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ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
THE CENTURY “PHIL@SOPHY SERIES
Justus Buchler, Editor
ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
JOHN HOSPERS, Editor

University of Southern California
Ey APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS
AcC Educational Division
New Yok MEREDITH CORPORATION
24554
Copyright © 1971 by
MEREDITH CORPORATION
All rights reserved
This book, or parts thereof, must not

be used or reproduced in any manner
without written permission. For infor-
mation address the publisher, Appleton-
Century-Crofts, Educational Division,
Meredith Corporation, 440 Park
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721-1
Library of Congress Card Number: 71-142225
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
390-46187-3
CONTENTS
PART | THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS
Introduction
Lro Toutstoy
Art as Communication
Ww BENEDETTO CROCE
Art, Intuition, and Expression 16
R. G. CoLLincwoop
Art as Expression 26
Joun Hospers
The Croce-Collingwood Theory of Art 51
Ww
Joun DEWEY
The Act of Expression 72
C. J. Ducasse
Art and the Language of the Emotions 95
Selected Readings 102

v1 CONTENTS
PART II THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT
Introduction 107
EpMuUND GURNEY
Music as Impressive and Music as Expressive

GEORGE SANTAYANA
Expression
W ASSILY KANDINSKY
The Expressiveness of Colors
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
Expression and Association 204
11 RupoLtF ARNHEIM
Expressiveness 218
12 O. K. BouwsMa
The Expression ‘Theory of Art 224
13 VINCENT ‘Tomas, Douctas Morcan, Monroe BEarDsLEY

The Concept of Expression in Art 250
14 Monroe BEARDSLEY
Musical Expression 288
wy Guy SIRCELLO
Expressive Predicates of Art
Selected Readings
Index
PART |
rls
EVAPINs
soi WAe
BN@EESS
INTRODUCTION
When a work of art is created, in what does the creation consist? At

least in this, that the various elements in a medium are combined in
new ways in which they did not exist before. A composer creates a
symphony; the notes in the scale existed before, but the exact com-
bination of notes he writes on the score did not. If they did and he
knew it, he was a copyist and not a creator. And if a poet creates a
poem, the words he writes on paper existed before he put them
down, but they did not previously exist in just the combination in
which he placed them. He can, of course, juxtapose words in such
combinations that the resulting product is entirely worthless; the
fact of creating something does not imply that what one creates is
worthwhile. What makes it creation is one thing; and what makes
it worthwhile or valuable creation is another.
But when the creative artist puts together the words or paints
or tones in new and unique ways, what else is occurring? Specifically,
what is going on within him? Many things, one would be inclined
to say—and not the same things in different creators. Some artists
seem to be on fire with feeling when they create, and in the throes
of some grand passion; others are cold as ice, planning their creation
3
4 THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS
step by step with the calm detachment of a bricklayer. Some artists
write or compose by means of a prepared plan, and follow it through
exactly at so many words or pages per day, while others have no plan
at all, but proceed pretty much as their inspiration leads them from
moment to moment, spending days gazing at an empty paper or
canvas waiting for lightning to strike, and working with uninter-
rupted zeal and abandon when it does. Some artists get their ideas
best if they compose at the piano or at the easel, but others create
best staring at the wall or at the ocean without dabbling in their
chosen medium but only (perhaps) imagining it. And there are
countless gradations between these extremes.
But what is happening in—shall we say his mind, or his soul, or
his head? As far as his inner life is concerned, what is he doing?
According to one theory, what is going on in artistic creation can be
summarized in one word: expression. The artist is expressing. What
is he expressing? Already at this point different people say different
things: he is expressing himself; he is expressing his feelings; he is
expressing feeling in general, or some specific feeling, but not his
feeling; or he is expressing thoughts or ideas or something else other
than feeling. That art is in some sense the expression of feeling is
the heart of the Expression Theory of Art, with which we are con-
cerned in Part I of this book.
When asked, “What is the artist doing when he creates?” some
would say simply, “He is expressing himself.” ‘This answer is so com-
monplace today that it apparently raises few eyebrows. Many artists
would accept it without question, adding perhaps, “So what else is
new?” This was not always so: in pre-Romantic days it would prob-
ably not even have been understood. When asked, “What are you
doing?” Bach would surely not have said, “I am expressing myself.”
He might just have said that he was putting notes on paper (stand-
ing for tones) in new and different combinations. (In our own cen-
tury, Stravinsky has called himself “a painter in tones.) But the
answer would not have seemed strange to artists in the Romantic
era, nor does it in our own day when Romanticism as a movement
has declined but its legacy is still with us.
Yet it is not a very informative answer; one might even say that
an artist is expressing himself no matter what words or notes he
writes on the paper. In any case, the answer tells us virtually nothing
about what specifically the artist is doing, and nothing whatever
about whether his work has any worth. A child daubing a paper with
THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS 5
colored crayon-marks could be said to be expressing himself, though
the product of his efforts is usually not worth looking at except
possibly to a fond parent or a probing psychiatrist.
The artist might, however, answer more specifically: “I am
expressing my thoughts.” He would be most likely to say this if his
work were an essay or an expository textbook or a treatise on science
or some other body of knowledge. Such a work might have aesthetic
value, such as crispness of style and neatness of organization, but
most works devoted specifically to the exposition of thoughts or ideas
are not usually counted as works of art.
One might also give another answer: “I am expressing my feel-
ings (or perhaps, I am expressing feelings).” With this answer we
come closer to the Romantic view of art. Wordsworth said that
poetry is (presumably, that the creation of poetry is) “the sponta-
neous overflow of powerful feelings.” The nineteenth-century writer
Eugene Véron, one of the founders of expressionism as a theory of
aesthetics, wrote that art is “the emotional expression of human per-
sonality.” Whether from the works of creators, critics, or philoso-
phers of art, the association of art with feeling is characteristic of
the Romantic conception of art.
There is, of course, much expression of feeling that is not art: a
child cries or smiles or has a tantrum; a man expresses his resentment
by engaging vigorously in some activity such as pounding with a
hammer or throwing wood on the fire. In a popular sense at least, he
is expressing his feelings by engaging in such activities. But some
philosophers of art would remind us that it is not artistic expression
until the artist has grappled with some resisting medium, such as
paints or tones or words, and undergone the difficult process of
bending them to his will. Indeed, many would say that such activi-
ties as the child having a tantrum constitute only a release or dis-
charge of feeling, not an expression of it; expression, they would say,
requires a medium, and this is not present in a smile or a tantrum.
(See the selection by John Dewey in this Part.) They might also
admit that the child expresses a feeling in the very different but
popular sense of revealing it to others (without necessarily intending
to): When a child laughs he is revealing to others that he is happy
—that is, others may infer from his laugh how he feels—but yet he is
not engaged in the process of expressing his feeling; at least he is
not consciously engaged in the same endeavor as the poet when he
is trying to find the right words.
6 THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS
The expressive process has now been distinguished from other
ones which are easily confused with it. Expression, then, is not these
other things; but what is it? The expression theorist does not content
himself with merely saying that the artist is creating something—
with this everyone would agree, even when they may disagree on the
value of what is created; he is saying that the artist is expressing
something. And what precisely is it that he is doing when he does
this? At this point the various answers emerge which constitute the
bulk of the readings in Part I. According to Croce and Collingwood,
expression is a process—largely unconscious—that takes place in the
mind of the artist, a process of the inchoate gradually becoming clar-
ified and ordered, of scattered feelings and intuitions gradually be-
coming transmuted into words and tones cast in the artist’s chosen
medium; and when the artist’s final conception of the work is present
“to his mind’s eye” (whether or not it yet exists on paper or canvas),
the expressive process is complete. (This theory of the expressive
process is critically evaluated in the selection by John Hospers.)
According to Dewey, expression is a process taking place not in the
artist’s mind but in interaction between the artist and his physical
medium (not as conceived in his mind, but as embodied in his
physical material) —it would be foolish to say he had expressed any-
thing until he has produced something in the physical world. Ac-
cording to Tolstoy, the labor within the artist’s own soul is not
enough: the feeling that impelled the artist must be communicated
to an audience, and the expressive process is not complete until this
communication has been achieved. (In some versions, such as Tol-
stoy’s, the feeling transmitted to the audience must be “the very
same” as the feeling that impelled the artist—though how one can
know that this has been achieved, and what its value is, supposing
it has been achieved, are points of criticism of Tolstoy’s view.)
According to Ducasse, the expressive process consists not in being
animated by feelings or clarifying them to oneself or even in com-
municating them to other minds, but in objectifying them—“putting
the feeling into the work,” as it were, so that viewers and listeners
can find it there. But once we speak of objectification of feeling
(“feeling in the work of art’), the question arises of how to construe
this figure of speech, of what can be meant by a feeling being or
residing in a work of art. This takes us to the problem of Part II.
Let us first allow the writers on the expressive process to speak
for themselves.
1
LEOm OL SrOY,
ART AS
COMMUNICATION
What is art if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses

the whole matter? The latest and most comprehensible definitions of
art, apart from the conception of beauty, are the following:—(1) a,
Art is an activity arising even in the animal kingdom, and springing
from sexual desire and the propensity to play (Schiller, Darwin,
Spencer), and b, accompanied by a pleasurable excitement of the
nervous system (Grant Allen). This is the physiological-evolutionary
definition. (2) Art is the external manifestation, by means of lines,
colours, movements, sounds, or words, of emotions felt by man
(Véron). This is the experimental definition. According to the very
latest definition (Sully), (3) Art is ‘the production of some perma-
nent object or passing action which is fitted not only to supply an
active enjoyment to the producer, but to convey a pleasurable im-
pression to a number of spectators or listeners, quite apart from any
personal advantage to be derived from it.’
Notwithstanding the superiority of these definitions to the meta-
From Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?, Chapters 5 and 15. Translated by Aylmer
Maude. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
7
8 LEO TOLSTOY
physical definitions which depended on the conception of beauty,
they are yet far from exact. The first, the physiological-evolutionary
definition (1) a, is inexact, because instead of speaking about the
artistic activity itself, which is the real matter in hand, it treats of
the derivation of art. The modification of it, b, based on the physio-
logical effects on the human organism, is inexact because within the
limits of such definition many other human activities can be in-
cluded, as has occurred in the neo-esthetic theories which reckon as
art the preparation of handsome clothes, pleasant scents, and even
of victuals.
The experimental definition, (2), which makes art consist in the
expression of emotions, is inexact because a man may express his
emotions by means of lines, colours, sounds, or words and yet may
not act on others by such expression—and then the manifestation of
his emotions is not art.
The third definition (that of Sully) is inexact because in the
production of objects or actions affording pleasure to the producer
and a pleasant emotion to the spectators or hearers apart from per-
sonal advantage, may be included the showing of conjuring tricks
or gymnastic exercises, and other activities which are not art. And
further, many things the production of which does not afford plea-
sure to the producer and the sensation received from which is un-
pleasant, such as gloomy, heart-rending scenes in a poetic description
or a play, may nevertheless be undoubted works of art.
The inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact that
in them all (as also in the metaphysical definitions) the object
considered is the pleasure art may give, and not the purpose it may
serve in the life of man and of humanity.
In order to define art correctly it is necessary first of all to cease
to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it as one of the
conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to
observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and
man.
Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind
of relationship both with him who produced or is producing the art,
and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently,
receive the same artistic impression.
Speech transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men serves
as a means of union among them, and art serves a similar purpose.
ART AS COMMUNICATION .
The peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it
from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by
words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by art he transmits
his feelings.
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man receiving
through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of
feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the
man who expressed it. To take the simplest example: one man
laughs, and another who hears becomes merry, or a man weeps, and
another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and
another man seeing him is brought to a similar state of mind. By
his movements or by the sounds of his voice a man expresses courage
and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind
passes on to others. A man suffers, manifesting his sufferings by
groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people;
a man expresses his feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or
love, to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are in-
fected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or
love, to the same objects, persons, or phenomena.
And it is on this capacity of man to receive another man’s ex-
pression of feeling and to experience those feelings himself, that the
activity of art is based.
If a man infects another or others directly, immediately, by his
appearance or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he
experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he
himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself is
obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is suffering—
that does not amount to art.
Art begins when one person with the object of joining another
or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feel-
ing by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a
boy having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, re-
lates that encounter, and in order to evoke in others the feeling he
has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the en-
counter, the surroundings, the wood, his own lightheartedness, and
then the wolf’s appearance, its movements, the distance between
himself and the wolf, and so forth. All this, if only the boy when
telling the story again experiences the feelings he had lived through,
and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what he had ex-
10 LEO TOLSTOY
perienced—is art. Even if the boy had not seen a wolf but had fre-
quently been afraid of one, and if wishing to evoke in others the fear
he had felt, he invented an. encounter with a wolf and recounted it
so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he
feared the wolf, that also would be art. And just in the same way it
is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the
attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination), ex-
presses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are in-
fected by them. And it is also art if a man feels, or imagines to
himself, feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or
despondency, and the transition from one to another of these feel-
ings, and expresses them by sounds so that the hearers are infected
by them and experience them as they were experienced by the
composer.
The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most
various—very strong or very weak, very important or very insignifi-
cant, very bad or very good: feelings of love of one’s country, self-
devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed in a drama,
raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of voluptuousness
expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a triumphal march,
merriment evoked by a dance, humour evoked by a funny story, the
feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a
lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque
—it is all art.
If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings
which the author has felt, it is art.
To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced and hay-
ing evoked it in oneself then by means of movements, lines, colours,
sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that
others experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art.
Art is a human activity consising in this, that one man con-
sciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feel-
ings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these
feelings and also experience them.
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some
mysterious Idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the esthetic physiolo-
gists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy;
it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not
the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure;
ART AS COMMUNICATION I]
but it is a means of union among men joining them together in the
same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards
well-being of individuals and of humanity.
As every man, thanks to man’s capacity to express thoughts by
words, may know all that has been done for him in the realms of
thought by all humanity before his day, and can in the present,
thanks to this capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become
a sharer in their activity and also himself hand on to his contem-
poraries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others
as well as those that have arisen in himself; so, thanks to man’s
capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art,
all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to
him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years
ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings
to others.
If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts conceived
by men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own
thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kasper Hauser.t
And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art,
people might be almost more savage still, and above all more sepa-
rated from, and more hostile to, one another.
And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as
important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.
As speech does not act on us only in sermons, orations, or books,
but in all those remarks by which we interchange thoughts and ex-
periences with one another, so also art in the wide sense of the word
permeates our whole life, but it is only to some of its manifestations
that we apply the term in the limited sense of the word.
We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear
and see in theatres, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings,
statues, poems, and novels. . . . But all this is but the smallest part
of the art by which we communicate with one another in life. All
human life is filled with works of art of every kind—from cradle-song,
jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, to
1‘The foundling of Nuremberg,’ found in the marketplace of that town on 23rd

May 1828, apparently some sixteen years old. He spoke little and was almost
totally ignorant even of common objects. He subsequently explained that he had
been brought up in confinement underground and visited by only one man,
whom he saw but seldom.
12 LEO TOLSTOY
church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It
is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word,
we do not mean all human, activity transmitting feelings but only
that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we
attach special importance.
This special importance has always been given by men to that
part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their reli-
gious perception, and this small part they have specifically called art,
attaching to it the full meaning of the word.
That was how men of old—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—
looked on art. Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Chris-
tians regard art. Thus it was, and still is, understood by the Moham-
medans, and thus it still is understood by religious folk among our
own peasantry.
Some teachers of mankind—such as Plato in his Republic, and
people like the primitive Christians, the strict Mohammedans, and
the Buddhists—have gone so far as to repudiate all art.
People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent
view of to-day which regards any art as good if only it affords plea-
sure) held and hold that art (as contrasted with speech, which need
not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its power to infect
people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by banishing
all art than by tolerating each and every art.
Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they
denied what cannot be denied—one of the indispensable means of
communication without which mankind could not exist. But not less
wrong are the people of civilized European society of our class and
day in favouring any art if it but serves beauty, that is, gives people
pleasure.
Formerly people feared lest among works of art there might
chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art alto-
gether. Now they only fear lest they should be deprived of any en-
joyment art can afford, and they patronize any art. And I think the
last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are
far more harmful.
Art in our society has become so perverted that not only has
bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of
what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about
ART AS COMMUNICATION 13
the art of our society it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distin-
guish art from counterfeit, art.
There is one indubitable sign distinguishing real art from its
counterfeit—namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man without
exercising effort and without altering his standpoint, on reading,
hearing, or seeing another man’s work experiences a mental condition
which unites him with that man and with others who are also af-
fected by that work, then the object evoking that condition is a
work of art. And however poetic, realistic, striking, or interesting, a
work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling
(quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union
with another (the author) and with others (those who are also
infected by it).
It is true that this indication is an internal one and that there
are people who, having forgotten what the action of real art is, expect
something else from art (in our society the great majority are in this
state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this esthetic
feeling the feeling of diversion and a certain excitement which they
receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to unde-
ceive these people just as it may be impossible to convince a man
suffering from colour-blindness that green is not red, yet for all that,
this indication remains perfectly definite to those whose feeling for
art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the
feeling produced by art from all other feelings.
The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the recipient of a
truly artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if
the work were his own and not some one else’s—as if what it ex-
presses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real
work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separa-
tion between himself and the artist, and not that alone, but also
between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this
freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this
uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great
attractive force of art.
If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels
this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has
effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not
this union with the author and with others who are moved by the
same work—then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign
14 LEO TOLSTOY
of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of
excellence in art.
The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art, speaking
of it now apart from its subject-matter—that is, not considering the
value of the feelings it transmits.
And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three
conditions :—
(1) On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling trans-
mitted; (2) on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling
is transmitted; (3) on the sincerity of the artist, that is, on the
greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion
he transmits.
The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly
does it act on the recipient; the more individual the state of soul
into which he is transferred the more pleasure does the recipient
obtain and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it.
Clearness of expression assists infection because the recipient
who mingles in consciousness with the author is the better satisfied
the more clearly that feeling is transmitted which, as it seems to him,
he has long known and felt and for which he has only now found
expression.
But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased
by the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator,
hearer, or reader, feels that the artist is infected by his own produc-
tion and writes, sings, or plays, for himself, and not merely to act on
others, this mental condition of the artist infects the recipient; and,
on the contrary, as soon as the spectator, reader, or hearer, feels that
the author is not writing, singing, or playing, for his own satisfaction
—does not himself feel what he wishes to express, but is doing it for
him, the recipient—resistance immediately springs up, and the most
individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not
only fail to produce any infection but actually repel.
I have mentioned three conditions of contagion in art, but they
may all be summed up into one, the last, sincerity; that is, that the
artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling.
That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will
express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different
from every one else, his feeling will be individual for every one else;
and the more individual it is—the more the artist has drawn it from
ART AS COMMUNICATION 1
the depths of his nature—the more sympathetic and sincere will it
be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find clear ex-
pression for the feeling which he wishes to transmit.
Therefore this third condition—sincerity—is the most important
of the three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this ex-
plains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition
almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually
produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or
vanity.
Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counter-
feits, and which also decide the quality of every work of art con-
sidered apart from its subject-matter.
The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work
from the category of art and relegates it to that of art’s counterfeits.
If the work does not transmit the artist’s peculiarity of feeling and is
therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it has
not proceeded from the author's inner need for expression—it is not
a work of art. If all these conditions are present even in the smallest
degree, then the work even if a weak one is yet a work of art.
The presence in various degrees of these three conditions: indi-
viduality, clearness, and sincerity, decides the merit of a work of art
as art, apart from subject-matter. All works of art take order of merit
according to the degree in which they fulfil the first, the second, and
the third, of these conditions. In one the individuality of the feeling
transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of expression; in
a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and individuality
but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and clearness, but
less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and combinations.
Thus is art divided from what is not art, and thus is the quality
of art, as art, decided, independently of its subject-matter, that is to
say, apart from whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad.
2
BENEDETTO CROCE
ART, INTUITION,
AND EXPRESSION
Knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical

knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowl-
edge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or
knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations
between them: it is, in fact, productive either of images or of con-
cepts.
In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge.
It is said that we cannot give definitions of certain truths; that they
are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intui-
tively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who
possesses no lively intuition of actual conditions; the educational
theorist insists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty
in the pupil before everything else; the critic in judging a work of
art makes it a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions,
and to judge it by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live
rather by intuition than by reason.
From Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic (2nd ed.), 1922, Chapter 1. Translated

by Douglas Ainslie. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, New
York; Peter Owen, Ltd., London; and The Vision Press, Ltd., London, pub-
lishers.
16
ART, INTUITION, AND EXPRESSION 17
But this ample acknowledgment granted to intuitive knowledge
in ordinary life, does not correspond to an equal and adequate ac-
knowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists
a very ancient science of intellectual knowledge, admitted by all
without discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowl-
edge is timidly and with difficulty asserted by but a few. Logical
knowledge has appropriated the lion’s share; and if she does not slay
and devour her companion outright, yet yields to her but grudgingly
the humble place of maid-servant or doorkeeper—What can intui-
tive knowledge be without the light of intellectual knowledge? It is
a servant without a master; and though a master find a servant use-
ful, the master is a necessity to the servant, since he enables him to
gain his livelihood. Intuition is blind; intellect lends her eyes.
Now, the first point to be firmly fixed in the mind is that intui-
tive knowledge has no need of a master, nor to lean upon any one;
she does not need to borrow the eyes of others, for she has excellent
eyes of her own. Doubtless it is possible to find concepts mingled
with intuitions. But in many other intuitions there is no trace of
such a mixture, which proves that it is not necessary. ‘The impression
of a moonlight scene by a painter; the outline of a country drawn
by a cartographer; a musical motive, tender or energetic; the words
of a sighing lyric, or those with which we ask, command and lament
in ordinary life, may well all be intuitive facts without a shadow of
intellectual relation. But, think what one may of these instances, and
admitting further the contention that the greater part of the intui-
tions of civilized man are impregnated with concepts, there yet re-
mains to be observed something more important and more con-
clusive. Those concepts which are found mingled and fused with the
intuitions are no longer concepts, in so far as they are really mingled
and fused, for they have lost all independence and autonomy. ‘They
have been concepts, but have now become simple elements of intui-
tion. The philosophical maxims placed in the mouth of a personage
of tragedy or of comedy, perform there the function, not of concepts,
but of characteristics of such personage; in the same way as the red
in a painted face does not there represent the red colour of the
physicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait. The whole
is that which determines the quality of the parts. A work of art may
be full of philosophical concepts; it may contain them in greater
abundance and they may there be even more profound than in a
philosophical dissertation, which in its tum may be mich to over-
18 BENEDETTO CROCE
flowing with descriptions and intuitions. But notwithstanding all
these concepts the total effect of the work of art is an intuition; and
notwithstanding all those intuitions, the total effect of the philo-
sophical dissertation is a concept. The Promessi Sposi contains
copious ethical observations and distinctions, but does not for that
reason lose as a whole its character of simple story or intuition. In
like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions to be found in the
works of a philosopher like Schopenhauer do not deprive those works
of their character of intellectual treatises. The difference between a
scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellectual fact
and an intuitive fact, lies in the difference of the total effect aimed
at by their respective authors. This it is that determines and rules
over the several parts of each, not these parts separated and con-
sidered abstractly in themselves.
But to admit the independence of intuition as regards concept
does not suffice to give a true and precise idea of intuition. Another
error arises among those who recognize this, or who at any rate do
not explicitly make intuition dependent upon the intellect, to obscure
and confuse the real nature of intuition. By intuition is frequently
understood perception, or the knowledge of actual reality, the appre-
hension of something as real.
Certainly perception is intuition: the perceptions of the room in
which I am writing, of the ink-bottle and paper that are before me,
of the pen I am using, of the objects that I touch and make use of
as instruments of my person, which, if it write, therefore exists;—
these are all intuitions. But the image that is now passing through
my brain of a me writing in another room, in another town, with
different paper, pen and ink, is also an intuition. This means that
the distinction between reality and non-reality is extraneous, sec-
ondary, to the true nature of intuition. If we imagine a human mind
having intuitions for the first time, it would seem that it could have
intuitions of actual reality only, that is to say, that it could have
perceptions of nothing but the real. But since knowledge of reality
is based upon the distinction between real images and unreal images,
and since this distinction does not at the first moment exist, these
intuitions would in truth not be intuitions either of the real or of
the unreal, not perceptions, but pure intuitions. Where all is real,
nothing is real. The child, with its difficulty of distinguishing true
from false, history from fable, which are all one to childhood, can
furnish us with a sort of very vague and only remotely approximate
idea of this ingenuous state. Intuition is the undifferentiated unity
of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible.
In our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves as empirical beings to
external reality, but we simply objectify our impressions, whatever
they be.
Those, therefore, who look upon intuition as sensation formed
and arranged simply according to the categories of space and time,
would seem to approximate more nearly to the truth. Space and
time (they say) are the forms of intuition; to have an intuition is to
place it in space and in temporal sequence. Intuitive activity would
then consist in this double and concurrent function of spatiality and
temporality. But for these two categories must be repeated what was
said of intellectual distinctions, when found mingled with intuitions.
We have intuitions without space and without time: the colour of a
sky, the colour of a feeling, a cry of pain and an effort of will,
objectified in consciousness: these are intuitions which we possess,
and with their making space and time have nothing to do. In some
intuitions, spatiality may be found without temporality, in others,
vice versa; and even where both are found, they are perceived by
later reflexion: they can be fused with the intuition in like manner
with all its other elements: that is, they are in it materialiter and
not formaliter, as ingredients and not as arrangement. Who, without
an act of reflexion which for a moment breaks in upon his contem-
plation, can think of space while looking at a drawing or a view?
Who is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or
a piece of music without breaking into it with a similar act of
reflexion? What intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and
time, but character, individual physiognomy. ‘The view here main-
tained is confirmed in several quarters of modern philosophy. Space
and time, far from being simple and primitive functions, are nowa-
days conceived as intellectual constructions of great complexity. And
further, even in some of those who do not altogether deny to space
and time the quality of formative principles, categories and functions,
one observes an effort to unite them and to regard them in a different
manner from that in which these categories are generally conceived.
Some limit intuition to the sole category of spatiality, maintaining
that even time can only be intuited in terms of space. Others
abandon the three dimensions of space as not philosophically neces-
20 BENEDETTO CROCE
sary, and conceive the function of spatiality as void of all particular
spatial determination. But what could such a spatial function be, a
simple arrangement that should arrange even time? It represents,
surely, all that criticism and refutation have left standing—the bare
demand for the affirmation of some intuitive activity in general. And
is not this activity truly determined, when one single function is
attributed to it, not spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing?
Or rather, when it is conceived as itself a category or function which
gives us knowledge of things in their concreteness and individuality?
Having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion of
intellectualism and from every later and external addition, we must
now explain it and determine its limits from another side and defend
it from a different kind of invasion and confusion. On the hither side
of the lower limit is sensation, formless matter, which the spirit can
never apprehend in itself as simple matter. This it can only possess
with form and in form, but postulates the notion of it as a mere
limit. Matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity; it is what
the spirit of man suffers, but does not produce. Without it no human
knowledge or activity is possible; but mere matter produces animality,
whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritual dominion,
which is humanity. How often we strive to understand clearly what
is passing within us! We do catch a glimpse of something, but this
does not appear to the mind as objectified and formed. It is in such
moments as these that we best perceive the profound difference
between matter and form. These are not two acts of ours, opposed
to one another; but the one is outside us and assaults and sweeps
us off our feet, while the other inside us tends to absorb and identify
itself with that which is outside. Matter, clothed and conquered by
form, produces concrete form. It is the matter, the content, which
differentiates one of our intuitions from another: the form is con-
stant: it is spiritual activity, while matter is changeable. Without
matter spiritual activity would not forsake its abstractness to become
concrete and real activity, this or that spiritual content, this or that
definite intuition.
It is a curious fact, characteristic of our times, that this very
form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is
so often ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of
man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of what is
called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human
activity, save when we imagine, with Aisop, that “arbores loquuntur
non tantum ferae.” Some affirm that they have never observed in
themselves this “miraculous” activity, as though there were no
difference, or only one of quantity, between sweating and thinking,
feeling cold and the energy of the will. Others, certainly with greater
reason, would unify activity and mechanism in a more general con-
cept, though they are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain
for the moment from examining if such a final unification be pos-
sible, and in what sense, but admitting that the attempt may be
made, it is clear that to unify two concepts in a third implies to
begin with the admission of a difference between the two first. Here
it is this difference that concerns us and we set it in relief.
Intuition has sometimes been confused with simple sensation.
But since this confusion ends by being offensive to common sense,
it has more frequently been attenuated or concealed with a phrase-
ology apparently designed at once to confuse and to distingish them.
Thus, it has been asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so
much simple sensation as association of sensations. Here a double
meaning is concealed in the word “association.” Association is under-
stood, either as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollec-
tion, and in that case the claim to unite in memory elements which
are not intuited, distinguished, possessed in some way by the spirit
and produced by consciousness, seems inconceivable: or it is under-
stood as association of unconscious elements, in which case we re-
main in the world of sensation and of nature. But if with certain
associationists we speak of an association which is neither memory
nor flux of sensations, but a productive association (formative, con-
structive, distinguishing); then our contention is admitted and only
its name is denied to it. For productive association is no longer asso-
ciation in the sense of the sensationalists, but synthesis, that is to
say, spiritual activity. Synthesis may be called association; but with
the concept of productivity is already posited the distinction between
passivity and activity, between sensation and intuition.
Other psychologists are disposed to distinguish from sensation
something which is sensation no longer, but is not yet intellectual
concept: the representation or image. What is the difference between
their representation or image and our intuitive knowledge? Every-
thing and nothing: for “representation” is a very equivocal word. If
by representation be understood something cut off and standing out
ZZ BENEDETTO CROCE
from the psychic basis of the sensations, then representation is
intuition. If, on the other hand, it be conceived as complex sensation
we are back once more in. crude sensation, which does not vary in
quality according to its richness or poverty, or according to whether
the organism in which it appears is rudimentary or highly developed
and full of traces of past sensations. Nor is the ambiguity remedied
by defining representation as a psychic product of secondary degree
in relation to sensation, defined as occupying the first place. What
does secondary degree mean here? Does it mean a qualitative, formal
difference? If so, representation is an elaboration of sensation and
therefore intuition. Or does it mean greater complexity and complica-
tion, a quantitative, material difference? In that case intuition is
once more confused with simple sensation.
And yet there is a sure method of distinguishing true intuition,
true representation, from that which is inferior to it: the spiritual
fact from the mechanical, passive, natural fact. Every true intuition
or representation is also expression. That-which does not objectify
itself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensation
and mere natural fact. The spirit only intuits in making, forming,
expressing. He who separates intuition from expression never suc-
ceeds in reuniting them.
Intuitive activity possesses intuitions to the extent that it ex-
presses them. Should this proposition sound paradoxical, that is partly
because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given to the
word “expression.” It is generally restricted to what are called verbal
expressions alone. But there exist also non-verbal expressions, such
as those of line, colour and sound, and to all of these must be ex-
tended our affirmation, which embraces therefore every sort of mani-
festation of the man, as orator, musician, painter, or anything else.
But be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or in whatever other form
it appear, to no intuition can expression in one of its forms be
wanting; it is, in fact, an inseparable part of intuition. How can we
really possess an intuition of a geometrical figure, unless we possess
so accurate an image of it as to be able to trace it immediately upon
paper or on the blackboard? How can we really have an intuition of
the contour of a region, for example of the island of Sicily, if we are
not able to draw it as it is in all its meanderings? Every one can
experience the internal illumination which follows upon his success
in formulating to himself his impressions and feelings, but only so
far as he is able to formulate them. Feelings or impressions, then,
pass by means of words from the obscure region of the soul into the
clarity of the contemplative spirit. It is impossible to distinguish
intuition from expression in this cognitive process. The one appears
with the other at the same instant, because they are not two, but one.
The principal reason which makes our view appear paradoxical
as we maintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more
complete intuition of reality than we really do. One often hears
people say that they have many great thoughts in their minds, but
that they are not able to express them. But if they really had them,
they would have coined them into just so many beautiful, sounding
words, and thus have expressed them. If these thoughts seem to
vanish or to become few and meagre in the act of expressing them,
the reason is that they did not exist or really were few and meagre.
People think that all of us ordinary men imagine and intuit countries,
figures and scenes like painters, and bodies like sculptors; save that
painters and sculptors know how to paint and carve such images,
while we bear them unexpressed in our souls. They believe that any
one could have imagined a Madonna of Raphael; but that Raphael
was Raphael owing to his technical ability in putting the Madonna
upon canvas. Nothing can be more false than this view. ‘The world
which as a rule we intuit is a small thing. It consists of little ex-
pressions, which gradually become greater and wider with the increas-
ing spiritual concentration of certain moments. They are the words
we say to ourselves, our silent judgments: “Here is a man, here is a
horse, this is heavy, this is sharp, this pleases me,” etc. It is a medley
of light and colour, with no greater pictorial value than would be
expressed by a haphazard splash of colours, from among which one
could barely make out a few special, distinctive traits. This and
nothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life; this is the basis
of our ordinary action. It is the index of a book. The labels tied to
things (it has been said) take the place of the things themselves.
This index and these labels (themselves expressions) suffice for
small needs and small actions. From time to time we pass from the
index to the book, from the label to the thing, or from the slight to
the greater intuitions, and from these to the greatest and most lofty.
This passage is sometimes far from easy. It has been observed by
those who have best studied the psychology of artists that when,
after having given a rapid glance at any one, they attempt to obtain
24 BENEDETTO CROCE
a real intuition of him, in order, for example, to paint his portrait,
then this ordinary vision, that seemed so precise, so lively, reveals
itself as little better than nothing. What remains is found to be at
the most some superficial trait, which would not even suffice for a
caricature. The person to be painted stands before the artist like a
world to discover. Michael Angelo said, “One paints, not with the
hands, but with the brain.” Leonardo shocked the prior of the Con-
vent of the Graces by standing for days together gazing at the “Last
Supper,” without touching it with the brush. He remarked of this
attitude: “The minds of men of lofty genius are most active in
invention when they are doing the least external work.” The painter
is a painter, because he sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse
of, but do not see. We think we see a smile, but in reality we have
only a vague impression of it, we do not perceive all the characteristic
traits of which it is the sum, as the painter discovers them after he
has worked upon them and is thus able to fix them on the canvas.
We do not intuitively possess more even of our intimate friend, who
is with us every day and at all hours, than at most certain traits of
physiognomy which enable us to distinguish him from others. The
illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would
seem strange to every one to say that the composer had added or
attached notes to a motive which was already in the mind of him
who is not the composer; as if Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony were
not his own intuition and his intuition the Ninth Symphony. Now,
just as one who is deluded as to the amount of his material wealth
is confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so he who
nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughts and images
is brought back to reality, when he is obliged to cross the Pons
Asinorum of expression. Let us say to the former, count; to the latter,
speak; or, here is a pencil, draw, express yourself.
Each of us, as a matter of fact, has in him a little of the poet,
of the sculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer:
but how little, as compared with those who bear those names, just
because they possess the most universal dispositions and energies of
human nature in so lofty a degree! How little too does a painter
possess of the intuitions of a poet! And how little does one painter
possess those of another painter! Nevertheless, that little is all our
actual patrimony of intuitions or representations. Beyond these are
only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions, or what-
ART, INTUITION, AND EXPRESSION Z>
ever else one may term what still falls short of the spirit and is not
assimilated by man; something postulated for the convenience of
exposition, while actually non-existent, since to exist also is a fact of
the spirit.
We may thus add this to the various verbal discriptions of intui-
tion, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowl-
edge. Independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual func-
tion; indifferent to later empirical discriminations, to reality and to
unreality, to formations and apperceptions of space and time, which
are also later: intuition or representation is distinguished as form
from what is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or
from psychic matter; and this form, this taking possession, is expres-
sion. To intuit is to express; and nothing else (nothing more, but
nothing less) than to express.
3
R. G. COLLINGW OOD
ART AS EXPRESSION
THE MEANING OF CRAFT
The first sense of the word ‘art’ to be distinguished from art proper
is the obsolete sense in which it means what in this book I shall call
craft. This is what ars means in ancient Latin, and what réxvy
means in Greek: the power to produce a preconceived result by
means of consciously controlled and directed action. In order to
take the first step towards a sound aesthetic, it is necessary to dis-
entangle the notion of craft from that of art proper. In order to do
this, again, we must first enumerate the chief characteristics of craft.
(1) Craft always involves a distinction between means and end,
each clearly conceived as something distinct from the other but re-
lated to it. The term ‘means’ is loosely applied to things that are
used in order to reach the end, such as tools, machines, or fuel.
Strictly, it applies not to the things but to the actions concerned
with them: manipulating the tools, tending the machines, or burning
From R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art. Reprinted by kind permis-

sion of The Clarendon Press, Oxford.
26
ART AS EXPRESSION Zi,
the fuel. ‘These actions (as implied by the literal sense of the word
means) are passed through or traversed in order to reach the end,
and are left behind when the end is reached. This may serve to
distinguish the idea of means from two other ideas with which it is
sometimes confused: that of part, and that of material. The relation
of part to whole is like that of means to end, in that the part is
indispensable to the whole, is what it is because of its relation to the
whole, and may exist by itself before the whole comes into existence;
but when the whole exists the part exists too, whereas, when the end
exists, the means have ceased to exist. As for the idea of material,
we shall return to that in (4) below.
(2) It involves a distinction between planning and execution.
The result to be obtained is preconceived or thought out before being
arrived at. The craftsman knows what he wants to make before he
makes it. ‘This foreknowledge is absolutely indispensable to craft: if
something, for example stainless steel, is made without such fore-
knowledge, the making of it is not a case of craft but an accident.
Moreover, this foreknowledge is not vague but precise. If a person
sets out to make a table, but conceives the table only vaguely, as
somewhere between two by four feet and three by six, and between
two and three feet high, and so forth, he is no craftsman.
(3) Means and end are related in one way in the process of
planning; in the opposite way in the process of execution. In planning
the end is prior to the means. The end is thought out first, and
afterwards the means are thought out. In execution the means come
first, and the end is reached through them.
(4) There is distinction between raw material and finished
product or artifact. A craft is always exercised upon something, and
aims at the transformation of this into something different. That
upon which it works begins as raw material and ends as finished
product. The raw material is found ready made before the special
work of the craft begins.
(5) There is a distinction between form and matter. The matter
is what is identical in the raw material and the finished product; the
form is what is different, what the exercise of the craft changes. ‘To
describe the raw material as raw is not to imply that it is formless,
but only that it has not yet the form which it is to acquire through
‘transformation’ into finished product.
(6) There is a hierarchical relation between various crafts, one
28 R. G. COLLINGWOOD
supplying what another needs, one using what another provides.
There are three kinds of hierarchy: of materials, of means, and of
parts. (a) The raw material of one craft is the finished product of
another. Thus the silviculturist propagates trees and looks after them
as they grow, in order to provide raw material for the felling-men
who transform them into logs; these are raw material for the saw-
mill which transforms them into planks; and these, after a further
process of selection and seasoning, become raw material for a joiner.
(b) In the hierarchy of means, one craft supplies another with tools.
Thus the timber-merchant supplies pit-props to the miner, the miner
supplies coal to the blacksmith; the blacksmith supplies horseshoes
to the farmer; and so on. (c) In the hierarchy of parts, a complex
operation like the manufacture of a motor-car is parcelled out among
a number of trades: one firm makes the engine, another the gears,
another the chassis, another the tyres, another the electrical equip-
ment, and so on; the final assembling is not strictly the manufacture
of the car but only the bringing together of these parts. In one or
more of these ways every craft has a hierarchical character; either as
hierarchically related to other crafts, or as itself consisting of various
heterogeneous operations hierarchically related among themselves.
Without claiming that these features together exhaust the
notion of craft, or that each of them separately is peculiar to it, we
may claim with tolerable confidence that where most of them are
absent from a certain activity that activity is not a craft, and, if it is
called by that name, is so called either by mistake or in a vague and
inaccurate way.
BREAK-DOWN OF THE THEORY
(1) The first characteristic of craft is the distinction between means

and end. Is this present in works of art? According to the technical
theory, yes. A poem is means to the production of a certain state of
mind in the audience, as a horseshoe is means to the production of
a certain state of mind in the man whose horse is shod. And the
poem in its turn will be an.end to which other things are means. In
the case of the horseshoe, this stage of the analysis is easy: we can
enumerate lighting the forge, cutting a piece of iron off a bar, heating
it, and so on. What is there analogous to these processes in the case
ART AS EXPRESSION US
of a poem? The poet may get paper and pen, fill the pen, sit down
and square his elbows; but these actions are preparatory not to com-
position (which may go on in the poet’s head) but to writing. Sup-
pose the poem is a short one, and composed without the use of any
writing materials; what are the means by which the poet composes it?
I can think of no answer, unless comic answers are wanted, such as
‘using a rhyming dictionary,’ ‘pounding his foot on the floor or wag-
ging his head or hand to mark the metre’, or ‘getting drunk’. If one
looks at the matter seriously, one sees that the only factors in the
situation are the poet, the poetic labour of his mind, and the poem.
And if any supporter of the technical theory says ‘Right: then the
poetic labour is the means, the poem the end’, we shall ask him to
find a blacksmith who can make a horseshoe by sheer labour, with-
out forge, anvil, hammer, or tongs. It is because nothing correspond-
ing to these exists in the case of the poem that the poem is not an
end to which there are means.
Conversely, is a poem means to the production of a certain state
of mind in an audience? Suppose a poet had read his verses to an
audience, hoping that they would produce a certain result; and sup-
pose the result were different; would that in itself prove the poem a
bad one? It is a difficult question; some would say yes, others no. But
if poetry were obviously a craft, the answer would be a prompt and
unhesitating yes. The advocate of the technical theory must do a
good deal of toe-chopping before he can get his facts to fit his theory
at this point.
So far, the prospects of the technical theory are not too bright.
Let us proceed.
(2) The distinction between planning and executing certainly
exists in some works of art, namely those which are also works of
craft or artifacts; for there is, of course, an overlap between these two
things, as may be seen by the example of a building or a jar, which
is made to order for the satisfaction of a specific demand, to serve a
useful purpose, but may none the less be a work of art. But suppose
a poet were making up verses as he walked; suddenly finding a line
in his head, and then another, and then dissatisfied with them and
altering them until he had got them to his liking: what is the plan
which he is executing? He may have had a vague idea that if he
went for a walk he would be able to compose poetry; but what were,
so to speak, the measurements and specifications of the poem he
planned to compose? He may, no doubt, have been hoping to com-
pose a sonnet on a particular subject specified by the editor of a
review; but the point is that he may not, and that he is none the less
a poet for composing without having any definite plan in his head.
Or suppose a sculptor were not making a Madonna and child, three
feet high, in Hoptonwood stone, guaranteed to placate the chancellor
of the diocese and obtain a faculty for placing it in the vacant niche
over a certain church door; but were simply playing about with clay,
and found the clay under his fingers turning into a little dancing
man: is this not a work of art because it was done without being
planned in advance?
All this is very familiar. There would be no need to insist upon
it, but that the technical theory of art relies on our forgetting it.
While we are thinking of it, let us note the importance of not over-
emphasizing it. Art as such does not imply the distinction between
planning and execution. But (a) this is merely negative characteristic,
not a positive one. We must not erect the absence of plan into a
positive force and call it inspiration, or the unconscious, or the like.
(b) It is a permissible characteristic of art, not a compulsory one.
If unplanned works of art are possible, it does not follow that no
planned work is a work of art. That is the logical fallacy? that under-
lies one, or some, of the various things called romanticism. It may
very well be true that the only works of art which can be made
altogether without a plan are trifling ones, and that the greatest and
most serious ones always contain an element of planning and there-
fore an element of craft. But that would not justify the technical
theory of art.
(3) If neither means and end nor planning and execution can
be distinguished in art proper, there obviously can be no reversal of
order as between means and end, in planning and execution re-
spectively.
(4) We next come to the distinction between raw material and
finished product. Does this exist in art proper? If so, a poem is made
1 It is an example of what I have elsewhere called the fallacy of precarious mar-
gins. Because art and craft overlap, the essence of art is sought not in the positive
characteristics of all art, but in the characteristics of those works of art which are
not works of craft. Thus the only things which are allowed to be works of art are
those marginal examples which lie outside the overlap of art and craft. This is a
precarious margin because further study may at any moment reveal the character-
istics of craft in some of these examples. See Essay on Philosophical Method.
ART AS EXPRESSION oe
out of certain raw material. What is the raw material out of which
Ben Jonson made Queene and Huntresse, chaste, and faire? Words,
pethaps. Well, what words? A smith makes a horseshoe not out of
all the iron there is, but out of a certain piece of iron, cut off a cer-
tain bar that he keeps in the comer of the smithy. If Ben Jonson did
anything at all like that, he said: ‘I want to make a nice little hymn
to open Act v, Scene vi of Cynthia’s Revels. Here is the English
language, or as much of it as I know; I will use thy five times, to
four times, and, bright, excellently, and goddesse three times each,
and so on.’ He did nothing like this. The words which occur in the
poem were never before his mind as a whole in an order different
from that of the poem, out of which he shuffled them till the poem,
as we have it, appeared. I do not deny that by sorting out the words,
or the vowel sounds, or the consonant sounds, in a poem like this,
we can make interesting and (I believe) important discoveries about
the way in which Ben Jonson’s mind worked when he made the
poem; and I am willing to allow that the technical theory of art is
doing good service if it leads people to explore these matters; but if
it can only express what it is trying to do by calling these words or
sounds the materials out of which the poem is made, it is talking
nonsense.
But perhaps there is a raw material of another kind: a feeling
or emotion, for example, which is present to the poet’s mind at the
commencement of his labour, and which that labour converts into
the poem. ‘Aus meinem grossen Schmerzen mach’ ich die kleinen
Lieder,’ said Heine; and he was doubtless right; the poet’s labour can
be justly described as converting emotions into poems. But this con-
version is a very different kind of thing from the conversion of iron
into horseshoes. If the two kinds of conversion were the same, a
blacksmith could make horseshoes out of his desire to pay the rent.
The something more, over and above that desire, which he must
have in order to make horseshoes out of it, is the iron which is their
raw material. In the poet’s case that something more does not exist.
(5) In every work of art there is something which, in some sense
of the word, may be called form. There is, to be rather more precise,
something in the nature of rhythm, pattern, organization, design, or
structure. But it does not follow that there is a distinction between
form and matter. Where that distinction does exist, namely, in arti-
facts, the matter was there in the shape of raw material before the
form was imposed upon it, and the form was there in the shape of a
preconceived plan before being imposed upon the matter; and as the
two coexist in the finished, product we can see how the matter might
have accepted a different form, or the form have been imposed upon
a different matter. None of these statements applies to a work of art.
Something was no doubt there before a poem came into being; there
was, for example, a confused excitement in the poet’s mind; but,
as we have seen, this was not the raw material of the poem. There
was also, no doubt, the impulse to write; but this impulse was not
the form of the unwritten poem. And when the poem is written,
there is nothing in it of which we can say, ‘this is a matter which
might have taken on a different form’, or ‘this is a form which might
have been realized in a different matter’.
When people have spoken of matter and form in connexion
with art, or of that strange hybrid distinction, form and content, they
have in fact been doing one of two things, or both confusedly at once.
Either they have been assimilating a work of art to an artifact, and
the artist’s work to the craftsman’s; or else they have been using these
terms in a vaguely metaphorical way as means of referring to distinc-
tions which really do exist in art, but are of a different kind. There
is always in art a distinction between what is expressed and that
which expresses it; there is a distinction between the initial impulse
to write or paint or compose and the finished poem or picture or
music; there is a distinction between an emotional element in the
artist’s experience and what may be called an intellectual element.
All these deserve investigation; but none of them is a case of the
distinction between form and matter.
(6) Finally, there is in art nothing which resembles the hierarchy
of crafts, each dictating ends to the one below it, and providing
either means or raw materials or parts to the one above. When a poet
writes verses for a musician to set, these verses are not means to the
musician’s end, for they are incorporated in the song which is the
musician’s finished product, and it is characteristic of means, as we
saw, to be left behind. But neither are they raw materials. The
musician does not transform them into music; he sets them to music;
and if the music which he writes for them had a raw material (which
it has not), that raw material could not consist of verses. What hap-
pens is rather that the poet and musician collaborate to produce a
work of art which owes something to each of them; and this is true
even if in the poet’s case there was no intention of collaborating.
ART AS EXPRESSION 33
Aristotle extracted from the notion of a hierarchy of crafts the
notion of a supreme craft, upon which all hierarchical series con-
verged, so that the various ‘goods’ which all crafts produce played
their part, in one way or another, in preparing for the work of this
supreme craft, whose product could, therefore, be called the ‘supreme
good’.? At first sight, one might fancy an echo of this in Wagner's
theory of opera as the supreme art, supreme because it combines the
beauties of music and poetry and drama, the arts of time and the
arts of space, into a single whole. But, quite apart from the question
whether Wagner’s opinion of opera as the greatest of the arts is
justified, this opinion does not really rest on the idea of a hierarchy
of arts. Words, gestures, music, scenery are not means to opera, nor
yet raw materials of it, but parts of it; the hierarchies of means and
materials may therefore be ruled out, and only that of parts remains.
But even this does not apply. Wagner thought himself a supremely
great artist because he wrote not only his music but his words, de-
signed his scenery, and acted as his own producer. This is the exact
opposite of a system like that by which motorcars are made, which
owes its hierarchical character to the fact that the various parts are
all made by different firms, each specializing in work of one kind.
TECHNIQUE
As soon as we take the notion of craft seriously, it is perfectly obvious

that art proper cannot be any kind of craft. Most people who write
about art to-day seem to think that it is some kind of craft; and this
is the main error against which a modern aesthetic theory must fight.
Even those who do not openly embrace the error itself, embrace
doctrines implying it. One such doctrine is that of artistic technique.
The doctrine may be stated as follows. The artist must have a
certain specialized form of skill, which is called technique. He
acquires his skill just as a craftsman does, partly through personal
experience and partly through sharing in the experience of others
who thus become his teachers. The technical skill which he thus
acquires does not by itself make him an artist; for a technician is
made, but an artist is born. Great artistic powers may produce fine
works of art even though technique is defective; and even the most
2 Nicomachean Ethics, beginning: 1094 a 1-b 10.

