And their co-operation, on the other hand, must evidently exercise some influence on the primordial feeling.

It is a familiar observation, duly emphasised in all psychological handbooks, that strong feelings make clear thought impossible. Everyday experience, as well as scientific experiment, gives unmistakable evidence of the influence which abnormal excitement or depression exercises, not only on our ideas and their associations, but even on the perceptions. The converse has perhaps not been stated so often. Still, it does not admit of doubt that intensified intellectual activity may, in some cases, even more effectually than motor reaction, overcome the tyranny of a hypernormal feeling. It is true that every mental state becomes more distinct as a phenomenon of consciousness when our thoughts are directed towards it. Feelings of low and moderate intensity may even be enhanced in their purely emotional aspect if we let our intellect play on them. But as soon as a greater intensity of feeling is reached, this relation is reversed. Joy which is so great as to be a burden, "Die Noth der F?lle," and numbing despair, must inevitably decrease when there is an increase of distinctness in their intellectual elements. The more we can compel ourselves to contemplate with cool and clear attention the causes and manifestations of such high-strung states, the more we are also able to master them. It is a familiar experience to everyone that strong fear can be vanquished, if only we can succeed in diverting all our attention to its objective source, and "stare the danger in the face." When the attention is concentrated and intensified to the utmost degree, it may even, as in the case of fascination, entirely prevent, to our own danger, the very rise of this self-preserving emotion.

Thus, to begin with, by its character as a palpable, objective reality, the work of art may diminish the subjective disturbance in which it originates. This influence is supplemented by the retroaction of the aesthetic qualities, in the narrowest sense of the term, such as beauty, symmetry, and the like, by which an artist always seeks, intentionally or unintentionally, to arrest the attention of his public. The more therefore the work grows in definiteness in the thought and under the hand of the artist, the more it will repress and subdue the chaotic tumult of emotional excitement. The Dionysiac rapture, as the ancients would have said, gives place to Apolline serenity. In language pruned of mythological symbolism, this only means that art is better able than any of the immediate expressional activities to give complete and effective relief from emotional pressure. And it further implies that however earnestly an artist may strive to communicate to his public the exact feeling he has himself experienced, the emotional content expressed in his work will always be of another and more harmonious character than the mental state by which his production was originally called into existence. To the extent that artistic form appears in a given work or manifestation there will also be present, independently of the subject,--cheerful or sad, passionate or calm,--a sense of mental liberation, which atones for the excesses of emotional excitement.

In a final and exhaustive treatment of aesthetic problems this influence of artistic form would need to be traced through all the departments of art-activity. And it would be one of the most interesting parts of such a research to estimate the relative power with which art in its various branches is able to assuage at the same time as it excites. We need not here undertake such a thorough comparative examination of the different arts. What has been said about literary creation may be applied in substance to formative production as well. And it even remains true with regard to those most lyrical and immediately expressive arts which seem to be altogether destitute of objective form and intellectual content. Although it has often been said that the lowest kinds of music are purely emotional manifestations, we may still discern an element of form in the rhythm which regulates even the simplest songs and dances. And the creation of this form undoubtedly requires a certain amount of conscious intention and intellectual activity. It is therefore natural that the intensest and most abnormally enhanced feeling should exclude the possibility of rhythmical movement. Exalted joy and violent despair are in their external manifestations not only inharmonious and ungraceful, but also unrhythmic. But by subjecting the expression to the yoke of a fixed time order we may succeed in harmonising it. And while the regular recurrence of intervals facilitates our movements--which thereby gain in ease and gracefulness--the vehemence of our feeling will be abated. Thus it is possible that although rhythm powerfully reinforces musical or dramatic excitement, it may at the same time exercise a restraining influence on hypernormal feeling. And its effects in music and dance show us, in the simplest and most comprehensive of all examples, the importance of artistic form. The musical katharsis or relief to sensation always involves stimulation, but it may nevertheless affect us as a sedative. The more the form-element and attention to form gain in prominence, the more effectual also is the relieving influence of art. Where the stimulative element is predominant in a work of art, there the relief is less complete.

This contrast, which can be observed at all stages of artistic development, is eminently conspicuous in ancient art, where high and low forms are often to be found in close juxtaposition. The superiority of Greek music over Phrygian music was a favourite topic of the old writers on art, and the legend of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas served as a mythological variation on the same theme. Lyre and flute stood as symbols for two different classes of art, of which one was violent, orgiastic, and barbarous, while the other was calm in its Olympian serenity.

