PART III

FORM

_There is a beauty of form._

Sec. 19. The most remarkable and characteristic problem of aesthetics
is that of beauty of form. Where there is a sensuous delight, like
that of colour, and the impression of the object is in its elements
agreeable, we have to look no farther for an explanation of the
charm we feel. Where there is expression, and an object indifferent
to the senses is associated with other ideas which are interesting,
the problem, although complex and varied, is in principle
comparatively plain. But there is an intermediate effect which is
more mysterious, and more specifically an effect of beauty. It is
found where sensible elements, by themselves indifferent, are so
united as to please in combination. There is something unexpected
in this phenomenon, so much so that those who cannot conceive its
explanation often reassure themselves by denying its existence. To
reduce beauty of form, however, to beauty of elements would not
be easy, because the creation and variation of effect, by changing
the relation of the simplest lines, offers too easy an experiment in
refutation. And it would, moreover, follow to the comfort of the
vulgar that all marble houses are equally beautiful.

To attribute beauty of form to expression is more plausible. If I
take the meaningless short lines in the figure and arrange them in
the given ways, intended to represent the human face, there appear
at once notably different aesthetic values.

[Illustration of long and short lines]

[Illustration of lines arranged into three facial profiles]

Two of the forms are differently grotesque and one approximately
beautiful. Now these effects are due to the expression of the lines;
not only because they make one think of fair or ugly faces, but
because, it may be said, these faces would in reality be fair or ugly
according to their expression, according to the vital and moral
associations of the different types.

Nevertheless, beauty of form cannot be reduced to expression
without denying the existence of immediate aesthetic values
altogether, and reducing them all to suggestions of moral good. For
if the object expressed by the form, and from which the form
derives its value, had itself beauty of form, we should not advance;
we must come somewhere to the point where the expression is of
something else than beauty; and this something else would of
course be some practical or moral good. Moralists are fond of such