finished technique will not produce the finest sort of work in their
absence; but all the same, no work of art whatever can be produced
without some degree of technical skill, and, other things being equal,
the better the technique the better will be the work of art. The
greatest artistic powers, for their due and proper display, demand a
technique as good in its kind as they are in their own.
All this, properly understood, is very true; and, as a criticism of
the sentimental notion that works of art can be produced by any
one, however little trouble he has taken to learn his job, provided his
heart is in the right place, very salutary. And since a writer on art is
for the most part addressing himself not to artists, but to amateurs
of art, he does well to insist on what every artist knows, but most
amateurs do not: the vast amount of intelligent and purposeful
labour, the painful and conscientious self-discipline, that has gone
to the making of a man who can write a line as Pope writes it, or
knock a single chip off a single stone like Michelangelo. It is no less
true, and no less important, that the skill here displayed (allowing
the word skill to pass for the moment unchallenged), though a neces-
sary condition of the best art, is not by itself sufficient to produce it.
A high degree of such skill is shown in Ben Jonson’s poem; and a
critic might, not unfruitfully, display this skill by analysing the
intricate and ingenious patterns of rhythm and rhyme, alliteration,
assonance, and dissonance, which the poem contains. But what makes
Ben Jonson a poet, and a great one, is not his skill to construct such
patterns but his imaginative vision of the goddess and her attendants,
for whose expression it was worth his while to use that skill, and for
whose enjoyment it is worth our while to study the patterns he has
constructed. Miss Edith Sitwell, whose distinction both as poet and
critic needs no commendation, and whose analyses of sound-pattern
in poetry are as brilliant as her own verse, has analysed in this way
the patterns constructed by Mr. T. S. Eliot, and has written warmly
of the skill they exemplify; but when she wishes conclusively to com-
pare his greatness with the littleness of certain other poets who are
sometimes ridiculously fancied his equals, she ceases to praise his
technique, and writes, ‘here we have a man who has talked with
fiery angels, and with angels of a clear light and holy peace, and who
has “walked amongst the lowest of the dead” ’8 It is this experience,
8 Aspects of Modern Poetry, ch. vand p. 251.

she would have us understand, that is the heart of his poetry; it is
the ‘enlargement of our experience’ by his own (a favourite phrase
of hers, and one never used without illumination to her readers) that
tells us he is a true poet; and however necessary it may be that a poet
should have technical skill, he is a poet only in so far as this skill is
not identified with art, but with something used in the service of art.
This is not the old Greco-Roman theory of poet-craft, but a
modified and restricted version of it. When we examine it, however,
we shall find that although it has moved away from the old poet-
craft theory in order to avoid its errors, it has not moved far enough.
When the poet is described as possessing technical skill, this
means that he possesses something of the same nature as what goes
by that name in the case of a technician proper or craftsman. It
implies that the thing so called in the case of a poet stands to the
production of his poem as the skill of a joiner stands to the produc-
tion of a table. If it does not mean this, the words are being used
in some obscure sense; either an esoteric sense which people who use
them are deliberately concealing from their readers, or (more prob-
ably) a sense which remains obscure even to themselves. We will
assume that the people who use this language take it seriously, and
wish to abide by its implications.
The craftsman’s skill is his knowledge of the means necessary to
realize a given end, and his mastery of these means. A joiner making
a table shows his skill by knowing what materials and what tools are
needed to make it, and being able to use these in such a way as to
produce the table exactly as specified.
The theory of poetic technique implies that in the first place a
poet has certain experiences which demand expression; then he con-
ceives the possibility of a poem in which they might be expressed;
then this poem, as an unachieved end, demands for its realization the
exercise of certain powers or forms of skill, and these constitute the
poet’s technique. There is an element of truth in this. It is true that
the making of a poem begins in the poet’s having an experience
which demands expression in the form of a poem. But the description
of the unwritten poem as an end to which his technique is means is
false; it implies that before he has written his poem he knows, and
could state, the specification of it in the kind of way in which a
joiner knows the specification of a table he is about to make. This is
always true of a craftsman; it is therefore true of an artist in those
cases where the work of art is also a work of craft. But it is wholly
untrue of the artist in those cases where the work of art is not a work
of craft; the poet extemporizing his verses, the sculptor playing with
his clay, and so forth. In these cases (which after all are cases of art,
even though possibly of art at a relatively humble level) the artist
has no idea what the experience is which demands expression until
he has expressed it. What he wants to say is not present to him as
an end towards which means have to be devised; it becomes clear to
him only as the poem takes shape in his mind, or the clay in his
fingers.
Some relic of this condition survives even in the most elaborate,
most reflective, most highly planned works of art. That is a problem
to which we must return in another chapter: the problem of reconcil-
ing the unreflective spontaneity of art in its simplest forms with the
massive intellectual burden that is carried by great works of art such
as the Agamemnon or the Divina Commedia. For the present, we
are dealing with a simpler problem. We are confronted with what
professes to be a theory of art in general. To prove it false we need
only show that there are admitted examples of art to which it does
not apply.
In describing the power by which an artist constructs patterns in
words or notes or brush-marks by the name of technique, therefore,
this theory is misdescribing it by assimilating it to the skill by which
a craftsman constructs appropriate means to a preconceived end. The
patterns are no doubt real; the power by which the artist constructs
them is no doubt a thing worthy of our attention; but we are only
frustrating our study of it in advance if we approach it in the
determination to treat it as if it were the conscious working-out of
means to the achievement of a conscious purpose, or in other words
technique. ...
ART AND EXPRESSION
The central and primary characteristic of craft is the distinction it

involves between means and end. If art is to be conceived as craft,
it must likewise be divisible into means and end. We have seen that
actually it is not so divisible; but we have now to ask why anybody
ever thought it was. What is there in the case of art which these
people misunderstood by assimilating it to the well-known distinction
of means and end? If there is nothing, the technical theory of art was
a gratuitous and baseless invention; those who have stated and ac-
cepted it have been and are nothing but a pack of fools; and we have
been wasting our time thinking about it. These are hypotheses I do
not propose to adopt.
(1) This, then, is the first point we have learnt from our criti-
cism: that there is in art proper a distinction resembling that be-
tween means and end, but not identical with it.
(2) The element which the technical theory calls the end is
defined by it as the arousing of emotion. The idea of arousing (i.e.
of bringing into existence, by determinate means, something whose
existence is conceived in advance as possible and desirable) belongs
to the philosophy of craft, and is obviously borrowed thence. But
the same is not true of emotion. This, then, is our second point. Art
has something to do with emotion; what it does with it has a certain
resemblance to arousing it, but is not arousing it.
(3) What the technical theory calls the means is defined by it
as the making of an artifact called a work of art. The making of this
artifact is described according to the terms of the philosophy of
craft: i.e. as the transformation of a given raw material by imposing
on it a form preconceived as a plan in the maker’s mind. To get the
distortion out of this we must remove all these characteristics of
craft, and thus we reach the third point. Art has something to do
with making things, but these things are not material things, made
by imposing form on matter, and they are not made by skill. They
are things of some other kind, and made in some other way.
We now have three riddles to answer. For the present, no at-
tempt will be made to answer the first: we shall treat it merely as a
hint that the second and third should be treated separately. In this
chapter, accordingly, we shall inquire into the relation between art
and emotion; in the next, the relation between art and making.
EXPRESSING EMOTION AND AROUSING EMOTION
Our first question is this. Since the artist proper has something to do
with emotion, and what he does with it is not to arouse it, what is it
that he does? It will be remembered that the kind of answer we
expect to this question is an answer derived from what we all know
and all habitually say; nothing original or recondite, but something
entirely commonplace. |
Nothing could be more entirely commonplace than to say he
expresses them. The idea is familiar to every artist, and to every one
else who has any acquaintance with the arts. To state it is not to
state a philosophical theory or definition of art; it is to state a fact
or supposed fact about which, when we have sufficiently identified it,
we shall have later to theorize philosophically. For the present it
does not matter whether the fact that is alleged, when it is said that
the artist expresses emotion, is really a fact or only supposed to be
one. Whichever it is, we have to identify it, that is, to decide what
it is that people are saying when they use the phrase. Later on, we
shall have to see whether it will fit into a coherent theory.
They are referring to a situation, real or supposed, of a definite
kind. When a man is said to express emotion, what is being said
about him comes to this. At first, he is conscious of having an emo-
tion, but not conscious of what this emotion is. All he is conscious
of is a perturbation or excitement, which he feels going on within
him, but of whose nature he is ignorant. While in this state, all he
can say about his emotion is: ‘I feel . . . I don’t know what I feel.’
From this helpless and oppressed condition he extricates himself by
doing something which we call expressing himself. ‘This is an activity
which has something to do with the thing we call language: he
expresses himself by speaking. It has also something to do with
consciousness: the emotion expressed is an emotion of whose nature
the person who feels it is no longer unconscious. It has also some-
thing to do with the way in which he feels the emotion. As unex-
pressed, he feels it in what we have called a helpless and oppressed
way; as expressed, he feels it in a way from which this sense of
oppression has vanished. His mind is somehow lightened and eased.
This lightening of emotions which is somehow connected with
the expression of them has a certain resemblance to the ‘catharsis’
by which emotions are earthed through being discharged into a make-
believe situation; but the two things are not the same. Suppose the
emotion is one of anger. If it is effectively earthed, for example by
fancying oneself kicking some one down stairs, it is thereafter no
longer present in the mind as anger at all: we have worked it off and
are rid of it. If it is expressed, for example by putting it into hot and
bitter words, it does not disappear from the mind; we remain angry;
but instead of the sense of oppression which accompanies an emotion
of anger not yet recognized as such, we have that sense of alleviation
which comes when we are conscious of our own emotion as anger,
instead of being conscious of it only as an unidentified perturbation.
‘This is what we refer to when we say that it ‘does us good’ to express
our emotions.
The expression of an emotion by speech may be addressed to
some one; but if so it is not done with the intention of arousing a
like emotion in him. If there is any effect which we wish to produce
in the hearer, it is only the effect which we call making him under-
stand how we feel. But, as we have already seen, this is just the
effect which expressing our emotions has on ourselves. It makes us,
as well as the people to whom we talk, understand how we feel. A
person arousing emotion sets out to affect his audience in a way in
which he himself is not necessarily affected. He and his audience
stand in quite different relations to the act, very much as physician
and patient stand in quite different relations towards a drug admin-
istered by the one and taken by the other. A person expressing
emotion, on the contrary, is treating himself and his audience in the
same kind of way; he is making his emotions clear to his audience,
and that is what he is doing to himself.
It follows from this that the expression of emotion, simply as
expression, is not addressed to any particular audience. It is addressed
primarily to the speaker himself, and secondarily to any one who can
understand. Here again, the speaker’s attitude towards his audience
is quite unlike that of a person desiring to arouse in his audience a
certain emotion. If that is what he wishes to do, he must know the
audience he is addressing. He must know what type of stimulus will
produce the desired kind of reaction in people of that particular sort;
and he must adapt his language to his audience in the sense of
making sure that it contains stimuli appropriate to their peculiarities.
If what he wishes to do is to express his emotions intelligibly, he has
to express them in such a way as to be intelligible to himself; his
audience is then in the position of persons who overhear* him doing
this. Thus the stimulus-and-reaction terminology has no applicability
to the situation.
The means-and-end, or technique, terminology too is inappli-
4 Further development of the ideas expressed in this paragraph will make it

necessary to qualify this word and assert a much more intimate relation between
artist and audience.
cable. Until a man has expressed his emotion, he does not yet know
what emotion it is. The act of expressing it is therefore an exploration
of his own emotions. He is trying to find out what these emotions
are. There is certainly here a directed process: an effort, that is, di-
rected upon a certain end; but the end is not something foreseen and
preconceived, to which appropriate means can be thought out in the
light of our knowledge of its special character. Expression is an ac-
tivity of which there can be no technique.
EXPRESSION AND INDIVIDUALIZATION
Expressing an emotion is not the same thing as describing it. ‘To say
‘I am angry’ is to describe one’s emotion, not to express it. ‘The words
in which it is expressed need not contain any reference to anger as
such at all. Indeed, so far as they simply and solely express it, they
cannot contain any such reference. The curse of Ernulphus, as in-
voked by Dr. Slop on the unknown person who tied certain knots, is
a classical and supreme expression of anger; but it does not contain
a single word descriptive of the emotion it expresses.
This is why, as literary critics well know, the use of epithets
in poetry, or even in prose where expressiveness is aimed at, is a
danger. If you want to express the terror which something causes,
you must not give it an epithet like ‘dreadful’. For that describes the
emotion instead of expressing it, and your language becomes frigid,
that is inexpressive, at once. A genuine poet, in his moments of
genuine poetry, never mentions by name the emotions he is ex-
pressing.
Some people have thought that a poet who wishes to express a
great variety of subtly differentiated emotions might be hampered by
the lack of a vocabulary rich in words referring to the distinctions
between them; and that psychology, by working out such a vocab-
ulary, might render a valuable service to poetry. This is the opposite
of the truth. The poet needs no such words at all; the existence or
non-existence of a scientific terminology describing the emotions he
wishes to express is to him a matter of perfect indifference. If such
a terminology, where it exists, is allowed to affect his own use of
language, it affects it for the worse.
The reason why description, so far from helping expression,
actually damages it, is that description generalizes. To describe a
thing is to call it a thing of such and such a kind: to bring it under
a conception, to classify it. Expression, on the contrary, individualizes.
The anger which I feel here and. now, with a certain person, for a
certain cause, is no doubt an instance of anger, and in describing it as
anger one is telling truth about it; but it is much more than mere
anger: it is a peculiar anger, not quite like any anger that I ever felt
before, and probably not quite like any anger I shall ever feel again.
To become fully conscious of it means becoming conscious of it not
merely as an instance of anger, but as this quite peculiar anger.
Expressing it, we saw, has something to do with becoming conscious
of it; therefore, if being fully conscious of it means being conscious
of all its peculiarities, fully expressing it means expressing all its
peculiarities. ‘he poet, therefore, in proportion as he understands
his business, gets as far away as possible from merely labelling his
emotions as instances of this or that general kind, and takes enor-
mous pains to individualize them by expressing them in terms which
reveal their difference from any other emotion of the same sort.
This is a point in which art proper, as the expression of emotion,
differs sharply and obviously from any craft whose aim it is to arouse
emotion. ‘The end which a craft sets out to realize is always con-
ceived in general terms, never individualized. However accurately
defined it may be, it is always defined as the production of a thing
having characteristics that could be shared by other things. A joiner,
making a table out of these pieces of wood and no others, makes it
to measurements and specifications which, even if actually shared by
no other table, might in principle be shared by other tables. A
physician treating a patient for a certain complaint is trying to pro-
duce in him a condition which might be, and probably has been,
often produced in others, namely, the condition of recovering from
that complaint. So an ‘artist’ setting out to produce a certain emotion
in his audience is setting out to produce not an individual emotion,
but an emotion of a certain kind. It follows that the means appro-
priate to its production will be not individual means but means of a
certain kind: that is to say, means which are always in principle
replaceable by other similar means. As every good craftsman insists,
there is always a ‘right way’ of performing any operation. A ‘way’
of acting is a general pattern to which various individual actions may
conform. In order that the ‘work of art’ should produce its intended
psychological effect, therefore, whether this effect) be magical or
merely amusing, what is necessary is that it should satisfy certain
conditions, possess certain characteristics: in other words be, not this
work and no other, but a work of this kind and of no other.
This explains the meaning of the generalization which Aristotle
and others have ascribed to art. We have already seen that Aristotle’s
Poetics is concerned not with art proper but with representative art,
and representative art of one definite kind. He is not analysing the
religious drama of a hundred years before, he is analysing the amuse-
ment literature of the fourth century, and giving rules for its compo-
sition. The end being not individual but general (the production of
an emotion of a certain kind), the means too are general (the por-
trayal, not of this individual act, but of an act of this sort; not, as
he himself puts it, what Alcibiades did, but what anybody of a certain
kind would do). Sir Joshua Reynolds’s idea of generalization is in
principle the same; he expounds it in connexion with what he calls
‘the grand style’, which means a style intended to produce emotions
of a certain type. He is quite right; if you want to produce a typical
case of a certain emotion, the way to do it is to put before your
audience a representation of the typical features belonging to the
kind of thing that produces it: make your kings very royal, your
soldiers very soldierly, your women very feminine, your cottages very
cottagesque, your oak-trees very oakish, and so on.
Art proper, as expression of emotion, has nothing to do with all
this. The artist proper is a person who, grappling with the problem of
expressing a certain emotion, says, ‘I want to get this clear.’ It is no
use to him to get something else clear, however like it this other
thing may be. Nothing will serve as a substitute. He does not want
a thing of a certain kind, he wants a certain thing. This is why the
kind of person who takes his literature as psychology, saying ‘How
admirably this writer depicts the feelings of women, or bus-drivers,
or homosexuals . . .’, necessarily misunderstands every real work of
art with which he comes into contact, and takes for good art, with
infallible precision, what is not art at all.
SELECTION AND AESTHETIC EMOTION
It has sometimes been asked whether emotions can be divided into

those suitable for expression by artists and those unsuitable, If by art
one means art proper, and identifies this with expression, the only
possible answer is that there can be no such distinction. Whatever is
expressible is expressible. There may be ulterior motives in special
cases which make it desirable to express some emotions and not
others; but only if by ‘express’ one means express publicly, that is,
allow people to overhear one expressing oneself. This is because one
cannot possibly decide that a certain emotion is one which for some
reason it would be undesirable to express thus publicly, unless one
first becomes conscious of it; and doing this, as we saw, is somehow
bound up with expressing it. If art means the expression of emotion,
the artist as such must be absolutely candid; his speech must be
absolutely free. This is not a precept, it is a statement. It does not
mean that the artist ought to be candid, it means that he is an artist
only in so far as he is candid. Any kind of selection, any decision to
express this emotion and not that, is inartistic not in the sense that
it damages the perfect sincerity which distinguishes good art from
bad, but in the sense that it represents a further process of a non-
artistic kind, carried out when the work of expression proper is already
complete. For until that work is complete one does not know what
emotions one feels; and is therefore not in a position to pick and
choose, and give one of them preferential treatment.
From these considerations a certain corollary follows about the
division of art into distinct arts. ‘I'wo such divisions are current: one
according to the medium in which the artist works, into painting,
poetry, music, and the like; the other according to the kind of emo-
tion he expresses, into tragic, comic, and so forth. We are concerned
with the second. If the difference between tragedy and comedy is a
difference between the emotions they express, it is not a difference that
can be present to the artist’s mind when he is beginning his work;
if it were, he would know what emotion he was going to express
before he had expressed it. No artist, therefore, so far as he is an
artist proper, can set out to write a comedy, a tragedy, an elegy, or
the like. So far as he is an artist proper, he is just as likely to write
any one of these as any other; which is the truth that Socrates was
heard expounding towards the dawn, among the sleeping figures in
Agathon’s dining-room.® These distinctions, therefore, have only a
5 Plato, Symposium, 223 p. But if Aristodemus heard him correctly, Socrates was
saying the right thing for the wrong reason. He is reported as arguing, not that
a tragic writer as such is also a comic one, but that 6 TEXYD Tpay~dords is
also a comic writer. Emphasis on the word 7éxvp is obviously implied; and this,
very limited value. They can be properly used in two ways. (1)
When a work of art is complete, it can be labelled ex post facto as
tragic, comic, or the like, according to the character of the emotions
chiefly expressed in it. But understood in that sense the distinction
is of no real importance. (2) If we are talking about representational
art, the case is very different. Here the so-called artist knows in ad-
vance what kind of emotion he wishes to excite, and will construct
works of different kinds according to the different kinds of effect they
are to produce. In the case of representational art, therefore, dis-
tinctions of this kind are not only admissible as an ex post facto
classification of things to which in their origin it is alien; they are
present from the beginning as a determining factor in the so-called
artist’s plan of work. :
The same considerations provide an answer to the question
whether there is such a thing as a specific ‘aesthetic emotion’. If it is
said there is such an emotion independently of its expression in art,
and that the business of artists is to express it, we must answer that
such a view is nonsense. It implies, first, that artists have emotions
of various kinds, among which is this peculiar aesthetic emotion;
secondly, that they select this aesthetic emotion for expression. If the
first proposition were true, the second would have to be false. If
artists only find out what their emotions are in the course of finding
out how to express them, they cannot begin the work of expression
by deciding what emotion to express.
In a different sense, however, it is true that there is a specific
aesthetic emotion. As we have seen, an unexpressed emotion is ac-
companied by a feeling of oppression; when it is expressed and thus
comes into consciousness the same emotion is accompanied by a new
feeling of alleviation or easement, the sense that this oppression is
removed. It resembles the feeling of relief that comes when a burden-
some intellectual or moral problem has been solved. We may call it,
if we like, the specific feeling of having successfully expressed outr-
selves; and there is no reason why it should not be called a specific
aethetic emotion. But it is not a specific kind of emotion pre-existing
with a reference to the doctrine (Republic, 333 z—334 a) that craft is what
Aristotle was to call a potentiality of opposites, i.e. enables its possessor to do not
one kind of thing only, but that kind and the opposite kind too, shows that what
Socrates was doing was to assume the technical theory of art and draw from it
the above conclusion.
to the expression of it, and having the peculiarity that when it comes
to be expressed it is expressed artistically. It is an emotional colouring
which attends the expression of any emotion whatever.
THE ARTIST AND THE ORDINARY MAN
I have been speaking of ‘the artist’, in the present chapter, as if

artists were persons of a special kind, differing somehow either in
mental endowment or at least in the way they use their endowment
from the ordinary persons who make up their audience. But this
segregation of artists from ordinary human beings belongs to the
conception of art as craft; it cannot be reconciled with the concep-
tion of art as expression. If art were a kind of craft, it would follow
as a matter of course. Any craft is a specialized form of skill, and
those who possess it are thereby marked out from the rest of man-
kind. If art is the skill to amuse people, or in general to arouse
emotions in them, the amusers and the amused form two different
classes, differing in their respectively active and passive relation to
the craft of exciting determinate emotions; and this difference will
be due, according to whether the artist is ‘born’ or ‘made’, either to
a specific mental endowment in the artist, which in theories of this
type has gone by the name of ‘genius’, or to a specific training.
If art is not a kind of craft, but the expression of emotion, this
distinction of kind between artist and audience disappears. For the
artist has an audience only in so far as people hear him expressing
himself, and understand what they hear him saying. Now, if one
person says something by way of expressing what is in his mind, and
another hears and understands him, the hearer who understands him
has that same thing in his mind. The question whether he would
have had it if the first had not spoken need not here be raised; how-
ever it is answered, what has just been said is equally true. If some
one says “I'wice two is four’ in the hearing of some one incapable of
carrying out the simplest arithmetical operation, he will be under-
stood by himself, but not by his hearer. The hearer can understand
only if he can add two and two in his own mind. Whether he could
do it before he heard the speaker say those words makes no differ-
ence. What is here said of expressing thoughts is equally true of
expressing emotions. If a poet expresses, for example, a certain kind
of fear, the only hearers who can understand him are those who are
capable of experiencing that kind of fear themselves. Hence, when
some one reads and understands a poem, he is not merely under-
standing the poet’s expression of his, the poet’s, emotions, he is
expressing emotions of his own in the poet’s words, which have thus
become his own words. As Coleridge put it, we know a man for a
poet by the fact that he makes us poets. We know that he is ex-
pressing his emotions by the fact that he is enabling us to express
ours.
Thus, if art is the activity of expressing emotions, the reader is
an artist as well as the writer. There is no distinction of kind be-
tween artist and audience. This does not mean that there is no
distinction at all. When Pope wrote that the poet’s business was to
say ‘what all have felt but none so well express’d’, we may interpret
his words as meaning (whether or no Pope himself consciously
meant this when he wrote them) that the poet’s difference from his
audience lies in the fact that, though both do exactly the same thing,
namely express this particular emotion in these particular words, the
poet is a man who can solve for himself the problem of expressing
it, whereas the audience can express it only when the poet has shown
them how. The poet is not singular either in his having that emotion
or in his power of expressing it; he is singular in his ability to take
the initiative in expressing what all feel, and all can express.
THE CURSE OF THE IVORY TOWER
I have already had occasion to criticize the view that artists can or
should form a special order or caste, marked off by special genius or
special training from the rest of the community. That view, we have
seen, was a by-product of the technical theory of art. This criticism
can now be reinforced by pointing out that a segregation of this
kind is not only unnecessary but fatal to the artist’s real function. If
artists are really to express ‘what all have felt’, they must share the
emotions of all. ‘Their experiences, the general attitude they express
towards life, must be of the same kind as that of the persons among
whom they hope to find an audience. If they form themselves into a
special clique, the emotions they express will be the emotion of that
clique; and the consequence will be that their work becomes intelligi-
ble only to their fellow artists. This is in fact what happened to a great
extent during the nineteenth century, when the segregation of artists
from the rest of mankind reached its culmination.
If art had really been a craft, like medicine or warfare, the effect
of this segregation would have been all to the good, for a craft only
becomes more efficient if it organizes itself into the shape of a com-
munity devoted to serving the interests of the public in a specialized
way, and planning its whole life with an eye to the conditions of
this service. Because it is not a craft, but the expression of emotions,
the effect was the opposite of this. A situation arose in which novel-
ists, for example, found themselves hardly at their ease except in
writing novels about novelists, which appealed to nobody except
other novelists. This vicious circle was most conspicuous in certain
continental writers like Anatole France or D’Annunzio, whose sub-
ject-matter often seemed to be limited by the limits of the segregated
clique of ‘intellectuals’. ‘The corporate life of the artistic community
became a kind of ivory tower whose prisoners could think and talk of
nothing except themselves, and had only one another for audience.
Transplanted into the more individualistic atmosphere of Eng-
land, the result was different. Instead of a single (though no doubt
subdivided) clique of artists, all inhabiting the same ivory tower, the
tendency was for each artist to construct an ivory tower of his own:
to live, that is to say, in a world of his own devising, cut off not only
from the ordinary world of common people but even from the corre-
sponding worlds of other artists. ‘Thus Burne-Jones lived in a world
whose contents were ungraciously defined by a journalist as “green
light and gawky girls’; Leighton in a world of sham Hellenism; and
it was the call of practical life that rescued Yeats from the sham
world of his youthful Celtic twilight, forced him into the clear air
of real Celtic life, and made him a great poet.
In these ivory towers art languished. The reason is not hard to
understand. A man might easily have been born and bred within the
confines of a society as narrow and specialized as any nineteenth-
century artistic coterie, thinking its thoughts and feeling its emotions
because his experience contained no others. Such a man, in so far as
he expressed these emotions, would be genuinely expressing his own
experience. The narrowness or wideness of the experience which an
artist expresses has nothing to do with the merits of his art. A Jane
Austen, born and bred in an atmosphere of village gossip, can make
great art out of the emotions that atmosphere generates. But a person
who shuts himself up in the limits of a narrow coterie has an experience
which includes the emotions of the larger world in which he was born
and bred, as well as those of the little society he has chosen to join. If
he decides to express only the emotions that pass current within the
limits of that little society, he is selecting certain of his emotions for
expression. The reason why this inevitably produces bad art is that,
as we have already seen, it can only be done when the person select-
ing already knows what his emotions are; that is, has already ex-
pressed them. His real work as an artist is a work which, as a
member of his artistic coterie, he repudiates. Thus the literature of
the ivory tower is a literature whose only possible value is an amuse-
ment value by which persons imprisoned within that tower, whether
by their misfortune or their fault, help themselves and each other to
pass their time without dying of boredom or of home-sickness for
the world they have left behind; together with a magical value by
which they persuade themselves and each other that imprisonment
in such a place and in such company is a high privilege. Artistic
value it has none.
EXPRESSING EMOTION AND BETRAYING EMOTION
Finally, the expressing of emotion must not be confused with what

may be called the betraying of it, that is, exhibiting symptoms of it.
When it is said that the artist in the proper sense of that word is a
person who expresses his emotions, this does not mean that if he is
afraid he turns pale and stammers; if he is angry he turns red and
bellows; and so forth. These things are no doubt called expressions;
but just as we distinguish proper and improper senses of the word
‘art’, so we must distinguish proper and improper senses of the word
‘expression’, and in the context of a discussion about art this sense
of expression is an improper sense. The characteristic mark of ex-
pression proper is lucidity or intelligibility; a person who expresses
something thereby becomes conscious of what it is that he is ex-
pressing, and enables others to become conscious of it in himself
and in them. Turning pale and stammering is a natural accompani-
ment of fear, but a person who in addition to being afraid also turns
pale and stammers does not thereby become conscious of the precise
quality of his emotion. About that he is as much in the dark as he
would be if (were that possible) he could feel fear without also
exhibiting these symptoms of it.
Confusion between these two senses of the word ‘expression’
may easily lead to false critical estimates, and so to false aesthetic
theory. It is sometimes thought a merit in an actress that when she
is acting a pathetic scene she can work herself up to such an extent
as to weep real tears. ‘here may be some ground for that opinion if
acting is not an art but a craft, and if the actress’s object in that
scene is to produce grief in her audience; and even then the con-
clusion would follow only if it were true that grief cannot be pro-
duced in the audience unless symptoms of grief are exhibited by the
performer. And no doubt this is how most people think of the
actor’s work. But if his business is not amusement but art, the object
at which he is aiming is not to produce a preconceived emotional
effect on his audience but by means of a system of expression, or
language, composed partly of speech and partly of gesture, to explore
his own emotions: to discover emotions in himself of which he was
unaware, and, by permitting the audience to witness the discovery,
enable them to make a similar discovery about themselves. In that
case it is not her ability to weep real tears that would mark out a
good actress; it is her ability to make it clear to herself and her
audience what the tears are about.
This applies to every kind of art. The artist never rants. A per-
son who writes or paints or the like in order to blow off steam, using
the traditional materials of art as means for exhibiting the symptoms
of emotion, may deserve praise as an exhibitionist, but loses for the
moment all claim to the title of artist. Exhibitionists have their
uses; they may serve as an amusement, or they may be doing magic.
The second category will contain, for example, those young men
who, learning in the torment of their own bodies and minds what
war is like, have stammered their indignation in verses, and pub-
lished them in the hope of infecting others and causing them to
abolish it. But these verses have nothing to do with poetry.
Thomas Hardy, at the end of a fine and tragic novel in which
he has magnificently expressed his sorrow and indignation for the
suffering inflicted by callous sentimentalism on trusting innocence,
spoils everything by a last paragraph fastening his accusation upon
‘the president of the immortals’. The note rings false, not because it
is blasphemous (it offends no piety worthy of the name), but be-
cause it is rant. The case against God, so far as it exists, is com-
plete already. The concluding paragraph adds nothing to it. All it
does is to spoil the effect of the indictment by betraying a symptom
of the emotion which the whole book has already expressed; as if a
prosecuting counsel, at the end of his speech, spat in the prisoner's
face.
The same fault is especially common in Beethoven. He was
confirmed in it, no doubt, by his deafness; but the cause of it was
not his deafness but a temperamental inclination to rant. It shows
itself in the way his music screams and mutters instead of speaking,
as in the soprano part of the Mass in D, or the layout of the opening
page in the Hammerklavier Sonata. He must have known his failing
and tried to overcome it, or he would never have spent so many of
his ripest years among string quartets, where screaming and mutter-
ing are almost, one might say, physically impossible. Yet even there,
the old Adam struts out in certain passages of the Grosse Fuge.
It does not, of course, follow that a dramatic writer may not
rant in character. ‘he tremendous rant at the end of The Ascent of
F6, like the Shakespearean ranting on which it is modelled, is done
with tongue in cheek. It is not the author who is ranting, but the
unbalanced character he depicts; the emotion the author is express-
ing is the emotion with which he contemplates that character; or
rather, the emotion he has toward that secret and disowned part of
himself for which the character stands.
4
JOHN HOSPERS
mes ek @GE
COLLINGWOOD
THEORY OF ART
It is not my intention in this brief essay to give an exhaustive critical

analysis of the theory of art championed by Croce and his follower
Collingwood; I intend only to point out certain confusions in and
misunderstandings of their theory, and to make a few critical com-
ments in the light of them. Nor do I wish to imply that the theories
of Croce and Collingwood are identical; but although they diverge
on some points, and although each develops views that the other
discusses only briefly, they are so substantially alike on all important
points (at any rate, on any that will be discussed in this essay) that,
as reviewers were quick to point out on the appearance of Colling-
wood’s The Principles of Art,! the two can for all practical purposes
be considered as one theory.
First published in Philosophy, 1956, pp. 3-20. Reprinted by permission of

the editor of Philosophy.
1Cf, Manchester Guardian, May 27, 1938; The Nation, Jan. 21, 1939; New
York Times, July 17, 1938; London Times Literary Supplement, August 13, 1938.
51
yz JOHN HOSPERS
The aspects of the theory that concern us here are these:

1. The popular view of the artist is that he is a person who has
developed a more than ordinary skill in the use of a certain medium
—a craftsman who plies his craft much as the blacksmith, the cabinet-
maker, and the bridge-builder do in other fields. According to Croce
and Collingwood, this view of the artist is completely erroneous:
the artist qua artist is not a craftsman at all. With training and
practice almost anyone can become a good cabinet-maker, or for that
matter a good billboard advertising “artist,” but not everyone can
become a good artist proper, although he could, for example, learn
to paint. Artists are born and not made; but good craftsmen in all
fields are made so by training and practice. What the public naively
believes to be the distinctive characteristic of the artist—his skill in
handling a chosen medium—does not characterize the artist qua
artist at all. What the public takes for artistry is what any dunce
can learn if he goes to art school long enough. To regard the artist
as a craftsman, then, is to make a fatal mistake.
2. But if skill in handling his chosen medium is not the distin-
guishing characteristic of the artist, what is? His ability to have
artistic ideas—or, as Croce calls them, intuitions. Artists differ from
other men, not in that they can skillfully wield a brush or a chisel
while most of us cannot, but in that they have intuitions which most
of us do not.
People think that all of us ordinary men imagine and intuit countries,
figures and scenes like painters, and bodies like sculptors; save that
painters and sculptors know how to paint and carve such images, while
we bear them unexpressed in our souls. They believe that anyone could
have imagined a Madonna of Raphael; but that Raphael was Raphael
owing to his technical ability in putting the Madonna upon canvas.
Nothing can be more false than this view. The world which as a rule we
intuit is a small thing.?
He quotes with approval Michelangelo’s statement, “One paints,

not with the hands, but with the brain,” and Leonardo’s, “The
2 Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic, page 9.