When trying to summarise our researches on the differences between artistic and non-artistic expression of emotional states in a comprehensive conclusion, we are again led to that eminently illustrative instance--the Bacchantic condition of the ancient Maenads. We have seen that in their description of Dionysiac mania the classical authors enumerate almost all the various orgiastic manifestations which can be found in all periods in different parts of the world. And if ancient literature affords us an epitome of the various expedients to which the expressional impulse resorts in its endeavour to enhance and relieve an emotional state, the force of this craving for expression, on the other hand, nowhere appears with such convincing clearness as in the Dionysiac monuments of classical art.

The frieze around the Bacchic candelabra in the Louvre proves better than any psychological analysis to how great a degree the Dionysiac state is alloyed with pain and the longing for relief. If these Maenads be compared with the figures on the great vases in the British Museum and with the various Agave reliefs, it will still more conclusively appear that it is real distress which compels the dancers to seek in ever-increasing excitement deliverance from the burden of their feelings. No movement could be more eloquently expressive of the corresponding psychical state than the peculiar toss on the head and the backward curve of the upper trunk which can always be recognised in the most violent of the dancers. An approach to this attitude sometimes appears, as Spencer remarks in his essay on the Physiology of Laughter, in movements of great joy, which has not been able to find expression by the usual channels of discharge. But there is no doubt that, however pleasurable the quality of the original state may have been, its tone must have been radically transformed before it could produce these strained postures. A feeling which distorts the body by its efforts to find relief, which is not satisfied with the wild cries, the dances, and all the madness of the Bacchic intoxication, must in its abnormal exaggeration be perceived as a pain. The pathological character of this feeling appears further from the fact that the very same movement may be observed in Pierre Breughel's paintings of hysteric patients and in M. Charcot's photographs from La Salp?tri?re. And this same backward toss of the head may be seen in sculptures of witches, the mediaeval Bacchantes, where it sometimes gives an impression of proud and insolent defiance, sometimes one of profound melancholy. But in the reliefs representing Bacchic orgies, side by side with the dancers whose distorted attitude and violent movements betray the pain underlying the appearance of revel and riot, there may always be seen the figures of women moving with easy and graceful step. The freedom of their motion shows that they at least have found deliverance from the oppression of overstrung feeling. The nervous tension which in their companions manifests itself in unrhythmic, inharmonious leapings and withings, has in their case found relief and given place to a feeling of rest and calm. This expression of peace in their faces, attitudes, and draperies affords an instructive comment on the Greek notion of Dionysos, the god of music, who, with all his wildness is none the less able to still the tempests of overpowering feelings.

This god of music, as conceived by those who gave him a place among the Olympians, was not a symbol of dissolute pleasure. On the contrary, the myths tell us how those who oppose his ritual themselves fall victims to a mania even more violent than the Bacchic frenzy itself. His devotees, on the other hand, receive from the stirring notes of his flute and cymbals a determinate form and mould for their otherwise vehement and irregular expression-movements. Their joy loses its defiant and barbaric character, their black despair is dissolved into gentle sadness. Rightly, therefore, was Dionysos saluted as a deliverer when, with his merry crew, he marched from village to village. Like him art moves among men, ennobling their joy and blunting the edge of their sufferings.

THE WORK OF ART

According to an old theory the classical drama originated in the Dionysiac cultus. The artistic development of savage and barbarous tribes supplies many analogies which strongly support this view. The simplest drama and the most primitive poetry have in most nations been connected with orgiastic rites which, from the psychological point of view, closely resemble the Bacchic ceremonies. But we may go still further. It has been contended on good grounds that even the formative arts made their earliest appearance on the occasion of great public festivals. It might seem that if this view could only be corroborated by a sufficient body of ethnological evidence, there would be no need of any further argument in favour of the emotionalistic interpretation of art. Granted that the simplest manifestations of all the different arts served primarily as means of heightening a festive mood, then the psychological origin of the artistic activity ought to be ascertained by an analysis of high-pitch feeling. The same mental causes and conditions which called forth the most primitive manifestations of art, and determined their character, may naturally be assumed to have influenced in greater or less degree the higher forms as well. And thus in further support of our view we might simply refer to the study of a typical exaltation with which the preceding chapter was concluded.

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