of the photoplay. We studied the mere act of perceiving the
pictures on the screen, of perceiving their apparently plastic
character, their depth, and their apparent movements. We turned then to
those psychical acts by which we respond to the perceived impressions.
In the foreground stood the act of attention, but then we followed the
play of associations, of memory, of imagination, of suggestion, and,
most important of all, we traced the distribution of interest. Finally
we spoke of the feelings and emotions with which we accompany the play.
Certainly all this does not exhaust the mental reactions which arise in
our mind when we witness a drama of the film. We have not spoken, for
instance, of the action which the plot of the story or its social
background may start in our soul. The suffering of the poor, the
injustice by which the weak may be forced into the path of crime, and a
hundred other social motives may be impressed on us by the photoplay;
thoughts about human society, about laws and reforms, about human
differences and human fates, may fill our mind. Yet this is not one of
the characteristic functions of the moving pictures. It is a side effect
which may set in just as it may result from reading the newspapers or
from hearing of practical affairs in life. But in all our discussions we
have also left out another mental process, namely, esthetic emotion. We
did speak about the emotions which the plot of the play stirs up. We
discussed the feelings in which we sympathize with the characters of the
scene, in which we share their suffering and their joy; and we also
spoke about that other group of emotions by which we take a mental
attitude toward the behaviour of the persons in the play. But there is
surely a third group of feelings and emotions which we have not yet
considered, namely, those of our joy in the play, our esthetic
satisfaction or dissatisfaction. We have omitted them intentionally,
because the study of this group of feelings involves a discussion of the
esthetic process as such, and we have left all the esthetic problems for
this second part of our investigation.

If we disregard this pleasure or displeasure in the beauty of the
photoplay and reflect only on the processes of perception, attention,
interest, memory, imagination, suggestion, and emotion which we have
analyzed, we see that we everywhere come to the same result. One general
principle seemed to control the whole mental mechanism of the