CROCE-COLLINGWOOD THEORY OF ART 53
minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they
are doing the least external work”; and he concludes, “The painter
is a painter, because he sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse
of, but do not see.’
3. These intuitions do not usually burst upon the artist in full
flower. ‘They begin as a rule as what William James has described as
a “blooming buzzing confusion”; a glimpse here, a spark there, a
relation perceived, an experience remembered, a promising avenue
developed, and gradually, after much reflection, concentration, un-
certainty, setting aside and returning afresh, and long periods of
gestation in the unconscious, finally the finished conception is born
in the artist’s mind. (This is what in coming pages we shall call the
art-process.) With some it is easy (Mozart) and with others it is
difficult (Brahms), but in every case the artist takes small, half-
formed, inchoate intuitions and develops them, organizing, unifying,
welding together into a completed work. The artist is distinguished
from other men not so much by having the initial, inceptive ideas—
many men have these—as by his ability to work them through to
completion into a well articulated and organized work of art.
4. The terminus of the art-process is the final artistic intuition—
the completed work of art as conceived in the mind of the artist,
toward which the entire art-process, conscious and unconscious, has
been moving. And—here is perhaps the most distinctive character-
istic of the Croce-Collingwood theory—when the art-process is com-
pleted in the artist’s mind, when the final artistic intuition is present
to his consciousness, the process of expression is also complete: for
the intuition is the expression. The gradual development of intuitions
in the artist’s mind is his process of artistic expression; and when the
intuitive process has reached its fruition within him, ipso facto the
expressive process has also.
In this Croce and Collingwood are most at odds with the popu-
lar view of art: to most people expression occurs only when the artist
is working not with his head but with his hand; it is then that he is
“expressing himself.” But to the Croce-Collingwood theory this is
secondary; it is not expression at all but externalization. Externaliza-
tion is a craft; expression is not. Successful externalization can be
learned; successful intuiting (expressing) cannot. The artist does
3 Op. cit., page 10.

a4 JOHN HOSPERS
usually externalize as well, so that we can see the fruits of his labour;
but gua artist he need not do so. The externalized object, or artifact,
is only a means for the communication of his ideas to us.
5. The work of art, therefore, is not (as popularly supposed) the
physical artifact—e.g. the painting on canvas—but something that
exists in the mind of the artist, and can exist again in the minds of
those who (by means of the artifact) come to share his intuitions.
The physical artifact, as we have just seen, is only a means towards
the attainment of this end: the reproduction of the work of art (the
artist’s intuition) in the mind of the observer.
6. But the means-end relation does not hold of the real work of
art—that is to say, of the artistic intuition (not its externalization).
Until one knows what the end of a process is to be, one cannot em-
ploy a means toward its achievement; and the artist does not know
the exact nature of his work of art (the completed intuition in his
mind) in advance. He must move in whatever direction his genius
dictates; he cannot give exact specifications for it in advance. It is
here that the artist differs most radically from the craftsman: the
craftsman, to the degree to which he is an efficient craftsman, can
specify in advance what the end is to be, and can therefore, with a
little practice, employ the best means for achieving it. It would be a
sloppy carpenter who, when he started building a house, did not
know what its dimensions were going to be, or its floor plan, or what
it was to be made of, or whether he had enough materials to finish
the job. The artist, on the contrary, cannot work in this way: when
he begins he cannot know what the finished product of his intuitive
processes will be like.
7. The reason for this is plain: the artist is engaged in expressing
emotions. In the process of expression, what was turbid and unclear
to him gradually becomes clarified and ordered; and until the process
of expression is completed, the artist does not know exactly what it
was he wanted to express. The artist’s cousin, the portrait-painter,
who employs the same physical medium, does know in advance what
he wants: he wants the painting to resemble the sitter as much as
possible; as such he is a craftsman, not an artist. Such a craftsman,
knowing in advance what he wants the end-product to be like,
deliberately and “with malice aforethought” seeks the best technique
for producing it. If he is a writer of mystery stories who wants to
capitalize on next year’s market, he writes calculatingly, deliberately,
CROCE-COLLINGWOOD THEORY OF ART SD
to satisfy that market. He operates in the same physical medium as
the true literary artist, but that is where the resemblance ends. He
does not himself feel the emotions he wants his audience to feel; he
is expressing nothing at all to himself; he is not, indeed, engaged in
expressing emotion at all, but in arousing emotion in others. And
doing this is a craft. Propaganda art, religious art, amusement art—
all forms of what Collingwood calls “‘art falsely so called” —all these
“know the end in the beginning”; they are crafts involving means
to a preconceived end. In any craft, the craftsman must know (the
more precisely the better) the result he wants to achieve before he
sets out to achieve it; but the artist does not know the result of his
achievement until he has achieved it. “The artist doesn’t know what
he’s going to express until he has expressed it.” Therefore the artist
is not, and cannot be, a craftsman.
II
The theory of art sketched briefly in the preceding section has at-
tained wide currency; but there are confusions both in it and about
it which appear to have gained an equally wide currency. I shall
now mention a few of these.
1. As we have observed, common usage of language associates
the term “expression” with the process of externalization rather than
with the process of intuition. When Croce repudiates this, refusing
to call the first process “expression” and applying the term only to
the second process, what (one might ask) is this but sheer termin-
ological perversity?
It is no doubt true that this reversal of terms has caused con-
siderable confusion in the minds of introductory students in aesthet-
ics. It is also probably true that what Croce gives us is a persuasive
definition of “expression”: he uses the emotively-tinged term to refer
to the activity to which he attaches the most importance. But there
are reasons for considering it more important: for if we may assume
(what the majority of critics would probably believe without ques-
tion) that the distinctive activity of the artist is that of expression,
then what Croce is insisting on is that this distinctive activity has to
do with the genesis or coming-into-being of the artist’s intuitions and
not of his externalizations. And if this is so, those who talk of the
56 JOHN HOSPERS
artist’s ‘ability to express” as if it were simply “skill in handling a
medium” (e.g. the slick journalist, the advertising artist) are simply
in error, and Croce is pointing out this error to us.
2. The theory is sometimes presented as if the order (1) expres-
sion and (2) externalization were a strictly chronological one in
which the first step must be completed before the second begins.
And indeed neither Croce nor Collingwood specifically try to dispel
this idea. Though they do not dispel it, however, it is surely not
essential to their theory of art that they should hold it. Those who
point to all the admittedly great painters who painted while they
worked and to the composers who composed at the piano, and then
consider this an adequate refutation of the theory, are surely knock-
ing down a man of straw. It is an empirical fact that most painters
“set their ideas” (artistic intuitions) while dabbling in paints, and
that artists in all media during their creative processes tend to “play
around in the medium” while doing so, but this fact is surely no
obstacle to the Croce-Collingwood theory. A Mozart can visualize an
entire concerto, down to the last note, “in his mind’s eye” before he
ever sets pen to paper, but most artists must experiment painstak-
ingly in their chosen medium before their intuitions finally crystal-
lize. In either case what does it matter? ‘The important thing for the
theory is that whether or not his intuitions come to him while he is
working in the physical medium, it is the having of these intuitions
that distinguishes him as an artist and not his ability to manipulate
the medium.+*
3. “Of art there is no technique.” What exactly does this mean?
It would surely appear, from what the theory has to say about the
art-process as opposed to the craft-process, that technique (as the
authors want to use the word) belongs not to the process of trans-
forming the artist’s initial “blooming buzzing confusion” into a
perfected artistic intuition—for this, as the theory insists, there is
no formula, no possibility of specifications in advance—but rather to
the process of externalization. In other words, there is no technique
4It would even be possible for the externalization to be completed at the same
moment as the final artistic intuition. This might happen if the artist’s intuitions
grew on him as he continued to apply paint to the canvas, and when he laid
down his brush he realized that he would have to change nothing—that the
earlier parts of the externalizing process would not have to be changed to
accommodate his subsequent intuitions, and that the externalization just com-
pleted rendered his artistic intuition exactly.
of artistic inspiration, but there is of putting the product of one’s
inspirations on canvas. In the light of the sharp distinction they
draw between intuition and externalization and their deprecation
of technique in the intuiting process, it would surely seem to be a
reasonable conclusion that they want the term “technique” to apply
only to the latter process.
Yet, if we maintain this view, we are surely involved in nothing
less than an absurdity. In painting and sculpture, no doubt, the
process of externalizing one’s intuitions involves considerable tech-
nical difficulty; it is a difficult business to chisel in stone, and much
experience is required before the hand obeys the head. But what of
literature, if this view of technique is correct? The only technique
involved here would be that involved in an ordinary act of penman-
ship (or typewriting), which anyone can do whose arm is not para-
lysed and who has completed the third grade in grammar school.
Anyone who can do this would have at his command all the tech-
nique necessary for writing poems. Similarly, the only technique
involved in musical composition would be that of writing on paper
the musical notation corresponding to the tone-relationships intuited
by the composer—which again can be done by anyone in a class in
elementary music. Even if it is true that good technique in drawing
is simply good draftmanship, it is not true that good technique in
poetry is good handwriting.
If we are to avoid these absurd consequences, we shall simply
have to assert that technique is not limited to the externalization
process. Without going into a detailed examination of the concept of
technique, but taking the term as it is ordinarily used in daily con-
versation among artists, it would seem that the technique involved in
musical composition includes knowledge of such matters as harmony
and counterpoint, which have to do not with the externalization
process but with the structuring or arranging of one’s musical intui-
tions; and the “rules of poesy,” involving such pedestrian matters as
meter and rhyme-scheme, are again concerned with the arrangement
of the words in one’s poetic intuitions, whether one writes them
down on paper or not. (The same surely applies to painting: rules
of composition, balance, and colour-harmony are rules about how to
shape one’s visual intuitions, whether one externalizes them on can-
vas or not.) Whether the Croce-Collingwood theory would admit
this extension of the term “technique” I do not know, but the ex-
58 JOHN HOSPERS
tension must be made if the theory is to escape absurdity. I can see
no inconsistency, in any case, that would result if this extension of
the term were admitted into the theory.
It would remain as true as ever that (as Croce and Collingwood
repeatedly remind us) good technique cannot assure a good artist,
and that one may know all the “rules of the game” or “tricks of the
trade” and still be unable to produce art; one may know every rule
in the book and still have no artistic intuitions upon which to exer-
cise them. The Croce-Collingwood theory, perhaps more than any
other, emphasizes the point that knowledge of technique alone will
not make an artist. Yet it is important to remind ourselves also that
an artist may be a better artist for having mastered technical matters:
it may give better form and greater scope to his artistic expression.
Gershwin was a composer of considerable talent, but in the opinion
of most music critics he would have done better had he known about
the technical side of musical composition. ‘True, what most would-be
artists lack is good intuitions and not good technique; but the latter
is not unimportant simply because it must be used in the service of
the former.
4. One of the most often-heard criticisms of the Croce-Colling-
wood theory may be summarized as follows: “According to the
theory, externalization is of small importance compared with the
process of intuition-expression which goes on in the artist’s mind.
But doesn’t this involve a divorce between the intuition-expression
and the artistic medium, which is entirely unjustified? It would seem
that according to the theory it doesn’t matter whether the artist
externalizes his intuition in the form of a statue or a symphony or a
poem, or indeed whether he externalizes at all. ‘The intuition might
be ‘materialized’ in any of these forms, or in none of them. But this
is patently false: the composer can externalize only in the medium
he knows, namely music; the painter, only on canvas; and so on.
Thus the externalization does matter, and it matters tremendously
—and any theory which denies this must be false.”
This criticism is, to say the least, a very confused one. It is true
that according to the theory the artist, qua artist, need not external-
ize, although (for reasons that Collingwood is quick to point out®)
he usually does. In this sense, and in this sense only, there is a
5 R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, Chapter 14.

CROCE-COLLINGWOOD THEORY OF ART >?
“divorce” between the artistic intuition and the medium. The con-
fusion in the above argument, however, lies in a failure to distinguish
between the physical medium (the work in the physical medium
being the artifact, the result of the externalizing process, e.g. apply-
ing the paint to the canvas) and the conceived medium. It is as a
result of the latter that the former takes place. It is the conceived
medium that is important for Croce and Collingwood, not the ex-
ternalization of it in the physical medium. Thus, the would-be poet
who said that he “had wonderful ideas but just wasn’t able to find
words for them” would, on the Croce-Collingwood theory, not be a
poet at all because his intuitions, whatever they might be, were not
conceived in the medium of words; until the words of the poem are
present, in their proper order, to the mind of the poet, he does not
have a poem-intuition, whatever else he may have. Wordsworth said
that there are many poets in the world who have “the vision and
faculty divine, yet wanting the accomplishment of verse’; if this
means that they have a “vision” but “the words just won’t come to
them,” Croce and Collingwood would unhesitatingly say that they
do not have poetic intuitions at all.
. . . It would seem strange to every one to say that the composer had
added or attached notes to a motive which was already in the mind of
him who is not the composer; as if Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony were
not his own intuition and his intuition of the Ninth Symphony. Now,
just as one who is deluded as to the amount of his material wealth is
confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so he who nour-
ishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughts and images is
brought back to reality, when he is obliged to cross the Pons Asinorum
of expression. Let us say to the former, count; to the latter, speak; or,
here is a pencil, draw, express yourself.
Another way of putting this is to say that according to the

theory there are no “mute inglorious Miltons,” poets who cannot
find the words to express what they feel. Many persons, perhaps the
majority of mankind, have feelings of great intensity and depth, and
the artist is not distinguished from other men by his capacity to have
them, but rather by his power of expressing them (even if only to
himself) in a medium. Mozart probably had no more intense emo-
tions of exultation, bereavement, or melancholy than his siblings and
8 Croce, Aesthetic, page 11.

60 JOHN HOSPERS
cousins, but he was a composer and they were not because he could
express his emotions in the musical medium and they could not." If
they were mute, ipso facto they were not Miltons.®
If this view is true, it is surely of great importance: it does away
with the popular notion that first the artist “has ideas” and then he
proceeds to find a medium for expressing them: that if one has skill
in the medium of paints, one chooses to express them on canvas,
whereas if one has gone to the conservatory, one expresses them in
musical form. The idea of the separation of the artistic intuition
from the medium, after the manner of the separation of a body from
its clothing, has done immense harm here: the body can be clothed
now with this garment-and now with that; but the artistic intuition
and its expression are inseparable. There is, on the theory, no such
thing as an artistic intuition which can be expressed, now in paint-
ing, now in music, depending on the artist’s chosen medium; the
artistic intuition and its expression are one: no expression-in-a-med-
ium, then no artistic intuition.
In the most important sense, then, the Croce-Collingwood
theory does not “institute a divorce” between intuition and medium
at all: the intuition comes only in words or shapes or tones, and if it
does not, then as far as art is concerned, the person is still in a state
of “blooming buzzing confusion.” The very thing, then, for which
the theory is so often criticized—that of divorcing the intuition from
the medium of expression—is exactly the reverse of the truth.
5. I shall not devote much space to the oft-criticized “mentalis-
tic” direction taken by the theory: that “the real work of art” exists
only in the artist’s mind and in the minds of qualified observers is a
natural enough consequence of the view that the physical artifact is
7 What it means to say that one “has expressed his emotions in the musical
medium” is indeed a large question, but it is no part of the subject of this paper.
See my paper, “The Concept of Artistic Expression,” Proceedings of the Aris-
totelian Society, 1954-5.
8 There is a possible confusion even in saying that according to the Croce-
Collingwood theory there are no mute inglorious Miltons. In the most important
sense this is true: unless the artist’s intuitions are conceived in an artistic me-
dium, he has no artistic intuitions at all; the artistic intuition is always medium-
istic. But in another sense he may be a Milton and yet mute: namely, if he can
create Miltonic lines “in his head” but for some reason or other he chooses to
refrain from communicating them to other men by writing them down. For him
to be a Milton it is enough that he carry Miltonic stanzas in his head which he
can write down, whether he actually does so or not.
only a means for the production in the audience of the requisite
experience. Questions about “where the true work of art exists”
usually presuppose (as the prefixed adjectives “real” and “true” so
often indicate) a persuasive definition of the phrase “work of art.”
If the question is asked, “Where then is the work of art? in the
artist’s mind? in the artifact—on paper or on canvas? in the sounds
emanating from the orchestra? in the minds of observers or listen-
ers?” I should say, In any or all of these places, depending on what
you choose to mean in the first place by the phrase “work of art.”
If one conceives the work of art as something in the artist’s mind,
one must accept the consequence that it no longer exists when the
artist dies or is asleep or not thinking about it; if it is something in
the minds of listeners or observers, one must accept the consequence
that there are as many works of art as there are listeners or observers;
if it is the physical artifact (as one would ordinarily hold it to be in
the case of painting, sculpture, or architecture), then it can no
longer be held to exist if the artifact is destroyed; this consequence
would be unwelcome in the case of a poem, for example, which
might be held to exist even if all the copies were destroyed, provided
that someone had memorized it and could reproduce it word for
word. In every alternative there will be some consequences that will
not square with the way we ordinarily use the phrase “work of art”;
therefore I should be more inclined to say that “the work of art
exists” if any one (not any specific one) of these requirements is
fulfilled. In every case, however, it is a matter of how we initially
decide to use the phrase “work of art”; one is welcome, for example,
to use it to refer to something in the artist’s mind if he is willing to
accept the consequence that after the artist’s death it no longer
exists. Croce and Collingwood are, on the face of it, no more jar-
ring to common sense when they say that “the work of art’ exists
only in the minds of the artists and those observers who (via the
artifact) share the artist’s intuition, than are those who say it exists
only as a physical artifact. If they wish to use the phrase “work of
art” to refer to an intuition in the minds of artists and audience,
they are privileged to do so; this locution will permit them to say, as
they do, that the artifact is not the work of art at all but only a
means to an end, namely, the reproduction of the real work of art in
the minds of observers.
6. The reference to means and end brings to mind a far more
62 JOHN HOSPERS
tangled situation: the contention of the Croce-Collingwood theory
that in craft the means-end relation exists, whereas in art it does not.
We have already seen that according to the theory the completed
artistic intuition cannot be an end toward which the artist adopts
means because, until the intuition has reached fruition in his mind,
the artist does not know what it is to be, and therefore he cannot
adopt means towards its achievement. The opening chapters of
Collingwood’s The Principles of Art are concerned mainly to exploit
this notion. They are concerned with various forms of “art falsely so
called” —falsely because in all of them the end is known in advance
and the artist-falsely-so-called (craftsman-truly-so-called) adopts
means to achieve this end, like the builder who builds to specifications
from a blueprint. There is, first, representative art, which consists in
producing in the audience emotions resembling those evoked by the
original: for example, a portrait which arouses feelings similar to
those aroused on seeing the sitter because the portrait so closely
resembles the sitter; or again, programme music representing the
sea, not because it sounds like the sea but because it evokes emotions
similar to those felt when one is at the seaside. Here the effect desired
is known in advance, and the painting or composition is a way of
inducing in the audience the preconceived effect. Second, there is
magical art, whose purpose is to evoke feelings that will affect sub-
sequent actions, as in religious art, Marxist art, patriotic art; the
“artist” knows exactly what emotion he wants to produce, and in
setting out to produce it he may not experience the emotion himself.
There is also amusement art, whose intent is not to have the emotions
aroused “spill over” into practical life, but rather to “work off’ or
discharge these emotions in the process of experiencing the work
itself (as in Aristotle’s theory of catharsis); here again the “artist”
knows in advance what he wishes to do: he is expressing no emotion,
but arousing in others, in a calculating way, emotions which he
may never feel himself. All these, then, are examples of “false art”—
false because they are really not art but craft. They adopt means to
a preconceived end, and as such they cannot be art.®
® It is, I hope, apparent that whereas on the theory the process of the builder is
one of craft, the process of the architect is one of art (whether good or bad).
The architect has the ideas (intuitions) for the completed building, and the
builder (a craftsman) builds to the architect’s specifications. And the end-result
of the process of getting architectural intuitions is no more known in advance to
the architect than is the end-result of the process of getting musical intuitions to
the composer.
To all this one is inclined to object by asking such questions as
these: “Can’t an artist have some end-in-view when he starts to
compose a work, even ‘in his head’? Surely the tragedian knows that
it will turn out as a tragedy and not as a comedy, or an epic, or a
symphony! And can’t he do it with an end-in-view, such as instilling
religious faith in the populace, or making money, or perhaps just
producing esthetic experiences in his audience? Surely there is great
religious art, deliberately designed to serve an end! Great works of
art have even been created for money; many, for example, were com-
missioned, This may not be the best or most usual way in which
great works of art are born, but even so it is surely possible, and
pretty surely has often happened; any theory which denies such a
possibility is certainly mistaken!”
The Croce-Collingwood theory leaves itself wide open for such
objections; fortunately not all of them (if any) are fatal to it, since
they rest on ambiguities in the concepts of means and end—am-
biguities which the theory itself does nothing to clarify, but which
we must now try to clarify for ourselves.
One distinction will be useful at the outset. Surely no one could
be disqualified from the position of artist because, contrary to his
intent, his works were used by his contemporaries or successors as a
means to an end. Even if in his artistic process a given artist fulfilled
the Croce-Collingwood requirements for being an artist rather than a
craftsman, his work may later be used as (for example) political
propaganda: that is, it may be used as a means to achieve a given
end, and in this sense his work is a means to an end. No work of art
is immune from such use or abuse. Clearly if a work cannot be a work
of “art proper’ if it is a means to an end in this sense, no work of art
is secure. Let us distinguish, then, between the means-end relation
in the use to which a work of art is put and the means-end relation in
the artistic process; it is the latter which the theory is concerned to
deny. A work of art, then, can be used as a means to an end but it
cannot be created as a means to an end.
With this distinction made, however, our troubles are not over.
One can still ask: “Why can’t the artist know in advance what he
wants to do? If he wants his composition to produce the same effect
as the sea crashing against the rocks, why should this make him any
the less an artist? If he wants to communicate the feeling associated
with a calm and simple religious faith, why should this expel him
from the ranks of artists? Surely Debussy’s La Mer and the paintings
64 JOHN HOSPERS
of Giotto are great art! Why can it not be, not only that a work of
art may be used as a means to an end, but that at the very inception
of the intuition-expression.process the artist may work toward a
preconceived end?”
Can this objection be answered satisfactorily without doing
violence to the Croce-Collingwood theory? Here again, I am per-
suaded that the answer depends on the meaning that is given to the
term “end.” The question, “Can the artist, at or near the beginning
of the art-process, consciously aim at an end, toward which the whole
art-process is a means?” may have different answers, depending on
what the end is conceived to be. It may be (1) the completed intui-
tion-expression in the artist’s mind: it may be (2) the artifact, or
externalized work (the materialization, as it were, of the artist’s
intuition-expression). It may even be (3) the effect which the artist
wants the artifact to have upon the audience.
A. It seems quite clear that (1) can be and is, in the Croce-
Collingwood theory, a means to (2). Once the completed intuition is
present to the mind of the artist, he may paint or write, this being the
means to the end of producing the artifact. Since this is clearly (on
the theory) a matter of “technique,” and it is equally clear that (on
the theory) externalization is a craft, we need not hesitate to apply
the means-end terminology to the relation between (1) and (2).
B. Also, (2) can be and often is a means to (3): the completed
artifact may be (and may be so intended by the artist himself) as a
means to the production of a certain specific effect, such that if it
does not have this effect the artist may reproach himself (or his
audience) for the failure of his work to produce this intended effect.
This would occur if, for example, La Mer did not give people the
*feel'<of these:
C. The crucial question, however, is this: Can the art-process—
the gradual process of intuition-expression in the artist’s mind
culminating in (1), the completed intuition-expression, be used as a
means to the production of (1)? On this question, it would seem, the
means-end contentions of the theory stand or fall. Even if the means-
end relation applies to all the other items, it cannot apply to the
relation between the art-process and the finished intuition-expression,
in the face of all that the theory has to say against this, without
abandoning the theory itself. It is this question, then, which we must
now briefly discuss.
Is the art-process a means to the completed intuition-expression
(in the artist’s mind) as end? (1) In a very general sense, doubtless
it is: If the artist were asked what end he had in view in undergoing
all the “divine agonies” of artistic creation, he might well (and rea-
sonably enough) reply that the completion of the expressive process
—the fruition of his chaotic, inchoate, but developing intuitions in a
unified work of art (even if, following Croce and Collingwood, the
finished product is conceived only in his mind)—was the end toward
which he was working. In this sense, then, it would be hard to deny
the applicability of the means-end relation even to the art-process.
(2) But when Collingwood denies that the means-end relation
applies to the art-process, he means something much more specific
than this. He means that the artist does not have his final end-in-
view (the completed intuition-expression) “before his mind’s eye”
at the inception of the process; he does not know, for example, just
what the completed painting (even as conceived in his mind) will
look like until the intuition-expression process is completed. He may
have a general idea—e.g. he surely knows that it will be a work of
literature rather than a work of sculpture, and even that it will be a
drama rather than an epic poem (though even here he may change
his mind as his intuitions develop, as was the case with Milton in
composing Paradise Lost)—but he cannot specify in advance the
details of the completed work (again, even as conceived in his mind),
the way a builder can tell you in advance the complete floor-plan
and material specifications for the house he is building; for the artist
does not yet know how the details of the completed intuition-expres-
sion process will take shape. He must “follow the dictates of his
genius.” If he could tell you in advance what the completed painting
would look like, he would not need to go through the throes of
creation. In this specific sense, then, Croce and Collingwood have
given us an account of the way in which artists work, as opposed to
the way in which craftsmen work; and this account seems to me on
the whole to be both true and important—although, as we shall see
later, it does not distinguish between good and bad artists.
There is, however, a point to be observed in connection with all
this which may blunt considerably the force of the theory. Even if
the artist, unlike the craftsman, does not know during the art-process
what the upshot of it will be, it by no means follows that he does
not know in advance what effect he wants it to have in his audience.
66 JOHN HOSPERS
For example, let us assume for the moment that Debussy wanted La
Mer to give his hearers the same feeling that they would have beside
the sounding surf at a certain place along the French seacoast where
the composer once walked—that the experience he wanted his listen-
ers to have was as close as possible to that experience of his; in this
event he knew exactly what effect he wanted to achieve. Still, he did
not know, until La Mer was completed, how the composition would
sound (even “to his mind’s ear’)—the composition by means of
which he wanted to evoke this effect; in bringing the composition
to completion he may well have gone through all the chaos and
turbulence that according to the theory characterizes the creative
process; but, although he did not know what (1) would be like—the
completed intuition-expression—he may have had a very exact idea
of what (3)—the effect—would be like. In other words, even if the
art-process cannot, in Collingwood’s sense, be a means to the pro-
duction of (1), it may well—via (2)—be a means to the production
of (3).
Some artists, such as Poe in his essay ““I’he Poetic Principle,” have
given us accounts of their creative processes which seem to indicate
a great deal of cold calculation of preconceived effects. Do such
accounts—assuming their author to be telling the truth—violate
Collingwood’s denial of the means-end relation to the art-process?
In the sense of the relation of the art-process to (1), the answer seems
clearly to be No. But in the sense of the relation of the art-process to
(3), which we just considered in the hypothetical case of La Mer, the
answer seems clearly to be Yes. Collingwood never distinguished
between these two, but applied his denial of the means-end relation
to art indiscriminately, thus confusing the issue. Let us therefore
examine it a bit more closely:
Poe may have had an uncommonly precise idea of what effect he
wanted “The Raven” to work upon his readers; he may well have
known, as he said, that such an effect could best be achieved by
repeated alliterations and rhythms, by the repetition of such words
as “nevermore,” and by the association of gloom and foreboding
carried by such words as “raven.” Yet Poe did not know and could
not have known in advance what the exact nature of the completed
poem (even in his mind) would be; if he had, he would have needed
only to recollect it and write it down, instead of planning it step by
step. Thus even for such a case as Poe’s, Collingwood’s contention
remains true that the completed poem was not present to his mind
during the creative process (though its effect was), and therefore it
could not in Collingwood’s sense have been present as an end toward
which his creative labours were means, as is the case with the builder
and the house. Regarding the relation of the art-process to (1) ?
therefore, Collingwood’s thesis remains inviolate.

But it remains so at a cost which there is no evidence that
Collingwood was awate of; for, in the face of such examples as Poe’s,
another aspect of his theory of art, which may have been equally
precious to him, must be abandoned: namely, his denial that the
artist’s activity can consist of arousing emotion (as opposed to ex-
pressing it). This may not at first be apparent, because Collingwood
represents the situation to be as follows
Art Craft
1. No means-end relation Means-end relation
2. Expressing emotion Arousing emotion
as if the import of the first and second lines were identical. But they
are not, as we can see if we reflect that the end in the means-end
relation of the first column is the completed intuition (here Colling-
wood’s thesis about art holds), whereas in the second column the end
is the arousal of emotion—and of course the end of arousal is not the
completed intuition at all but the effect upon an audience. As we
have just seen, an artist cannot at the beginning of the art-process
know exactly what the completed work of art, even in his mind, will
be like; but he may know—as in “The Raven”—what he wants the
effect of it on the audience to be. And if he knows what he wants the
effect to be, he may deliberately set out to arouse this effect in his
audience, often without feeling the emotion himself. And thus his
activity will be that of arousing emotion, which according to Colling-
wood does not characterize art proper at all. It surely seems quite
plain that what Poe was consciously trying to do was to arouse a
certain kind of emotion in his readers. What Collingwood apparently
does not see is that these two theses—the first: that the means-end
relation is not applicable to the art-process; the second: that the art-
process is one of expressing rather than arousing—are separable from
each other. The example of “The Raven” does not violate the first
thesis but it does violate the second. Collingwood’s denial of the
means-end relation (in his specific sense) to the art-process will not
68 JOHN HOSPERS
have to be abandoned because of cases like Poe’s, but his insistence
that the artist’s activity is never that of arousing emotion quite surely
will.1° i
7. We have just seen that the art-process may involve an end in
the sense of a foreknowledge of the effect to be aroused in the audi-
ence but that Collingwood is right in holding that the art-process can-
not be a means toward the completed intuition as end, if calling this
an end implies foreknowledge of the nature of the completed work
(completed artistic intuition). Nevertheless, a very damaging criticism
can be made even about the point on which Collingwood is right,
and it is this: that the art-process cannot be a means of distinguishing
good art from bad. Let-us grant that Shakespeare did not work to
advance specifications as the cabinet-maker does; but then neither
does the poet next door. The processes of Shakespeare and the poet
next door both differ from that of the cabinet-maker in respect of
the means-end relation—we may grant this; but Collingwood’s de-
scription of the art-process as opposed to the craft-process provides
no criterion for distinguishing the great artist from the merely
would-be artist or the divinely inspired sophomore or the “flash in
the pan.” “Art proper,” says Collingwood in effect, “is what’s pro-
duced in this way (here is appended his description of the art-
process); art falsely so called, on the contrary, is not.” The most
telling criticism of this whole procedure is that it attempts to dis-
tinguish art from non-art, not by examining the artifact, but by
investigating the process which brought it into being. In other words,
Collingwood accepts or rejects something as a work of art on the basis
of the process, and it is the process that virtually all his attention is
directed, whereas the truth surely is that we must reject or accept it
on the basis of the product. It is not my purpose in this paper to try
to provide any criterion for such evaluation, or to say whether there
10 “But if intuition is (on the theory) expression, how can we say that Poe’s is a
case of arousing emotion? Doesn’t ‘aroused’ mean ‘not expressed,’ and doesn’t
this (on the theory) mean ‘not intuited’? And yet you don’t deny that Poe had
intuitions.”
The answer is, of course, that arousing and expressing do not really turn out
to be exclusive of each other. The terminus of the expression-intuition process is
(1), while that of arousal is (3). Thus Poe was still expressing, for he did not
know the nature of the poem in advance and had to “intuit” his way toward the
completed poem; but at the same time he was also arousing emotion because he
had his eye on (3) during the entire process.
is One or many, or indeed any at all; the only point I wish to make
here is that an examination of the process is irrelevant to an evalua-
fl of the product,11 whatever the criteria for such evaluation may
€:
If this is so, what recourse is there for Collingwood in this situ-
ation?
A. In spite of the objection, Collingwood might simply define
“art” as “whatever was produced in such-and-such a way.” To know
whether something was a work of art we would then examine, not
the work itself, but the process which led to its existence. In those
cases where no knowledge of the artist was available, we would
simply have to suspend our judgment of its value. This seems to be
a desperate expedient indeed.
B. More interesting, however, is this alternative: We could hold
that we can know independently of knowing the process whether
something is to be called a work of art, but interpret Collingwood’s
theory as an empirical generalization: “Whenever true art exists,
there existed in the artist the art-process (such as described by the
theory); and whenever the art-process occurs, the product of it is a
work of art proper.” In other words, Collingwood’s theory would
assert an empirical correlation between a certain type of process and
a certain type of product.
As a process-product generalization of this kind, would the theory
stand up? It seems to me that it would not:
(1) Does every example of an art-process, as described by the
theory, always lead to an art-product? (Is every A a B?) If this means
a product of any esthetic value,!* the answer seems plainly in the
negative. The poet next door may regularly go through all the agonies
of the art-process and yet his efforts fizzle out into a wholly inferior
product or none at all: the mountain has produced a mouse. For
11 Jt does not matter here whether we consider the product to be the physical
artifact or the completed intuition in the artist’s mind. Both are here opposed to
the process leading up to their existence. (If the product is taken to be the
intuition in the artist’s mind, we have of course the practical difficulty of know-
ing exactly what that was; therefore it is probably more practicable to take
“product” to mean “artifact.’’)
12 If no reference to its esthetic value is intended in calling it art, then of course
the answer is Yes, but it amounts only to a tautology: If an art-product is what-
ever results from the art-process, then it is true but tautological to say, “Every-
thing that results from the art-process is a work of art (ie. a result of the
art-process) .”
70 JOHN HOSPERS
every thousand instances of the art-process there is probably barely
one instance of an art-product worth looking at twice. The realm of
art would contain an embarrassment of riches, far beyond what it
now possesses, if every art-process (a la Collingwood) led to an
example of “art truly so called.”
(2) Is every example of a product which is “art truly so called”
invariably produced by an art-process? (Is every B an A?) This
question is harder to answer, because we must first know what part(s)
of the theory are expendable as a description of the process. (a) It
is probably safe to say that products of esthetic value usually come
into existence as a result of a process in which the artist was led
gradually to his final artistic intuition, unlike the case of the builder
who builds to advance specifications; and that therefore Colling-
wood’s denial of the means-end relation (in his specific sense) to
the art-process, unlike the house-building process, is justified. But,
the processes by which great works of art have come into being are
extremely various; and Shakespeare’s plays would be no less great if
they had been created in a manner far different from that described
by the theory. (b) If the expression-arousal distinction is employed
to separate them from each other, it will not do the trick either. As
we have already seen, great art may come into being in order to give
the “feel” of the seashore, or to arouse religiosity, or to honour the
Pharaoh, or to preach communism (as with Orozco), or to inculcate
materialism (as with Lucretius). It may be that great art is more
often created if the artist was not trying deliberately to arouse
emotions in others; but this is far from certain—one would hate to
stake his life on it. (c) In any case, a negative reply to the question
is virtually guaranteed if we put to ourselves this query: If we have
once judged a work, such as Hamlet, as great art, would our evalua-
tion of it be changed if we suddenly learned that the process of its
creation was totally unlike anything described as belonging to “art
proper” by the Croce-Collingwood theory? Do we, for that matter,
hesitate to describe Shakespeare’s works as great because we know
nothing about the processes that led to them? Do we suspend our
judgment of the artistic merits of drawings on cave walls made by
our prehistoric ancestors simply because we know nothing, nor pre-
sumably shall we ever know anything, about the processes involved
in their creation? If our answer is in the negative—as it surely must
be if our esthetic judgments are not to be entirely suspended or re-
duced to utter chaos—then we shall have to hold to Herbert Dingle’s
judgment that “criticism is of the product only”;!8 and anything we
may happen to know or fail to know about the process which led to
the product, however interesting it may be to us as psychologists,
will be entirely irrelevant to our judgment of it as a work of art.
Collingwood’s theory, then, while it enables us to distinguish between
the artist and the craftsman (in his sense)—e.g. the builder who
builds to specifications and the sculptor who does not—it fails entirely
to provide a criterion for distinguishing great works of art from artistic
failures. Indeed, it fails to distinguish the artist from the creative
mathematician, the scientific theorist, and the puzzle-solver, none of
whom (in their characteristic activities) can “see the end in the
beginning” any more than the artist can do so. The artist is (though
it is not very helpful to say so) one who creates good works of art;
and for them to be good works of art it is in no way necessary for
any single kind of process to be involved in their creation.
18 Herbert Dingle, Science and Literary Criticism, page 37.

D
JOHN DEWEY
THE ACY OF
EXPRESSION
Every experience, of slight or tremendous import, begins with an

impulsion, rather ds an impulsion. I say “impulsion” rather than
“impulse.” An impulse is specialized and particular; it is, even when
instinctive, simply a part of the mechanism involved in a more com-
plete adaptation with the environment. “Impulsion” designates a
movement outward and forward of the whole organism to which
special impulses are auxiliary. It is the craving of the living creature
for food as distinct from the reactions of tongue and lips that are
involved in swallowing; the turning toward light of the body as a
whole, like the heliotropism of plants, as distinct from the following
of a particular light by the eyes.
Because it is the movement of the organism in its entirety, im-
pulsion is the initial stage of any complete experience. Observation
of children discovers many specialized reactions. But they are not,
therefore, inceptive of complete experiences. They enter into the
latter only as they are woven as strands into an activity that calls
Reprinted by permission of Mrs. John Dewey; Minton, Balch & Co., pub-
lishers; and G. P. Putnam’s Sons from Art as Experience (Chapter 4, “The Act
of Expression”), by John Dewey. Copyright 1934 by John Dewey.
72
THE ACT OF EXPRESSION 73
the whole self into play. Overlooking these generalized activities and
paying attention only to the differentiations, the divisions of labor,
which render them more efficient, are pretty much the source and
cause of all further errors in the interpretation of experience.
Impulsions are the beginnings of complete experience because
they proceed from need; from a hunger and demand that belongs to
the organism as a whole and that can be supplied only by instituting
definite relations (active relations, interactions) with the environ-
ment. ‘The epidermis is only in the most superficial way an indication
of where an organism ends and its environment begins. There are
things inside the body that are foreign to it, and there are things
outside of it that belong to it de jure, if not de facto; that must, that
is, be taken possession of if life is to continue. On the lower scale,
air and food materials are such things; on the higher, tools, whether
the pen of the writer or the anvil of the blacksmith, utensils and
furnishings, property, friends and institutions—all the supports and
sustenances without which a civilized life cannot be. The need that
is manifest in the urgent impulsions that demand completion through
what the environment—and it alone—can supply, is a dynamic
acknowledgment of this dependence of the self for wholeness upon
its surroundings.
It is the fate of a living creature, however, that it cannot secure
what belongs to it without an adventure in a world that as a whole
it does not own and to which it has no native title. Whenever the
organic impulse exceeds the limit of the body, it finds itself in a
strange world and commits in some measure the fortune of the self
to external circumstance. It cannot pick just what it wants and auto-
matically leave the indifferent and adverse out of account. If, and
as far as, the organism continues to develop, it is helped on as a
favoring wind helps the runner. But the impulsion also meets many
things on its outbound course that deflect and oppose it. In the
process of converting these obstacles and neutral conditions into
favoring agencies, the live creature becomes aware of the intent
implicit in its impulsion. The self, whether it succeed or fail, does
not merely restore itself to its former state. Blind surge has been
changed into a purpose; instinctive tendencies are transformed into
contrived undertakings. The attitudes of the self are informed with
meaning.
An environment that was always and everywhere congenial to
74 JOHN DEWEY
the straightaway execution of our impulsions would set a term to
growth as surely as one always hostile would irritate and destroy.
Impulsion forever boosted on its forward way would run its course
thoughtless, and dead to emotion. For it would not have to give an
account of itself in terms of the things it encounters, and hence they
would not become significant objects. The only way it can become
aware of its nature and its goal is by obstacles surmounted and means
employed; means which are only means from the very beginning are
too much one with an impulsion, on a way smoothed and oiled in
advance, to permit of consciousness of them. Nor without resistance
from surroundings would the self become aware of itself; it would
have neither feeling nor interest, neither fear nor hope, neither dis-
appointment nor elation. Mere opposition that completely thwarts,
creates irritation and rage. But resistance that calls out thought
generates curiosity and solicitous care, and, when it is overcome and
utilized, eventuates in elation.
That which merely discourages a child and one who lacks a
matured background of relevant experiences is an incitement to
intelligence to plan and convert emotion into interest, on the part
of those who have previously had experiences of situations sufficiently
akin to be drawn upon. Impulsion from need starts an experience
that does not know where it is going; resistance and check bring
about the conversion of direct forward action into re-flection; what
is turned back upon is the relation of hindering conditions to what
the self possesses as working capital in virtue of prior experiences.
As the energies thus involved reénforce the original impulsion, this
operates more circumspectly with insight into end and method. Such
is the outline of every experience that is clothed with meaning.
That tension calls out energy and that total lack of opposition
does not favor normal development are familiar facts. In a general
way, we all recognize that a balance between furthering and retarding
conditions is the desirable state of affairs—provided that the adverse
conditions bear intrinsic relation to what they obstruct instead of
being arbitrary and extraneous. Yet what is evoked is not just
quantitative, or just more energy, but is qualitative, a transformation
of energy into thoughtful action, through assimilation of means from
the background of past experiences. The junction of the new and
old is not a mere composition of forces, but is a re-creation in which
the present impulsion gets form and solidity while the old, the
“stored,” material is literally revived, given new life and soul through
having to meet a new situation.
It is this double change which converts an activity into an act of

