If we name over the various arts and skills which appeal to the different senses, we find that there are: (1) for vision: architecture, sculpture, painting, decorative arts, arts of acting and of dancing; (2) for hearing: music, poetry, oratory; (3) for smell: perfumery; (4) for taste: cookery; (5) for touch and the muscle sense: dancing and gymnastics. Out of this list we see that it is only the arts which appeal to the eye and ear (dancing, only in its visual aspect) that are recognized as esthetic. Allowing, however, that the beautiful or esthetic object must be something which makes a direct appeal to the eye or ear — that it is primarily either visible or audible — we may still insist that the other senses are often involved in furnishing attendant imagery to the esthetic conscious

ness.

As elements of beauty, we often speak of warmth, coolness, softness of a color; sweetness of a tone; smoothness, strength, vigor, elasticity in line. Of course these. terms are metaphors, but the qualities which they refer to call up imagery of the cutaneous, gustatory and muscular kinds. Again, our motor apparatus is "taken in" by the rhythms and tempos in music; and the stimulation to movement often makes up the larger part of the enjoyment both of music and the visual arts. Finally, we may argue that esthetic consciousness includes organic sensations when it includes strong emotion. The beautiful object, then, does make a reference to other than the visual and auditory senses; the imagery of these other senses is present as a fringe, a background, or a cloud of associations. Indeed, the more senses there are involved in observing the object, the more the subject is absorbed in the object \(one of the criteria of esthetic feeling). If the sensuous

IMAGE AND IDEA

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appeal is profound and elaborate, we are all the more captured by the work of art.

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Image and Idea. That which an artist has to convey is sometimes referred to as his "idea," to distinguish it from the exact form which he adopts as its vehicle. It would be better perhaps to call it his meaning or emotional theme". Now, ideas and emotional themes never appear in consciousness without some kind of sensuous accompaniment or label attached to them. This sensuous accompaniment is the image, it is the stuff or filling, the visual, auditory, tactile quality or aspect of consciousness; whereas the idea or theme is that for which the image stands, is its meaning or signification.

Logical Function of the Image. For logical and practical purposes, mental images are merely means to some further end, and the precise look or sound of them is less important than the precise meaning. The same piece of work may be done, or the same logical conclusion reasoned out, by quite different sorts of mental imagery. In a quotation given above, Dr. Lay says that he can estimate a minute if he imagines a piece of music, about a minute in length, being played. Another person might be able to estimate a minute by imagining himself walking a certain distance. In these two cases the same piece of work is performed-estimating an interval. This practical accomplishment can also be expressed in the form of a logical conclusion. Dr. Lay's reasoning would be like this: "This piece of music takes a minute to play. I have now mentally heard it played through. Therefore a minute must now have elapsed." And the other would say: "It takes me one minute to walk

a block. I have now imagined all the steps in that distance. Therefore a minute must now have elapsed." From the point of view of this logical or practical purpose, then, we can say that the imagery is dependent upon personal peculiarity, and that its exact sensuous character is irrelevant. To take another illustration, suppose we ask a picnic party to recall the spot where they ate their lunch on a bygone day. One may say: "It was up on the hill; I remember the sound of the brook up there." Another: "Yes, it was on the hill; I remember the view we got." And a third: "I remember it by the climbing we had to do," etc. work has been done. By different members of the group have answered the question, all arriving at the same conclusion, though the associative link or mediating image was different for each one.

Here again a bit of mental

means of associations the

Images are not only serviceable in enabling us to reproduce former experiences, but they have an even more important function in enabling us to look out for the future. Thus our hypothetical picnic friends can do other things with their respective images besides finding the answer to our question. The one who recalled the sound of the brook might conclude that this would be an excellent spot for poetic composition; while the one who recalled the burden and heat of climbing might resolve to choose a different place for rambling or lunching. In this way the imagery of their past experience would play a part in altering future action. We must notice, too, that before affecting future action the image itself undergoes some change. In the mind of

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one person the imagery of the brook has become allied with the imagery of poetic composition. The person who resolves to give up climbing the hill has some imagery in mind corresponding to that resolve. This might be the motor image of climbing plus some motor image of negation, such as shaking the head or speaking the words, "I won't go there again." Or it might be the image of walking on level ground (which would amount to the negation of climbing). When images begin to shift in this way, they are no longer simply reproductive of past happenings, but are creative, and are indicative of some new line of action to be followed.

Reproductive images, we have just said, are those which re-present old experience; such images are vicarious percepts. But consciousness always has some reference to the future, and we never quite want, or quite get, old experience over again. There are many degrees of change, and all we can say is that reproductive images are those which show the least degree of change.

The Esthetic Significance of the Image. However indifferent the exact content of the image may be for logical and practical purposes, it is always, in the field of art and esthetics, a matter of the utmost importance. This point has been stated to everybody's satisfaction in this famous passage of Pater's from the essay on The School of Giorgione:

"It is the mistake of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music, and painting - all the various products of art as but translations into different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour, in painting-of sound in music of rhythmical words, in poetry. In this way, the sensuous element in art,

and with it almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is made a matter of indifference; and a clear apprehension of the opposite principle that the sensuous material of each art brings with it a special phase or quality of beauty, untranslatable into the forms of any other, an order of impressions distinct in kind - is the beginning of all true esthetic criticism."

In admitting a difference between the practical and the esthetic function of the image we want to be careful not to admit too much. In a later chapter we shall argue that art is ultimately practical. What we admit here is that logical and practical purposes are not always artistic.

Creative Imagination. When a new thing is examined whether it be a machine, a melody, a drama or what not - it always turns out to be no more than a new arrangement of old elements. Creation is rearrangement. The novelty is the combination. This process of creation, however, is one of those things that will not dance to our piping; the new combination does not take form at our mere command; we cannot compel invention. New ideas seem rather to come by grace, when they come at all. Poets, painters, machine-inventors, in short, originators of whatever kind, speak of ideas as having "inspired" or "seized" them, thoughts as having "occurred" to them. Thus an artist who had been commissioned to paint the frieze of a certain room, and to whom no directions had been given as to the nature of his composition, said that as soon as he looked at the space he was to fill he saw his whole design in every detail exactly as he afterward executed it. But while invention is always a little in the nature of something which springs