THE SUBSTANCE OF THE EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY   Our examination of the aesthetic theories shows quite plainly that, far from contradicting each other, all of them are driving at one common substance in somewhat different language. What is this substance, this central thread that runs through them? It is that the aesthetic experience is one in which, to use the words of Walter Pater, "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end." Beauty is an impression giving a feeling of completeness in its kind, of self-sufficiency, of significance in, by, and for itself. It is a state of attention, of complete absorption, from which all mental strain is absent, in which the mind is free of desire and will, of straining and striving, calculating and scheming, a mental state of intense interest, yet without intellectual effort bent on understanding or consequent action. Beauty is a state of being in which we are raised above time and place, lifted out of the stream of life, in which there is neither past nor future, neither before nor after, but only the now exists. It is the unique glory of moments of beauty, as has been well said, that "they have nothing to do with business, with the adaptation of means to ends, with the bustle and dust of life. They are impractical and purposeless. They serve no interest and further no cause. They are self-sufficing, and neither point to any good beyond themselves, nor overflow except by accident into any practical activities." No better account of this state of being is to be found than that given by Schopenhauer. He writes: If, raised by the power of the mind, a man relinquished the common way of looking at things, gives up tracing, under the guidance of the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, their relations to each other, the final goal of which is always a relation to his own will; if he thus ceases to consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither of things, and looks simply and solely at the what; if, further, he does not allow abstract thought, the concepts of the reason, to take possession of his consciousness, but, instead of all this, gives the whole power of his mind to perception, sinks himself entirely in this, and lets his whole consciousness be filled with the quiet contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether a landscape, a tree, a mountain, a building, or whatever it may be; inasmuch as he loses himself in this object, i. e. forgets even his individuality, his will, and only continues to exist as the pure subject, the clear mirror of the object, so that it is as if the object alone were there, without any one to perceive it, and he can no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but both have become one, because the whole consciousness is filled and occupied with one single sensuous picture; if thus the object has to such an extent passed out of all relation to something outside it, and the subject out of all relation to the will, then that which is so known is no longer the particular thing as such; but it is the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will at this grade; and therefore, he who is sunk in this perception is no longer individual, for in such perception the individual has lost himself; but he is pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge. . . . In such contemplation the particular thing becomes at once the Idea of its species, and the perceiving individual becomes pure subject of knowledge. In sum: beauty is experience become significant as experience. Beauty is an unique relationship existing between a perceiving subject and a perceived object, the uniqueness consisting in the fact that the subject is completely immersed in the active contemplation of the object as object, a pure form, the subject thus existing in a state of complete intellectual and affective detachment from the world of facts or ideas that are outside the object present to mind. Such experience or activity is intrinsic, disinterested, objective, significant as form, psychically distanced, therefore reposeful, and therefore also cathartic. On the other hand, when experience or activity becomes significant because of its consequences it is practical. Such experience or activity is extrinsic, interested, subjective, significant as meaning, psychically close, therefore restless and troublesome. And when practical experience becomes obnoxious, repugnant, it is ugly. Beauty is, in a word, pure experience. And whenever such experience is aroused by some object or phenomenon in nature, that object or phenomenon is termed beautiful. Whenever such experience is aroused by any product of man that product is called an art work.		Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty The Substance of the Experience of Beauty The Service of Art Art As Release Beauty in Music Painting Poetry