expression. ‘Things in the environment that would otherwise be mere
smooth channels or else blind obstructions become means, media.
At the same time, things retained from past experience that would
grow stale from routine or inert from lack of use, become coefficients
in new adventures and put on a raiment of fresh meaning. Here are
all the elements needed to define expression. The definition will gain
force if the traits mentioned are made explicit by contrast with al-
ternative situations. Not all outgoing activity is of the nature of
expression. At one extreme, there are storms of passion that break
through barriers and that sweep away whatever intervenes between
a person and something he would destroy. There is activity, but not,
from the standpoint of the one acting, expression. An onlooker may
say “What a magnificent expression of rage!” But the enraged being
is only raging, quite a different matter from expressing rage. Or,
again, some spectator may say “How that man is expressing his own
dominant character in what he is doing or saying.” But the last thing
the man in question is thinking of is to express his character; he is
only giving way to a fit of passion. Again the cry or smile of an
infant may be expressive to mother or nurse and yet not be an act
of expression of the baby. To the onlooker it is an expression because
it tells something about the state of the child. But the child is only
engaged in doing something directly, no more expressive from his
standpoint than is breathing or sneezing—activities that are also
expressive to the observer of the infant’s condition.
Generalization of such instances will protect us from the error—
which has unfortunately invaded esthetic theory—of supposing that
the mere giving way to an impulsion, native or habitual, constitutes
expression. Such an act is expressive not in itself but only in reflective
interpretation on the part of some observer—as the nurse may in-
terpret a sneeze as the sign of an impending cold. As far as the act
itself is concerned, it is, if purely impulsive, just a boiling over. While
there is no expression, unless there is urge from within outwards, the
welling up must be clarified and ordered by taking into itself the
values of prior experiences before it can be an act of expression. And
these values are not called into play save through objects of the en-
76 JOHN DEWEY
vironment that offer resistance to the direct discharge of emotion
and impulse. Emotional discharge is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition of expression.
There is no expression without excitement, without turmoil. Yet
an inner agitation that is discharged at once in a laugh or cry, passes
away with its utterance. To discharge is to get rid of, to dismiss; to
express is to stay by, to carry forward in development, to work out
to completion. A gush of tears may bring relief, a spasm of destruc-
tion may give outlet to inward rage. But where there is no administra-
tion of objective conditions, no shaping of materials in the interest
of embodying the excitement, there is no expression. What is some-
times called an act of self-expression might better be termed one of
self-exposure; it discloses character—or lack of character—to other. In
itself, it is only a spewing forth.
The transition from an act that is expressive from the standpoint
of an outside observer to one intrinsically expressive is readily illu-
strated by a simple case. At first a baby weeps, just as it turns its head
to follow light; there is an inner urge but nothing to express. As the
infant matures, he learns that particular acts effect different conse-
quences, that, for example, he gets attention if he cries, and that
smiling induces another definite response from those about him. He
thus begins to be aware of the meaning of what he does. As he grasps
the meaning of an act at first performed from sheer internal pressure,
he becomes capable of acts of true expression. The transformation of
sounds, babblings, lalling, and so forth, into language is a perfect
illustration of the way in which acts of expression are brought into
existence and also of the difference between them and mere acts of
discharge.
There is suggested, if not exactly exemplified, in such cases the
connection of expression with art. The child who has learned the
effect his once spontaneous act has upon those around him performs
“on purpose” an act that was blind. He begins to manage and order
his activities in reference to their consequences. The consequences
undergone because of doing are incorporated as the meaning of sub-
sequent doing because the relation between doing and undergoing is
perceived. The child may now cry for a purpose, because he wants
attention or relief. He may begin to bestow his smiles as inducements
or as favors. There is now art in incipiency. An activity that was
“natural”—spontaneous and unintended—is transformed because it
THE ACT OF EXPRESSION EE
is undertaken as a means to a consciously entertained consequence.
Such transformation marks every deed of art. The result of the trans-
formation may be artful rather than esthetic. The fawning smile and
conventional smirk of greeting are artifices. But the genuinely gracious
act of welcome contains also change of an attitude that was once a
blind and “natural” manifestation of impulsion into an act of art,
something performed in view of its place or relation in the processes
of intimate human intercourse.
The difference between the artificial, the artful, and the artistic
lies on the surface. In the former there is a split between what is
overtly done and what is intended. The appearance is one of cordiality;
the intent is that of gaining favor. Wherever this split between what
is done and its purpose exists, there is insincerity, a trick, a simulation
of an act that intrinsically has another effect. When the natural and
the cultivated blend in one, acts of social intercourse are works of art.
The animating impulsion of genial friendship and the deed performed
completely coincide without intrusion of ulterior purpose. Awkward-
ness may prevent adequacy of expression. But the skillful counterfeit,
however skilled, goes through the form of expression; it does not have
the form of friendship and abide in it. ‘The substance of friendship
is untouched.
An act of discharge or mere exhibition lacks a medium. Instinc-
tive crying and smiling no more require a medium than do sneezing
and winking. They occur through some channel, but the means of
outlet are not used as immanent means of an end. The act that
expresses welcome uses the smile, the outreached hand, the lighting
up of the face as media, not consciously but because they have be-
come organic means of comunicating delight upon meeting a valued
friend. Acts that were primitively spontaneous are converted into
means that make human intercourse more rich and gracious—just as
a painter converts pigment into means of expressing an imaginative
experience. Dance and sport are activities in which acts once per-
formed spontaneously in separation are assembled and converted
from raw, crude material into works of expressive art. Only where
material is employed as media is there expression and art. Savage
taboos that look to the outsider like mere prohibitions and inhibitions
externally imposed may be to those who experience them media of
expressing social status, dignity, and honor. Everything depends upon
the way in which material is used when it operates as medium.
78 JOHN DEWEY
The connection between a medium and the act of expression is
intrinsic. An act of expression always employs natural material,
though it may be natural in the sense of habitual as well as in that
of primitive or native. It becomes a medium when it is employed in
view of its place and role, in its relations, an inclusive situation—as
tones become music when ordered in a melody. The same tones
might be uttered in connection with an attitude of joy, surprise, or
sadness, and be natural outlets of particular feelings. ‘They are ex-
pressive of one of these emotions when other tones are the medium
in which one of them occurs.
Etymologically, an act of expression is a squeezing out, a pressing
forth. Juice is expressed when grapes are crushed in the wine press;
to use a more prosaic comparison, lard and oil are rendered when
certain fats are subjected to heat and pressure. Nothing is pressed
forth except from original raw or natural material. But it is equally
true that the mere issuing forth or discharge of raw material is not
expression. Through interaction with something external to it, the
wine press, or the treading foot of man, juice results. Skin and seeds
are separated and retained; only when the apparatus is defective are
they discharged. Even in the most mechanical modes of expression
there is interaction and a consequent transformation of the primitive
material which stands as raw material for a product of art, in relation
to what is actually pressed out. It takes the wine press as well as
grapes to ex-press juice, and it takes environing and resisting objects
as well as internal emotion and impulsion to constitute an expression
of emotion.
Speaking of the production of poetry, Samuel Alexander re-
marked that “the artist’s work proceeds not from a finished imagina-
tive experience to which the work of art corresponds, but from
passionate excitement about the subject matter. . . The poet’s poem
is wrung from him by the subject which excites him.” The passage
is a text upon which we may hang four comments. One of these
comments may pass for the present as a reénforcement of a point
made in previous chapters. The real work of art is the building up
of an integral experience out of the interaction of organic and
environmental conditions and energies. Nearer to our present theme
is the second point: The thing expressed is wrung from the producer
by the pressure exercised by objective things upon the natural im-
pulses and tendencies—so far is expression from being the direct and
immaculate issue of the latter. The third point follows. The act of
expression that constitutes a work of art is a construction in time,
not an instantaneous emission. And this statement signifies a great
deal more than that it takes time for the painter to transfer his
imaginative conception to canvass and for the sculptor to complete
his chipping of marble. It means that the expression of the self in
and through a medium, constituting the work of art is itself a pro-
longed interaction of something issuing from the self with objective
conditions, a process in which both of them acquire a form and order
they did not at first possess. Even the Almighty took seven days to
create the heaven and the earth, and, if the record were complete,
we should also learn that it was only at the end of that period that
he was aware of just what He set out to do with the raw material of
chaos that confronted Him. Only an emasculated subjective meta-
physics has transformed the eloquent myth of Genesis into the con-
ception of a Creator creating without any unformed matter to work
upon.
The final comment is that when excitement about subject matter
goes deep, it stirs up a store of attitudes and meanings derived from
prior experience. As they are aroused into activity they become
conscious thoughts and emotions, emotionalized images. To be set
on fire by a thought or scene is to be inspired. What is kindled must
either burn itself out, turning to ashes, or must press itself out in
material that changes the latter from crude metal into a refined
product. Many a person is unhappy, tortured within, because he has
at command no art of expressive action. What under happier con-
ditions might be used to convert objective material into material of
an intense and clear experience, seethes within in unruly turmoil
which finally dies down after, perhaps, a painful inner disruption.
Materials undergoing combustion because of intimate contacts
and mutually exercised resistances constitute inspiration. On the side
of the self, elements that issue from prior experience are stirred into
action in fresh desires, impulsions and images. These proceed from
the subconscious, not cold or in shapes that are identified with par-
ticulars of the past, not in chunks and lumps, but fused in the fire
of internal commotion. They do not seem to come from the self,
because they issue from a self not consciously known. Hence, by a
just myth, the inspiration is attributed to a god, or to the muse. The
inspiration, however, is initial. In itself, at the outset, it is. still
80 JOHN DEWEY
inchoate. Inflamed inner material must find objective fuel upon
which to feed. Through the interaction of the fuel with material
already afire the refined and formed product comes into existence.
The act of expression is not something which supervenes upon an
inspiration already complete. It is the carrying forward to completion
of an inspiration by means of the objective material of perception
and imagery.?
An impulsion cannot lead to expression save when it is thrown
into commotion, turmoil. Unless there is com-pression nothing is
ex-pressed. The turmoil marks the place where inner impulse and
contact with environment, in fact or in idea, meet and create a
ferment. The war dance and the harvest dance of the savage do not
issue from within except there be an impending hostile raid or crops
that are to be gathered. To generate the indispensable excitement
there must be something at stake, something momentous and un-
certain—like the outcome of a battle or the prospects of a harvest. A
sure thing does not arouse us emotionally. Hence it is not mere
excitement that is expressed but excitement-about-something; hence,
also, it is that even mere excitement, short of complete panic, will
utilize channels of action that have been worn by prior activities that
dealt with objects. Thus, like the movements of an actor who goes
through his part automatically, it simulates expression. Even an
undefined uneasiness seeks outlet in song or pantomime, striving to
become articulate.
Erroneous views of the nature of the act of expression almost all
have their source in the notion that an emotion is complete in itself
within, only when uttered having impact upon external material.
But, in fact, an emotion is to or from or about something objective,
whether in fact or in idea. An emotion is implicated in a situation,
the issue of which is in suspense and in which the self that is moved
in the emotion is vitally concerned. Situations are depressing, threat-
ening, intolerable, triumphant. Joy in the victory won by a group
1In his interesting “The Theory of Poetry,” Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie wavers
between two views of inspiration. One of them takes what seems to me the cor-
rect interpretation. In the poem, an inspiration “completely and exquisitely de-
fines itself.” At other times, he says the inspiration is the poem; “something
self-contained and self-sufficient, a complete and entire whole.” He says that
“each inspiration is something which did not and could not originally exist as
words.” Doubtless such is the case; not even a trigonometric function exists
merely as words. But if it is already self-sufficient and self-contained, why does it
seek and find words as a medium of expression?
with which a person is identified is not something internally com-
plete, nor is sorrow upon the death of a friend anything that can be
understood save as an interpenetration of self with objective con-
ditions.
This latter fact is especially important in connection with the
individualization of works of art. The notion that expression is a
direct emission of an emotion complete in itself entails logically that
individualization is specious and external. For, according to it, fear
is fear, elation is elation, love is love, each being generic, and internally
differentiated only by differences of intensity. Were this idea correct,
works of art would necessarily fall within certain types. This view
has infected criticism but not so as to assist understanding of concrete
works of art. Save nominally, there is no such thing as the emotion
of fear, hate, love. The unique, unduplicated character of experienced
events and situations impregnates the emotion that is evoked. Were
it the function of speech to reproduce that to which it refers, we
could never speak of fear, but only of fear-of-this-particular-oncoming-
automobile, with all its specifications of time and place, or fear-under-
specified-circumstances-of-drawing-a-wrong-conclusion from just-such-
and-such-data. A lifetime would be too short to reproduce in words
a single emotion. In reality, however, poet and novelist have an
immense advantage over even an expert psychologist in dealing with
an emotion. For the former build up a concrete situation and permit
it to evoke emotional response. Instead of a description of an emo-
tion in intellectual and symbolic terms, the artist “does the deed
that breeds” the emotion.
That art is selective is a fact universally recognized. It is so
because of the réle of emotion in the act of expression. Any pre-
dominant mood automatically excludes all that is uncongenial with
it. An emotion is more effective than any deliberate challenging
sentinel could be. It reaches out tentacles for that which is cognate,
for things which feed it and carry it to completion. Only when
emotion dies or is broken to dispersed fragments, can material to
which it is alien enter consciousness. The selective operation of
materials so powerfully exercised by a developing emotion in a series
of continued acts extracts matter from a multitude of objects, nu-
merically and spatially separated, and condenses what is abstracted
in an object that is an epitome of the values belonging to them all.
This function creates the “universality” of a work of art.
If one examines into the reason why certain works of art offend
82 JOHN DEWEY
us, one is likely to find that the cause is that there is no personally
felt emotion guiding the selecting and assembling of the materials
presented. We derive the impression that the artist, say the author
of a novel, is trying to regulate by conscious intent the nature of the
emotion aroused. We are irritated by a feeling that he is manipulat-
ing materials to secure an effect decided upon in advance. ‘The facets
of the work, the variety so indispensable to it, are held together by
some external force. The movement of the parts and the conclusion
disclose no logical necessity. The author, not the subject matter, is
the arbiter.
In reading a novel, even one written by an expert craftsman,
one may get a feeling early in the story that hero or heroine is
doomed, doomed not by anything inherent in situations and char-
acter but by the intent of the author who makes the character a
puppet to set forth his own cherished idea. The painful feeling that
results is resented not because it is painful but because it is foisted
upon us by something that we feel comes from outside the move-
ment of the subject matter. A work may be much more tragic and
yet leave us with an emotion of fulfillment instead of irritation. We
are reconciled to the conclusion because we feel it is inherent in the
movement of the subject matter portrayed. ‘The incident is tragic but
the world in which such fateful things happen is not an arbitrary
and imposed world. The emotion of the author and that aroused in
us are occasioned by scenes in that world and they blend with sub-
ject matter. It is for similar reasons that we are repelled by the
intrusion of a moral design in literature while we esthetically accept
any amount of moral content if it is held together by a sincere
emotion that controls the material. A white flame of pity or
indignation may find material that feeds it and it may fuse every-
thing assembled into a vital whole.
Just because emotion is essential to that act of expression which
produces a work of art, it is easy for inaccurate analysis to miscon-
ceive its mode of operation and conclude that the work of art has
emotion for its significant content. One may cry out with joy or
even weep upon seeing a friend from whom one has been long
separated. ‘The outcome is not an expressive object—save to the
onlooker. But if the emotion leads one to gather material that is
affiliated to the mood which is aroused, a poem may result. In the
direct outburst, an objective situation is the stimulus, the cause, of
THE ACT OF EXPRESSION §3
the emotion. In the poem, objective material becomes the content
and matter of the emotion, not just its evocative occasion.
In the development of an expressive act, the emotion operates
like a magnet drawing to itself appropriate material: appropriate be-
cause it has an experienced emotional affinity for the state of mind
already moving. Selection and organization of material are at once a
function and a test of the quality of the emotion experienced. In
seeing a drama, beholding a picture, or reading a novel, we may feel
that the parts do not hang together. Either the maker had no ex-
perience that was emotionally toned, or, although having at the out-
set a felt emotion, it was not sustained, and a succession of unrelated
emotions dictated the work. In the latter case, attention wavered and
shifted, and an assemblage of incongruous parts ensued. The sensi-
tive observer or reader is aware of junctions and seams, of holes
arbitrarily filled in. Yes, emotion must operate. But it works to effect
continuity of movement, singleness of effect amid variety. It is se-
lective of material and directive of its order and arrangement. But it
is not what is expressed. Without emotion, there may be craftsman-
ship, but not art; it may be present and be intense, but if it is directly
manifested the result is also not art.
There are other works that are overloaded with emotion. On the
theory that manifestation of an emotion is its expression, there could
be no overloading; the more intense the emotion, the more effective
the “expression.” In fact, a person overwhelmed by an emotion is
thereby incapacitated for expressing it. There is at least that element
of truth in Wordsworth’s formula of “emotion recollected in tran-
quillity.” There is, when one is mastered by an emotion, too much
undergoing (in the language by which having an experience has
been described) and too little active response to permit a balanced
relationship to be struck. There is too much “nature” to allow of
the development of art. Many of the paintings of Van Gogh, for
example, have an intensity that arouses an answering chord. But with
the intensity, there is an explosiveness due to absence of assertion of
control. In extreme cases of emotion, it works to disorder instead of
ordering material. Insufficient emotion shows itself in a coldly “cor-
rect” product. Excessive emotion obstructs the necessary elaboration
and definition of parts.
The determination of the mot juste, of the right incident in the
right place, of exquisiteness of proportion, of the precise tone, hue,
84 JOHN DEWEY
and shade that helps unify the whole while it defines a part, is
accomplished by emotion. Not every emotion, however, can do this
work, but only one informed by material that is grasped and gathered.
Emotion is informed and carried forward when it is spent indirectly
in search for material and in giving it order, not when it is directly
expended.
Works of art often present to us an air of spontaneity, a lyric

quality, as if they were the unpremeditated song of a bird. But man,
whether fortunately or unfortunately, is not a bird. His most spon-
taneous outbursts, if expressive, are not overflows of momentary
internal pressures. The spontaneous in art is complete absorption in
subject matter that is fresh, the freshness of which holds and sustains
emotion. Staleness of matter and obtrusion of calculation are the two
enemies of spontaneity of expression. Reflection, even long and ar-
duous reflection, may have been concerned in the generation of
material. But an expression will, nevertheless, manifest spontaneity
if that matter has been vitally taken up into a present experience.
The inevitable selfmovement of a poem or drama is compatible with
any amount of prior labor provided the results of that labor emerge
in complete fusion with an emotion that is fresh. Keats speaks
poetically of the way in which artistic expression is reached when he
tells of the “innumerable compositions and decompositions which
take place between the intellect and its thousand materials before it
arrives at that trembling, delicate and snail-horn perception of
beauty.”
Each of us assimilates into himself something of the values and
meanings contained in past experiences. But we do so in differing
degrees and at differing levels of selfhood. Some things sink deep,
others stay on the surface and are easily displaced. The old poets
traditionally invoked the muse of Memory as something wholly out-
side themselyes—outside their present conscious selves. The invocation
is a tribute to the power of what is most deep-lying and therefore
the furthest below consciousness, in determination of the present
self and of what it has to say. It is not true that we “forget” or drop
into unconsciousness only alien and disagreeable things. It is even
more true that the things which we have most completely made a
part of ourselves, that we have assimilated to compose our personality
and not merely retained as incidents, cease to have a separate con-
scious existence. Some occasion, be it what it may, stirs the personality
that has been thus formed. Then comes the need for expression.
What is expressed will be neither the past events that have exercised
their shaping influence nor yet the literal existing occasion. It will
be, in the degree of its spontaneity, an intimate union of the features
of present existence with the values that past experience have in-
corporated in personality. Immediacy and individuality, the traits that
mark concrete existence, come from the present occasion; meaning,
substance, content, from what is embedded in the self from the past.
I do not think that the dancing and singing of even little chil-
dren can be explained wholly on the basis of unlearned and un-
formed responses to then existing objective occasions. Clearly there
must be something in the present to evoke happiness. But the act is
expressive only as there is in it a unison of something stored from
past experience, something therefore generalized, with present con-
ditions. In the case of the expressions of happy children the marriage
of past values and present incidents takes place easily; there are few
obstructions to be overcome, few wounds to heal, few conflicts to
resolve. With maturer persons, the reverse is the case. Accordingly
the achievement of complete unison is rare; but when it occurs it is
so on a deeper level and with a fuller content of meaning. And then,
even though after long incubation and after precedent pangs of labor,
the final expression may issue with the spontaneity of the cadenced
speech or rhythmic movement of happy childhood.
In one of his letters to his brother Van Gogh says that “emo-
tions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing that
one works, and the strokes come with a sequence and coherence like
that of words in a speech or letter.” Such fullness of emotion and
spontaneity of utterance come, however, only to those who have
steeped themselves in experiences of objective situations; to those
who have long been absorbed in observation of related material and
whose imaginations have long been occupied with reconstructing
what they see and hear. Otherwise the state is more like one of
frenzy in which the sense of orderly production is subjective and
hallucinatory. Even the volcano’s outburst presupposes a long period
of prior compression, and, if the eruption sends forth molten lava
and not merely separate rocks and ashes, it implies a transformation
of original raw materials. “Spontaneity” is the result of long periods
of activity, or else it is so empty as not to be an act of expression.
86 JOHN DEWEY
What William James wrote about religious experience might
well have been written about the antecedents of acts of expression.
“A man’s conscious wit and, will are aiming at something only dimly
and inaccurately imagined. Yet all the while the forces of mere
organic ripening within him are going on to their own prefigured
result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies
behind the scenes which in their way work toward rearrangement,
and the rearrangement toward which all these deeper forces tend is
pretty surely definite, and definitely different from what he con-
sciously conceives and determines. It may consequently be actually
interfered with (jammed as it were) by his voluntary efforts slanting
toward the true direction.” Hence, as he adds, “When the new center
of energy has been subconsciously incubated so long as to be just
ready to burst into flower, ‘hands off’ is the only word for us; it must
burst forth unaided.”
It would be difficult to find or give a better description of the
nature of spontaneous expression. Pressure precedes the gushing forth
of juice from the wine press. New ideas come leisurely yet promptly
to consciousness only when work has previously been done in forming
the right doors by which they may gain entrance. Subconscious
maturation precedes creative production in every line of human
endeavor. The direct effort of “wit and will” of itself never
gave birth to anything that is not mechanical; their function
is necessary, but it is to let loose allies that exist outside their scope.
At different times we brood over different things; we entertain pur-
poses that, as far as consciousness is concerned, are independent,
being each appropriate to its own occasion; we perform different
acts, each with its own particular result. Yet as they all proceed from
one living creature they are somehow bound together below the level
of intention. They work together, and finally something is born
almost in spite of conscious personality, and certainly not because of
its deliberate will. When patience has done its perfect work, the man
is taken possession of by the appropriate muse and speaks and sings
as some god dictates.
Persons who are conventionally set off from artists, “thinkers,”
scientists, do not operate by conscious wit and will to anything like
the extent popularly supposed. They, too, press forward toward some
end dimly and imprecisely prefigured, groping their way as they are
lured on by the identity of an aura in which their observations and
reflections swim. Only the psychology that has separated things
which in reality belong together holds that scientists and philosophers
think while poets and painters follow their feelings. In both, and to
the same extent in the degree in which they are of comparable rank,
there is emotionalized thinking, and there are feelings whose sub-
stance consists of appreciated meanings or ideas. As I have already
said, the only significant distinction concerns the kind of material
to which emotionalized imagination adheres. Those who are called
artists have for their subject-matter the qualities of things of direct
experience; “intellectual” inquirers deal with these qualities at one
remove, through the medium of symbols that stand for qualities but
are not significant in their immediate presence. The ultimate differ-
ence is enormous as far as the technique of thought and emotion are
concerned. But there is no difference as far as dependence on emo-
tionalized ideas and subconscious maturing are concerned. Thinking
directly in terms of colors, tones, images, is a different operation
technically from thinking in words. But only superstition will hold
that, because the meaning of paintings and symphonies cannot be
translated into words, or that of poetry into prose, therefore thought
is monopolized by the latter. If all meanings could be adequately
expressed by words, the arts of painting and music would not exist.
There are values and meanings that can be expressed only by im-
mediately visible and audible qualities, and to ask what they mean
in the sense of something that can be put into words is to deny
their distinctive existence.
Different persons differ in the relative amount of participation
of conscious wit and will which go into their acts of expression.
Edgar Allan Poe left an account of the process of expression as it is
engaged in by those of the more deliberate cast of mind. He is tell-
ing about what went on when he wrote “The Raven,” and says:
“The public is rarely permitted to take a peep behind the scenes at
the vacillating crudities, of the true purpose seized at the last mo-
ment, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene shifting, the
step ladders and demon traps, the red paint and black patches,
which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the proper-
ties of the literary histrio.”
It is not necessary to take the numerical ration stated by Poe
too seriously. But the substance of what he says is a picturesque
presentation of a sober fact. The primitive and raw material of
88 JOHN DEWEY
experience needs to be reworked in order to secure artistic expres-
sion. Oftentimes, this need is greater in cases of “inspiration” than
in other cases. In this process the emotion called out by the original
material is modified as it comes to be attached to the new material.
This fact gives us the clue to the nature of esthetic emotion.
With respect to the physical materials that enter into the forma-
tion of a work of art, every one knows that they must undergo
change. Marble must be chipped; pigments must be laid on canvas;
words must be put together. It is not so generally recognized that a
similar transformation takes place on the side of “inner” materials,
images, observations, memories and emotions. They are also progres-
sively re-formed; they, too, must be administered. This modification
is the building up of a truly expressive act. The impulsion that
seethes as a commotion demanding utterance must undergo as much
and as careful management in order to receive eloquent manifesta-
tion as marble or pigment, as colors and sounds. Nor are there in
fact two operations, one performed upon the outer material and the
other upon the inner and mental stuff.
The work is artistic in the degree in which the two functions of
transformation are effected by a single operation. As the painter
places pigment upon the canvas, or imagines it placed there, his
ideas and feeling are also ordered. As the writer composes in his
medium of words what he wants to say, his idea takes on for himself
perceptible form.
The sculptor conceives his statue, not just in mental terms but
in those of clay, marble or bronze. Whether a musician, painter, or
architect works out his original emotional idea in terms of auditory
or visual imagery or in the actual medium as he works is of relatively
minor importance. For the imagery is of the objective medium
undergoing development. The physical media may be ordered in
imagination or in concrete material. In any case, the physical process
develops imagination, while imagination is conceived in terms of
concrete material. Only by progressive organization of “inner” and
“outer” material in organic connection with each other can any-
thing be produced that is not a learned document or an illustration
of something familiar.
Suddenness of emergence belongs to appearance of material
above the threshold of consciousness, not to the process of its gener-
ation. Could we trace any such manifestation to its roots and follow
THE ACT OF EXPRESSION &9
it through its history, we should find at the beginning an emotion
comparatively gross and undefined. We should find that it assumed
definite shape only as it worked itself through a series of changes in
imagined material. What most of us lack in order to be artists is not
the inceptive emotion, nor yet merely technical skill in execution.
It is capacity to work a vague idea and emotion over into terms of
some definite medium. Were expression but a kind of decalcomania,
or a conjuring of a rabbit out of the place where it lies hid, artistic
expression would be a comparatively simple matter. But between
conception and bringing to birth there lies a long period of gesta-
tion. During this period the inner material of emotion and idea is
as much transformed through acting and being acted upon by ob-
jective material as the latter undergoes modification when it becomes
a medium of expression.
It is precisely this transformation that changes the character of
the original emotion, altering its quality so that it becomes distinc-
tively esthetic in nature. In formal definition, emotion is esthetic
when it adheres to an object formed by an expressive act, in the
sense in which the act of expression has been defined.
In its beginning an emotion flies straight to its object. Love
tends to cherish the loved object as hate tends to destroy the thing
hated. Either emotion may be turned aside from its direct end. The
emotion of love may seek and find material that is other than the
directly loved one, but that is congenial and cognate through the
emotion that draws things into affinity. ‘This other material may be
anything as long as it feeds the emotion. Consult the poets, and we
find that love finds its expression in rushing torrents, still pools, in
the suspense that awaits a storm, a bird poised in flight, a remote
star or the fickle moon. Nor is this material metaphorical in charac-
ter, if by “metaphor” is understood the result of any act of con-
scious comparison. Deliberate metaphor in poetry is the recourse of
mind when emotion does not saturate material. Verbal expression
may take the form of metaphor, but behind the words lies an act of
emotional identification, not an intellectual comparison.
In all such cases, some object emotionally akin to the direct
object of emotion takes the place of the latter. It acts in place of a
direct caress, of hesitating approach, of trying to carry by storm.
There is truth in Hulme’s statement that “beauty is the marking
time, the stationary vibration, the feigned ecstasy, of an arrested
90 JOHN DEWEY
impulse unable to reach its natural end.”? If there is anything wrong
with the statement, it is the veiled intimation that the impulsion
ought to have reached “its natural end.” If the emotion of love
between the sexes had not been celebrated by means of diversion into
material emotionally cognate but practically irrelevant to its direct
object and end, there is every reason to suppose it would still remain
on the animal plane. The impulse arrested in its direct movement
toward its physiologically normal end is not, in the case of poetry,
arrested in an absolute sense. It is turned into indirect channels
where it finds other material than that which is “naturally” ap-
propriate to it, and as it fuses with this material it takes on new
color and has new Consequences. This is what happens when any
natural impulse is idealized or spiritualized. That which elevates the
embrace of lovers above the animal plane is just the fact that when
it occurs it has taken into itself, as its own meaning, the conse-
quences of these indirect excursions that are imagination in action.
Expression is the clarification of turbid emotion; our appetites
know themselves when they are reflected in the mirror of art, and as
they know themselves they are transfigured. Emotion that is distinc-
tively esthetic then occurs. It is not a form of sentiment that exists
independently from the outset. It is an emotion induced by material
that is expressive, and because it is evoked by and attached to this
material it consists of natural emotions that have been transformed.
Natural objects, landscapes, for example, induce it. But they do so
only because when they are matter of an experience they, too, have
undergone a change similar to that which the painter or poet effects
in converting the immediate scene into the matter of an act that
expresses the value of what is seen.
An irritated person is moved to do something. He cannot sup-
press his irritation by any direct act of will; at most he can only
drive it by this attempt into-a subterranean channel where it will
work the more insidiously and destructively. He must act to get rid
of it. But he can act in different ways, one direct, the other indirect,
in manifestations of his state. He cannot suppress it any more than
he can destroy the action of electricity by a fiat of will. But he can
harness one or the other to the accomplishment of new ends that
will do away with the destructive force of the natural agency. The
2 Speculations, p. 266.
THE ACT OF EXPRESSION m4
uritable person does not have to take it out on neighbors or mem-
bers of his family to get relief. He may remember that a certain
amount of regulated physical activity is good medicine. He sets to
work tidying his room, straightening pictures that are askew, sorting
papers, clearing out drawers, putting things in order generally. He
uses his emotion, switching it into indirect channels prepared by
prior occupations and interests. But since there is something in the
utilization of these channels that is emotionally akin to the means
by which his irritation would find direct discharge, as he puts objects
in order his emotion is ordered.
This transformation is of the very essence of the change that
takes place in any and every natural or original emotional impulsion
when it takes the indirect road of expression instead of the direct
road of discharge. Irritation may be let go like an arrow directed at
a target and produce some change in the outer world. But having an
outer effect is something very different from ordered use of objective
conditions in order to give objective fulfillment to the emotion. The
latter alone is expression and the emotion that attaches itself to, or
is interpenetrated by, the resulting object is esthetic. If the person
in question puts his room to rights as a matter of routine he is
anesthetic. But if his original emotion of impatient irritation has
been ordered and tranquillized by what he has done, the orderly
room reflects back to him the change that has taken place in him-
self. He feels not that he has accomplished a needed chore but has
done something emotionally fulfilling. His emotion as thus “‘objecti-
fied” is esthetic.
Esthetic emotion is thus something distinctive and yet not cut

off by a chasm from other and natural emotional experiences, as
some theorists in contending for its existence have made it to be.
One familiar with recent literature on esthetics will be aware of a
tendency to go to one extreme or the other. On one hand, it is as-
sumed that there is in existence, at least in some gifted persons, an
emotion that is aboriginally esthetic, and that artistic production and
appreciation are the manifestations of this emotion. Such a con-
ception is the inevitable logical counterpart of all attitudes that make
art something esoteric and that relegate fine art to a realm separated
by a gulf from everyday experiences. On the other hand, a reaction
wholesome in intent against this view goes to the extreme of holding
92 JOHN DEWEY
that there is no such thing as distinctively esthetic emotion. The
emotion of affection that operates not through an overt act of caress
but by searching out the observation or image of a soaring bird, the
emotion of irritating energy that does not destroy or injure but that
puts objects in satisfying order, is not numerically identical with its
original and natural estate. Yet it stands in genetic continuity with
it. The emotion that was finally wrought out by Tennyson in the
composition of “In Memoriam” was not identical with the emotion
of grief that manifests itself in weeping and a downcast frame: the
first is an act of expression, the second of discharge. Yet the con-
tinuity of the two emotions, the fact that the esthetic emotion is
native emotion transformed through the objective material to which
it has committed its development and consummation, is evident.
Samuel Johnson with the Philistine’s sturdy preference for re-
production of the familiar, criticized Milton’s “Lycidas” in the fol-
lowing way: “It is not to be considered as the effusion of real
passion, for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
opinions. Passion plucks not berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor
calls upon Arethusa and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and fauns
with cloven heel. Where there is leisure for fiction there is little
grief.” Of course the underlying principle of Johnson’s criticism
would prevent the appearance of any work of art. It would, in strict
logic, confine the “expression” of grief to weeping and tearing the
hair. Thus, while the particular subject matter of Milton’s poem
would not be used today in an elegy, it, and any other work of art,
is bound to deal with the remote in one of its aspects—namely, that
remote from immediate effusion of emotion and from material that
is worn out. Grief that has matured beyond the need of weeping
and wailing for relief will resort to something of the sort that John-
son calls fiction—that is, imaginative material, although it be dif-
ferent matter from literature, classic and ancient myth. In all primi-
tive peoples wailing soon assumes.a ceremonial form that is “remote”
from its native manifestation.
In other words, art is not nature, but is nature transformed by
entering into new relationships where it evokes a new emotional
response. Many actors remain outside the particular emotion they
portray. This fact is known as Diderot’s paradox since he first devel-
oped the theme. In fact, it is paradox only from the standpoint im-
plied in the quotation from Samuel Johnson. More recent inquiries
have shown, indeed, that there are two types of actors. There are
those who report that they are at their best when they “lose” them-
selves emotionally in their roles. Yet this fact is no exception to the
principle that has been stated. For, after all, it is a role, a “part”
with which actors identify themselves. As a part, it is conceived and
treated as part of a whole; if there is art in acting, the réle is sub-
ordinated so as to occupy the position of a part in the whole. It is
thereby qualified by esthetic form. Even those who feel most poig-
nantly the emotions of the character represented do not lose con-
sciousness that they are on a stage where there are other actors
taking part; that they are before an audience, and that they must,
therefore, cooperate with other players in creating a certain effect.
These facts demand and signify a definite transformation of the
primitive emotion. Portrayal of intoxication is a common device of
the comic stage. But a man actually drunken would have to use art
to conceal his condition if he is not to disgust his audience, or at
least to excite a laughter that differs radically from that excited by
intoxication when acted. The difference between the two types of
actors is not a difference between expression of an emotion con-
trolled by the relations of the situation into which it enters and a
manifestation of raw emotion. It is a difference in methods of bring-
ing about the desired effect, a difference doubtless connected with
personal temperament.
Finally, what has been said locates, even if it does not solve, the
vexed problem of the relation of esthetic or fine art to other modes
of production also called art. The difference that exists in fact can-
not be leveled, as we have already seen, by defining both in terms
of technique and skill. But neither can it be erected into a barrier
that is insuperable by referring the creation of fine art to an impulse
that is unique, separated from impulsions which work in modes of
expression not usually brought under the caption of fine art. Conduct
can be sublime and manners gracious. If impulsion toward organiza-
tion of material so as to present the latter in a form directly fulfilling
in experience had no existence outside the arts of painting, poetry,
music, and sculpture, it would not exist anywhere; there would be
no fine art.
The problem of conferring esthetic quality upon all modes of
production is a serious problem. But it is a human problem for
human solution; not a problem incapable of solution because it is
94 JOHN DEWEY
set by some unpassable gulf in human nature or in the nature of
things. In an imperfect society—and no society will ever be perfect
—fine art will be to some extent an escape from, or an adventitious
decoration of, the main activities of living. But in a better-ordered
society than that in which we live, an infinitely greater happiness
than is now the case would attend all modes of production. We live
in a world in which there is an immense amount of organization,
but it is an external organization, not one of the ordering of a
growing experience, one that involves, moreover, the whole of the
live creature, toward a fulfilling conclusion. Works of art that are
not remote from common life, that are widely enjoyed in a com-
munity, are signs of a-unified collective life. But they are also mar-
velous aids in the creation of such a life. The remaking of the mate-
rial of experience in the act of expression is not an isolated event
confined to the artist and to a person here and there who happens
to enjoy the work. In the degree in which art exercises its office, it is
also a remaking of the experience of the community in the direction
of greater order and unity.
6
Ge OUCASSE
ART AND THE

LANGUAGE
OF THE EMOTIONS
That art is the language of the emotions has been widely held since
Eugene Véron in 1878 declared that art is “the emotional expression
of human personality,’ and Tolstoy in 1898 that “art is a human
activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of
certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived
through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and
also experience them.”?
1. Expression? or expression and transmission? Whether trans-
mission of the emotions expressed occurs or not, however, is largely
accidental; for a given work of art may happen never to come to the
attention of persons other than the artist himself; and yet it remains
a work of art. Moreover, the individual psychological constitution of
persons other than the artist who may contemplate his work is one
of the variables that determine whether the feelings those persons
then experience are or are not the same as the feelings the artist
Reprinted from the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 23, Fall 1964,
by kind permission of the author and the publisher.
1 Véron, L’Esthétique (Paris, 1882), p. 35; Ist ed., 1878.
2 Tolstoy, What is Art? Trans. Aylmer Maude (London, 1899).
95
96 C. J. DUCASSE
intended the object he has created to express. Evidently the activity
of the artist as artist terminates with his creation of the work of art.
What the word language signifies in the phrase language of the
emotions is therefore essentially medium of expression, and only ad-
ventitiously means of transmission.
But even after this has been realized, the term language of the
emotions still remains ambiguous in several respects. The present
paper attempts to eliminate its ambiguities and thereby to make
clear in precisely what sense the statement that art is the language
of the emotions must be taken if it is to constitute a true answer to
the two questions, What is art? and What is a work of art?
2. The arts, and the fine arts. The first of the facts to which
attention must be called is that the word art in its generic sense
means skill; and that the purposes in pursuit of which one employs
skill may be more specifically pragmatic, or epistemic, or aesthetic.
Let it therefore be understood that, in what follows, only
aesthetic art, i.e., what is commonly called fine art, will be in view.
Indeed, because of the limited space here available, only the visual
and the auditory arts, but not the literary arts, will be directly re-
ferred to. What will be said about the former arts, however, would
in essentials apply also to the latter.
3. The two central questions. So much being clear, the two
questions mentioned above may now be stated more fully as follows:
a. Just what does the creative operation termed expression of
emotion consist in, which the artist is performing at the time he is
creating a work of art? b. Just what is meant by saying that the work
of art, once it has come into existence, then itself “expresses emo-
tions”?
4. The feelings, and the emotions. Before the attempt is made
to answer these two questions, it is necessary to point out that a
fairer statement of what is really contended when art is said to be
the language of the emotions would be that art is the language of
the feelings. For the term the emotions ordinarily designates the
relatively few feelings—anger, love, fear, joy, anxiety, jealousy, sad-
ness, etc.—for which names were needed because their typical spon-
taneous manifestations, and the typical situations that arouse those
particular feelings, present themselves again and again in human life.
And if, when art is said to be the language of the emotions, “the
emotions” were taken to designate only the few dozen varieties of
ART AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS oY
feelings that have names, then that conception of art would apply
to only a small proportion of the things that are admittedly works
of art. The fact is that human beings experience, and that works of
art and indeed works of nature too express, many feelings besides
the few ordinarily thought of when the term the emotions is used.
These other feelings are too rare, or too fleeting, or too unmanifested,
or their nuances too subtle, to have pragmatic importance and there-
fore to have needed names.
5. Being sad vs. imagining sadness. Taking it as granted, then,
that the emotions of which art is said to be the language include
these many nameless feelings as well as the emotions, moods, senti-
ments, and attitudes that have names, the next important distinction
is between having a feeling—for instance, being sad—and only imag-
ining the feeling called sadness; that is, imagining it not in the sense
of supposing oneself to be sad, but in the sense of entertaining a
mental image of sadness.
The essential distinction here as regards feelings, and in the
instance as regards the feeling-quality called sadness, is the same as
therdistinclioms in: tne Case-Of ae color,-or a7tone, “ora taste; etc,
between actually sensing it, and only imagining it; for example,
between seeing some particular shade of red, and only imagining that
shade, i.e., calling up a mental image of it as one does when perhaps
remembering the red one saw the day before.
6. Venting vs. objectifying sadness. Next two possible senses of
the statement that a person is expressing sadness must be clearly
distinguished.
If a person who is sad manifests the fact at all in his behavior,
the behavior that manifests it consists of such things as groans, or
sighs, or a dejected posture or countenance; and these behaviors ex-
press his sadness in the sense of venting it, i.e., of being effusions of
it. They are not intentional; and the interest of other persons in
them is normally not aesthetic interest, but diagnostic—diagnostic
of the nature of his emotional state; and possibly also pragmatic in
that these evidences of his sadness may move other persons to try
to cheer him up.
Unlike such venting or effusion, however, which is automatic,
the composing of sad music—or, comprehensively, the creating of a
work of any of the arts—is a critically controlled purposively creative
operation. If the composer manages to accomplish it, he then has
98 C. J. DUCASSE
expressed sadness. In order to do it, however, he need not at all—
and preferably should not—himself be sad at the time but rather,
and essentially, intent and striving to achieve his intent. This is, to
compose music that will besad not in the sense of itself experiencing
sadness, since music does not experience feelings, but in the sense of
objectifying sadness.
And that a particular musical composition objectifies sadness
means that it has the capacity—the power—to cause an image of
sadness to arise in the consciousness of a person who attends to the
music with aesthetic interest; or, as we might put it, the capacity to
make him taste, or sample, sadness without actually making him sad.
It is sad in the sense in which quinine is bitter even at times when
it is not being tasted; for bitter, as predicated of quinine, is the name
of the capacity or power of quinine, when put on the tongue, to
cause experience of bitter taste; whereas bitter, as predicated of a
taste, is the name not of capacity or power of that taste, but of that
taste quality itself.
7. Aesthetic contemplation. A listener who is attending to the
music with interest in its emotional import is engaged in aesthetic
contemplation of the music. He is doing what the present writer has
elsewhere proposed to call ecpathizing the music—ecpathizing being
the analogue in the language of feelingof what reading is in the
language of concepts. Reading acquaints the reader with, for instance,
the opinion which a given sentence formulates but does not neces-
sarily cause him to adopt it himself. Similarly, listening with aes-
thetic interest to sad music acquaints the listener with the taste of
sadness, but does not ordinarily make him sad.
8. The process of objectification of feeling. The psychological
process in the artist, from which a work of art eventually results, is
ordinarily gradual. Except in very simple works of art, the artist very
seldom imagines precisely from the start either the finished elaborate
work he is about to record or the rich complex of feelings it will
objectify in the sense stated above. Normally, the creative process has
many steps, each of them of the trial and error type. In the case of
music, the process may get started by some sounds the composer
hears, or more likely by some sound-images that emerge spontane-
ously out of his subconscious and inspire him. That they inspire him
means that they move him to add to them some others in some
particular temporal pattern. Having done so, he then contemplates
ART AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS ‘99
aesthetically the bit of music he has just invented and perhaps actu-
ally played; and, if need be, he then alters it until its emotional
import satifies the inspiration that. generated it. Next, contemplation
in turn of the created and now satisfactory musical fragment gener-
ates spontaneously some addition to it, the emotional import of
which in the temporal context of the previously created fragment
is then in its turn contemplated, judged, and either approved or
altered until found satisfactory. Each such complex step both in-
spires a particular next step, and rules out particular others which a
different composer might have preferred.
This process—of inspiration-creation-contemplation-judgment-and
correction or approval—is repeated again and again until the musical
composition, or as the case may be the painting, or statue, or work
of one of the other arts, is finished; each image that is found satis-
factory being ordinarily recorded-in musical notation, or in paint on
canvas, etc., rather than trusted to memory.
ve The sources of the emotional import of an object. The feel-
ings, of which images are caused to arise in a person when he con-
templates with aesthetic interest a given work of art, or indeed any
object, have several possible sources.
One of them is the form of the object; that is, the particular
arrangement of its parts in space, or in time, or both. Taking as the
simplest example a tone expressive of sadness, its form would ‘consist
of its loudness-shape, e.g., diminuendo from BOY loud to
nothing.
A second source of feeling would be what might be called the
material of the tone; that is, its quality as made up of its fundamen-
tal pitch, of such overtones as may be present, and of the mere noise
it may also contain.
And still another source of feeling would be the emotional im-
port of what the presented tone may represent whether consciously
or subconsciously to a particular hearer; that is, the emotional import
which the tone may be borrowing from past experiences of his to
which it was intrinsic, that happened to be closely associated with
experience of that same tone at some time in the history of the
person now hearing it again. For instance the tone, although itself
rather mournful, might happen to have been the signal of quitting
time at the factory where he worked at a tedious job. This would
have made the tone represent something cheerful—would have given
100 C. J. DUCASSE
the tone a cheerful meaning; the cheerfulness of which henceforth
automatically mingles with, or perhaps masks for him, the otherwise
mournful feeling-import of the tone’s presented quality and loudness
shape. This third possible source of the emotional import of an
aesthetically contemplated object may be termed the object’s conno-
tation; so that in the example just used the tone has mournfulness
of quality and form, but cheerfulness of connotation.
Something must be said at this point, however, to make clear
both the likeness and the difference between what Santayana, when
discussing specifically beauty, means by beauty of expression, and
what would be meant by beauty of connotation.
By beauty of expression, Santayana means such beauty as an
object would owe to the fact that, in the past history of the person
who now finds it beautiful, it had pleasurable associations, and that,
if these are not now explicity recalled, their pleasurableness is auto-
matically borrowed by the object; thus making it beautiful since, in
Santayana’s view, that an object is beautiful means that, in aesthetic
contemplation, it is found pleasurable.
The likeness between what Santayana means by beauty of ex-
pression and what would here be meant by beauty of connotation is
that, in both cases, the beauty now found in the object arises from
something automatically borrowed by the object from associations it
has had in the past experience of the person concerned.
The difference, on the other hand, is that in what Santayana
calls beauty of expression, what the object so borrows and connotes,
is not beauty but, and essentially, only pleasurableness (no matter
whether sentimental, aesthetic, or other); whereas, in what would
properly be called beauty of connotation, what the object borrows
and connotes would be the beauty of something itself beautiful, with
which it had been associated. ‘Thus, whereas the cheerfulness of the
tone was cheerfulness of connotation, the beauty of expression of an
object is not beauty of connotation, but only pleasurableness of
connotation.
The sense of the word expression in Santayana’s phrase beauty
of expression is thus different from the three senses of expression
already distinguished, to wit, (a) expression as designating the kind
of operation being performed by an artist creating a work of art; (b)
expression in the sense it has when one speaks for instance of the sad
expression on a man’s face, for sad expression then means symptom
Rockmont College Librar
y
ART AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS 101

of sadness—diagnostic sign that he is sad; and (c) expression as
designating the capacity of an object when aesthetically contem-
plated by a person to generate in him an image of sadness, i.e., to
make him taste sadness.
10. “The language of the emotions” defined, The effect of the
several distinctions, to the indispensability of which attention has
been called in what precedes, is, the writer believes, to make it possi-
ble now to state precisely the sense in which it is true that art is the
language of the emotions. This sense is as follows.
Art is the critically controlled purposive activity which aims to
create an object having the capacity to reflect to its creator, when
he contemplates it with interest in its emotional import, the feeling-
images that had dictated the specific form and content he gave the
object; the created object being capable also of generating, in other
persons who contemplate it aesthetically, feeling-images similar or
dissimilar to those which dictated the specific features given the
object by the artist, according as the psychological constitution of
these other persons resembles or differs from that of the artist who
created the particular work of art.
SELECTED READINGS FOR PART I
Anderson, Harold (ed.). Creativity and Its Cultivation. New York:

Harpers, 1959.
Carritt, E. F. An Introduction to Aesthetics. London: Hutchinsons,
1948. Chapter 6. :
Collingwood, Robin G. The Principles of Art. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1938.
Cooper, Lane (ed.). The Art of the Writer. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1952.
Croce, Benedetto. Aesthetic. London: Maanillan; 1922.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch & Co.,
19s
Donagan, Alan. “The Croce-Collingwood Theory of Art.” Philoso-
phy, Vol. 53 (1958), p. 162.
Ducasse, Curt J. The Philosophy of Art. New York: Dial Press, 1929.
Ducasse, Curt J. Art, the Critics, and You. Indianapolis: Liberal Arts
Press, 1944.
Ghiselin, Brewster (ed.). The Creative Process. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1952. (Also Mentor Books paperback.)
Goldwater, Robert, and Marco Treves (eds.). Artists on Art. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1945.
Hospers, John. “The Concept of Artistic Expression.” Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 55 (1954-55), pp. 313-44. Reprinted
in John Hospers (ed.), Introductory Readings in Aesthetics. New
York: The Free Press, 1969.
Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation. New York: Macmillan, 1964.
Mursell, James L. The Psychology of Music. New York: Norton, 1937.
Chapter 7.
Osborne, Harold. Aestheti-s and Criticism. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1955.
102
103 SELECTED READINGS FOR PART I
Portnoy, Julius. A Psychology of Art Creation. Chapel Hill, N.C.:
University of North Carolina, 1942.
Sullivan, J. W. N. Beethoven: His Spiritual Development. London:
Jonathan Cape, 1927.
Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? 1895. London: Oxford University Press,
and other editions.
Tomas, Vincent (ed.). Creativity in the Arts. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1964.
Véron, Eugene. L’Esthetique, Paris, 1878.
PART II
Wiebe
EXPRESSIVE
PRODUCT
INTRODUCTION
A philosophically oriented reader who has completed the readings in

