History
may tell us what men did, but only the poet or other artist can make
us relive the values of their experience. For through expression they
make their memories, or their interpretations of other men's memories,
ours. Art is the memory of the race, the conserver of its values.
The distinguishing characteristics of aesthetic expression observed by
us--the pleasurableness of the medium, the enhanced unity--serve
intuition as that has been described by us. One of the strongest
objections against the theory of art as intuition, as that theory has
been developed by Croce, for example, is that it provides no place for
charm. Yet without charm there is no complete beauty, and any
interpretation of the facts of the aesthetic experience which neglects
this element is surely inadequate. But charm although an indispensable,
is not an independent, factor in the experience of art; for it serves
intuition. It does so in two ways. The charm of the medium, by drawing
attention to itself, increases the objectivity of the experience
expressed. Even when the experiences felt into color and line and sound
are poignantly our own, to live pleasantly in any one of these
sensations is to live as an object to oneself, the life sharing the
externality of the medium--we put our life out there more readily when
it is pleasant there. And the charm of the medium serves intuition in
another way. When the activities of thought and feeling and imagination
released by the work of art are delightful, they become more delightful
still if the medium in which they function is itself delightful.
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