point--senses,
emotions, intellect; and, if criticism is to go deep, it must ground
upon psychological reasons. Now the mere artist can never be a
psychologist; the art critic may, but seldom will; hence, as they will
not come over to us, some of us must go over to them. The Art discussion
of the greatest fountains of human feeling--love and anger--would react
with advantage upon the very difficult psychology of these emotions, so
long the sport of superficiality.

[AESTHETICS: HEDONICS.]

But I hold that aesthetics is but a corner of a larger field that is
seldom even named among the sciences of mind; I mean human happiness as
a whole, "eudaemonics," or "hedonics," or whatever you please to call
it. That the subject is neglected, I do not affirm; but it is not
cultivated in the proper place, or in the proper light-giving
connection--that is to say, under the psychology of the human feelings.
It should have at once a close reference to psychology, and an
independent construction; while either in comprehending aesthetics, or
in lying side by side with that, it would give and receive illumination.
The researches now making into the laws and limits of human sensibility,
if they have any value, ought to lead to the economy of pleasure and the
abatement of pain. The analysis of sensation and of emotion points to
this end. Whoever raises any question as to human happiness should refer
it, in the first instance, to psychology; in the next, to some general
scheme that would answer for a science of happiness; and, thirdly, to an
induction of the facts of human experience; the three distinct appeals
correcting one another. If psychology can contribute nothing to the
point, it confesses to a desideratum for future inquirers.

[HEDONICS SEPARATE FROM ETHICS.]

I am not at all satisfied with the coupling of happiness with ethics, as
is usually done. Ethics is the sphere of duty; happiness is mentioned
only to be repressed and discouraged. This is not the situation for
unfolding all the blossoms of human delight, nor for studying to allay
every rising uneasiness. He would be a rare ethical philosopher that
would permit full scope to such an operation within his grounds; neither
Epicurus nor Bentham could come up to this mark. But even if the thing
were permitted, the lights are not there; it is only by combining the
parent psychology and the hedonic derivative, that the work can be done.
It is neither disrespect nor disadvantage