Part I may well ask, “So what?” We have been exposed to various
accounts of the expressive process on the part of the creative artist.
But one may ask what is the relation of all this to a philosophical
aesthetics? Does it matter to critics or laymen, or to anyone except
those who take a special interest in the psychology of art? Even in
this domain, its value could be questioned: not much is yet known
about the psychology of genius (including artistic genius), and the
process of creation differs so much from one creative artist to an-
other that to generalize about any process occurring in all artists
seems impossible. Besides, is the process of artistic creation neces-
sarily and always a process that can be called “expression of feeling,”
as the expression theory claims?
The process by which a work of art was created is so-and-so—
let us, for the sake of argument at least, agree. But surely what we
as consumers of art are interested in is not how it got there, but
what it is like once it gets there. We are interested not in the process
or genesis, but in the products that result from that process. No
matter how they got there (even if they dropped from the sky),
107
108 THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT
here they are—the works of Shakespeare or Bach or Rembrandt.
Now how shall we interpret them, appreciate them, characterize
them, analyze them? Granted.that feelings occur somewhere in the
process of creating them; granted even that the process can (as the
expression theory claims) be called “the expression of feeling.” But
in the process of creating anything at all—such as a scientific theory
—some feeling on the part of the creator doubtless occurs; the ques-
tion is how art is different. “A work of art, unlike a work of science,
is an embodiment of feeling,” is one answer. “It is not the feeling
that inspired the artist when he created, but the feeling that is em-
bodied in the work of art, that counts.” This takes up directly into
the central problem of Part II.
Here a most important ambiguity of the term “expression”
comes to light. We can talk about expression as a process, as we
did in Part I; or we can talk about expression as characterizing an
artistic product (work of art), as we shall do in Part II. The ques-
tion “Is art an expression of feeling?” is a trap for the unwary, lead-
ing countless students, critics, and artists to talk utter confusion and
nonsense about expression. In the present case, as in countless con-
versations heard and overheard about art, one has first to ask the
clarifying question: “Do you mean expression as something the
artist does, or as something the work of art has, possesses, contains?”
It is to this latter question that Part II is addressed. When
Ducasse wrote that art is the objectification of feeling, he was saying
that the feeling is “in” the work—that the artist put it there, em-
bodied it in the product of his labors, so that those of us who re-
spond to the work can find it for ourselves. Very well; but what is it
for a feeling to be “in” a work of art? A statement such as “The
artist has such-and-such feelings” can be literally true, but not “The
work of art has such-and-such feelings.” Presumably only conscious
beings can have feelings, and paintings and concertos are not con-
scious beings, so it follows that they cannot have feelings. Yet in
some sense the statement seems quite capable of being true, and
indeed we speak this way all the time: “T’schaikovsky’s Pathétique
Symphony is full of feeling” and “This poem is very sad,” and so on.
What is it, then, for a poem to be sad, for a symphony to be full
of feeling? How do we find out that it is, and how do we defend our
judgment in the face of someone who questions it? This problem
will be our concern in Part II.
THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT 109
Some works of art can—at least occasionally—be responded to
without the person so much as thinking of any expressive quality.
A fugue by Bach and a set of colored lines intersecting at right
angles by Mondrian can be seen as simply a pleasing interplay of
tone-combinations or visual forms, teasing the eye or ear. Some
critics, such as Clive Bell, have held that the proper appreciation of
art consists only of this. Yet it is virtually impossible for most ob-
servers to sustain such a way of viewing works of art; even when
there is no story and no representation of people and objects in the
world, the work of art is viewed as endowed with human qualities:
the interplay of tones or lines strikes one as grand, or graceful, or
stark, or monumental, or noble, or restless—all this, of course, with-
out attributing any story or program to the music or any representa-
tional character or other association (“this reminds me of. . . .”)
to the painting or sculpture. The story or the subject-matter may
often be incidental; but attributing to the work of art the qualities
of things and processes in the world seems indigenous to our response
to all art. We might construct a motto to state this fact: In art, all
percepts are suffused with affect.
Some critics of the arts, while granting the importance of this
phenomenon, have denied that it is of any importance in assessing
or evaluating works of art. he best-known writer who has taken this
stand on music is the late nineteenth-century Austrian critic, Eduard
Hanslick, whose book The Beautiful in Music is a defense of this
position. A much more closely reasoned book in which the same
general thesis is defended is The Power of Sound by the Victorian
English critic, Edmund Gurney, whose work is virtually unread today
although it deserves the widest possible recognition. According to
Gurney, the essence of music is that it is kinesis, motion: music is
best conceived as a moving arabesque of sound with no associations
with representation, program, or even human emotion. Descriptive
tems such as “fast” and “slow” properly apply to music; so do such
terms as “shrill” and “whispering”; even “tense” and “relaxed” are
acceptable, for they describe the way in which the musical pattern
moves (from mounting tension to resolution); but to attribute to
music the moods and emotions of life, such as yearning or depression
or anger or melancholy or surprise, is beyond the pale. It is not that
we do not attribute such qualities to music, for we do; it is not even
that we should not, for Gurney and Hanslick both sometimes char-
acterize musical passages as sprightly, melancholy, and so on; the
point is rather that the presence of such qualities does not add a jot
or a tittle to the value of the work as music. Expressiveness, says
Gurney, is no more a guarantee of beauty in a musical composition
than in a human face. Many works of music do have some expressive
character (such as sadness in Tschaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony,
to take an obvious example); but many others do not, and yet they
are just as valuable as music (if not more so); one should not say
that this composition is good because it expresses so-and-so when we
find twenty others just as good although we can think of nothing at
all that they express. In Chapter 7, Gurney presents a formidable
array of arguments to show that the expressive character of a melody,
when it exists, has no correlation whatever with what makes it an
enduring source of delight to our musical sense. Regardless of
whether one agrees in the end with Gurney’s general position, his
work is such a masterly assemblage of data, of overall organization,
and of sustained argument, as to put to shame by comparison virtu-
ally all the works of musical aesthetics that have been written in the
twentieth century.
Whether or not expressiveness enhances aesthetic value, let us
return to what expressiveness is. Some would say that we have set up
a fictitious problem; they would say that we have just three things
to deal with: (1) the coming-into-being of the work of music (or
other art), (2) the work of music itself, and (3) the effects of the
work of music upon listeners. Let us say that the composer feels
sad, and that in some way or other the hearing of this work causes
the listener to feel sad. That is all we need, and that is all there is:
composers have feelings, listeners have feelings, but symphonies have
none—why create unnecessary problems?
However, this account, though simple, would be questioned by
most writers on the subject. There is something in the symphony,
even if it is no more than a capacity to produce in listeners the
impression of sadness when they hear it played—which immediately
prompts the question, “In what specific combination(s) of tonalities
does this capacity consist?” It is no accident that most hearers would
say “sad” to characterize the Pathétique but not to characterize
Haydn’s Toy Symphony. There is something there, and it is this
something on which we must focus and attempt to shed some light.
Moreover, to talk about music’s qualities is not the same as talking
THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT 11]
about its effects: “The music is sad” and “The music makes me feel
sad: are two different assertions, with two different meanings. We
call the Pathétique sad even when we do not respond to it by feeling
sadness or indeed anything else: we may feel bored or sleepy or so
happy that anything we hear makes us feel happy that day, and yet
we continue to call the symphony sad even when it makes us happy
to hear it. How it makes us feel is a variable thing, depending on
our state of mind and our mood of the moment; but the fecling that
is “embodied” or “objectified” (to use Ducasse’s term) in the music,
is there regardless of our mood of the moment. It seems, then, that
the two must be carefully distinguished, even at the expense of
simplicity in our account.
Thus, we are back with our problem again. On the one hand,
there are the various components that constitute works of art, the
physical components of the artistic medium—the sounds of the
music, the colors and shapes of the painting, the words of the poem,
the combinations of these items in the mixed arts such as opera and
dance. On the other hand, we have the feelings, including emotions
and moods, that we attribute to the combination of the physical
components: joy and sadness, longing and fulfillment, sprightliness
and melancholy, and a thousand other qualities. Once again, in the
arts all our percepts are suffused with affect. We do not just see the
curved line, we see it as graceful or droopy or restless; we do not just
hear the musical tones, we hear them as plaintive or yearning or
cheerful or excited.
It is the latter member of this pair that generates our problem:
we can see how a work of music can have a particular set of har-
monic intervals, but how can it have joy or melancholy? One type
of theory on this point is represented in Chapter 8, in a selection
from George Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty (1896). According to
this view, when we say that a composition or painting or poem (or
an element in a melody or a line or a word) is expressive of a
certain quality, we are saying something about the obscure, complex,
and largely unconscious lines of association that are awakened in us
when we are exposed to the work. What a melody or line expresses
tous is still'a matter of association, but not as simple a one as
“what I happen to feel at the moment.” We find in works of art
“a tendency and quality, not original to them, a meaning and a tone,
which upon investigation we shall see to have been the proper
Lie THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT
characteristics of other objects and feelings, associated with them
once in our experience. The hushed reverberations of these associated
feelings continue in our braif,.and by modifying our present reac-
tion, color the image upon which our attention is focused. The
quality thus acquired by objects through association is what we call
their expression.”
The conclusion one might draw from this is that “expressive-
ness is subjective,” that is, being expressive is a to-you or to-me
characteristic: if two persons have different mental associations with
a work of art it will express different things to each of them. Strictly
speaking this is true, but most of those associations are not mere
peculiarities of the biography of the person who is hearing or viewing
or reading the work in question. Some of them may have a basis in
human physiology, and thus may be common to all human observers.
Others, perhaps most of them, have their basis in pervasive features
of our environment (such as the “warm” colors being expressive of
warmth because of their association with the sun, fire, and so on),
that again are common to all, or almost all, human beings. (Would
orange and yellow be perceived as warm to someone who had never
seen fire?) Many fascinating suggestions about the expressiveness of
colors, shapes, and sounds are given in the selections by Gurney,
Kandinsky, Hartshorne, and Arnheim. Indeed, some of the expressive
qualities attributed to objects may be so pervasive that one is
tempted to say that the expressive quality resides “intrinsically” in
the object. This seems to be the position taken by Arnheim, for
example. ‘There is no doubt that the expressive qualities are perceived
as characterizing the objects (as Arnheim and Tomas contend)—
we perceive the line as droopy just as directly and noninferentially
as we perceive it as curved. But whether the expressiveness is an
intrinsic property of the line in the way that the curvature is, is a
different question, of course, from whether we perceive it as such.
(Something may be “phenomenally objective” perceived as “out
there’”—and yet not “objective.”’)
A different kind of account of expressiveness is represented in
the essay of Professor O. K. Bouwsma (1948). According to
Bouwsma, there is a closer relation than mere association between
X, the object having the expressive quality, and Y, the quality ex-
pressed. When X expresses Y, there is a similarity between X and Y
—similarity that really exists “out there” and is not the result of
THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT 113
“reading into the script.” The similarity may be in some simple
quality such as intensity, but more usually it is similarity of structure
in a sequence of elements. Thus, to take Bouwsma’s own example,
“Sad music has some of the characteristics of people who are sad. It
will be slow, not tripping, it will be low, not tinkling. People who
are sad move more slowly, and when they speak, they speak softly
and low.” In short, people who are sad and music that is sad have
characteristics in common, and when we say that the music is ex-
pressive of sadness, it is by virtue of these common characteristics.
(We need not isolate them consciously, of course, nor be aware
when we call music sad that it has characteristics in common with
sad people.) Such an analysis of expressiveness can explain the uni-
versal attribution of certain expressive qualities to certain patterns of
tones in music, for example:
A person says, for example, that he feels restless. A description of what it

feels like to be restless might include references to such things as increased
rate of breathing and heartbeat, unsteady organics in the region of the dia-
phragm, tapping of the feet or fingers, inability to keep still, etc. It requires
no great knowledge of music to appreciate the fact that much the same kind
of movements may easily be produced in musical phrases. Staccato passages,
trills, strong accents, quavers, rapid accelerandos and crescendos, shakes,
wide jumps in pitch—all such devices conduce to the creation of an audi-
tory structure which is appropriately described as restless.1
The selection by Monroe Beardsley provides a clear summary of

the issue. He distinguishes various possible versions of the expression
theory of art. If “X expresses Y” means only that the artist felt Y
when he was composing it and was impelled by this feeling to com-
pose it, then the assertion that X expresses Y is only a statement
about the artist’s biography, and belongs entirely to process-talk. And
if it is construed to mean that X makes me feel Y when I hear it, it
is again not about the work of art, X, but about the feelings that X
evokes in me, the listener. If, however, the sentence is taken to mean
that X has, or possesses, or embodies, the quality Y, then it is inde-
pendent of the feelings of the artist and the feelings of the listener,
and is strictly about the music itself. And thus taken, the statement
may well be true: the music possesses human qualities such as sad-
1 Carroll C. Pratt, The Meaning of Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931),

p- 198.
ness, as Bouwsma says. Beardsley argues that it is indeed true—music
does embody or contain feeling (not merely evoke it) against the
claims of those who contend that it cannot, in spite of difficulties
of language and communication about the precise nature of the
qualities thus attributed. But, as a final irony, when the expression
theory has reached this point—when it no longer has to talk about
the states of feeling of the artist or of the audience—it has tran-
scended its own language. It is no longer necessary to say “The
melody expresses joy’—it is sufficient to say “The melody is joyful.”
The reference to expression can be deleted, but that the melody is
joyful is at least a fact.
Such, at any rate, is the conclusion of the most currently ac-
cepted account of expressive properties. But it has not gone entirely
unchallenged. In the final selection, Professor Guy Sircello challenges
the adequacy of the analyses given by Bouwsma and Beardsley.
Beginning with examples of paintings and poems exemplifying quite
clearly certain expressive properties, he concludes that while it is true
that some works of art can be called “sad,” “calm,” and so on, by
virtue of features that they share with natural objects, there are
many other (perhaps more) cases in which no such thing occurs, but
in which the expressive character is present by virtue of something
which the artist does in the work, e.g. certain ways of handling a
scene or situation depicted; and it is these “artistic acts” that account
for the expressiveness. ‘Thus, Poussin’s “Rape of the Sabine Women”
is aloof and detached, not because any of the characters in the paint-
ing are (quite the contrary), but because Poussin has painted the
scene in an aloof, detached way. What this implies, and how it
offers a more complete account of expressiveness than the theories
represented thus far, is the subject of Professor Sircello’s essay,
which presents a new turn in Expression Theory and will doubtless
create an arena of controversy among aestheticians in years to come.
[a
EDMUND GURNEY
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE
AND
MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE
So far we have been considering Music almost entirely as a means of

impression, as a presentation of impressive (or, as too often happens,
unimpressive) phenomena. We have now to distinguish this aspect
of it from another, its aspect as a means of expression, of creating in
us a consciousness of images, or of ideas, or of feelings, which are
known to us in regions outside Music, and which therefore Music, so
far as it summons them up within us, may be fairly said to express.
The chief difficulty in getting a clear view of this part of the subject
lies in the vagueness and looseness of thought which is apt to run in
the track of general and abstract terms: and this being so, I can only
make my argument clear by insisting on the clear separation of the
sets of conceptions which come under the heads of impression and
expression respectively, or at any rate may be justifiably so classified
after due definition.
The distinction is made very simple by considering that expres-
sion involves two things, one of which is expressed by the other. ‘The
From Edmund Gurney, The Power of Sound, Chapter 14. London: Smith,
Elder & Co., 1883.
UE)
116 EDMUND GURNEY
expression may take the form of imitation, as when an appearance or
a movement of anything is purposely suggested by some aspect or
movement given to something-else. Or the thing expressed may be an
idea, as when a fine idea is expressed by a metaphor; or a feeling, as
when suffering is expressed by tears; or a quality, as when pride is
expressed by a person’s face or demeanour. As regards expression of
qualities, some preliminary explanation is necessary. When a quality
is so permanent and general and familiar an attribute of anything
that our idea of the thing comprises the quality, the latter does not
seem separable enough for us to conceive of it as expressed; and thus
we should not naturally say that a tree expressed greenness, or a dark
night darkness, or a church-steeple height. In a word, a thing is ex-
pressive of occasional attributes, not of the essential attributes of its
class. There is a doubtful region where such phrases might be used
even of very general qualities with reference to some special idea in
the speaker’s mind: thus a Platonist might say that the face of nature
expressed beauty, conceiving of beauty as a single principle, which is
one thing; capable of manifesting itself in this or that form, which is
another thing: but we should not, in an ordinary way, say that a
flower expresses beauty, or a lion strength, but that the flower is
beautiful and the lion strong. So with respect to musical forms or
motions; they are so familiarly conceived as aiming at being beautiful
and vigorous, such qualities are so identified with our idea of their
function, that we do not naturally think of them as expressing beauty
and vigour. So with qualities identified with the most general effects
of impressive sound on the organism; we do not conceive of any
sounds, musical or non-musical, as expressing soothingness or excit-
ingness. But we do not quarrel with the description of music as hav-
ing a romantic or passionate or sentimental expression, even though
the analogy of the effect to modes of feeling known outside Music
may be of the dimmest and most intangible kind; and when some
more special and distinctive quality appears, such as agitation or
melancholy, when a particular feeling in ourselves is identified with
a particular character in a particular bit of music, then we say with-
out hesitation that such a particular bit expresses the quality or
feeling.t
1'The necessary connection of quality and feeling should be noted: for there
being no personality in music, the qualities it can be in itself expressive of must
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE HAY,
1. Another manner of using words like “expression” and “sig-
nificance.” It is true that there is a very important method of using
words like expressive in relation to Music, in the absence of partic-
ular describable qualities or particular suggestions of any sort; a usage
which has been more than once adopted in this book, and which it
seems to me impossible to forego. Thus we often call music which
stirs us more expressive than music which does not; and we call
great music significant, or talk of its import, in contrast to poor
music, which seems meaningless and insignificant; without being
able, or dreaming we are able, to connect these general terms with
anything expressed or signified. This usage was explained, at the end
of the sixth chapter, as due to the inevitable association of music
with utterance, and of utterance with something external to itself
which is to be expressed,” as our ideas are external to the sounds in
which we utter them. But even those who take the transcendental
view that something is so expressed or signified by all beautiful
music—whether the something be the ‘Will of the World,’ as
Schopenhauer taught, or any other supposed fundamental reality to
which our present conceptions are inadequate—may still perfectly
well accept the following proposition: that there is a difference be-
be identified with some affection of ourselves. Thus we should not say that quick
or slow music expressed such impersonal qualities as speed or slowness, but possi-
bly hilarity or solemnity. Music may present even decided qualities which are not
suggestive of any special and occasional mode of feeling in ourselves. Thus a
melody may be simple, but as it does not make us feel simple, and as we have
no definite mode of feeling identified with the contemplation of so general a
quality, we should not naturally say that it expressed simplicity; unless there were
some simplicity external to it, in other words or pesson associated with it. The
feeling in ourselves need not necessarily be the same as the quality attributed to
the music: the special feeling corresponding to melancholy music is melancholy,
but the special feeling corresponding to capricious or humorous music is not
capriciousness or humorousness, but surprise or amusement: clearly, however, this
mode of feeling is sufficiently identified with the contemplation of the quality.
2 Quite apart from the notion of such a something to be expressed, our habitual
projection either of the composer’s or of the performer’s or of some imaginary
personality behind the music we hear may naturally lead to such phrases as that
some one expresses himself or expresses his personality or expresses his soul in
the music; in the same sense, ¢.g., as a theist may hold the Creator to express
himself in the beauties of Nature: such a use need not at all confuse the distinc-
tion in the text. The word expression, again, in such a general phrase as ‘playing
with expression’ does not mean the signification of any thought or feeling external
to the music, but merely the making the utmost, the literal squeezing out, of all
the beauty which is there in the music.
118 EDMUND GURNEY
tween music which is expressive in the sense of definitely suggesting
or inspiring images, ideas, qualities, or feelings belonging to the
region of the known outside music, and music which is not SO €X-
pressive, and in reference to which terms of expression and signifi-
cance, however intuitive and habitual, could only be logically pressed
by taking them in a quite peculiar sense, and postulating an un-
known something behind phenomena, which the phenomena are
held to reveal or signify, or, according to Schopenhauer, to ‘objectify.’
2. Music cannot be truly expressive without being impressive;
but a great deal of impressive music is not definably expressive.
The distinction as thus stated does not altogether coincide with that
conveyed by the words expressive and impressive; since there 1s
nothing to prevent music which is expressive in the former and tangi-
ble sense from being also impressive by its beauty. As the true dis-
tinction involved in the words is between two different aspects of
Music, both of these may naturally be presented by the same speci-
men; and indeed we shall find that no music is really expressive in
any valuable way which does not also impress us as having the
essential character of musical beauty; an unpleasing tune may be
lugubrious but not melancholy. But the great point, which is often
strangely ignored and for the sake of which the distinction has been
thus pedantically emphasised, is that expressiveness of the literal and
tangible sort is either absent or only slightly present® in an immense
amount of impressive music; that to suggest describable images, qual-
ities, or feelings, known in connection with other experiences, how-
ever frequent a characteristic of Music, makes up no inseparable or
essential part of its function; and that this is not a matter of opinion,
or of theory as to what should be, but of definite everyday fact.
The immense importance of this truth, and of its relation to the
facts of expression, will further appear when expression has been
separately considered; but this independent impressiveness is so en-
tirely at the foundation of the argument that it will be best to start
3 It is hard to word this so as to obviate all possible objections. In modern music

it may perhaps be the case, more often than not, that some one out of the
category of descriptive adjectives may seem at any rate more appropriate than
most others: words like energetic, peaceful, solemn, and so on, may be made to
cover an immense amount of ground. But the qualities may be said to be slightly
expressed if they excite no special remark; if one’s impression, if it runs at all
into words, is far more vividly ‘how beautiful,’ or ‘how indescribable, how utterly
a musical experience,’ than ‘how extraordinarily solemn,’ or ‘how exceptionally
peaceful.’
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE 119
by briefly recalling its root and groundwork. We found these, it will
be remembered, in the fusion and sublimation of those strongest
elementary passions and emotions which, according to Mr. Darwin’s
view, were associated with the primeval exercise of the musical
faculty, the primeval habit of following tones and thythm with plea-
sure; and in the light of generally admitted principles of hereditary
association, we found no extraordinary difficulty in connecting what
are now some of the most profound stirrings of our emotional nature
with those crude elements which were yet the most profound emo-
tional stirrings possible to our progenitors. In this connection it is
well worth noting that at every stage which comes under our obser-
vation, Music seems capable of stirring up the strongest excitement
that a being who musically typifies that stage can experience. This
enjoyment to the utmost of the best that can be got is exemplified
equally in the case of singing-birds, and of the gibbon, moved with
rapture at his own performance of the chromatic scale, and of the
savage repeating over for hours his few monotonous strains and
maddened by the rhythmic beat of the drum, and of the ancient
Greek spellbound by performances for the like of which we should
probably tell a street-performer to pass on, and of a circle of Arabs
sobbing and laughing by turns in ecstasies of passion at the sound of
their native melodies, and of the English child to whom some simple
tune of Mozart’s reveals the unguessed springs of musical feeling, or
of the adult in his loftiest communings with the most inspired utter-
ances of Beethoven.* And it is all-important to observe that these
emotional experiences are essentially connected, throughout the
whole long course of development, with the distinctly melodic prin-
ciple, with the presentation of a succession of single sound-units;
such series being exemplified in the percussive drummings of the
spider and in the song of the gibbon, as well as in the distinguish-
able lines of tune indispensable to the emotional character of modern
4 What is said here may be connected with what was said in the tenth chapter
as to the rapid obsolescence of music. The newer and apparently more original
kinds of Ideal Motion often make older music seem tame and trite. But it would
certainly be most unfair to think of comparing, as regards amount of enjoyment,
our own musical experiences with those of a person in the middle of the last
century, by comparing the pleasure we derive from Beethoven with that which
we derive from, ¢.g., the earlier works of Hadyn. Evidence entirely confirms what
d priori we might have guessed, that that earlier music stirred its hearers to the
very depths, in a manner which we can only realise by recalling some of the
strains which have had a similar effect on ourselves in childhood.
120 EDMUND GURNEY
composition. So that our general theory entirely bears out the view
which in the fifth chapter was deduced from simple musical experi-
ence, that the ground for the essential effects of the art must be
sought, not in any considerations connected with large or elaborate
structure, or with rich complexity of parts, or splendid masses of
tone, but in the facts of mere note-after-note melodic motion.
And while the theory, in its invocation of the strongest of all
primitive passions, as germs for the marvellously sublimated emo-
tions of developed Music, seems not only adequate but unique in
its adequacy to account generally for the power of those emotions,
it further connects itself in the most remarkable manner with that
more special peculiarity of independent impressiveness which is now
under review; with the fact which attentive examination of musical
experience more and more brings home to us, that Music is perpetu-
ally felt as strongly emotional while defying all attempts to analyse
the experience or to define it even in the most general way in terms
of definite emotions. If we press close, so to speak, and try to force
our feelings into declaring themselves in definite terms, a score of
them may seem pent up and mingled together and shooting across
each other—triumph and tenderness, surprise and certainty, yearning
and fulfillment; but all the while the essential magic seems to lie at
an infinite distance behind them all, and the presentation to be not
a subjective jumble but a perfectly distinct object, productive (in a
thousand minds it may be at once) of a perfectly distinct though
unique and undefinable affection. ‘This is precisely what is explained,
if we trace the strong undefinable affection to a gradual fusion and
transfiguration of such overmastering and pervading passions as the
ardours and desires of primitive loves; and it is in reference to these
passions of all others, both through their own possessing nature and
from the extreme antiquity which they permit us to assign to their
associative influence, that a theory of fusion and transfiguration in
connection with a special range of phenomena seems possible and
plausible. The problem is indeed a staggering one, by what alchemy
abstract forms of sound, however unique and definite and however
enhanced in effect by the watching of their evolution moment by
moment, are capable of transformation into phenomena charged
with feeling, and yet in those most characteristic impressiveness
separate feelings seem as fused and lost as the colours in a ray of
white light: but at any rate the suggested theory of association is
less oppressive to the speculative mind than the everyday facts of
musical experience would be in the absence of such a far-reaching
explanation of them.
3. The activity of the musical faculty, as connected with differ-
ences of musical expression. The more serious difficulty, we found,
came later. When we merely ask why are melodic forms emotionally
impressive, and why are they emotionally impressive after a fashion
which defies analysis or description, the association-theory comes to
our assistance. But the further question, why one melodic form is
felt as emotionally impressive and another not, reveals in a moment
how much any such general theory leaves unaccounted for; and our
further examination of melodic forms showed that the faculty of
discernment, the faculty in which the cognisance of them is wholly
vested, is one whose nature and action have to be accepted as unique
and ultimate facts, and whose judgments are absolute, unreasoning,
and unquestionable.® It is not necessary to repeat what has been said
in the preceding chapters as to this extraordinary and independent
faculty of co-ordinating a series of time- and pitch-relations into
forms or notions, and of deriving various degrees of satisfaction or
dissatisfaction from the proportions so progressively contemplated;
nor as to the somewhat difficult but still warrantable supposition
that the satisfactory action of the faculty, the concentration of it on
such proportions as give it adequate scope and exercise, is the only
mode whereby the flood-gates of emotion from the associational
region are opened, and the perception of the form transfused and
transfigured; the transfusion ipso facto preventing our knowing what
the mere perception, the simple musical impression as it might be if
the informing associational elements were non-existent, would in
itself amount to.
But we now come to the consideration of certain points in
musical forms and in the exercise of the musical faculty which are
new; these being specially connected with Music in its expressive
aspect. As long as Music is regarded only as a means of impression,
as productive of a sort of emotion which, however definite and crude
may have been its unfused and undeveloped germs, has been for
ages so differentiated as to convey no suggestion of its origin, and is
unknown outside the region of musical phenomena—as long as the
forms, however various and individual to the musical sense, still
5 Absolute and unquestionable, not of course as final or competent judgments of

merit or anything else, but in reference to the power of a particular bit of music
to affect a particular individual at a particular time.
IZ EDMUND GURNEY
present a musical character undistinguished and unpervaded by any
particular definable feeling of joy, gloom, triumph, pathos, &c.—no
examination of their structure from outside (as we abundantly saw
in the seventh and following chapters) throws the slightest light on
that musical character and its varieties: no rules can be framed
which will not be so general as to include the bad as well as the
good. The exercise of the musical faculty on such and such a form is
found pleasurable and emotional, its exercise on such and such an-
other is found neutral, or unsatisfactory and irritating; and that is
all: a mode of perception which is unique defies illustration, and on
this ground the only answer to the questions which present them-
selves is the showing why they are unanswerable. But when we come
to the expressive aspect of Music, to the definite suggestion or por-
trayal of certain special and describable things known outside Music,
whether images of objects or ideas or qualities or feelings, we should
naturally expect to be able to trace in some degree the connection of
any special suggestion or shade of character with some special point
or points in the musical form and the process by which we follow it:
and we have now to examine the various modes in which such con-
nections may present themselves. None of them, it will now be evi-
dent, can be held accountable for any musical beauty which may be
present: a tune is no more constituted beautiful by an expression,
e.g., of mournfulness or of capriciousness than a face is. ‘The impres-
siveness which we call beauty resides in the unique musical experi-
ence whose nature and history have just been summarised: but in
proportion as the beauty assumes a special and definable character
or aspect, it does so in virtue of features in the musical form which
are also special and definable.
4. The several ways by which definite expression may be pro-
duced. It will be convenient to consider first the expression of quali-
ties and feelings; the suggestion by music of objects and ideas being
of a much more external and accidental kind. In our ordinary experi-
ence the natural mode in which qualities and feelings are expressed
otherwise than by speech® is of course physical movement of some
kind; thus human beings express confidence and good spirits by rapid
6 The relation of Music to Speech will be discussed in succeeding chapters, with
results which will supplement without otherwise affecting the arguments in the
present chapter. The emotional elements which music may gain by association
with definite words and scenes will also be subsequently treated’ of; and certain
extensions of the senses in which Music can be considered expressive will present
themselves in connection with Song and Opera.
and decisive movements, solemnity by measured movements, agita-
tion by spasmodic movements, and so on. Now the Ideal Motion of
Music gives us an aspect of physical movement ready made; the
aspect, namely, of pace and rhythm; which can be presented without
any sound at all by movements in space, and the correspondence of
which with movements in space we perpetually exemplify in our
own persons, as we follow and in any way keep time with Music.
Moreover the Ideal Motion regarded in its completeness, without
such particular reference to the rhythmic element, will be found to
present certain faint affinities to external movement and gesture. But
while it is naturally in motion that we should look for the signs of
definite emotional states, or, as we commonly say, the expression of
such states, in Music there are three other features connected with
expression, two of which belong especially to the tone- or pitch-
element apart from peculiarities of motion; the use, namely, of the
major or the minor ‘mode,’ and of occasional noticeable harmonies;
the other being timbre or sound-colour. And we may take these first,
as there is less to be said about them.”
First, timbre or quality of musical sound. The expression
which can truly be attributed to mere timbre amounts to much less
than is generally supposed. When we consider the cases commonly
7 Particular keys are sometimes credited with definable emotional powers. That
certain faint differences exist between them on certain instruments is undeniable,
though it is a difference which only exceptional ears detect. The relations between
the notes of every key being identical, every series of relations presenting every
sort of describable or indescribable character will of course be accepted by the ear
in any key, or if it is a series which modulates through a set of several keys, in
any set of similarly related keys. But as it must have a highest and a lowest note,
it will be important, especially in writing for a particular instrument, to choose
such a key that these notes shall not be inconvenient or impossible; and also the
mechanical difficulties of an instrument may make certain keys preferable for
certain passages. Subject to correction from considerations of this sort, the com-
poser probably generally chooses the key in which the germ of his work first
flashes across his mind’s eye; and when the music has once been seen and known,
written in a certain key, the very look of it becomes so associated with itself that
the idea of changing the key may produce a certain shock. But the cases are few
indeed where, had the music been first presented to any one’s ears in a key
differing by a semitone from that in which it actually stands, he would have per-
ceived the slightest necessity for alteration; and as a matter of fact, when a bit of
music is thought over, or hummed, or whistled, unless by a person of exceptionally
gifted ear, it is naturally far oftener than not in some different key to that in
which it has been written and heard. Even the difference most commonly alleged,
between C major as bright and strong and D flat as soft and veiled, comes to
almost absolutely nothing when a bright piece is played in D flat or a dreamy
one in C. The view of Helmholtz, which seems unassailable, is that the differ-
ences, so far as they exist, result from features of certain instruments; e.g. that on
124 EDMUND GURNEY
adduced, we shall find that it is the pace or the manner of beginning
the note, or something else beyond the mere colour-quality, which
gives the sound its peculiar*character. For instance, when we speak
of the plaintive sounds of a violin, we are thinking of slow, long-
drawn-out notes, taken very gently without percussion or anything to
give them a strongly-marked catch at the beginning. Nor does it
occur to us to call sound of the same quality plaintive when, instead
of being divided into these long gentle notes, it is produced con-
tinuously, nor when it is divided into short notes begun with more
sharpness and suddenness. Association with particular sorts of Music
and particular occasions may produce a somewhat erroneous impres-
the piano the method of striking the short black keys produces a somewhat dif-
ferent quality of tone, and on bowed instruments the bright strong notes of the
open strings will distinguish the keys in which those notes are prominent: and
that thus this alleged character of keys differs on different instruments. He ob-
serves that on the organ and with singing voices the differences are not discernible,
and even on the piano (it may be added) they would hardly be discernible except
in chords.
That a variety of emotional characters can be definitely attributed to the vari-
ous keys is a notion so glaringly absurd that I would not even mention it, were it
not that it is very commonly held; that I find it asserted and exemplified in the
gravest manner in a popular manual by a well-known musician; and that such
doctrines are really harmful by making humble and genuine lovers of Music
believe that there are regions of musical feeling absolutely beyond their powers of
conception. What I shall quote may also serve as a sample to indicate that, as
regards the whole matter of this and the following chapters, I am not fighting
the air, but that the exactly opposite views to mine are what are practically in
possession of the field. In the manual referred to, the following statements occur:
‘C major expresses feeling in a pure, certain, and decisive manner. It is further-
more expressive of innocence, of a powerful resolve, of manly earnestness, and
deep religious feeling.
‘G major, that favourite key of youth, expresses sincerity of faith, quiet love,
calm meditation, simple grace, pastoral life, and a certain humour and brightness.
‘G minor expresses sometimes sadness, sometimes, on the other hand, quiet and
sedate joy—a gentle grace with a slight touch of dreamy melancholy—and occa-
sionally it rises to a romantic elevation. It effectively pourtrays the sentimental,’
&c. (Another author, quoted by Schumann, found in G minor discontent, dis-
comfort, worrying anxiety about an unsuccessful plan, ill-tempered gnawing at the
bit. “Now compare this idea,’ says Schumann, ‘with Mozart’s Symphony in G
minor, that floating Grecian Grace.’ He quotes from the same writer that E
minor is a girl dressed in white with a rose-coloured breastknot.)
‘A major, full of confidence and hope, radiant with love, and redolent of simple
genuine cheerfulness, excels all the other keys in pourtraying sincerity of feeling.
“A minor is expressive of tender, womanly feeling; it is at the same time most
effective for exhibiting the quiet melancholy sentiment of Northern nations,
and, curiously enough, lends itself very readily to the description of Oriental
character, as shown in Boleros and Mauresque serenades. But A minor also ex-
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE NAS
sion in this respect. Many people perhaps vaguely regard the organ,
which has an immense variety of timbre, as an essentially solemn
instrument, just as a Greek who had commonly heard the flute in
connection with pathetic and effeminate melody would identify its
natural tone with that character: but both the organ and the flute
will of course lend their colours to all sorts of music. Mr. Prout, in
his excellent primer on instrumentation, justly remarks that the oboe,
which has a very peculiar timbre, ‘is equally useful for the expression
of melancholy, tenderness, and gaiety;’ and he might have added for
the colouring of music which does not particularly present any of
these characters. The horn is described as having a dreamy or melan-
presses sentiments of devotion mingled with pious resignation.

‘B major, a key but seldom used, expresses in fortissimo boldness and pride; in
pianissimo, purity and the most perfect clearness.
‘B minor, that very melancholy key, tells of a quiet expectation and patient
hope. It has often been observed that nervous persons will sooner be affected by
that key than by any other.
‘F sharp major sounds brilliant and exceedingly clear; as G flat major it ex-
presses softness coupled with richness.
‘F sharp minor, that dark, mysterious, and spectral key, is at the same time full
of passion.
‘A flat major is full of feeling, and replete with a dreamy expression.
‘F major is at once full of peace and joy, but also expresses effectively a light,
passing regret: a mournful, but not a deeply sorrowful feeling. It is, moreover,
available for the expression of religious sentiment.
‘F minor, a harrowing key, is especially full of melancholy, at times rising into
passion,’ &c &c.
These are but extracts, and a good deal of the humour is lost by election. For
the ‘characters’ of several of his keys the author gives a list of examples; the
choice of which, inasmuch as every possible character might be exemplified from
compositions in every single key, cannot have been very difficult. It is something
like proving that Monday is a day ‘especially full of melancholy,’ on the ground
that some individual lost a relative on it, or that the characteristic of Thursday
is ‘confidence and hope,’ on the ground that on it an individual came in for a
fortune. Subject to the above-mentioned qualifications, anything can happen in
any key, as anything can happen on any day, or as any motion can take place in
any part of space. With a dim perception of this the author explains it, and
innocently confutes his whole theory by saying that ‘one composer detects in a
certain key qualities which have remained entirely hidden from another; so that
one finds cheerfulness and another mournfulness in the same way; which is like
explaining the difference between a joyful and a sombre picture by saying that
one painter detects in his canvas qualities which have remained hidden from the
other. The author tells us that the German professor on whose work his own is
founded, evolved his theory ‘from philosophical principles; some further principles
might perhaps have been obtained from the work of the Chinese philosopher who
traced the five tones of the old Chinese scale to the five elements, water,
fire, wood, metal, and earth.
126 EDMUND GURNEY
choly character; but is eminently suitable for lively and hunting
strains. The bassoon, which is unrivalled for humourous and gro-
tesque effects, was described by Piccini’ as sad and melancholy; and,
as Berlioz remarks, when Meyerbeer wanted ‘a pale, cold, cadaverous
sound’ for the resurrection of the nuns, he obtained it from this in-
strument. There are, however, less malleable instruments with the
timbre of which a particular emotional character does seem more
identified. It is something in the piercing and peculiar tone of bag-
pipes, over and above association, which produces the stirring and
martial effect attributed to them in their native country: and among
recognised orchestral instruments, the sounds of the trumpet are too
brilliant and sudden not to occur more frequently and prominently
in joyous and triumphant strains, than in a peaceful or pathetic style
of music. But even here, if we consider a sufficient number of in-
stances, we shall find the only rule that can be laid down is too
general to allow us very closely to associate even a timbre as marked
as that of trumpets with definable expression: the most we can say
is that they belong rather to the strong and exciting than to the
smooth and quiet passages. Trumpet-sounds perpetually occur with
splendid effect in most various motions; often in places where no
particular emotional tinge of triumph or joy is produced, and where
brilliant and forcible colour seems entirely appropriate to the musical
passage without thereby doing more than make it musically more
arresting and exciting.
Mutatis mutandis, similar remarks would apply to other instru-
ments; and also to the effects of marked fortes and pianos, which
suit all sorts of musical motions, without its being possible to class
them as belonging to, much less as constituting, separate and defin-
able emotional characters. Fortissimo passages may be sombre as
well as gay; and pianissimo is often as appropriate to passages full of
passion, hurry, and excitement as to the gentlest lullaby.
8 Piccini’s views on instruments represent the sort of laxity which is still very
common. Thus he considered that ‘the oboe has an expression which does not
belong to the clarinet; and it, in its turn, differs totally from the flute. The horns
change their character according to the key in which they are employed,’ and so
on. Here not only does the unfortunate word expression tend unwarrantably to
identify difference of musical timbre with power to suggest different states of
extra-musical feeling, but not a word is said of the forms or motions presented by
the various instruments; so that colour is represented as usurping the whole sway
of the expressive element.
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE 127,
Secondly major and minor ‘mode? The major mode demands
no special notice. The expression of confidence usually attributed to
it really belongs to the cases where it is contrasted with the minor.
Major music is not perceived as confident in virtue of its ‘mode’
alone, or clearly more than half the music we possess would have to
be considered definitely expressive of this character. Music in a major
key may be profoundly mournful; and it would often be impossible
for any description to touch the musically felt difference between
such music and mournful minor music. The minor mode has a some-
what more constant range of effect. The main fact, the impression
of melancholy and want of confidence conveyed by the characteristic
notes of the minor scale, whether used melodically or harmonically,
was sufficiently dwelt on in the chapter on Harmony. The character
of the minor mode, as compared with the major, must rest primarily
on the melodic and harmonic character of those particular notes:
but it is very possible that the effect of trouble or mystery is aided
by the general want of certainty in the harmonisation of the mode,
as pointed out by Helmholtz. But in reality the extent to which we
can identify the use of the minor mode with definable emotional
experience is but slight. Out of a hundred minor bits of music, only
a few may be at all distinctly melancholy or elegiac. Features of
pace and rhythm may be connected in some with an agitated, in
others a majestic expression; some may be marked by intensity,
others by insouciance, others by caprice; none of which characteris-
tics have any special connection with the minor mode. Many, again,
may wholly lack extra-musical character: or if even among wide and
marked differences of musical individuality a certain tinge of trouble,
pathos, or complaint may be traced (as compared, for instance, with
the effect of similar motions in the major), such a tinge is too in-
tangible and general to be easily thought of as definable expression.
It is just in such a case that the error would be made which we shall
have to notice later as of very common occurrence; the error of
supposing that because we perceive a great variety of musical forms,
of forms which in their musical aspect are entirely distinct from one
another and individually impressive, and because a few of them
correspond with or express some mode of emotional experience
known outside music, therefore the others must express shades and
varieties of such extra-musical experience.
Thirdly, particular harmonic features. ‘The definable expression
128 EDMUND GURNEY
given sometimes by a single harmonic feature (apart from major or
minor effects) is chiefly connected with the use of discords. The
effects of discords and resolutions, as of harmony in general,° are
generally, of course, bits of purely musical satisfaction, occurring in
their proper places as elements of all varieties of form, and in music
of all shades and no shades of definable character. But a particular
expression may be occasionally traced to discords in marked posi-
tions. Thus in Schumann’s Imploring Child, beginning thus—
the special accent of trouble is given by the unusual start on the

ninth; it is increased by the flattening into the minor note, B flat, as
was noticed in the chapter on Harmony. Another simple instance of
expression conveyed by a simple chord may be found in the use of a
diminished seventh in the bar which immediately precedes the
cadence of Auld Robin Gray, thus—
® Harmony is so often called the great ‘means of musical expression’ (with perfect
truth in the wider sense, that it enormously intensifies and varies musical effects,
making them go further into us, so to speak, and tell us more of those un-
fathomable things which Music alone reveals), that we should the more carefully
note the limits of its expressiveness in the more precise sense here used, of its
power to bring musical emotions into the definable zone.
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE 12)
As this is the only place where the melody goes above C, the ascent
to the F would alone produce an expression of strain and yearning,
to which the troubled chord gives a strong additional shade. Such
effects, however, easily get an exaggerated air; and, in the present
case, the unstable, unsatisfied sound of the chord of the dominant
seventh without the dominant, thus—
is all that is really wanted, and is on the whole preferable. A beauti-

