When such principles as we have tried to formulate are admitted, the
world of aesthetic judgments can be organized and some consensus about
the beautiful achieved. Without an approach to a consensus, the aesthetic
impulse can never be content; for it is indefeasibly sociable. Agreement
in judgments depends upon a common experience, and this also art can
provide. For beauty is constituted of elementary reactions to sense
stimuli which are well-nigh universal among men, and of symbols and
meanings which can be learned like any language. The delight in harmony
and balance, order and symmetry and rhythm, and again, the pleasure
in the unique and well finished, are felt by every one. The entire
form side of art, its structure or design, is based on fundamental and
enduring elements of human nature. The symbolism of sensation, its
musical expressiveness, as we have called it, is rooted likewise in
reactions and interpretations that either are, or may become, through
suggestion and training, common property. There are, of course, the
people who have no feeling for tones, and through defective memory for
tones, no appreciation of musical design; there are also those who are
insensitive to color and line. In many cases, through the training of
the attention, these defects can be overcome; yet, in others, they are
permanent and incurable. This fact limits the universality of art;
oftentimes, when two people are discussing a work, they are not talking
about the same object; for a large part of its potentialities are lost
to one of them.
Pages:
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170