ful example of distinct expression, from a single harmonic feature,
occurs in Schubert’s song, Die bése Farbe—
ee e ee
Loe bt -e- -
ee eee ee cecer
eee
Se
130 EDMUND GURNEY
the feature being one of the most distinctive in music. In its present
position, on the last syllable of the line, ‘Ich méchte die grinen
Griser all’ weinen ganz todten-bleich,’ it has a most passionate ac-
cent of sudden wailing.
It is clearly impossible, however, to lay down rules assigning
such and such harmonies to such and such emotional effects, as the
same actual harmonic features, in connection with different forms,
may intensify quite different sorts of expressiveness. Even when the
harmony seems not so much to intensify as actually to produce an
effect, impossible without it, it must still be in virtue of some relation
to the general musical motion into which it enters. Thus .. . the E
flat chord in Voyez sur cette roche is suggestive of alarm and warn-
ing; but that character results purely from the sort of contrast it
produces occurring in the midst of a naive and debonair melody. In
the crash of the finale to an overture the same harmonic change...
though it may be impressive, has no assignable expression.
5. Expression produced by characters of motion. First, by pace.
When we come to considerations of motion, the ground is much
clearer. First as regards pace: the expressive character of anything
noticeably fast or slow is evident; for pace, to be expressive, must
deviate noticeably one way or the other from some normal standard.
If we see a man running at the rate of nine miles an hour, we con-
sider his movement expresses eagerness or sportiveness; if we see him
walking at the rate of one mile an hour, we consider his movement
expresses solemnity or depression; but if we see him walking at four
miles an hour, it does not strike us that his pace expresses modera-
tion. Similar remarks apply in great measure to Music. It is impossi-
ble, however, to lay down any very precise standard of moderation
for musical pace; partly because there are no physical conditions
such as correspond to three or four miles an hour in walking; partly
because the outline of a slow or moderate tempo may comprise pas-
sages formed of a number of short quick notes, which may produce
the most energetic effect. Pace, moreover, in musical as in physical
motion, is far too wide and general a feature to mark the character
with any certainty: but we may at any rate safely say that a very
slow movement is often solemn, and never gay or agitated, and that
a very quick movement is often gay or agitated, and never solemn;
and that unwarranted liberties with pace are as destructive of the
definable character, if such exist, as of the essential musical beauty;
witness Meyerbeer’s treatment of Ein’ feste Burg in the overture to
the Huguenots. Positive moderation and calmness may seem more
distinctly expressible by Music than by degrees of physical motion
which are too habitual and unnoticed to be thought of as expressive.
In Music, however, the quality of calmness is connected rather with
evenness of flow, with the absence of strongly marked groups and of
wide variety in the time-values of notes, than with mere moderation
of tempo: nor is the connection by any means constant, inasmuch
as we have already found, and shall find again, that extreme musical
passion is compatible with an even and moderate rhythmic flow.
And even in normal cases, when a musical motion is interesting us
by its beauty, the expression by it of anything so neutral as calmness,
is hardly calculated, as a rule, to strike us in a more positive way
than the quality of moderation in the average pace of a walker.
We find the connection of rhythm, as distinct from pace, with
musical expression chiefly in features of metrical outline and of
strong marking of accents: in the more detailed structure the rhyth-
mic element presents no features which can be dwelt on apart from
the Ideal Motions into which it enters only as a single factor.
Secondly, by abundance of strong accents. ‘The crowding to-
gether of strong accents, as in the ‘subject’ from the movement
L’Absence . . . is connected with an expression of passion and vehe-
mence, which we might compare with the similar expression given
by frequent strong gestures to passionate speech. We see the essential
connection of the ictus with the passion in such an instance as that
quoted, in that it goes to constitute, and does not result from, the
force and stir of the Ideal Motion. We do not conceive the motion
as passionate, and then put an ictus on such and such notes; the
passion has no true existence until the ictus is there, and a person
who played the passage without the ictus, would simply show that
for him its passionate character did not exist. Similarly it would be
impossible to conceive the energy of the opening subject of Schu-
bert’s B flat trio—without feeling in it a ttemendousness of ictus which
would seem extravagant in actual performance, and which therefore
makes all earthly performance appear inadequate. [See page 132.]
Thirdly, by strongly marked rhythmic outline. An expression
of confidence, again, is very commonly connected with a strongly
marked rhythmic outline at a certain somewhat quick pace; and
especially in double time, since there we easily get an association
132 EDMUND GURNEY
re
oa
oe Wo ee
AAA ee
ev ——_ ——_—_- —_—__.
SS Prrerrrririrr
Eee Srrr
rec e a
with the movement of marching, which is impossible in a measure
where the bar cannot be halved. Triumph, again, of the clear, direct
kind which may be suggested by a firm and buoyant step, is similarly
often connected with a strongly marked rhythmic movement; though
naturally such expression only rises into the stage of being noticed or
defined in cases where the music has beauty enough to be arresting
and stirring; as, for instance, in the opening of Mendelssohn’s
Lobgesang. It would be ridiculous to attempt to extend to music in
general the distinction between double and triple time,!° which the
greater physical confidence of the former in certain cases might
suggest. But it is possible to trace in many simple instances a certain
very indefinable character which seems dimly to connect itself with
10 The idea of forcing emotional characteristics on things so empty in themselves,

andso capable of the most various sorts of content, as the several rhythmic
outlines of Music, is not less preposterous than the notion about keys discussed
in a former note. I may quote a few pieces of information from the same source
as before.
‘The common time expresses the quiet life of the soul, a solid earnestness, an
inward peace—but also strength, and courage.’ It ‘lends itself readily to the
representation of passion,’ but ‘is also expressive of quiet meditation.’
‘The three-eight time expresses joy, a bright and sincere pleasure, which less
affects our feelings than it carries us insensibly along in an unpretending and agrtee-
able manner.’ It is also, we are told, expressive of suddenness and impulse, which are
liable soon to degenerate into the expression of a frantic excitement; but its best
characteristic is innocence and simplicity.
‘The three-four time is expressive of longing, of supplication, of sincere hope,
and of love. It lends itself also very effectively to the description of sincere devo-
tional feelings. The six-eight time is the natural interpreter of a spontaneous jovial-
ity and pleasure; but it also unites gracefulness with dignity, and may sometimes be
used as expressive of a mournful sentiment; yet the sorrow it indicates is rather
that of young persons.’ And so on.
It would be interesting to hear from this writer what happens when any one
composes a piece in common time, which ‘expresses the quiet life of the soul and
inward peace,’ and in the key of E minor, which ‘represents grief, mournfulness,
and restlessness of spirit.’
After the previous discussion of rhythm, I need hardly warn my readers against
the totally false analogy of poetical metres, to which, within very wide limits,
certain characteristics may be attributed; in English verse, for instance, anapaestic
metres might be said to be swifter and more stirring than iambic. The difference
between word-metres and rhythmic outlines in Music is obvious. In the first place
the word-metre to a great extent controls the pace, while every rhythmic outline
is compatible with the most various paces. In the second place, the word-metre
is the rhythm, the whole rhythm; while every rhythmic outline used in Music will
embrace an indefinite number of rhythms or sets of time-relations, and a different
set (the number being indefinite it would be absurd to call them feet) may
occur in every bar even of a single piece.
154 EDMUND GURNEY
that distinction. Thus, if we compare a waltz with a quadrille or
galop, there is something in the triple beat of the former which
seems to give more chance for delicate leanings and poisings in the
Ideal Motion, for movements whose half-tantalising caprice and
grace is shown in the way one wants to humour them, to dwell for
an infinitesimal time on this and that note, and so on. The outline
of a galop or quadrille seems less elastic and less adapted to such
small impassioned impulses; and thus we often find in good waltzes
a tinge of passion and romance, which we do not associate with
dance-music written in double time.
I have said advisedly that the expression of confidence and tri-
umph is often connected with strongly accented rhythmic move-
ment: to say it was given or ensured by such movement, would be
quite incorrect. ‘The rhythmic element always remains a single factor
of the form or Ideal Motion; and if the Ideal Motion in its com-
pleteness is not satisfactory or striking, no amount of accenting of
its rhythmic outline will redeem its poverty, or make it seem expres-
sive of any emotional quality. The boldness of expression is bound
up with the whole musical motion; and it would be easy to give
instances where features beyond those of rhythm, such as pieces of
ascending and descending scale, might also be specially associated
with the bold effect: but such features could not really be reduced,
like those of rhythm, under any wide general head.
Fourthly, by undecided rhythm. ‘The opposite sort of expres-
sion, that of doubt and hesitation, is perhaps even more markedly
connected with features of time-relations and rhythm. There could’
not be a better instance of this than the passage in Beethoven’s
pianoforte sonata in FE, minor, Op. 90, which is said to have been
humorously connected by the composer with the indecision in the
mind of a certain noble lover whose passion for an actress had been
expressed in a preceding theme—
piriseerse sierra
——— Bcc Seetsaecteectevinti ets eee ee eeegi gin
Sire erecta
F sempre dim.
ae eestorSSiSee:
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE 135,
ie ae 1S UE eek ee
==
ee ee ee
sae
ges a pp cres.
Va wre
(2S eg tales
ii Btn Sirus] dels &c.
Even tapped on a couple of drums, this, so far as it was not abso-

lutely incoherent, would have an air of uncertainty, owing to the
confused accents and varying time-values of the notes; but the effect
is clearly a hundredfold clearer and stronger when the actual phrases
are heard, catching each other up, and less and less able to get on,
till at last they are mutually jogged, so to speak, into making up their
minds. The importance of not attempting to detach the rhythmic
factor from the whole musical motion is thus again illustrated. But
though the expression of uncertainty may be connected in various
cases with various melodic and harmonic features, we may safely
assert that the most general feature, the one which is almost essen-
tially present, is some pause, hesitation, or retardation in the rhyth-
mic flow, as the analogies of physical motion, gesture, and speech
would have enabled us to predict.
Other special points of musical motion may be connected with
the rarer and more definite character of actual despondency, as ex-
pressed, for instance, in the air He was despised. . . . The effect of
the minor intervals in this melody was noticed in the chapter on
Harmony; but the character is really set in the opening six bars of
the piece, before any such interval has occurred. Here the motion,
grave throughout, owes its character of absolute dejection mainly to
re-
the two groups of three descending thirds in the middle; these
from the accent’s falling on the second of
ceive a special intensity
136 EDMUND GURNEY
the three chords; and the pause after the first group emphasises the
effect of the reiteration, as though the power of movement were
gathered together again only to sink to a still lower depth of depres-
sion! The effect is borne out further on in the piece by the re-
iterated longer pieces of descending scale. ‘These features present a
clear affinity to physical movements of drooping and collapse; and
somewhat similar ones might usually be found in similar cases of
expression. Such explanations, it must be again observed, are con-
cerned only with the special character the beauty wears; they do not
attempt to account for the beauty, for the delight given by the
exercise of the musical faculty on the whole melody. A hundred
melodies might be written which would seem to embody the same
features of motion, but there being no special beauty in them, there
would be no special pathos. In the explanation of the expressive
character of the phrases their musical value is, so to speak, presup-
posed: the reason why they fill up their place in the form to such
divine issues lies hid in the instinctive perceptions of the musical
faculty.
6. Means of expression in the less obvious processes of Ideal Mo-
tion. Yearning and Intensity. In pace and rhythm, and such a
feature as slow yet emphatic motions of drooping, we have con-
sidered modes in which musical motion corresponds in the most
obvious way with expressive physical movements; but our search for
the means of definable expression in Music may carry us beyond
these obvious features into the more inward processes of the Ideal
Motion. Consider, for instance, this tune of Schumann’s, the opening
of a little piece called Des Abends:
Slow. AohyGy ys n
b4— —e— pRB & >,
——_--»-,--8_S —
Seeger
SS Ss SS .
ae
11 All these points have to be considered before the peculiar character of the
motion can be at all accounted for. The crude rapprochement made by a popular
English writer on Music, of mental elation and depression to mere up and down
in pitch, is wholly unreal, and is in fact a mere verbal juggle. Is the writer him-
self really kept in a see-saw of elation and depression by all the various ascents
and descents of an ordinary melody?
= = oe
acne pa =e
dartalssaperty tte litepees

The characteristic expression of this melody is certainly yearning and
imploring; and as it is in a major key, moderate in pace, and in
perfectly even rhythm, none of the more obvious sources of expres-
sion are present. The general style of the harmony may perhaps be
138 EDMUND GURNEY
adduced in explanation; the accented notes several times constituting
discords which are resolved on the next unaccented notes, and the
prevalence of diminished seyenths aiding the expression of unrest.
But these features, though they intensify the effect here, occur else-
where without any similar result; and, moreover, the simple melodic
form conveys the expression without any accompaniment at all. The
yearning character can, I think, only be due to the fact that, in a
large part of the process of following this Ideal Motion, we are
yearning, not for inexpressible things, but for the next note, or at all
events for some foreseen point beyond. ‘Take the place of junction
of the second and third bars; in leaving the A (in the simplified
version) we seem to be stretching out for, straining towards, the F
sharp, with a desire which results in an almost imperceptible dwell-
ing on it when we have once arrived.!? Then in the ascent to the
upper F, we have a gradually growing excitement in the approach
and the same final strain towards the longed-for point, in arriving at
which our satisfaction is again expressed by a momentary dwelling,
or as it might be on the violin by a thrill. ‘The accessory C sharp and
D sharp again yearn upwards, and the C sharp in the final cadence
downwards. Contrast this sort of motion with our activity in follow-
ing the Forelle or the Old Hundredth; where we feel no yearning or
strain, but pass in easy confidence or in solemn confidence from one
note to another. ‘The gesture and attitude of straining, of stretching
out towards a thing, is of course the common mode of expressing
yearning and entreaty; so that we have here merely a subtler form of
expression through the indication of known signs of feeling. It must
be observed that I am not attempting to explain why the musical
process is of the kind it is, why such and such a combination of notes
makes one yearn for such and such a starting point for such and
such another, and so on, matters which belong to the inscrutable
musical faculty: I am accepting this as a fact, and showing how it is
connected with the particular expression of the melody, which in the
12 Such nuances in the Ideal Motion are to be remarked as very frequently con-
nected with the character of intensity and fervour in Music; and the connection
is rather the converse of what is generally imagined. The general view would be
‘You feel the impulse to dwell, to emphasize, to humour, to indulge in slight
hurries and retardations, because the melody has emotional intensity.’ Rather it
is the fact that any particular specimen of Ideal Motion makes these demands
that the musical sense feels itself constrained in these sorts of ways, which con.
stitutes the motion a yearning or passionate instead of, e.g., a confident one.
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND EXPRESSIVE
139
above case many would describe as shadowing forth all the indefin-
able aspirations of their lives.18
Or take the first sentence of Schubert’s Leise flehen—
——p—2— —o—
fs oat aes a ze —s ——
e =f
SSS SS
S°-eFC
a ars a —— =a
FF GF Mes Set So.

SS ee
8S ee
2B 2
i= Se
SS
ee
see a S
eg sa et
te ——————paar
ae ———ee
—
SOS es. |
gee- 23s-2
= ete
@
p
zo
o—
m o
oe Se ee ae ee a
=
ee eeeS
eee ee
ee e
13 There is always a danger in quoting examples, as one can but choose the things
which are powerfully affecting to oneself. If any one does not appreciate Des
Abends, he will not perceive it to yearn, or rather will not yearn with it. As I was
debating this point, it happened that some one passed the window whistling an
Italian melody which I especially dislike, with a certain manner of making his
way to the notes, a yearning ‘expression,’ which showed its power over him.
140 EDMUND GURNEY
&e.
Ss SS
Tf |
Be ES —_—
Se
Here the slightly troubled rhythm given by the triplets, the reitera-
tion of the movement of the first two bars, the falling back for a
moment with relaxed energy, and then the straining towards and
attaining a point beyond in the higher note, &c. &c., are features of
melodic motion which help to explain the passionate and yearning
character of this serenade, as compared with the more serene and
confident flow of Handel’s Love in her eyes. And here again the facts
of the motion and of our satisfaction in it are the data on which the
explanation proceeds. No amount of triplets or reiterations or fallings
back or straining upwards would have any emotional result if the
particular motion as a whole were not musically delightful; no de-
scription of such features would convey to any one who did not
know the melody the slightest shadow of its rare and individual
beauty; but the melody and the musical beauty being there we can
to some extent connect the features with its more special emotional
tinge.
Cases of expression depending rather on the general tenor of
the Ideal Motion than on distinguishable points might be exempli-
fied by such a character as tenderness, expressed by melodies in
which (beauty again being presupposed) the motion is smoothly
and gently gradated. When, again, the gradualness is connected with
chromatic harmonies, which introduce the feeling of uncertainty by
suspending for a time the definite sense of key, creepiness may be
the word which the sort of groping motion suggests. I need only refer
to the effect in its place of the famous passage in the andante of
Beethoven’s C minor symphony—
And a mysterious character may often be connected with somewhat

similar features.
A somewhat different instance of definable expression may be
found in Carmen’s song Presso il bastion—
The characteristics of this melody are undoubtedly melancholy and

caprice, of a sort which association with the person in whose mouth
it is put may readily enable us to define as girlish. ‘The predominance
of the minor key, combined with the easy swing of the tune, may be
connected with the air of melancholy without earnestness. The
TAZ EDMUND GURNEY
caprice may be traced both in the alternations from minor to major
and major to minor, and in the marked change of motion presented
by the second phrase of four bars, with its two emphatic little triplet
groups, clinched by the delicate impetuosity of the octave-spring—
features which have some faintly perceived analogy with familiar
gestures of wilfulness; while in the following part this character is
further confirmed by the sudden breaking off of the half-pathetic
vein with the little upward rush and final decisive step of the
cadence.
In this last case we have traced the expression in great measure
to relations between parts; and a peculiarity in this respect is not less
frequently at the root of it than some single pervading feature, such
as minor ‘mode’ or strongly marked confident rhythm. Given unity
of beauty in the whole, we shall continually find that aspects of
passion and romance may be connected with lapses and renewals of
effort, and marked points of contrast and climax. Even the strictest
sort of composition may be thus coloured with a romantic character,
as, for example, the fugue in D minor in the second division of
Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Clavier.
Humour is another quality in Music which is often connected
with comparison of parts and marked features of diversity and
change. The simplest possible case would be the slackening and
pause immediately before a cadence (as in the third figure of the
Lancers’), succeeded by a quick wind-up; which is quite parallel to
things that make babies laugh; and this tantalising and surprising of
the expectant ear has many more delicate varieties. Another sort of
fun in Music depends simply on the watching of a race, as in the
minuet of Haydn’s quartett, Op. 76, 2. But there are also less simple
effects, especially common in the works of Beethoven, where the
most comprehensive definition of humour is realised in the simul-
taneous presentation of subtle aspects of congruity and incongruity.
7. Other sorts of expression which cannot be connected with
such special features in the Music. So far we have been able to
connect the character with actual features in the music which there
was no difficulty in distinguishing. But it is not hard to see that in a
world peopled with so vast a variety of very distinct forms as that of
Music, varieties of character may arise which are perceived in less
special and direct ways than those we have been considering, and
greatly by unconscious comparison of the phenomena among them-
selves; that is to say, by judging any special one in reference to its
fellows, and with a latent sense of a variety of effects which have
made up our previous experience, we are sensible of many qualities
with which we cannot at all identify any special peculiarities of the
musical motion. Thus one melody seems on the whole prononcé
without being original, and we call it vulgar; another is pretty with-
out being prononcé, and we call it innocent; or perhaps delicate, if
its motion, while unemphatic, strikes us as having a sort of indefin-
able rarity. Again, we have connected humour with certain distin-
guishable features; but if we take the more intangible quality of
quaintness, all we can usually say is that certain bits of music present
to our musical perception that amount of divergence from familiar
types, that sort of unexpectedness and oddness in relation to their
fellows, which is analogous to the character described as quaintness
in other regions of phenomena. Similar remarks would apply to many
other qualities which Music may occasionally present. But on such
ground we have evidently got beyond the characters which corre-
spond with any definite conditions of our own feelings, or in virtue
of which any value could be assigned to Music as expressive of our
emotional life: and once on this ground, we may give our adjectives
the freest play. In the attempt to describe music—an attempt as
hopeless as to write English with the letters x y z—we are often
driven from the recognised category of esthetic emotions to terms
such as tantalising, uncompromising, persistent, insouciant, and even
stranger expressions. It would be hard, for instance, to describe, ex-
cept as a piece of divine folly, the ‘Jill came tumbling after’ effect
of the scherzo of Beethoven’s sonata in F for piano and violin: but
it would be absurd to say it expressed folly or inspired the feelings
with which we commonly regard folly.
8. The very act of cataloguing a few of these definite emotional
characters makes one feel how transient and uncertain they often
are; how little they sum up the substance of the thing which is
actually delighting us. It has been necessary to go through a certain
number of samples of the special emotional characters which Music
may without absurdity be said to express. But the very act of giving
them this amount of definition oppresses one with a sense of un-
reality when one stops and realises what the impression of most of
the music one cares about truly is. Half a dozen such tinges of ex-
pression may be presented by a single melody, which, as musically
144 EDMUND GURNEY
apprehended, is a perfect coherent unity. And if one forces oneself
to try to give a name to the character of the successive sentences or
phrases in a page of a sonata, though this one as compared with that
may be more confident, or more relaxed, though we may find an
energetic phrase here and a pleading phrase there, a capricious turn
in close proximity to a piece of emphatic reiteration, and so on, our
interest seems to lie in something quite remote from such descrip-
tion, and it is only by a sort of effort that we perceive whether or
not the musical current has been coloured by occasionally floating
into the zone of describable expression. The more general and un-
distinctive the character the more chance is there of its being kept
up for some time: and an air of cheerfulness or peace or solemnity
may pervade entire pieces of a moderate length. But we surely have
only to look, to perceive that in hundreds of the most emotional
instrumental movements" the effect is rarely, even for so much as a
few bars, the suggestion of a recognisable emotion, and is never
essentially that, but rather like a revelation of self-evident and
wholly untranslatable import.
Nor is it only with respect to this piecemeal and haphazard sort
of application that the suggestion of definable characters seems tan-
talisingly remote from the essential effects of Music. If we take
various musical motions, the definable seems to pass into the purely
musical and indefinable in the most impalpable and unaccountable
way. For certain of the features of musical motion which, when
sufficiently prominent, may be connected with definite character,
such as yearning or triumph, are really to a great extent present in
all beautiful music; or at all events there are characteristics of the
Ideal Motion which, if we attempt the hopeless task of putting them
into words, can only be so described. Thus to take the word triumph.
The deep satisfaction felt in winning our way from note to note, or
phrase to phrase, continually gives us a sense of inward triumph in
14 Instrumental music is of course the ground on which the subject of Music as
expressive must be first and mainly studied. Till we have obtained perfectly clear
views on that ground, we have no power at all of fairly examining the nature of
the expressiveness of Music as connected with words and persons; for in the
music which is so connected we cannot possibly eliminate the factor of associa-
tion, more or less unconscious, with the sentiment of the words or the character
of the persons. Words and scenes may seem to a dozen people to be satisfactorily
and even remarkably ‘expressed’ by music of which, if they heard it first apart
from the words and scenes, they would have given a dozen totally different
versions. We shall return to this subject hereafter.
music whose general expression, so far as it is describable would not
be called triumphant, but solemn it may be, or intense or passionate.
In poor music, note after note and phrase after phrase seem to
present themselves trivially and pointlessly; but in music we enjoy, as
we progressively grasp the form, the sense of absolute possession, of
oneness with it; the cogent and unalterable rightness of every step
in Our progress, may produce the most vivid impression of triumphal
advance. If we attempted in such a case to translate the Ideal Motion
into terms of physical motion (and this is allowable if we are careful
to remember that they are distinct things and that the result is the
faintest metaphor) we might say that we were inwardly elated at the
certainty, strength, and success of our steps, without at all feeling
that our outward and obvious gait and aspect were of a confident and
triumphant character. Again, take the word yearning. The points in
the Ideal Motion which seem in some way to suggest it, are found
in all sorts of music quite outside the region where, as in the Des
Abends, quoted above, the quality of subdued yet straining pathos
seems predominant. The feeling of stretching out longingly to a fore-
seen note, indicated sometimes by actual movements of the hands,
may exist in cases where the very slightest variation of pace or attempt
to give musical emphasis to the rendering would be impertinent or
impossible.1® Again, the still more obvious feeling of passion, which
seems more or less a definable expression in cases where music pre-
sents marked features of agitated motion, is perpetually felt in music
which suggests no external signs of passion at all: and though we may
excusably call such music expressive of passion, by imagining it a vent
for some external condition of excitement and exaltation, we must
still recognise that the particular sense of excitement belongs to a
state of consciousness known only in the realisation of music, and
not essentially referable to any mode or exhibition of feeling belong-
ing to times when music is not being realised.
15 A faint sense of irony may often be felt in passing by without special outward
recognition or emphasis notes pregnant in musical importance; and to some per-
formers it is a matter of real difficulty to play such notes with the requisite
ironical indifference. It is dangerous to attempt to exemplify so delicate an effect
from personal experience, as any one who happens not to appreciate the example
will complain of the description as over-fanciful; but I will risk some of the inner
notes in the latter section of the allegretto of Beethoven’s seventh Symphony. . . .
The C sharp, for instance, in the fifth bar from the end of the quotation, could
not possibly be in any way emphasised: yet one has a sensation of wanting to
hug it as it passes.
146 EDMUND GURNEY
9. The definitely expressive element is far less constant and
essential than is usually imagined. Such descriptions as the above
can only be arrived at by considerable attention to one’s own sensa-
tions: I can but hope that as they represent my own experience
truly, however inadequately, others may find them to correspond in
some degree with theirs. And the result is certainly to relegate the
definitely expressive element in Music to a much more subordinate
position than that commonly assigned to it.
These words must not be misunderstood. ‘The element of ex-
pression is not subordinate in the sense that, when present, it is
slight or shallow; on the contrary, it may reach the very extreme of
intensity and profundity, since the whole mass of musical feeling
which is stirred up appears steeped in the colour of any special emo-
tion it may suggest. But it is subordinate (1) in the sense that it is
far from being a constant element; (2) in the sense that not in it,
but in the independently impressive aspect of Music, must be sought
the explanation of the essential effect of the-art; and that the very
intensity of which musical expression is capable, so far from being
explanatory, is one of the prime mysteries to be explained. Both
these senses are commonly ignored. In ninety-nine per cent of the
current talk and writing about Music and composers, it is implied
(even where not definitely stated) that Music is primarily an art of
expression; that it is ‘the language of the emotions,’ i.e. of modes of
feeling familiar in the life external to Music (which for convenience
I have called extra-musical modes of feeling); and that its great func-
tion, either with or without the association of some external words
or subject-matter, consists in the evocation of these emotions. And
this view is connected, either as cause or effect, with the idea that in
mentioning the expressive aspects the problem of Music’s power has
been solved. To many the question never occurs why mournfulness
or exultation should be held as any more explanation or guarantee
of overpowering beauty in a tune than in a face. The chain of error
may be traced partly to the fact that those who theorise on the sub-
ject are apt to consider cases where Music is associated with definite
words or scenes, or at all events cases where definable characters of
feeling are more or less suggested, so that they do not feel driven to
look beyond for some more fundamental source of effect; partly to
the natural difficulty of fully recognising the unique and independent
impressiveness in Music, in the lack of some such expedient as the
application of Mr. Darwin’s theory attempted in this book. But how-
ever the view may be accounted for, its bearings on theories of
musical art are none the less disastrous; and its importance must be
my excuse for presenting the various objections to it at some length
and in precise order.
First, we have the fundamental fact that in an immense amount
of beautiful music the element of definable expression is absent; or
present only in such vague and fragmentary ways that, in describing
the phenomena under that aspect, we seem to get about as near the
reality as when we attempt descriptions of things in the vocabulary
of some unfamiliar foreign language. The bearing of this on the cases
which do present definable expression is obvious. Taking a single
specimen of music with a definable expression, we might find a
difhculty in proving to any one that it did not owe its value to its
expression, for the simple reason that it is impossible to present that
specimen without its expression. A beautiful face can change; it is
capable of being neutral or of wearing many different expressions,
under each of which the form is so slightly modified that the face
remains obviously one and the same: whereas a pathetic melody, a
triumphant melody, and an undefinable melody are necessarily three
and not one, and one of them cannot become either of the others.
But clearly if I find twenty bits of music beautiful and indescribable,!¢
and one bit beautiful and pathetic, it is unreasonable to say I enjoy
the last (which I don’t enjoy at all more than the others) because it
is pathetic.
Secondly, the very features which may be often indisputably
connected with definable expression are perpetually present in cases
where, the music not being perceived as impressive or beautiful, they
produce no effect on us. The essential conditions of musical beauty,
of the satisfaction of the musical sense, must therefore be quite
outside these special features of effect. On the other hand, if any
music expresses distinct feeling, it expresses it better, we say, the
16 Indescribable must not be confounded with indefinite. However indefinite

Music may often be in its expressive aspect, in its impressive aspect it shows its
virtue in being definite. Apart from the definiteness of individuality due to the
actual perceptible difference of one musical form from another, we can often feel
in Music a general character so definite as to make us certain of the author of
the composition. But as this character, which is so certainly perceived by the
musical sense, has no sort of extra musical existence, it of course cannot be
described.
148 EDMUND GURNEY
more beautiful it is; that is, the more profoundly it exercises that
sense of musical impression which, in the cognisance of all music,
is felt as one in kind. .
Thirdly, it is often found that music which wears a definable
expression to one person, does not wear it or wears a different one to
another, though the music may be equally enjoyed by both. For in-
stance, the great ‘subject’ of the first movement of Schubert’s B flat
trio represents to me and many others the ne plus ultra of energy and
passion; yet this very movement was described by Schumann as
‘tender, girlish, confiding:’ and the reiteration of the bass figure in
the adagio of Beethoven’s fourth symphony, which has always seemed
to me quite tremendous in its earnestness, appeared to Schumann as
a humorous feature.
Fourthly, take twenty bits of music, each presenting the same
definable character, such as melancholy or triumph. Now if the
stirring of this emotion is the whole business of any one of these
tunes, how is anybody the richer for knowing the other nineteen?
for in respect of this stirring character they are all on a par, and one
of them would do completely all that could be done. In reality, of
course, each of them is an individual, with a beauty peculiar to itself,
and each is, to one who loves it, a new source of otherwise unknown
delight. ‘The mistake, as thus regarded, connects itself with the in-
ward nature of the sense of hearing: as we cannot touch what we
hear, the fact that we perceive a piece of music as an individual
object is apt to be lost sight of in theory, however universally exempli-
fied in the whole practice of musical appreciation.
Fifthly, even if definite bias of expression did really belong to all
enjoyable music, there is the d priori impossibility that abstract
motion of any sort should produce the extraordinarily vivid and indi-
vidual effects of Music by the mere suggestion of emotions, apart
from some independently based beauty, some independent means of
powerfully affecting us. Why should the mere expression of some
mode of feeling by an abstract musical motion be more adequate to
stir us than the expression of it by the gestures of some uninteresting
concrete personage? Apart, indeed, from some independent source of
impressiveness, it would seem far less adequate. For a melancholy
look, a pleading gesture, an energetic gait, may set our imaginations
coursing down a score of interesting avenues connected with the sub-
ject or object of that particular human manifestation: but in Music
our attention is centred on forms which are for us the unique in-
habitants of a perfectly unique world, disconnected from the interest
of visible things. How should the mere suggestion of emotions suffice
to transfigure these abstract forms with individual life and beauty?
On the contrary, it is the life and beauty which the forms draw from
their own peculiar spring in our organisation that enables them to
transfigure any definable emotional character they may perchance
suggest. ‘The extraordinary intensification which known emotions
undergo in musical expression, the movingness of the pathetic, the
jubilance of the exulting strains, might alone suggest the problem
how one method of motion should possess such a monopoly of ex-
pressive power; and might have led to the answer that the particular
expression is a phase in an independent mode of deep and mighty
impression, whose depth and might it thus makes its own.
10. Nor can the view that expression is the source and secret of
musical effect find any support or relevance in the number of varieties
and nuances of musical motion. One special form of the error we
are discussing demands separate notice. The question asked in the
last paragraph, why is the effect of expressive music so infinitely
greater than that of the corresponding physical motion, by resembling
which?" it suggests definite conditions of feeling?—why is the effect
of an agitated presto of Beethoven superior to that of a man excitedly
waving his arms in the air? why is Des Abends more delightful than
a series of imploring gestures? why is Carmen’s Presso il bastion more
pleasurable than any copy or accompaniment of it by capricious
physical movements?—such questions, I say, are often answered by
saying that Music presents an infinitely greater variety and more
delicate nuances of motion than physical movement. But this answer,
when connected with the theory that Music is effective by the ex-
pression of extra-musical emotions, becomes absurd; as will be obvious
if the argument as to the relation of musical to physical motion be
briefly but connectedly restated. The three main facts are as follows;—
A. Musical or Ideal Motion has infinite varieties and nuances,
which constitute the whole body of musical forms.
B. Musical Motion may present a certain number of very gen-
eral features which resemble and suggest definite physical motions in
17 For simplicity’s sake I neglect here the more occasional elements of expression
found in timbre, ‘mode,’ and harmony; which may be done without injury to the
ensuing argument.
150 EDMUND GURNEY
space; sometimes presented in an obvious way by pace, rhythmic
outline and emphasis, and width of intervals; sometimes connected
with the more inward processes of the Ideal Motion, as when the
musical straining towards a note dimly adumbrates some correspond-
ing physical gesture.
C. Human or extra-musical emotions, so far as they are express-
ible otherwise than by language, are normally expressed in a rough
and general way by physical motions: and musical motion, by its
resemblances to physical motion, can in an extremely general way
suggest the conditions of feeling with which definite features of
physical motion are thus connected.
Now if Music’s power consisted in the expression of extra-
musical emotion, the greater variety and nuance in musical motion
could only give it a superiority over physical motion by enabling it
to express a greater variety and more delicate shades of extra-musical
emotion. But such a theory (not to mention its inapplicability to
the beauty presented in single homogeneous passages of limited
length) at once brings us into collision with C. Musical motions
express extra-musical moods and feelings through their resemblance
to physical motions: how then can it be maintained that an infinite
superiority in variety and nuance makes them infinitely superior in
this power of expression to that, by resembling which it is that they
express at all?18 The varieties and nuances of course exist; but they
belong to the essence of the Ideal Motion, as musically perceived in
its numberless manifestations; which may reach the maximum of im-
pressiveness in the absence of any features suggestive of extra-musical
moods and feelings. A single instance is stronger than any argument.
Take two musical movements, alike in agitated pace and rhythm,
18 The criticism, in the eighth chapter, of Helmholtz’s view that the effects of
Music are sufficiently accounted for by mere consideration of motion, may now
be supplemented and completed. He dwells especially on the variety and delicacy
of musical motions, and does not seem to perceive the inevitable dilemma, as
stated in the text. If the superior delicacy and variety of musical motions involves
no improved means of discriminating and expressing extra-musical feeling, that
source, which is what Helmholtz ultimately relies on for their effect, is unavailable
to account for it. And since mere variety of motions does not help us unless we
can say why any one of them should be supremely pleasant, it follows that their
power to awaken deep and unique feeling must be derived from some other
independent emotional source; the possibility of which, in the connection of the
satished exercise of the musical faculty with hidden channels of primaeval asso-
ciation, I have attempted to explain.
and in what we may call physical character: both equally express, if
we will, an agitated state of feeling: but will any one seriously main-
tain that the varieties and nuances of Ideal Motion, which make
every phrase and bar of the one totally different from every phrase
and bar of the other, correspond with varieties and nuances of extra-
musical mood? Such an instance is alone utterly subversive of the
hypothesis that musical motion is effective by doing more delicately
and minutely what physical motion does roughly and generally.
11. Extreme broadness and generality of the feelings Music can
express. ‘The theory about shades of emotion becomes doubly absurd
when we notice what the largest general qualities really are, which
may be included under some comprehensive mode of feeling, and
how utterly any mode of motion lacks the power of following and
expressing even these broadest distinctions. Under the general head
of pathos or melancholy, for example, may be included a multitude
of large qualities, which can be expressed either by the verbal repre-
sentation of persons and characters or by visible forms, but which
mere motion, musical or physical, could never the least touch or
suggest; patience, for instance, and pity. Sculpture can depict pa-
tience, because it can make a patient-looking figure; but what
means has Music of giving us a patient-sounding tune? Pity may be
itself subdivided into many kinds; we feel one sort for Antigone,
another for Lear, another for Hamlet: but Music cannot even get so
far down in definition as the broad attribute of pity itself, nor
differentiate it from regret or any other of the qualities which a
general pathos of expression might cover. Earnestness, agitation, are
differentiated in life in a score of different ways, not one of which
can be marked out by any special peculiarity in the expression of the
general character by motion. And indeed when we realise the essential
distinction between presentative and representative art, the wonder
is not so much that the expression of emotions by Music should be
comprised for the most part under extremely wide and general heads,
as that even that amount of definition should be possible.1®
19 Some may find a certain difficulty in catching the notion that many different
and individual presentations, each loved with a special love, and all emotionally
stirring, do not awaken distinct sorts and shades of feeling. And especially when
two bits of music present a certain character, but a character which cannot be
described more particularly than by saying, e.g., that both bits are melancholy,
it is very natural to conceive that the melancholy of the one is different from
that of the other. A moment’s thought will, however, show that the sense of
US EDMUND GURNEY
The want of definiteness in musical expression is sufficiently
obvious to have been recognised even by some of those who, with
great inconsistency, assign nd ground for the power and value of the
art save its expression of extra-musical emotions: and the recognition
usually takes the form of saying that the expression is not of definite
emotions, but of some general mood, Gemiithsstimmung, capable of
taking many channels; such a general emotional disposition, for
instance, as might equally appear in the ardour of the lover and the
ardour of the saint, and might therefore be differently interpreted
according to the subjective fancies of the hearers. ‘These emotional
states seem to be just those extremely general ones? which we have
noticed as corresponding with certain known physical conditions and
modes of motion, and so as naturally expressible by Music. And as
regards the question where the essential effect of Music lies, we need
scarcely fear that any sane person will seriously attribute it (however
much his language may imply such a view) to characters like these;
characters so broad and undistinctive and which so little strike us as
being deliberately or definitely expressed, that one of them may per-
difference concerns the two individual forms or motions, not the melancholy
which they express; just as if two children of different physiognomy be told a
piece of bad news which affects them exactly alike, the same sentiment will be
expressed by their totally different and individual faces.
It is disappointing to find how loosely even Schumann, whose position about
the general undefinableness of musical feeling is often firm enough, can sometimes
speak about shades of emotion. ‘Half-educated people,’ he says, ‘are generally
unable to discover more than the expression of grief and joy, and perhaps melan-
choly, in music without words. They are deaf to the finer shades of emotion—
anger, revenge, satisfaction, quietude, &c.’ As if, on the one hand, satisfaction
and quietude were fine shades, instead of the most general and undistinctive
characters possible; and as if, on the other hand, Schumann or any one else
could distinguish between anger and revenge as ‘expressed’ in Music. Elsewhere,
after disclaiming all artistic value for the titles of his pianoforte pieces, he adds
‘the different soul-states only are interesting to me.’ Now the soul-states are either
things possible and known apart from Music, or they are not. If they are not,
the words used are very misleading: if they are, how many of them are there,
and how many pieces of music belong to each? If each of them is only an
extremely broad Gemiithsstimmung, like those treated of in the following para-
graph, how can it be the interesting or distinguishing element in a number of
vivid and different individuals?
20 It is strange that Helmholtz, after correctly pointing out the extreme vagueness
and generality of these states of feeling, and how one of them, such as ‘the
dreamy longing for transcendent bliss,’ may represent the broadest common ele-
ment in a number of more distinct feelings, such as love, piety, &c., should in
the same paragraph directly contradict himself by adding that Music expresses
extra-musical emotions ‘exactly and delicately.’
vade a hundred different pieces without seeming to constitute the
slightest kinship between them. No one who has any musical appre-
ciation is likely to think that the raison d’étre of a tranquil or a lively
piece is the expression of liveliness or tranquillity, or to attach any
vital importance to such attributes. But though this Gemiithsstim-
mung-theory is thus less of a trap than the theory of ‘shades of
emotion,’ we must notice how far it is from being generally appli-
cable. For, in the first place, in hundreds and thousands of cases it
is as impossible to name any general mood as to name any more
definite emotions; the mood is simply that unique one which we can
but describe as the mood of musical exaltation, by whatever music
produced.*! And, in the second place, it is just in connection with a
21'The customary phrases about depiction of moods are deceptive only by their
vagueness. ‘I’o see what they come to, we have but to scrutinise them in direct
connection with a few specimens of music we care about. Take for instance the
two following beautiful tunes, each completely appreciable in its unaccompanied
melodic form: the first is from Beethoven’s Serenade Trio—
an = —S—=—_
(Sas gies ee Ser eee eae aie

ae oe ee ee eee ee eee
the second is a song, Willst du dein Herz mir schenken, attributed to Bach—
; = asaoe's — — A. a - a _——
In spite of a certain superficial similarity, these melodies are to the musical

apprehension as different as different can be. But any one who thought he could
define the difference as a difference of two particular moods, might fairly be
called on, within a limited range of music, to find names for many hundreds of
moods, to correspond with differences equally patent to the musical sense and
equally inexpressible in known terms of emotion. The most conclusive experiment
would be to take twenty such persons, if they could be found, and ask them
to write down the difference of mood in a particular case like the above, and
then to compare their descriptions.
154 EDMUND GURNEY
Gemiithsstimmung that a difficulty already noticed is at its maxi-
mum: if we try to assign corresponding moods to the passages of
some long and exciting instrumental movement, we often cannot
stick to one for a dozen bars together. So far as they can be con-
ceived as existing at all, they are perpetually changing, sometimes at
a moment’s notice. There is surely a sort of unreality about the
notion of playing football in this irresponsible way with what are
represented as very deep and pervading emotional conditions; and
those who imagine they dignify Music by calling it a reflection of
life, forget that neither does life consist in pitching oneself without
rhyme or reason from one definable mood into another, and would
be very unpleasant if it did.
12. Expression of emotions in relation to the composer. So far
we have been considering emotions as awakened, or not awakened,
in ourselves. We may now briefly consider the same topic in relation
to the composer. Of course the doctrine that a composer expresses
his emotions is subject to all the modifications entailed by the absence
of continuous and definable emotional expression in perhaps the
greater part of his work: on this we need not further dwell. But the
doctrine is sufficiently faulty even for the cases where definable ex-
pression is most clearly present. Suppose a painter is depicting ‘Night’
or ‘Autumn’ as a melancholy female: is he expressing his own melan-
choly all the time? if he paint a death-scene, is he mournful during
the whole of the working hours of a month or six months? Similarly
a musician may be a month in working up a funeral march, without
at all losing his good spirits. Indeed he would naturally be much less .
under the dominance of the mournful emotion than the painter.
For the latter has the middle term of his own intellectual represen-
tation; in depicting a scene of sorrow he must constantly realise to
himself the mood and its concrete embodiment; his own emotions
may be only artistically pumped up, but still he is face to face with
mournful realities. But the musician is not kept in the presence of
external realities, and no one can keep a mood going for the mere
purpose of expressing it. The painter again, having the world to
choose from, deliberately chooses such subjects as he prefers to dwell
on himself; and as many of the forms and objects which he depicts
might be known and imagined, and might show their beauty, in
several moods or aspects, his choice of a special mood may seem
characteristic. The germ of a musician’s work is very different. His
‘subjects’ are not aspects and relations of things deliberately chosen,
but fragments of musical inspiration, independent of views of life and
habits of sentiment. It may be readily granted that if, without
conscious aim, he sits down to his piano at one of those times when
there is a sense of pause in the more vigorous pulses of life, he is
more likely to fall into a melancholy and rhythmically quiet andante
than into a tumultuous presto; and conversely, when a mood of
confidence reflects the exhilaration of joyful surroundings, the humour
of the moment may flash forth in more impetuous strains. But his
longer works, with their solemn adagios and sportive minuets and so
on, can be no sort of reflection of his from-day-to-day existence. His
musical activity may be to him the natural vent for (or refuge from)
all sorts of emotional conditions; but to suppose that it was bound
to expression of those conditions to us would be to suppose that
sonatas and symphonies were short gushes of impassioned impromptu,
instead of works of prolonged labour. The exciting music which is
held to indicate the pre-existence of some emotional storm in its
author, may equally have been the result of the most peaceful and
ordinary work-day.
The history of musical composition is so clear on this point, that
people can only have been driven to find in what they hear the
expression of the composer’s emotions at the moment, by supposing
that Music must express something and not seeing what else it
could be. For anything so wrapped up with the physical organism
as Music, it is rather in the physical conditions of the composer that
we should naturally look for some assignable connection with musical
workings in his brain. There is a most interesting account by Mozart
of the manner in which his music came to him, when he was com-
fortable after dinner, or lying peacefully in bed: Auber’s ideas were
set in motion on horseback, and Beethoven’s in his rapid walks,
enlivened by strange hummings and shoutings, about the environs
of Vienna. But emotions (real or imagined) external to the music,
though they may act generally and indirectly by quickening and
attuning the mind to a sense of beauty, are far oftener wholly latent
or irrelevant. A melody composed for an instrument in a neutral
frame of mind might afterwards be set to religious words, of which
it might then seem to breathe the very spirit; music written without
a thought of death or any solemn subject might turn out to make a
first-rate funeral march and be adopted as such; and a gifted child
156 EDMUND GURNEY
who had never personally realised the existence of such a feeling as
mournfulness might appreciate and even invent a deeply pathetic
melody. We can yearn, triumph, and so on in purely musical regions;
and where we find in music a mood describable by some adjective
thus drawn from the category of the emotions, to say the music was
composed as an expression of the composer’s emotion would as a
tule be as true as to say that the interior of St. Mark’s was designed
as an expression of a previous mood of gloom on the part of its
architect.
When for special purposes, as in writing for occasions or for
words, a man has obviously turned his musical faculty into a special
vein, as of tenderness, or sportiveness, or solemnity, it may seem
cynical to imagine him entirely absorbed in his unique creative
region. But as a matter of fact, his faculty may set itself on the
inventive track, so to speak, in a slow rhythm and a minor key, or
in quick capricious snatches which gradually flash into a vivacious
‘subject,’ without any swayings of his conscious moods.
Relation of a composer's temperament and circumstances to his
work. It is of course quite another question how far a musician’s
permanent temperament and circumstances, or some long and ab-
normal affection of body and mind, may be perceptibly connected
with his artistic work. Different answers might probably be given in
different cases, and we might doubtless find instances where a pre-
dominant tone of struggle and despondency or of serenity and glad-
ness seems in sufficiently striking correspondence with external char-
acteristics and conditions.?? The most general attribute of physical
intensity, so prominent in the organisation of many great musicians,
is certainly often accompanied by strong affections and emotional
fervour. But it is dangerous to try to press more special points. Noth-
ing, for instance, in Beethoven’s music is more striking than the
variety and delicacy of its humour: as a man, his sense of humour
could of all things be least relied on, and the jokes he preferred were
*2 Schumann says of his C major symphony, ‘I sketched it out while suffering

severe physical pain; indeed, I may call it the struggle of my mind, which
influenced this, and by which I sought to beat off my disease. The first move-
ment is full of this struggle, and very peevish and perverse in character.’ We see
here the same sort of connection between physical states and musical stirrings,
between the restless, sudden, and impatient movements of the sufferer and the
music which kept time to them in his head, as was less painfully exemplified in
Beethoven’s striding walks and Auber’s rides.
of a very rough-and-tumble description. And even on the more gen-
eral ground we shall perhaps be safer in tracing the connection to the
most fundamental inborn bias of disposition than to the emotional
conditions which special circumstances might affect. I believe that
Mendelssohn’s work would have remained in general flowing and
rangé, through any amount of external or internal tumult; that the
sublime pathos and stormy energy of Beethoven would not have been
stifled by comfort and happiness; and that as a rule the springs of
musical creation, even where strongest and most abundant, dwell
singularly apart, and have for their very own the hues they are
thought to reflect. The fashion of imagining and overstraining con-
nections between a man’s music and his life is due to a tendency,
amiable but in Music especially ill-advised, to make heroes of artists.
13. The sort of sense in which Music may be considered a reflec-
tion of the inner life. In conclusion, I can imagine that a reader who
has given assent to the various propositions and arguments which have
been presented in this chapter, may still feel that, after all, there is a
sense in which Music may be truly considered a reflection of the
inner life. I am far from denying that such is the case: the error is
in not seeing that so far as the idea has any sort of generality of
application, the reflection itself must be of the most general and
indefinite kind; very different from the definable expression, with its
dubious and fragmentary appearances, which we have been discussing.
Characters far too wide to be regarded, without absurdity, as what
the pieces were written to express, or as what their merit and indi-
viduality consist in their expressing, may still make a sort of un-
defined human atmosphere under which the distinct musical forms
are revealed and the distinct musical impressions received. Moreover,
if the following and realising of music be regarded as itself one com-
plete domain of inner life, we may then perceive that it is large and
various enough, full enough of change and crisis and contrast, of
expectation, memory, and comparison, of general forms of perception
which have been employed in other connections by the same mind,
for the course of musical experience, as felt under these most abstract
aspects and relations, to present a dim affinity to the external course
of emotional life. In this way we may feel, at the end of a musical
movement, that we have been living an engrossing piece of life which,
in the variety and relations of its parts, has certain qualities belonging
to any series of full and changing emotions: and this feeling may
158 EDMUND GURNEY
impress us with much more of reality than any attempted ranking of
the several parts and phases of the music under particular heads of
expression. It is easy to distinguish general affinities of this kind from
anything referable to the more definite categories. Such qualities, e.g.,
as evenness and continuity, or interruptedness and variability, of
musical movement, may suffice to suggest a sort of kinship between
musical and other trains of feeling, while far too abstract to define
or guarantee the character of the pieces where they occur, and able
equally to cover the most various content: the slowness and sus-
tainedness of an adagio movement, for instance, often described as
typical of a peaceful flow of consciousness, we have found to be as
compatible with the undefinable stirring of musical passion as with
the definable expression of calm. Another instance of abstract rela-
tionship, equally remote from definite suggestion and expression, may
be found in the faint analogy of mingling currents of music to that
mingling of various strains of feeling and idea which is so frequent a
feature of our ordinary life: it would be absurd in the vast majority
of such cases to attempt to represent each musical current as typi-
fying some distinguishable train of known feeling, so that here the
quality common to the musical and the extra-musical experience
seems so abstract as to be little more than harmonious concomitance
of several elements in each: yet this mere parallelism of complexity
seems enough to open up in Music faint tracts of association with
extra-musical life. A similar affnity has been attributed to the pre-
dominance of a single melodic theme in relation to its accompani-
ment; where the mere relation may possibly suggest our general
experience of prominent strains of feeling as standing out from the
general stream of consciousness, whose other elements make for it a
sort of dimly-felt background.
And Music condenses a very large amount of inner life, of the
sort of experience which might lend itself to such general associa-
tions, into a very brief space of actual time. The successions of in-
tensity and relaxation, the expectation perpetually bred and _per-
petually satisfied, the constant direction of the motion to new points,
and constant evolution of part from part, comprise an immense
amount of alternations of posture and of active adjustment of the
will. You may perhaps even extend the suggestions of the last para-
graph so far as to imagine that this ever-changing adjustment of the
will, subtle and swift in Music beyond all sort of parallel, may project
on the mind faint intangible images of extra-musical impulse and
endeavour; and that the ease and spontaneity of the motions, the
certainty with which a thing known or dimly divined as about to
happen does happen, creating a half-illusion that the notes are
obeying the controlling force of one’s own desire, may similarly open
up vague channels of association with other moments of satisfaction
and attainment. But these affinities are at any rate of the most abso-
lutely general kind; and whatever their importance may be, they
seem to me to lie in a region where thought and language struggle
in vain to penetrate.
8
GEORGE SANTAYANA
EXPRESSION
EXPRESSION DEFINED
We have found in the beauty of material and form the objectifica-

tion of certain pleasures connected with the process of direct percep-
tion, with the formation, in the one case of a sensation, or quality,
in the other of a synthesis of sensations or qualities. But the human
consciousness is not a perfectly clear mirror, with distinct boundaries
and clear-cut images, determinate in number and exhaustively per-
ceived. Our ideas half emerge for a moment from the dim continuum
of vital feeling and diffused sense, and are hardly fixed before they
are changed and transformed, by the shifting of attention and the
perception of new relations, into ideas of really different objects.
This fluidity of the mind would make reflection impossible, did we
not fix in words and other symbols certain abstract contents; we
thus become capable of recognising in one perception the repetition
of another, and of recognising in certain recurrences of impressions
a persistent object. ‘This discrimination and classification of the con-
tents of consciousness is the work of perception and understanding,
Reprinted with permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons from The Sense of
Beauty, pp. 145-164, by George Santayana.
160
EXPRESSION 161
and the pleasures that accompany these activities make the beauty
of the sensible world.
But our hold upon our thoughts extends even further. We not
only construct visible unities and recognisable types, but remain
aware of their affinities to what is not at the time perceived; that is,
we find in them a certain tendency and quality, not original to them,
a meaning and a tone, which upon investigation we shall see to have
been the proper characteristics of other objects and feelings, associated
with them once in our experience. The hushed reverberations of these
associated feelings continue in the brain, and by modifying our
present reaction, colour the image upon which our attention is fixed.
The quality thus acquired by objects through association is what we
call their expression. Whereas in form or material there is one object
with its emotional effect, in expression there are two, and the emo-
tional effect belongs to the character of the second or suggested one.
Expression may thus make beautiful by suggestion things in them-
selves indifferent, or it may come to heighten the beauty which they
already possess.
Expression is not always distinguishable in consciousness from the
value of material or form, because we do not always have a distin-
guishable memory of the related idea which the expressiveness implies.
When we have such a memory, as at the sight of some once frequented
garden, we clearly and spontaneously attribute our emotion to the
memory and not to the present fact which it beautifies. There revival
of a pleasure and its embodiment in a present object which in itself
might have been indifferent, is here patent and acknowledged.
The distinctness of the analysis may indeed be so great as to
prevent the synthesis; we may so entirely pass to the suggested object,
that our pleasure will be embodied in the memory of that, while the
suggestive sensation will be overlooked, and the expressiveness of the
present object will fail to make it beautiful. Thus the mementos of
a lost friend do not become beautiful by virtue of the sentimental
associations which may make them precious. ‘The value is confined
to the images of the memory; they are too clear to let any of that
value escape and diffuse itself over the rest of our consciousness, and
beautify the objects which we actually behold. We say explicitly:
I value this trifle for its associations. And so long as this division
continues, the worth of the thing is not for us aesthetic.
But a little dimming of our memory will often make it so. Let
the images of the past fade, let them remain simply as a halo and
162 GEORGE SANTAYANA
suggestion of happiness hanging about a scene; then this scene,
however empty and uninteresting in itself, will have a deep and intt-
mate charm; we shall be pleased by its very vulgarity. We shall not
confess so readily that we value the place for its associations; we shall
rather say: I am fond of this landscape; it has for me an ineffable
attraction. The treasures of the memory have been melted and dis-
solved, and are now gilding the object that supplants them; they are
giving this object expression.
Expression then differs from material or formal value only as
habit differs from instinct—in its origin. Physiologically, they are
both pleasurable radiations of a given stimulus; mentally, they are
both values incorporated in an object. But an observer, looking at
the mind historically, sees in the one case the survival of an ex-
perience, in the other the reaction of an innate disposition. ‘This
experience, moreover, is generally rememberable, and then the ex-
trinsic source of the charm which expression gives becomes evident
even to the consciousness in which it arises. A word, for instance, is
often beautiful simply by virtue of its meaning and associations; but
sometimes this expressive beauty is added to a musical quality in the
world itself. In all expression we may thus distinguish two terms: the
first is the object actually presented, the word, the image, the expres-
sive thing; the second is the object suggested, the further thought,
motion, or image evoked, the thing expressed.
These lie together in the mind, and their union constitutes ex-
pression. If the value lies wholly in the first term, we have no beauty
of expression. The decorative inscriptions in Saracenic monuments
can have no beauty of expression for one who does not read Arabic;
their charm is wholly one of material and form. Or if they have any
expression, it is by virtue of such thoughts as they might suggest, as,
for instance, of the piety and oriental sententiousness of the builders
and of the aloofness from us of all their world. And even these sug-
gestions, being a wandering of our fancy rather than a study of the
object, would fail to arouse a pleasure which would be incorporated
in the present image. The scroll would remain without expression,
although its presence might have suggested to us interesting visions
of other things. The two terms would be too independent, and the
intrinsic values of each would remain distinct from that of the other.
There would be no visible expressiveness, although there might have
been discursive suggestions.
EXPRESSION 163
Indeed, if expression were constituted by the external relation
of object with object, everything would be expressive equally, inde-
terminately, and universally. The flower in the crannied wall would
express the same thing as the bust of Caesar or the Critique of Pure
Reason. What constitutes the individual expressiveness of these
things is the circle of thoughts allied to each in a given mind; my
words, for instance, express the thoughts which they actually arouse
in the reader; they may express more to one man than to another,
and to me they may have expressed more or less than to you. My
thoughts remain unexpressed, if my words do not arouse them in you,
and very likely your greater wisdom will find in what I say the mani-
festation of a thousand principles of which I never dreamed. Expres-
sion depends upon the union of two terms, one of which must be
furnished by the imagination; and a mind cannot furnish what it
does not possess. The expressiveness of everything accordingly in-
creases with the intelligence of the observer.
But for expression to be an element of beauty, it must, of course,
fulfil another condition. I may see the relations of an object, I may
understand it perfectly, and may nevertheless regard it with entire
indifference. If the pleasure fails, the very substance and protoplasm
of beauty is wanting. Nor, as we have seen, is even the pleasure
enough; for I may receive a letter full of the most joyous news, but
neither the paper, nor the writing, nor the style, need seem beautiful
to me. Not until I confound the impressions, and suffuse the symbols
themselves with the emotions they arouse, and find joy and sweetness
in the very words I hear, will the expressiveness constitute a beauty;
as when they sing, Gloria in excelsis Deo.
The value of the second term must be incorporated in the first;
for the beauty of expression is as inherent in the object as that of
material or form, only it accrues to that object not from the bare act
of perception, but from the association with it of further processes,
due to the existence of former impressions. We may conveniently
use the word “expressiveness” to mean all the capacity of suggestion
possessed by a thing, and the word “expression” for the aesthetic
modification which that expressiveness may cause in it. Expressive-
ness is thus the power given by experience to any image to call up
others in the mind; and this expressiveness becomes an aesthetic
value, that is, becomes expression, when the value involved in the
associations thus awakened are incorporated in the present object.
THE ASSOCIATIVE PROCESS
The purest case in which an expressive value could arise might seem
to be that in which both terms were indifferent in themselves, and
what pleased was the activity of relating them. We have such a
phenomenon in mathematics, and in any riddle, puzzle, or play with
symbols. But such pleasures fall without the aesthetic field in the
absence of any objectification; they are pleasures of exercise, and the
objects involved are not regarded as the substances in which those
values inhere. We think of more or less interesting problems or calcu-
lations, but it never occurs to the mathematician to establish a hier-
archy of forms according to their beauty. Only by a metaphor could
he say that (a+b)?=a?+2ab+b? was a more beautiful formula
than 2+-2—4. Yet in proportion as such conceptions become definite
and objective in the mind, they approach aesthetic values, and the
use of aesthetic epithets in describing them becomes more constant
and literal.
The beauties of abstract music are but one step beyond such
mathematical relations—they are those relations presented in a sensi-
ble form, and constituting an imaginable object. But, as we see
clearly in this last case, when the relation and not the terms consti-
tute the object, we have, if there is beauty at all, a beauty of form,
not of expression; for the more mathematical the charm of music is,
the more form and the less expression do we see in it. In fact, the
sense of relation is here the essence of the object itself, and the
activity of passing from term to term, far from taking us beyond our
presentation to something extrinsic, constitutes that presentation.
The pleasure of this relational activity is therefore the pleasure of
conceiving a determined form, and nothing could be more thoroughly
a forma! beauty.
And we may here insist upon a point of fundamental impor-
tance; namely, that the process of association enters consciousness as
directly, and produces as simple a sensation, as any process in any
organ. The pleasures and pains of cerebration, the delight and the
fatigue of it, are felt exactly like bodily impressions; they have the
same directness, although not the same localisation. Their seat is not
open to our daily observation, and therefore we leave them disem-
bodied, and fancy they are peculiarly spiritual and intimate to the
EXPRESSION 165
soul. Or we try to think that they flow by some logical necessity from
the essences of objects simultaneously in our mind. We involve our-
selves in endless perplexities in trying to deduce excellence and
beauty, unity and necessity, from the describable qualities of things;
we repeat the rationalistic fiction of turning the notions which we
abstract from the observation of facts into the powers that give those
facts character and being.
We have, for instance, in the presence of two images a sense
of their incongruity; and we say that the character of the images
causes this emotion; whereas in dreams we constantly have the most
rapid transformations and patent contradictions without any sense
of incongruity at all; because the brain is dozing and the necessary
shock and mental inhibition is avoided. Add this stimulation, and
the incongruity returns. Had such a shock never been felt, we should
not know what incongruity meant; no more than without eyes we
should know the meaning of blue or yellow.
In saying this, we are not really leaning upon physiological
theory. ‘The appeal to our knowledge of the brain facilitates the con-
ception of the immediacy of our feelings of relation; but that im-
mediacy would be apparent to a sharp introspection. We do not
need to think of the eye or skin to feel that light and heat are
ultimate data; no more do we need to think of cerebral excitements
to see that right and left, before and after, good and bad, one and
two, like and unlike, are irreducible feelings. ‘The categories are
senses without organs, or with organs unknown. Just as the discrimi-
nation of our feelings of colour and sound might never have been
distinct and constant, had we not come upon the organs that seem
to convey and control them; so perhaps our classification of our
inner sensations will never be settled until their respective organs are
discovered; for psychology has always been physiological, without
knowing it. But this truth remains—quite apart from physical con-
ceptions, not to speak of metaphysical materialism—that whatever
the historical conditions of any state of mind may be said to be, it
exists, when it does exist, immediately and absolutely; each of its
distinguishable parts might conceivably have been absent from it;
and its character, as well as its existence, is a mere datum of sense.
The pleasure that belongs to the consciousness of relations is
therefore as immediate as any other; indeed, our emotional con-
sciousness is always single, but we treat it as a resultant of many and
even of conflicting feelings because we look at it historically with a
view to comprehending it, and distribute it into as many factors as
we find objects or causes tg which to attribute it. The pleasure of
association is an immediate feeling, which we account for by its
relation to a feeling in the past, or to cerebral structure modified by
a former experience; just as memory itself, which we explain by a
reference to the past, is a peculiar complication of present con-
sciousness.
KINDS OF VALUE IN THE SECOND TERM
These reflections may make less surprising to us what is the most

striking fact about the philosophy of expression; namely, that the
value acquired by the expressive thing is often of an entirely different
kind from that which the thing expressed possesses. The expression
of physical pleasure, of passion, or even of. pain, may constitute
beauty and please the beholder. ‘Thus the value of the second term
may be physical, or practical, or even negative; and it may be trans-
muted, as it passes to the first term, into a value at once positive and
aesthetic. The transformation of practical values into aesthetic has
often been noted, and has even led to the theory that beauty is utility
seen at arm’s length; a premonition of pleasure and prosperity, much
as smell is a premonition of taste. ‘The transformation of negative
values into positive has naturally attracted even more attention, and
given rise to various theories of the comic, tragic, and sublime. For
these three species of aesthetic good seem to please us by the sug-
gestion of evil and the problem arises how a mind can be made
happier by having suggestions of unhappiness stirred within it; an
unhappiness it cannot understand without in some degree sharing
in it. We must now turn to the analysis of this question.
‘The expressiveness of a smile is not discovered exactly through
association of images. The child smiles (without knowing it) when
he feels pleasure; and the nurse smiles back; his own pleasure is
associated with her conduct, and her smile is therefore expressive of
pleasure. The fact of his pleasure at her smile is the ground of his
instinctive belief in her pleasure in it. For this reason the circum-
stances expressive of happiness are not those that are favourable to it
in reality, but those that are congruous with it in idea. The green of
EXPRESSION 167
spring, the bloom of youth, the variability of childhood, the splen-
dour of wealth and beauty, all these are symbols of happiness, not
because they have been known to accompany it in fact,—for they do
not, any more than their opposites,—but because they produce an
image and echo of it in us aesthetically. We believe those things to
be happy which it makes us happy to think of or to see; the belief
in the blessedness of the supreme being itself has no other founda-
tion. Our joy in the thought of omniscience makes us attribute joy
to the possession of it, which it would in fact perhaps be very far
from involving or even allowing.
The expressiveness of forms has a value as a sign of life that
actually inhabits those forms only when they resemble our own body;
it is then probable that similar conditions of body involve, in them
and in us, similar emotions; and we should not long continue to
regard as the expression of pleasure an attitude that we know, by
experience in our own person, to accompany pain. Children, indeed,
may innocently torture animals, not having enough sense of analogy
to be stopped by the painful suggestions of their writhings; and,
although in a rough way we soon correct these crying misinterpreta-
tions by a better classification of experience, we nevertheless remain
essentially subject to the same error. We cannot escape it, because
the method which involves it is the only one that justifies belief in
objective consciousness at all. Analogy of bodies helps us to distribute
and classify the life we conceive about us; but what leads us to
conceive it is the direct association of our own feelings with images
of things, an association which precedes any clear representation of
our own gestures and attitude. I know that smiles mean pleasure
before I have caught myself smiling in the glass; they mean pleasure
because they give it.
Since these aesthetic effects include some of the most moving
and profound beauties, philosophers have not been slow to turn the
unanalysed paradox of their formation into a principle, and to explain
by it the presence and necessity of evil. As in the tragic and the sub-
lime, they have thought, the sufferings and dangers to which a hero
is exposed seem to add to his virtue and dignity, and to our sacred
joy in the contemplation of him, so the sundry evils of life may be
elements in the transcendent glory of the whole. And once fired by
this thought, those who pretend to justify the ways of God to man
have, naturally, not stopped to consider whether so edifying a phe-
nomenon was not a hasty illusion. They have, indeed, detested any
attempt to explain it rationally, as tending to obscure one of the
moral laws of the universe. In venturing, therefore, to repeat such an
attempt, we should not be too sanguine of success; for we have to
encounter not only the intrinsic difficulties of the problem, but also
a wide-spread and arrogant metaphysical prejudice.
For the sake of greater clearness we may begin by classifying the
values that can enter into expression; we shall then be better able to
judge by what combinations of them various well-known effects and
emotions are produced. The intrinsic value of the first term can be
entirely neglected, since it does not contribute to expression. It does,
however, contribute greatly to the beauty of the expressive object.
The first term is the source of stimulation, and the acuteness and
pleasantness of this determine to a great extent the character and
sweep of the associations that will be aroused. Very often the pleas-
antness of the medium will counterbalance the disagreeableness of
the import, and expressions, in themselves hideous or inappropriate,
may be excused for the sake of the object that conveys them. A
beautiful voice will redeem a vulgar song, a beautiful colour and
texture an unmeaning composition. Beauty in the first term—beauty
of sound, rhythm, and image—will make any thought whatever poetic,
while no thought whatever can be so without that immediate beauty
of presentation.t
AESTHETIC VALUE IN THE SECOND TERM
That the noble associations of any object should embellish that ob-
ject is very comprehensible. Homer furnishes us with a good illustra-
tion of the constant employment of this effect. The first term, one
need hardly say, leaves with him little to be desired. The verse is
beautiful. Sounds, images, and composition conspire to stimulate and
delight. This immediate beauty is sometimes used to clothe things
1 Curiously enough, common speech here reverses our use of terms, because it
looks at the matter from the practical instead of from the aesthetic point of view,
regarding (very unpsychologically) the thought as the source of the image, not
the image as the source of the thought. People call the words the expression of
the thought: whereas for the observer, the hearer (and generally for the speaker.
too), the words are the datum and the thought is their expressiveness—that
which they suggest.
EXPRESSION 169
terrible and sad; there is no dearth of the tragic in Homer. But the
tendency of his poetry is nevertheless to fill the outskirts of our
consciousness with the trooping images of things no less fair and
noble than the verse itself. The heroes are virtuous. There is none of
importance who is not admirable in his way. The palaces, the arms,
the horses, the sacrifices, are always excellent. The women are always
stately and beautiful. The ancestry and the history of every one are
honourable and good. The whole Homeric world is clean, clear, beauti-
ful, and providential, and no small part of the perennial charm of the
poet is that he thus immerses us in an atmosphere of beauty; a
beauty not concentrated and reserved for some extraordinary senti-
ment, action, or person, but permeating the whole and colouring the
common world of soldiers and sailors, war and craft, with a mar-
vellous freshness and inward glow. There is nothing in the associa-
tions of life in this world or in another to contradict or disturb our
delight. All is beautiful, and beautiful through and through.
Something of this quality meets us in all simple and idyllic
compositions. ‘There is, for instance, a popular demand that stories
and comedies should “end well.” The hero and heroine must be
young and handsome; unless they die,—which is another matter,—
they must not in the end be poor. The landscape in the play must
be beautiful; the dresses pretty; the plot without serious mishap. A
pervasive presentation of pleasure must give warmth and ideality to
the whole. In the proprieties of social life we find the same principle;
we study to make our surroundings, manner, and conversation sug-
gest nothing but what is pleasing. We hide the ugly and disagreeable
portion of our lives, and do not allow the least hint of it to come
to light upon festive and public occasions. Whenever, in a word, a
thoroughly pleasing effect is found, it is found by the expression, as
well as presentation, of what is in itself pleasing—and when this
effect is to be produced artificially, we attain it by the suppression of
all expression that is not suggestive of something good.
If our consciousness were exclusively esthetic, this kind of
expression would be the only one allowed in art or prized in nature.
We should avoid as a shock or an insipidity, the suggestion of any-
thing not intrinsically beautiful. As there would be no values not
esthetic, our pleasure could never be heightened by any other kind
of interest. But as contemplation is actually a luxury in our lives,
and things interest us chiefly on passionate and practical grounds,
the accumulation of values too exclusively esthetic produces in our
minds an effect of closeness and artificiality. So selective a diet cloys,
and our palate, accustomed to much daily vinegar and salt, is surfeited
by such unmixed sweet.
Instead we prefer to see through the medium of art—through
the beautiful first term of our expression—the miscellaneous world
which is so well known to us—perhaps so dear, and at any rate so
inevitable, an object. We are more thankful for this presentation
of the unlovely truth in a lovely form, than for the like presentation
of an abstract beauty; what is lost in the purity of the pleasure is
gained in the stimulation of our attention, and in the relief of viewing
with esthetic detachment the same things that in practical life hold
tyrannous dominion over our souls. The beauty that is associated only
with other beauty is therefore a sort of esthetic dainty; it leads the
fancy through a fairyland of lovely forms, where we must forget the
common objects of our interest. The charm of such an idealisation is
undeniable; but the other important elements of our memory and
will cannot long be banished. Thoughts of labour, ambition, lust,
anger, confusion, sorrow, and death must needs mix with our con-
templation and lend their various expressions to the objects with
which in experience they are so closely allied. Hence the incorpora-
tion in the beautiful of values of other sorts, and the comparative
rareness in nature or art of expressions the second term of which has
only esthetic value.
PRACTICAL VALUE IN THE SAME
More important and frequent is the case of the expression of utility.

This is found whenever the second term is the idea of something of
practical advantage to us, the premonition of which brings satisfac-
tion; and this satisfaction prompts an approval of the presented ob-
ject. The tone of our consciousness is raised by the foretaste of a
success; and this heightened pleasure is objectified in the present
image, since the associated image to which the satisfaction properly
belongs often fails to become distinct. We do not conceive clearly
what this practical advantage will be; but the vague sense that an
advantage is there, that something desirable has been done, accom-
panies the presentation, and gives it expression.
EXPRESSION 171
‘The case that most resembles that of which we have been just
speaking, is perhaps that in which the second term is a piece of
interesting information, a theory, or other intellectual datum. Our
interest in facts and theories, when not esthetic, is of course prac-
tical; it consists in their connexion with our interests, and in the
service they can render us in the execution of our designs. Intellectual
values are utilitarian in their origin but esthetic in their form, since
the advantage of knowledge is often lost sight of, and ideas are prized
for their own sake. Curiosity can become a disinterested passion, and
yield intimate and immediate satisfaction like any other impulse.
When we have before us, for instance, a fine map, in which the
line of coast, now rocky, now sandy, is clearly indicated, together with
the windings of the rivers, the elevations of the land, and the distri-
bution of the population, we have the simultaneous suggestion of so
many facts, the sense of mastery over so much reality, that we gaze
at it with delight, and need no practical motive to keep us studying
it, perhaps for hours together. A map is not naturally thought of as
an esthetic object; it is too exclusively expressive. The first term is
passed over as a mere symbol, and the mind is filled either with im-
aginations of the landscape the country could really offer, or with
thoughts about its history and inhabitants. ‘These circumstances pre-
vent the ready objectification of our pleasure in the map itself. And
yet, let the tints of it be a little subtle, let the lines be a little delicate,
and the masses of land and sea somewhat balanced, and we really
have a beautiful thing; a thing the charm of which consists almost
entirely in its meaning, but which nevertheless pleases us in the same
way as a picture or a graphic symbol might please. Give the symbol
a little intrinsic worth of form, line, and colour, and it attracts like a
magnet all the values of the things it is known to symbolise. It be-
comes beautiful in its expressiveness.
Hardly different from this example is that of travel or reading;
for in these employments we get many esthetic pleasures, the origin
of which is in the satisfaction of curiosity and intelligence. When we
say admiringly of anything that it is characteristic, that it embodies
a whole period or a whole man, we are absorbed by the pleasant
sense that it offers innumerable avenues of approach to interesting
and important things. The less we are able to specify what these are,
the more beautiful will the object be that expresses them. For if we
could specify them, the felt value would disintegrate, and distribute
itself among the ideas of the suggested things, leaving the expressive
object bare of all interest, like the letters of a printed page.
The courtiers of Philip the Second probably did not regard his
rooms at the Fscurial as particularly interesting, but simply as small,
ugly, and damp. The character which we find in them and which
makes us regard them as eminently expressive of whatever was sinister
in the man, probably did not strike them. They knew the king, and
had before them words, gestures, and acts enough in which to read
his character. But all these living facts are wanting to our experience;
and it is the suggestion of them in their unrealisable vagueness that
fills the apartments of the monarch with such pungent expression. It
is not otherwise with all emphatic expressiveness—moonlight and
castle moats, minarets and cypresses, camels filing through the desert
—such images get their character from the strong but misty at-
mosphere of sentiment and adventure which clings about them. The
profit of travel, and the extraordinary charm of all visible relics of
antiquity, consist in the acquisition of images in which to focus a
mass of discursive knowledge, not otherwise felt together. Such
images are concrete symbols of much latent experience, and the deep
roots of association give them the same hold upon our attention which
might be secured by a fortunate form or splendid material.
COST AS AN ELEMENT OF EFFECT
There is one consideration which often adds much to the interest

with which we view an object, but which we might be virtuously
inclined not to admit among esthetic values. I mean cost. Cost is
practical value expressed in abstract terms, and from the price of
anything we can often infer what relation it has to the desires and
efforts of mankind. There is no reason why cost, or the circumstances
which are its basis, should not, like other practical values, heighten
the tone of consciousness, and add to the pleasure with which we view
an object. In fact, such is our daily experience; for great as is the
sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and price adds an expression
of distinction to them, which they would never have if they were
cheap.
The circumstance that makes the appreciation of cost often
unzsthetic is the abstractness of that quality. The price of an object
EXPRESSION 173
is an algebraic symbol, it is a conventional term, invented to facilitate
our operations, which remains arid and unmeaning if we stop with
it and forget to translate it again at the end into its concrete equiva-
lent. The commercial mind dwells in that intermediate limbo of
symbolised values; the calculator’s senses are muffled by his intellect
and by his habit of abbreviated thinking. His mental process is a
reckoning that loses sight of its original values, and is over without
reaching any concrete image. Therefore the knowledge of cost, when
expressed in terms of money, is incapable of contributing to zsthetic
effect, but the reason is not so much that the suggested value is not
esthetic, as that no real value is suggested at all. No object of any
kind is presented to the mind by the numerical expression. If we
reinterpret our price, however, and translate it back into the facts
which constitute it, into the materials employed, their original place
and quality, and the labour and art which transformed them into
the present thing, then we add to the esthetic value of the object,
by the expression which we find in it, not of its price in money, but
of its human cost. We have now the consciousness of the real values
which it represents, and these values, sympathetically present to the
fancy, increase our present interest and admiration.
I believe economists count among the elements of the value of
an object the rarity of its material, the labour of its manufacture,
and the distance from which it is brought. Now all these qualities,
if attended to in themselves, appeal greatly to the imagination. We
have a natural interest in what is rare and affects us with unusual
sensations. What comes from a far country carries our thoughts there,
and gains by the wealth and picturesqueness of its associations. And
that on which human labour has been spent, especially if it was a
labour of love, and is apparent in the product, has one of the deepest
possible claims to admiration. So that the standard of cost, the most
vulgar of all standards, is such only when it remains empty and
abstract. Let the thoughts wander back and consider the elements of
value, and our appreciation, from being verbal and commercial, be-
comes poetic and real.
We have in this one more example of the manner in which
practical values, when suggested by and incorporated in any object,
contribute to its beauty. Our sense of what lies behind, unlovely
though that background may be, gives interest and poignancy to
that which is present; our attention and wonder are engaged, and a
Wa GEORGE SANTAYANA
new meaning and importance is added to such intrinsic beauty as the
presentation may possess.
THE EXPRESSION OF ECONOMY AND FITNESS
The same principle explains the effect of evident cleanliness, security,

economy, and comfort. This Dutch charm hardly needs explanation;
we are conscious of the domesticity and neatness which pleases us
in it. There are few things more utterly discomforting to our minds
than waste: it is a sort of pungent extract and quintessence of
folly. The visible manifestation of it is therefore very offensive; and
that of its absence very reassuring. The force of our approval of
practical fitness and economy in things rises into an appreciation
that is half-esthetic, and which becomes wholly so when the fit
form becomes fixed in a type, to the lines of which we are ac-
customed; so that the practical necessity of the form is heightened
and concentrated into the esthetic propriety of it.
The much-praised expression of function and truth in archi-
tectural works reduces itself to this principle. ‘The useful contrivance
at first appeals to our practical approval; while we admire its in-
genuity, we cannot fail to become gradually accustomed to its pres-
ence, and to register with attentive pleasure the relation of its parts.
Utility, as we have pointed out in its place, is thus the guiding princi-
ple in the determination of forms.
The recurring observation of the utility, economy, and fitness of
the traditional arrangement in buildings or other products of art,
re-enforces this formal expectation with a reflective approval. We
are accustomed, for instance, to sloping roofs; the fact that they
were necessary has made them familiar, and the fact that they are
familiar has made them objects of study and of artistic enjoyment.
If at any moment, however, the notion of condemning them passes
through the mind,—if we have visions of the balustrade against the
sky,—we revert to our homely image with kindly loyalty, when we
remember the long months of rain and snow, and the comfortless
leaks to be avoided. The thought of a glaring, practical unfitness is
enough to spoil our pleasure in any form, however beautiful intrin-
sically, while the sense of practical fitness is enough to reconcile us
to the most awkward and rude contrivances.
EXPRESSION 175
This principle is, indeed, not a fundamental, but an auxiliary
one; the expression of utility modifies effect, but does not constitute
it. ‘There would be a kind of superstitious haste in the notion that
what is convenient and economical is necessarily and by miracle
beautiful. The uses and habits of one place and society require works
which are or may easily become intrinsically beautiful; the uses and
habits of another make these beautiful works impossible. The beauty
has a material and formal basis that we have already studied; no
fitness of design will make a building of ten equal storeys as beautiful
as a pavilion or a finely proportioned tower; no utility will make a
steamboat as beautiful as a sailing vessel. But the forms once estab-
lished, with their various intrinsic characters, the fitness we know
to exist in them will lend them some added charm, or their unfitness
will disquiet us, and haunt us like a conscientious qualm. The other
interests of our lives here mingle with the purely esthetic, to enrich
or to embitter it.
If Sybaris is so sad a name to the memory—and who is without
some Sybaris of his own?—if the image of it is so tormenting and in
the end so disgusting, this is not because we no longer think its
marbles bright, its fountains cool, its athletes strong, or its roses
fragrant; but because, mingled with all these supreme beauties, there
is the ubiquitous shade of Nemesis, the sense of a vacant will and a
suicidal inhumanity. The intolerableness of this moral condition
poisons the beauty which continues to be felt. If this beauty did not
exist, and was not still desired, the tragedy would disappear and Je-
hovah would be deprived of the worth of his victim. The sternness
of moral forces lies precisely in this, that the sacrifices morality im-
poses upon us are real, that the things it renders impossible are still
precious.
We are accustomed to think of prudence as estranging us only
from low and ignoble things; we forget that utility and the need of
system in our lives is a bar also to the free flights of the spirit. The
highest instincts tend to disorganisation as much as the lowest, since
order and benefit are what practical morality everywhere insists upon,
while sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice. The constant de-
mands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental
indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding. For
this reason, utility keeps close watch over beauty, lest in her wilful-
ness and riot she should offend against our practical needs and ulti-
mate happiness. And when the conscience is keen, this vigilance of
the practical imagination over the speculative ceases to appear as an
eventual and external check; The least suspicion of luxury, waste,
impurity, or cruelty is then a signal for alarm and insurrection. ‘That
which emits this sapor hoereticus becomes so initially horrible, that
naturally no beauty can ever be discovered in it; the senses and
imagination are in that case inhibited by the conscience.
For this reason, the doctrine that beauty is essentially nothing
but the expression of moral or practical good appeals to persons of
predominant moral sensitiveness, not only because they wish it were
the truth, but because it largely describes the experience of their own
minds, somewhat warped in this particular. It will further be observed
that the moralists are much more able to condemn than to appre-
ciate the effects of the arts. Their taste is delicate without being
keen, for the principle on which they judge is one which really
operates to control and extend aesthetic effects; it is a source of
expression and of certain nuances of satisfaction; but it is foreign to
the stronger and more primitive esthetic values to which the same
persons are comparatively blind.
9
W ASSILYKANDINSKY
THE EXPRESSIVENESS
OF COLORS
THE EFFECT OF COLOR
If you let your eye stray over a palette of colors, you experience two
things. In the first place you receive a purely physical effect, namely
the eye itself is enchanted by the beauty and other qualities of color.
You experience satisfaction and delight, like a gourmet savoring a
delicacy. Or the eye is stimulated as the tongue is titillated by a spicy
dish. But then it grows calm and cool, like a finger after touching
ice. ‘These are physical sensations, limited in duration. They are
superficial, too, and leave no lasting impression behind if the soul
remains closed. Just as we feel at the touch of ice a sensation of cold,
forgotten as soon as the finger becomes warm again, so the physical
action of color is forgotten as soon as the eye turns away. On the other
hand, as the physical coldness of ice, upon penetrating more deeply,
arouses more complex feelings, and indeed a whole chain of psycho-
logical experiences, so may also the superficial impression of color
develop into an experience.
On the average man, only impressions caused by familiar objects
Documents of Modern Art, Vol. 5, George Wittenborn, Inc., New York, New
York. From Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
Wy
178 WASSILY KANDINSKY
will be superficial. A first encounter with any new phenomenon
exercises immediately an impression on the soul. This is the experi-
ence of the child discoveringsthe world; every object is new to him.
He sees a light, wishes to hold it, burns his finger and feels hence-
forth a proper respect for flame. But later he learns that light has a
friendly side as well, that it drives away the darkness, makes the day
longer, is essential to warmth and cooking, and affords a cheerful
spectacle. From the accumulation of these experiences comes a
knowledge of light, indelibly fixed in his mind. The strong, intensive
interest disappears, and the visual attraction of flame is balanced
against indifference to it. In this way the whole world becomes
gradually disenchanted. The human being realizes that trees give
shade, that horses run fast and automobiles still faster, that dogs bite,
that the moon is distant, that the figure seen in a mirror is not real.
Only with higher development does the circle of experience of
different beings and objects grow wider. Only in the highest de-
velopment do they acquire an internal meaning and an inner reso-
nance. It is the same with color, which makes a momentary and su-
perficial impression on a soul whose sensibility is slightly developed.
But even this simplest effect varies in quality. The eye is strongly
attracted by light, clear colors, and still more strongly by colors that
are warm as well as clear; vermilion stimulates like flame, which has
always fascinated human beings. Keen lemon-yellow hurts the eye as
does a prolonged and shrill bugle note the ear, and one turns away
for relief to blue or green.
But to a more sensitive soul the effect of colors is deeper and
intensely moving. And so we come to the second result of looking at
colors: their psychological effect. They produce a correspondent
spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibra-
tion that the physical impression is of importance.
Whether the psychological effect of color is direct, as these last
few lines imply, or whether it is the outcome of association, is open
to question. ‘The soul being one with the body, it may well be pos-
sible that a psychological tremor generates a corresponding one
through association. For example, red may cause a sensation anal-
ogous to that caused by flame, because red is the color of flame. A
warm red will prove excitirlg, another shade of red will cause pain or
disgust through association with running blood. In these cases color
awakens a corresponding physical sensation, which undoubtedly
works poignantly upon the soul.
THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF COLORS 179
If this were always the case, it would be easy to define by associa-
tion the physical effects of color, not only upon the eye but the other
senses. One might say that bright yellow looks sour, because it recalls
the taste of a lemon.
But such definitions are not universal. There are several corre-
lations between taste and color which refuse to be classified. A Dres-
den doctor reported that one of his patients, whom he designated as
an “exceptionally sensitive person,” could not eat a certain sauce
without tasting “blue,” i.e, without “seeing blue.”! It would be
possible to suggest, by way of explanation, that in highly sensitive
people the approach to the soul is so direct, the soul itself so im-
pressionable, that any impression of taste communicates itself im-
mediately to the soul, and thence to the other organs of sense (in
this case, the eyes). ‘This would imply an echo or reverberation, such
as occurs sometimes in musical instruments which, without being
touched, sound in harmony with an instrument that is being played.
Men of sensitivity are like good, much-played violins which vibrate
at each touch of the bow.
But sight has been known to harmonize not only with the sense
of taste but with the other senses. Many colors have been described
as rough or prickly, others as smooth and velvety, so that one feels
inclined to stroke them (e.g., dark ultramarine, chromoxide green,
and madder-lake). Even the distinction between warm and cool
colors is based upon this discrimination. Some colors appear soft
(madder-lake), others hard (cobalt green, blue-green oxide), so that
fresh from the tube they seem to be “dry.”
The expression “perfumed colors” is frequently met with.
The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find
anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes, or dark
lake with the treble.2 The explanation in terms of association will
1 Freudenberg, “Spaltung der Persénlichkeit” (Ubersinnliche Welt, 1908 No. 2,

p. 64-65). The author also discusses hearing color, and says that no rules can be
laid down. But see L. Sbanejeff in Musik, No. 9, Moscow, 1911, where the
imminent possibility of laying down a law is clear.
2Much theory and practice have been devoted to this question. People have
thought to paint in counterpoint. Also, unmusical children have been successfully
helped to play the piano by quoting a parallel in color (e.g., of flowers). Mme
A. Sacharjin-Unkowsky has worked along these lines for several years and has
evolved a method of “so describing sounds by natural colors, and colors by
natural sounds, that color could be heard and sound seen.” The system has
proved successful for several years both in the inventor's own school and the
Conservatoire at St. Petersburg. Finally Scriabin, on more spiritual lines, has
not satisfy us, in many important cases. Those who have heard of
chromotherapy know that colored light can influence the whole
body. Attempts have been made with different colors to treat various
nervous ailments. Red light stimulates and excites the heart, while
blue light can cause temporary paralysis. If the effect of such action
can be observed in animals and plants, as it has, then the association
theory proves inadequate. In any event one must admit that the
subject is at present unexplored, but that it is unquestionable that
color can exercise enormous influence upon th body as a physical
organism.
The theory of association is no more satisfactory in the psycho-
logical sphere. Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul.
Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano
with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key
or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.
It is evident therefore that color harmony must rest ultimately
on purposive playing upon the human soul; this is one of the guiding
principles of internal necessity.
THE LANGUAGE OF FORM AND COLOR
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Sc. 1.
Musical sound acts directly on the soul and finds an echo there,
since music is innate in man.
“Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of
‘joy and plenty’ ” (Delacroix) 2
paralleled sounds and colors in a chart not unlike that of Mme Unkowsky. In
“Prometheus’’ he has given convincing proof of his theories. (His chart appeared
in Musik, No. 9, Moscow, 1911.)
3 Cf. Paul Signac: D’Eugéne Delacroix au Neo-Impressionisme. Also compare an
interesting article by K. Shettler: “Notizen iiber die Farbe” (Decoratiy Kunst
February, 1901).
THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF COLORS 18]
‘The above quotations show the deep relations among the arts,
and especially between music and painting. Goethe said that painting
must consider this relation its ground, and by this prophetic remark
he foretold the position of painting today. Painting stands, in fact,
at the first stage of the road by which it will, according to its own
possibilities, grow in the abstract sense and arrive finally at painterly
composition.
For this ideal of composition, painting has two means at its
disposal:
1. Color.
2. Form.
Form can stand alone, as a representation of an object (“real”
or not), or as an abstract limit to a space or a surface.
Color cannot stand alone; it cannot dispense with boundaries
of some kind. An unlimited expanse of red can only be seen in the
mind; when the word red is heard, the color is evoked without
definite boundaries; if they are necessary, they have to be imagined
deliberately. But red as is seen abstractly and not materially arouses
both a precise and an unprecise impression on the soul, which has
a purely internal physical sound.* This red has also no independent
transition to warmth or cold; the same must be imagined as subtleties
of the red tone. Therefore, I call this spiritual seeing “‘unprecise.”
However, it is at the same time “precise,” since the inner sound
remains without incidental tendencies to warm and cold, etc. This
inner sound is similar to the sound of a trumpet or an instrument
which one can imagine one hears when the word “trumpet” is pro-
nounced. This sound is not detailed; it is imagined without the
variations that occur depending upon whether the trumpet is sounded
in the open air, in a closed room, alone or with other instruments,
if played by a postilion, a huntsman, a soldier or a professional.
But when red is presented concretely (as in painting), it must
possess (1) some definite shade of the innumerable shades of red that
exist and (2) a limited surface, divided off from other colors which
are unconditionally there; this may under no circumstances be
avoided, and by this means, through delimitation and proximity, the
subject characteristics change, 1.e., receive an objective sheath, here
the objective “accompanying sound.”
4A similar result is shown in the example given later of the tree: in that, how-
ever, the material part of the idea takes up comparatively great space.
The inevitable relation between color and form brings us to the
question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though
abstract and geometrical, has its internal resonance, a spiritual entity
whose properties are identical with the form. A triangle (without
consideration of its being acute or obtuse or equilateral) is such an
entity, with its particular spiritual perfume. In relation to other forms
this perfume may be somewhat modified, but it remains in intrinsic
quality the same, as the scent of the rose cannot be mistaken for
that of the violet. The case is similar with a circle, a square or any
conceivable geometrical figure.® As above, with red, we have a sub-
jective substance in an objective sheath.
The mutual relation of form and color now becomes clear. A
yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green triangle, a
yellow circle, a blue square: all these are differently acting entities.
It is evident that certain colors can be emphasized or dulled in
value by certain forms. Generally speaking, sharp colors are well
suited to sharp forms (e.g., yellow in the triangle), and soft, deep
colors by round forms (e.g., blue in the circle). But it must be
remembered that an unsuitable combination of form and color is
not necessarily discordant, but may with manipulation show fresh
harmonic possibilities.
Since the number of colors and forms is infinite, their combina-
tions also are infinite, and, simultaneously, their effect. This material
is inexhaustible.
Form, in the narrow sense, is the boundary between one surface
and another: that is its external meaning. But it has also an internal
significance, of varying intensity;* and properly speaking form is the
external expression of inner meaning. To use again the metaphor of
the piano, and substituting form for color, the artist is the hand
which, by playing this or that key (ie., form), purposely vibrates
the human soul in this or that way. It is evident that form harmony
must rest only on the purposive vibration of the human soul. This
principle has been designated here as the principle of internal
necessity.
The two aspects of form define its two aims. The external
5 An important part is played by the direction in which the triangle stands (e.g.,
movement). This is of great importance in painting.
8 It is never literally true that a form is meaningless and “says nothing.” Every
form in the world says something. But its message often fails to reach us; as
when what is said is not interesting in itself or is not said in the proper place.
boundary is purposive only when it realizes expressively the meaning
of form.’ The external aspect of form, i.e., the boundary, may as-
sume different shapes; but it will never overstep two external limits:
(1) Either a form aims at delimiting a concrete object two-
dimensionally,
(2) Or a form remains abstract, a purely abstract entity. Such
abstract entities, which have life in themselves, are a square, a circle,
a triangle, a rhombus, a trapezoid, etc., many of them so complicated
as to have no mathematical formula. All these forms are of equal
rank in the abstract realm.
Between these two boundaries lie the innumerable forms in
which both elements exist, with a preponderance of either the ab-
stract or the concrete. ‘These forms are at present largely the treasure
from which the artist draws all the component elements of his
creations. Purely abstract forms are in the reach of few artists at
present; they are too indefinite for the artist. It seems to him that
to limit himself to the indefinite would be to lose possibilities, to
exclude the human and therefore to weaken expression.
Nevertheless, there are artists who even today experience ab-
stract form as something quite precise and use it to the exclusion of
any other means. This seeming stripping bare becomes an inner en-
richment.
On the other hand, there exists no purely material form. A
material object cannot be absolutely reproduced. For better or worse
the artist depends on his eye, his hand, which in this case are perhaps
more artistic than his soul that would confine itself to photographic
aims. But the discriminating artists who cannot be content with an
inventory of material objects seek to express objects by what was
once called “idealization,” and later “stylization,” and which in the
future will again be called something else.§
7The phrase “expressively’ must be clearly understood. Form often is most
expressive when subdued. It is often most expressive when reticent, perhaps only
a stroke, a mere hint of external meaning.
8 The function of idealization was to beautify the organic form, to make it ideal,
whereby it easily resulted in schematically dulling its inner personal note. “Styli-
zation,” developing from impressionist foundation, had, as its first aim, not the
beautifying of the organic form, but a strong characterization through an omission
of incidental details. The resulting harmony had an entirely personal character
but with a prevailing external expression. The coming treatment and change of
the organic form aims at baring or uncovering inner harmony. The organic form
here no longer serves as direct object but is only an element of the divine
language, which needs human expression because it is directed from man to man.
The impossibility and, in art, the purposelessness of copying an
object, the desire to make the object express itself, are the beginning
of leading the artist away from “literary” color to artistic, i.€., pic-
torial aims. And this brings us to the question of composition.
The purely pictorial composition has in regard to form two aims:
1. The composition of the whole picture.
2. The creation of the various forms which, by standing in dif-
ferent relations to each other, serve the composition of the whole.®
Many objects (concrete, abstract and purely abstract) have to be
considered in the light of the whole, and so arranged as to suit this
whole. Singly they will have little meaning, being of importance
only so far as they help the general effect. ‘These single objects must
be fashioned in one way only; this, not because their internal mean-
ing demands that particular means, but because they must serve as
material for the whole. Here we have defined the first problem,
which is the composition of a whole canvas.’°
Thus the element of the abstract is creeping into art, although
yesterday it was derided and ignored for mundane ideals. Its gradual
advance and eventual success is natural enough, for as representa-
tional form falls into the background, the abstract gains.
But residual organic forms possess, nevertheless, an internal
sound of their own, which may be similar to that of their abstract
parallel (thus producing a simple combination of the two elements)
or different (in which case the combination may be complex and
possibly discordant). However diminished in importance organic
forms may be, their internal sound will always be heard; for this
reason the choice of natural objects in painting is an important one.
The spiritual accord of naturalism with the abstract may strengthen
8 The general composition will naturally include little compositions which may be
antagonistic to each other, though helping—perhaps by their very antagonism—
the harmony of the whole. These little compositions have themselves subdivisions
of varied inner shades.
10 A good example is Cézanne’s “Bathers,” which is built in the form of a tri-
?
angle (the mystical triangle). Such geometrical composition is an old principle,

which was abandoned because academic usage had made it lifeless. But Cézanne
has given it new life by emphasizing pictorial-compositional elements. He does
not use the triangle to harmonize his groups, but as a final artistic aim. Here is
the geometrical form which is simultaneously the means to the composition in
painting; stress is laid on purely artistic aims with strong accompaniment of the
abstract. He distorts the human figure justifiably. Not only must the whole figure
follow the lines of the triangle, but each limb is driven upward, as it were, be-
coming ever lighter and more expansive.
the appeal of the latter (either by concord or counterpoint), or may
be disturbing to it. The subject may possess only a casual sound,
which would not effect an essential change in the fundamental
harmony if the subject were replaced.
Let us suppose a rhomboidal composition, made up of human
figures. ‘The artist asks himself: Are these human figures absolutely
necessary to the composition, or could they be replaced by other
organic forms, without affecting the fundamental harmony of the
whole? If the answer is in the affirmative, we have a case in which
the materialistic appeal not only does not help the abstract but
damages it directly. An indifferent sound in the object weakens the
sound of the abstract. ‘This is not only logical but an actual artistic
fact. Therefore, in this case another object should be found which is
more suitable to the inner sound of the abstract (either through
similarity or contrast), or this entire form should, generally speaking,
remain a purely abstract form.
Once more the metaphor of the piano applies: for “color” or
“form” substitute “object.” Every object (whether a natural form
or man-made) has its own life and therefore its own potency; we
are continually being affected by spiritual potency. Many results will
remain in the “subconscious” (where they continue to be alive and
creative). Many rise to the “super-conscious.” Man can free himself
from many of these by shutting his soul to them. Nature, that is to
say, the ever changing surroundings of men, sets in vibration the
strings of the piano (the soul) by manipulation of the keys (various
objects with their specific potentialities) .
The effects we receive, which often appear chaotic, consist of
three elements: the action of the color of the object, of its form,
and of the object per se, independent of either color or form.
At this point the individuality of the artist asserts itself and
makes use of these three elements. Here too the purposive prevails.
It is clear, therefore, that the choice of an object (i.e., one of the
elements of form) must be decided by a purposive vibration in the
human soul; therefore, the choice of the object also originates from
the principle of internal necessity.
The freer the abstract form, the purer and more primitive the
vibration. Therefore, in any composition where corporeal form seems
superfluous it may be replaced by abstract or semi-abstract form. In
each case this translation should be guided by our feeling. The more
an artist uses these semi-abstract or abstract forms, the deeper and
more confidently will he advance into the sphere of the abstract. And
after him will follow those who look at his pictures, who will in turn
gradually acquire familiarity with the language of abstract art.
Must we then altogether abandon representation and work solely
in abstraction? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of the con-
crete and the abstract answers this question. Just as each spoken
word rouses an internal vibration, so does every object represented.
To deprive oneself of this possibility of causing a vibration would
be reducing one’s arsenal of means of expression: anyhow, that is
the case today. But besides this, there is another one which art can
always offer to any question beginning with “must”: There is no
“must” in art, because art is always free.
With regard to the second problem of composition, the creation
of the forms which are to compose the whole, it must be remembered
that the same form with the same relations will always have the same
internal appeal. Only the relations constantly vary. The result is that:
(1) Ideal harmony alters according to its relation with other forms;
(2) Even in similar relations, a slight approach to or withdrawal
from other forms may effect the structure. Nothing is absolute.
Form composition is relative, depending on (1) alterations in the
relations of one form to another, and (2) alterations in each indi-
vidual form, down to the very smallest. Every form is as sensitive as
smoke, the slightest wind will fundamentally alter it. This extreme
mobility makes it perhaps easier to obtain similar harmonies from
the use of different forms than from a repetition of the same one:
apart from the fact that, of course, an exact repetition can never be
produced. So long as we are susceptible mainly to the appeal of a
whole composition, this fact is of theoretical importance. But when
we become more sensitive, by a constant use of abstract forms (which
have no material interpretation), it will become of great practical
significance. On the one hand, the difficulties of art will increase, but
at the same time the wealth of forms of expression will also increase
in quality and quantity. Simultaneously the problem of distortion in
drawing disappears and is replaced by the problem of how far the
internal structure of a particular form is veiled or bared. This changed
point of view will lead further and to greater enrichment of the
11 This is what we mean when we speak of “movement.” For example, an upright
triangle is more steadfast and quiet than one set obliquely on the surface.
media of expression because veiling is of enormous power in art. The
combining of the veiled and bared will form a new possibility of
leitmotivs in form composition.
Without such development as this, form composition is impos-
sible. ‘To anyone who cannot experience the internal structure of
form (whether natural or abstract), composition must be meaning-
less and arbitrary. Apparently aimless alterations in arrangement
make art seem a senseless game of forms. Here we find the same
criterion and principle which thus far we have encountered every-
where as the only purely artistic one free from the unessential, the
principle of inner necessity.
If, for example, features of the face or parts of the body are
changed or distorted for artistic reasons, one encounters not only
the purely pictorial question but also that of anatomy, which ham-
pers the pictorial intention and imposes upon it the consideration
of unimportant details. In our case, however, the unessential dis-
appears automatically and only the essential remains, the artistic
aim. These seemingly arbitrary but, in reality, well-reasoned altera-
tions in form are one of the sources of an infinite number of artistic
creations.
The flexibility of each form, its internal, organic variation, its
direction (motion) in the picture, the relative weight of concrete or
of abstract forms and their combination; further, the concord or
discord of the various elements of a pictorial structure, the handling
of groups, the combination of the hidden and the stripped bare, the
use of rhythmical or unrhythmical, or geometrical or non-geometrical
forms, their contiguity or separation—all these things are the ele-
ments of structure in drawing.
But as long as color is excluded, such structure is confined to
black and white. Color itself offers contrapuntal possibilities and,
when combined with design, may lead to the great pictorial counter-
point, where also painting achieves composition, and where pure art
is in the service of the divine. The same infallible guide will carry
it to the great heights, the principle of internal necessity.
Inner necessity originates from three elements: (1) Every artist,

as a creator, has something in him which demands expression (this
is the element of personality). (2) Every artist, as the child of his
time, is impelled to express the spirit of his age (this is the element
of style)—dictated by the period and particular country to which the
artist belongs (it is doubtful how long the latter distinction will con-
tinue). (3) Every artist, as a servant of art, has to help the cause of
art (this is the quintessence of art, which is constant in all ages and
among all nationalities).
A full understanding of the first two elements is necessary for a
realization of the third. But he who realizes this will recognize that
a rudely carved Indian column is an expression of the spirit that
actuates any advance-guard work.
There has been in the past, and there is now, much talk of
“personality” in art. Talk of the coming “style” is more frequent
each day. But in spite of their importance now, these questions will
lose their edge under the perspective of time.
Only the third element—that of quintessential art—will remain
forever. Time, far from diminishing its importance, increases it. An
Egyptian carving moves us more deeply today than it did its con-
temporaries; for they judged it with the restrictive knowledge of
period and personality. But we can judge it as an expression of an
eternal art.
Similarly, the greater the part played in a modern work of art
by the elements of style and personality, the better will it be appre-
ciated by people today; but a modern work of art which is full of
the third element will fail to reach the contemporary soul. Some-
times centuries have to pass before the third element is understood.
But the artist in whose work this third element predominates is the
great artist.
These three mystical necessities are the constituent elements of
a work of art, which interpenetrate and constitute unity of the work.
Nevertheless, the first two elements include what belongs to time
and space, while in the pure and eternal artistry, which is beyond
time and space, this forms a relatively non-transparent shell. The
process in the development in art consists of the separation of its
quintessence from the style of the time and the element of person-
ality. Thus, these two elements are not only a cooperative but also a
hindering force. The personality and the style of the time create in
every epoch many precise forms, which in spite of apparent major
differences are so organically related that they can be designated as
one single form: their inner sound is finally but one major chord.
These two elements are of a subjective nature. The entire epoch
desires to reflect itself, to express artistically its life. Likewise, the
artist wishes to express himself and chooses only forms which are
sympathetic to his inner self. Thus, gradually is formed the style of
an epoch, i.e., a certain external and subjective form. The pure and
eternal art is, however, the objective element which becomes com-
prehensible with the help of the subjective.
The inevitable desire for expression of the objective is the im-
pulse here defined as “internal necessity.” This impulse is the lever
or spring driving the artist forward. Because the spirit progresses,
today’s internal laws of harmony are tomorrow’s external laws,
which in their further application live only through this necessity
which has become external. It is clear, therefore, that the inner spirit
of art uses the external form of any particular period as a stepping-
stone to further development.
In short, the effect of internal necessity and the development
of art is an ever advancing expression of the eternal and objective
in terms of the historical and subjective.
Because the objective is forever exchanging the subjective ex-
pression of today for that of the morrow, each new extension of
liberty in the use of external form is hailed as final and supreme. At
present we say that an artist may use any form, so long as he draws
on forms that exist in nature. But this limitation, like all its prede-
cessors, is temporary. From the point of view of inner need, no
limitation can be made. The artist may use any form which his
expression demands; his inner impulse must find suitable external
form.
Thus one sees finally (and this is of utmost importance for
today or any time) that to seek for personality and “style,” for
nationality, to achieve this deliberately, is not only impossible but
comparatively unimportant. The general relationship of those works
of art which through the centuries are not weakened but always more
and more strengthened, does not lie in the “external” but in the
deep roots of mystical inner content. Therefore, the followings of
schools, the searching for the “mode,” the desire for principles in a
work and the insistence upon certain media of expression of a period
can only be misleading and must bring misunderstanding, obscurity
and silence.
The artist must ignore distinctions between “recognized” or
“unrecognized” conventions of form, the transitory knowledge and
demands of his particular age. He must watch his own inner life
and hearken to the demands of internal necessity. Then he may
safely employ means sanctioned or forbidden by his contemporaries.
This is the only way to express the mystical necessity. All means are
sacred which are called for by internal necessity. All means are sinful
which are not drawn from inner necessity.
It is impossible to theorize about this ideal. In real art, theory
does not precede practice but follows it. Everything is at first a
matter of feeling. Even though the general structure may be formu-
lated theoretically, there is still an additional something which con-
stitutes the soul of creation. Any theoretical scheme will be lacking
in the essential of creation—the internal desire for expression—which
cannot be formulated. Despite the most accurate weights and bal-
ances to be had, a purely deductive weighing can never suffice. True
proportions cannot be calculated, nor true scales be found ready-
made.!? Proportions and scales are not outside the artist but within
him; they are what we may call a feeling for boundaries, artistic tact
—qualities which are innate and which may be raised by enthusiasm
to genius. In this sense we may understand the possibility of a
general base to painting, as envisaged by Goethe. Such a grammar
of painting is at present a matter of conjecture, and, should it ever
be achieved, it will be not so much according to physical laws
(which have often been tried and which the cubists try today), as
according to the laws of internal necessity, which is of the soul.
Inner necessity is the basis of both small and great problems in

painting. ‘Today we are seeking the road which is to lead us away
from the external’® to the internal basis. The spirit, like the body,
12The many-sided genius of Leonardo devised a system of little spoons with
which different colors were to be used, thus creating a kind of mechanical
harmony. One of his pupils, after trying in vain to use this system, in despair
asked one of his colleagues how the master himself used the invention. The
colleague replied: ““The master never uses it at all’ (Merejkowski, The Romance
of Leonardo da Vinci).
13 The term “external,” here used, must not be confused with the term “material”
used previously. I am using the former to mean “external necessity,” which never
goes beyond conventional limits, nor produces other than conventional beauty.
“Internal necessity” knows no such limits and often produces results conven-
tionally considered “ugly.” But “ugly” itself is a conventional term, and only
means “spiritually unsympathetic,” being applied to some expression of internal
necessity either outgrown or not yet attained. But everything which adequately
Sue internal necessity is beautiful, and will sooner or later be recognized as
sucn.
THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF COLORS 19]
can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise: just as the
body, if neglected, grows weak and finally impotent, so the spirit
perishes if untended. The innate feeling of the artist is the biblical
talent which must not be buried in the earth. And for this reason
it is necessary for the artist to know the starting-point for the
exercise of his spirit.
The starting-point is the study of color and its effects on men.
There is no need to deal with the profound and refined com-
plexities of color; we should consider at first only the direct use of
simple colors.
To begin with, let us test the effect upon ourselves of individual
colors, and make a chart, which will simplify the whole question.
Two great divisions of color immediately occur to the mind:
warm and cool; and light and dark. Thus it becomes evident that
each color may have four principal notes: either (1) warm, and
therefore either light or dark; or (2) cold, and either light or dark.
Generally speaking, warmth or coolness in a color means an
approach to yellow or to blue. This distinction occurs on one level,
so to speak: i.e., the color preserves its basic quality, but this quality
is, now more, now less, earthy. It represents a horizontal movement,
the warm colors approaching the spectator, the cool ones retreating
from him.
The colors that cause in another color a horizontal movement
while they are themselves affected by it have another movement of
their own, which acts with a violent, separative force. This is there-
fore the first great antithesis in internal value, and the inclination
of the color to cool or warm is of tremendous importance.
The second great antithesis is between white and black; i.e., the
inclination to light or dark caused by the two tones. These tones
have, too, a peculiar movement to and from the spectator, but in a
more rigid form (see Fig. I).
Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the first
antithesis—an eccentric and concentric movement. If two circles are
drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, a brief contempla-
tion will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the
center, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the
other hand, moves into itself, like a snail retreating into its shell,
and draws away from the spectator. The eye feels stung by the first
circle while it is absorbed into the second.
In the case of light and dark colors movement is emphasized.
LOZ. WASSILY KANDINSKY
Figure I
First pair of antitheses a and b (internal structure acting on the spirit)
a. warm cold = First antithesis

yellow blue
Two movements:
(I) horizontal
Towards the spectator (bodily) <—$<——_ >—] = Away from the spectator (spiritual)
Yellow Blue
(Il) eccentric cs) and C) concentric
b. light dark = Second antithesis

white black
Two movements:
(1) movement of resistance
Eternal resistance, yet Complete non-resistance,

potentiality (birth) pie wyeo. devoid of potentiality (death)
(Il) eccentric. and concentric, as in the case of yellow and blue, but more rigid
That of the yellow increases with an admixture of white, ie., as it

becomes lighter. That of the blue increases with an admixture of
black, i.e., as it becomes darker. This fact has a greater importance
if we note that yellow inclines to the light (white) to such an extent
that there can be no very dark yellow. The relationship between
white and yellow is as close as between black and blue, for blue can
be so dark as to border on black. Besides this physical relation, there
is also a spiritual one (between yellow and white on one side, and
blue and black on the other), which marks a strong separation be-
tween the two pairs.
An attempt to make yellow colder produces a greenish tint and
checks both the horizontal and eccentric movement. The color
becomes sickly and unreal, like an energetic man who has been
checked in the use of his energy by external circumstances. The blue
by its contrary movement acts as a brake on the yellow and is hin-
dered in its own movement, and, if more blue is added, the contrary
movements cancel each other and complete immobility ensues. The
result is green. Similarly white, when mixed with black, loses per-
manence, and the result is gray, which is spiritually similar to green.
But while yellow and blue are potentially active in green, though
temporarily paralyzed, in gray there is no possibility of movement
because gray consists of colors that have no motive power, one repre-
senting static resistance, the other non-resistant immobility (like an
endless wall or a bottomless pit).
Because the component colors of green are active and have a
movement of their own, it is possible, even theoretically, on the basis
of this movement, to determine (or anticipate) their spiritual effect.
We reach the same results by proceeding experimentally in
having colors act upon us. The first movement of yellow, that of
straining toward the spectator (which can be increased by intensi-
fying the yellow), and the second movement, that of overrunning the
boundaries, having a material parallel in that human energy which
attacks every obstacle blindly and goes forth aimlessly in all directions.
If steadily gazed at in any geometrical form, yellow has a dis-
turbing influence; it pricks, upsets people, and reveals its true char-
acter, which is brash and importunate.'* The intensification of yellow
increases the painful shrillness of its note, like that of a shrill bugle.*®
Yellow is the typical earthly color. It never acquires much depth.
When cooled by blue, it assumes, as I have said before, a sickly tone.
If we were to compare it with human states of mind, it might be said
to represent not the depressive, but the manic aspect of madness.
The madman attacks people and disperses his force in all directions,
aimlessly, until it is completely gone. ‘To use another metaphor, we
are reminded of the last prodigal expansion of summer in the glaring
autumn foliage, whose calming blue component rises to the sky.
Depth is found in blue, first in its physical movements (1) of _
retreat from the spectator, (2) of turning in upon its own center.
14E_.g., the effect of the yellow mail boxes in Bavaria. It is also worth noting
that the sour-tasting lemon and shrill-singing canary are both yellow.
15A parallel between color and music can only be relative. Just as a violin can
give various shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by
various instruments. But in making such parallels,I am assuming in each case a
pure, moderate tone of color or sound, unvaried by vibration or dampers, etc.
It affects us likewise mentally in any geometrical form. ‘The deeper
its tone, the more intense and characteristic the effect. We feel a call
to the infinite, a desire for purity and transcendence.
Blue is the typical heavenly color;1° the ultimate feeling it
creates is one of rest.17 When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a
grief that is hardly human.1® It becomes an infinite engrossment in
solemn moods. As it grows lighter it becomes more indifferent and
affects us in a remote and neutral fashion, like a high, cerulean sky.
The lighter it grows, the more it loses resonance, until it reaches
complete quiescence, in other words, white. In music a light blue is
like a flute, a darker blue a ’cello; a still darker the marvelous double
bass; and the darkest blue of all—an organ.
Yellow easily becomes acute and is incapable of great depth.
Conversely, blue resists pointing up and heightening. A well-balanced
mixture of blue and yellow produces green; the horizontal movements
cancel each other, and so do movements from and towards the
center. Calm ensues. This is a fact recognized not only by oculists,
but by the world. Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking
any undertone of joy, grief or passion. On exhausted men this rest-
fulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious.
Pictures painted in shades of green bear this out. As a picture painted
in yellow always radiates spiritual warmth, or as one in blue has
apparently a cooling effect, so green is only boring. Yellow and blue
have an active effect corresponding to man’s participation in con-
tinuous and perhaps eternal cosmic motion, whereas green represents
the passive principle. This contrasts with the active warmth of
yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colors
green represents the social middle class, self-satisfied, immovable,
narrow.!® It is the color of summer, when nature is quiescent after
the perturbations of spring (see Fig IT).
16“. . . The halos are golden for emperors and prophets (i.e., for mortals), and
sky-blue for symbolic figures (i.e., spiritual beings) . . .” (Kondakoff, Histoire de
Art Byzantine considérée principalement dans les miniatures, vol. II, p. 382,
Paris, 1886-91).
17 Supernatural rest, not the earthly contentment of green. The way to the super-
natural lies through the natural. And we mortals passing from the earthly yellow
to the heavenly blue must pass through green.
18 Yet different from violet, for which see later.
19 With regard to this much-praised “equilibrium” we are reminded of the words
of Christ: “Ye are neither hot nor cold.”
THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF COLORS ey
Figure lf
Second pair of antitheses ¢ andd (physical appeal of complementary colors)
c. Red Green = Third antithesis (of the spiritually

extinguished first antithesis)
Two movements:
byt Any 6 = Potentiality of motion

Movement within itself y
= Immovability
Red
Eccentric and concentric movements are entirely absent.
Optical blend = Gray
Mechanical blend of white and black = Gray
d. Orange Violet = Fourth antithesis
Arise out of the first antithesis from:
1. Active element of the yellow in red = Orange
2. Passive element of the blue in red = Violet
In eccentric Motion within In concentric

direction itself direction
Any preponderance in the absolute green of yellow or blue

introduces a corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal.
The green keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the
former increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with
the inclination to depth. In music, absolute green is represented by
the placid, middle notes of a violin.
Black and white have already been discussed in general terms.
Speaking more particularly, white, although often considered as no
color (a theory due largely to the impressionists, who saw no white
in nature2°), is a symbol of a world from which all colors as material
attributes have disappeared. This world is too far above us for its
structure to touch our souls. There comes a great silence which
materially represented is like a cold, indestructible wall going on
into the infinite. White, therefore, acts upon our psyche as a great,
absolute silence, like the pauses in music that temporarily break the
melody. It is not a dead silence, but one pregnant with possibilities.
White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the
world in the ice age.
On the other hand, the ground-note of black is a silence with
no possibilities. In music it is represented by one of those profound
and final pauses, after which any continuation of the melody seems
the dawn of another world: the circle is closed. Black is something
burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral pyre, something motionless
like a corpse. The silence of black is the silence of death. Outwardly
black is the most toneless color of all, a kind of neutral background
against which the minutest shades of other colors stand forth clearly.
It also differs in this from white, in conjunction with which nearly
every color becomes blurred, dissolves and leaves only a faint
resonance.# :
White is not without reason taken to symbolize joy and spotless
purity, and black, grief and death. A blend of black and white pro-
duces gray, which, as has been said, is silent and motionless, being
composed of two inactive colors, its restfulness having none of the
potential activity of green. The immobility of gray is desolate. The
darker the gray the more preponderant becomes this feeling of deso-
lation and strangulation. When it is made lighter, the color seems
to breathe again, as if invested with new hope. A similar gray is
20'Van Gogh, in his letters, asks whether he may not paint a white wall dead
white. This question offers no difficulty to the non-representational artist, who is
concerned only with the inner harmony of color. But to the impressionist-realist
it appears a bold liberty to take. To him it seemed as outrageous as his own
change from brown shadows to blue seemed to his contemporaries. (Cf. the
famous example of “green sky and blue grass.”) Van Gogh’s question marks a
transition from impressionism to an art of spiritual harmony, as the coming of
the blue shadow marked a transition from academicism to impressionism (see The
Letters of Vincent van Gogh).
21F.g., vermilion rings dull and muddy against white, but against black with
clear strength. Light yellow against white is weak, against black pure and brilliant.
produced by an optical mixture of green and red, a spiritual blend
of passivity and glowing warmth.22
The unbounded warmth of red has not the irresponsible appeal
of yellow, but rings inwardly with a determined and powerful in-
tensity. It glows in itself, maturely, and does not distribute its vigor
aimlessly (see Fig. II).
‘The varied powers of red are very striking. By a skilful use of it in
its different shades, its fundamental tone may be made warm or cool.
Light warm red has a certain similarity to medium yellow, alike
in texture and appeal, and gives a feeling of strength, vigor, determi-
nation, triumph. In music, it is a sound of trumpets, strong, harsh
and ringing.
Vermilion is a red with a feeling of sharpness, like flowing steel
which can be cooled by water. Vermilion is quenched by blue, for it
can bear no mixture with a cold color: more accurately speaking,
such a mixture produces what is called a muddy color, scorned by
the painters of today. But mud as a material object has its own
internal appeal, and therefore to avoid it in painting is as unjust and
narrow as was yesterday’s cry for pure color. At the call of internal
necessity that which is outwardly foul may be inwardly pure, and
vice versa.
These two shades of red are similar to yellow, except that they
reach out less toward the spectator. The glow of red is within itself.
For this reason it is a color more beloved than yellow, being fre-
quently used in primitive and traditional decoration and also in
peasant costumes, because in the open air the harmony of red and
green is very charming. Taken by itself this red is material and, like
yellow, has no very deep appeal. It is dangerous to seek to deepen
red by an admixture of black, for black quenches the glow or at least
reduces it.
There remains brown, unemotional, disclined to movement. An
intermixture of red is outwardly barely audible, but there does ring
out a powerful inner harmony. Skilful blending can produce an inner
appeal of extraordinary, indescribable beauty. The vermilion now
rings like a great trumpet or thunders like a drum.
22 Gray = immobility and rest. Delacroix sought to express rest by a mixture of

green and red (see Signac, sup. cit.).
23 Of course, every color can be to some extent varied between warm and cool,
but no color has so extensive a scale of varieties as red.
Cool red (madder-lake), like any other fundamentally cool color,
can be deepened, especially by an intermixture of azure. The char-
acter of the color changes; the inward glow increases, the active
element gradually disappears. But this active element is never so
wholly absent as in deep green. There always remains a hint of
renewed vigor somewhere out of sight, waiting for a certain moment
in order to burst forth afresh. In this lies the great difference between
a deepened red and deepened blue, because in red there is always a
trace of the material. Corresponding in music are the passionate,
middle tones of a ’cello. A cool, light red contains a very distinct
bodily or material element, but it is always pure, like the fresh
beauty of a young girl’s face. The singing notes of a violin exactly
express this in music.?#
Warm red, intensified by a kindred yellow, is orange. This blend
brings red almost to the point of spreading out towards the spectator.
But the element of red is always sufficiently strong to keep the color
from flippancy. Orange is like a man convinced of his own powers.
Its note is that of a church-bell (the Angelus bell), a strong contralto
voice, or the largo of an old violin.
Just as orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow, so
violet is red withdrawn from humanity by blue. But the red in violet
must be cool, for spiritual need does not allow of a mixture of warm
red with cold blue. ;
Violet is therefore both in the physical and spiritual sense a
cooled red. It has a morbid, extinct quality, like slag. It is worn by
old women, and in China it is the garb of mourning. In music it is
an English horn, or the deep notes of woodwinds (e.g., a bassoon) .25
The last two colors, which result from mixing red with yellow or
blue, are rather unstable. We are reminded of a tight-rope walker
who has to balance himself continously. Where does orange start,
and either red or yellow cease? Where is the border-line dividing
violet from red or blue, and when does it become lilac??¢ Orange
and violet are the fourth and last pair of antitheses of the primitive
colors. They stand to each other in the same relation as the third
24The pure, joyous, consecutive sounds of sleigh-bells are called in Russian
“raspberry jingling.”” The color of raspberry juice is close to the above-mentioned
light, cool red.
25 Among artists, the question, “How do you do?” is sometimes jokingly
answered, “Deep violet,” meaning “not very well.”
26 Violet tends to merge into lilac. Where does one end and the other begin?
antithesis—green and red—, i.e., as ‘complementary colors (Fig II).
As in a great circle, a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol of
eternity, of something without end), appear the six colors that make
up the three main antitheses. And to right and left stand the two
great possibilities of silence—death and birth (Fig. III).
Figure Ill
The antitheses as a circle between two poles, i.e., the life of colors between birth and death
(The capital letters indicate the pairs of antitheses.)
It is clear that all I have said of these simple colors is very pro-
visional and general, and so are the feelings (joy, grief, etc.) which
have been quoted as parallels to the colors. For these feelings are
only material expressions of the soul. Shades of color, like those of
sound, are of a much finer texture and awaken in the soul emotions
too fine to be expressed in prose. Certainly each tone will find some
probable expression in words, but there will always be something
left over, which the word fails to express and which yet is not super-
erogatory but the very kernel of its existence. For this reason words
are, and will always remain, hints, mere suggestions of colors. In this
impossibility of expressing color in words, with the consequent need
for some other mode of expression, lies the possibility of a monu-
mental art. In this art, among innumerable rich and varied combina-
tions, at least one is based on firm fact and is as follows: the same
internal tone may be achieved by the different arts; each art will
bring to this general tone its own special characteristics, thereby
adding to it a richness and a power which no one art form could
achieve. The immense possibilities of profundity and strength to be
gained by combination or by discord between the various arts may
be easily realized.
It is often said that to admit the possibility of one art replacing
another (for example, painting by literature) amounts to a denial of
the necessary difference between the arts. This is not the case. An
absolutely similar inner tone cannot be achieved by two different
arts: even if it were possible, the second version would differ at least
outwardly. But suppose this were not the case, that is to say, suppose
that a repetition of the same tone, exactly similar both outwardly and
inwardly, could be achieved by different arts: such repetition would
not be merely superfluous. ‘To begin with, different people find
affinity with different forms of art (alike on the active and passive
side, among the creators or the audience): further and more im-
portant, repetition of the same tones thickens the spiritual milieu
that is necessary for the maturing of the finest feelings, in the same
way that the warm air of a greenhouse is necessary for the ripening
of fruit. An example of this is the case of the individual who receives
a powerful impression from constantly repeated actions, thoughts or
feelings, although if they had come singly they might have passed
unnoticed.?* However, we must not apply this rule only to the simple
examples of the spiritual atmosphere. For this atmosphere is like air,
which can be pure or filled with various foreign elements. Not only
visible actions, thoughts and feelings, with their external expression,
make up this atmosphere, but the secret happenings of which no
one knows; unspoken thoughts, hidden feelings are also elements.
Suicide, murder, violence, low and unworthy thoughts, hate, hostility,
egotism, envy, narrow “patriotism,” partisanship, are elements of the
spiritual atmosphere.?8
And conversely, self-sacrifice, mutual help, lofty thoughts, love,
unselfishness, joy in the success of others, humanity, justness, are the
27 This idea forms, of course, the fundamental basis of advertisements.
28 Epidemics of suicide or of warlike feeling, etc., are products of this impure
atmosphere. The measure which you apply to others will be applied to yourself.
elements which destroy those already enumerated, just as the sun
destroys microbes and restores the atmosphere to purity.2®
The second and more complicated form of repetition is that in
which several elements make mutual use of different forms. In our
case these elements are the various arts summed up in monumental
art. And this form of repetition is even more powerful, because dif-
ferent natures respond to different elements in the combination. For
one, musical form is the most moving and impressive; for another,
the pictorial, for the third the literary, and so on. There lie, therefore,
in arts that are outwardly different hidden forces equally different,
so that they may all work towards a single result, even though each
art may be working in isolation.
This not easily definable action of isolated colors is the basis

upon which various values can be harmonized. Paintings, art objects,
whole settings, may be based on a certain harmony chosen with
artistic tact. ‘The carrying out of one color, the binding together and
mixture of two related colors, are the foundation of most color
harmonies. From what has been said about color action, from the
fact that we live in a time of questioning, experiment and contra-
diction, we may draw the conclusion that for a harmonization on
the basis of individual colors our age is especially unsuitable. Perhaps
with envy and with a mournful sympathy we listen to the music of
Mozart. It acts as a welcome pause in the turmoil of our inner life,
as a consolation and as a hope, but we hear it as the echo of some-
thing from another age long past and fundamentally strange. The
strife of colors, the sense of the balance we have lost, tottering
principles, unexpected assaults, great questions, apparently useless
striving, storm and tempest, broken chains, antitheses and contra-
dictions—these make up our harmony. The composition arising from
this harmony is a mingling of color and drawing, each with its
separate existence, but each blended into a common life, which is
called a picture by the force of internal necessity. Only the individual
parts are essential. Everything else (including the representational
element) is secondary. The combination of two colors is a logical
29 These elements likewise have their historical periods. Was there a greater
period than that of early Christianity, which roused the weakest to spiritual
struggle? Agents of a similar kind are found in every war or revolution, and they
help to cleanse the poisonous atmosphere.
outcome of modern conditions. The association of colors hitherto
considered discordant is merely a further development. For example,
the use, side by side, of red and blue—colors in themselves with no
physical relation but from their spiritual contrast of strong effect—
is one of the most frequent occurrences in modern structure.*°
Harmony today rests chiefly on the principle of contrast, which has
for all time been one of the most important principles of art. But
our contrast is an internal contrast which stands alone and rejects
the help (for help would mean destruction) of any other principles
of structure. It is interesting to note that this placing together of
red and blue was so beloved by the primitive both in Germany and
Italy that it has survived until today, principally in popular religious
carvings.*! One often sees in popular paintings and painted sculpture
the Virgin in a red gown and a blue cloak: it seems that the artists
wished to express the grace of heaven in terms of humanity, and
humanity in terms of heaven. Legitimate and illegitimate combina-
tions of colors, the shock of contrasting colors, the silencing of one
color by another, the sounding of one color through another, the
checking of fluid color spots by contours of design, the overflowing
of these contours, the mingling and the sharp separation of surfaces,
all these open great vistas of purely pictorial possibility.
One of the first steps away from representation and toward
abstraction was, in the pictorial sense, the exclusion of the third
dimension, i.e., the tendency to keep the picture on a single plane.
Modeling was abandoned. In this way the concrete object was made
abstract, and an important step forward was achieved—this step
forward has, however, had the effect of limiting the possibilities of
painting to the actual surface of the canvas: and thus painting
acquired another material limit.
Any attempt to free painting from this material limitation,
together with the striving after a new form of composition, must
concern itself first of all with the destruction of the theory of one
single surface—attempts have been made to place the picture on
some ideal plane, which of course had to exist prior to the material
plane of the canvas. Out of composition in flat triangles has devel-
30 Cf. Gauguin’s Noa-Noa—where the artist states his disinclination, when he
first arrived in Tahiti, to juxtapose red and blue.
81 Frank Brangwin, strongly defending his colors in his early painting, was prob-
ably the first to use this mixture in the recent past.
oped a composition with plastic three-dimensional triangles, that is
to say, with pyramids; and this is cubism. But here a tendency has
arisen towards inertia, towards a concentration on form for its own
sake, and consequently once more a reduction of potential values.
But that is the unavoidable result of the external application of an
inner principle.
A further point of great importance must not be forgotten.
There are other ways of using the concrete plane as a space of three
dimensions in order to create an ideal plane: the thinness or thick-
ness of a line, the placing of the form on the surface, the crossing
of one form by another may be mentioned as examples of the ex-
tension of picture space in depth through drawing. Similar possi-
bilities are offered by color, which, when nightly used, can advance
or retreat, and can make of the picture suspended, non-material
form. The combination of both means of extension-in-depth in
harmony or counter-point is one of the richest and most powerful
elements in pictorial structure.
10
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
EXPRESSION
AND ASSOCIATION
EXPRESSION AND ASSOCIATION
The doctrine of expressionism is in its strictest form neatly summed

up in the often gibed at, often admired, and sometimes understood,
Crocean formula: art = intuition (immediate knowledge) = ex-
pression. This doctrine admits of the following forms, according as
the relation between the feeling “embodied” and the sense data
which embody it is interpreted.
There is first a broad distinction between doctrines which rely
entirely upon the principle of association as the ground of expression,
and these which posit some other mode of connection. The word
“association” is here used to mean any doctrine which ascribes the
entire feeling import of a sense content to the fact that feeling and
content happen to occur together in experience, rather than to a
relatedness logically inherent in the natures of sensation and feeling.
In short, the contrast is between merely existential and essential
connectedness.
From The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, sections 23 and 38, by

Charles Hartshorne. Copyright © 1934 by the University of Chicago Press.
Reprinted by permission of the author and the University of Chicago Press.
204
EXPRESSION AND ASSOCIATION 205
Among associational doctrines we may distinguish “tight” and
“loose” forms, according to the strength, permanence, and universality
of the association linkages. The’extreme of looseness is found in the
view that the feeling values depend upon purely personal and more
or less radically alterable associations—as that a certain color might
seem joyous because of some flowers of that color which recently
had been received under happy circumstances. Should one’s feelings
toward the sender subsequently fade or undergo unfortunate reversal,
the meaning of the color might then also change radically. The
extreme of tightness is the hypothesis that the connections are innate
to the race, and perhaps to the higher animals. There must then
doubtless be an inborn connection between the nerve processes
underlying the feelings and those underlying the sensations.
The extreme loose doctrine reduces art creation to a pure gam-
ble. How could the artist know the effect which his colors or sounds
would have if this effect depended for each person upon the most
accidental and unique aspects of his personal history? Philosophers
may assert this doctrine; but they should know that they are making
nonsense of art. And it is certainly not the fact that artists interpret
their task in this light.1 What artist ever put himself on record as so
believing? A less frivolous doctrine would be that the decisive aesthetic
associations were mainly determined by social conventions and thus
might vary from age to age or from culture to culture but would
present considerable uniformities within any one culture. Thus Oc-
cidentals may share in certain color feelings or sound feelings which
to Orientals are quite or largely foreign, and thus what are discords
to one age or people may be agreeable tone combinations to another.
Against this doctrine are the following facts: in the case of colors,
at least, no striking evidences of such cultural differences have been
found; where the use of colors is different, the simplest explanation,
fitting all the facts, is not that the same colors express different
feelings to different people, but that different peoples, having different
feelings to express, have embodied this difference of feeling in a
difference of color. For example, the often quoted use of white (and
indeed of many other colors) in funerals by the Chinese (and for
that matter by many other peoples) is no proof whatsoever that the
Chinese feeling for white is different from ours (do we not call
white a “pure” color, see in it a certain detachment from the pas-
1 See the important book by Ozenfant, himself a painter: Foundations of Modern
Art (New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1931), chaps. x and xi.
206 CHARLES HARTSHORNE
sions and the joys of life?) but suggests rather that the Chinese do
not share our conviction that the symbols connected with a funeral
should be such as to express solely the sheer negativity, destructive-
ness, and despair of death, which our black does for us (and would, I
believe, also do for the Chinese). The fact is that white expresses
here not evil but sacredness; the Chinese put the religious meaning
first, as many have held we should do.”
Again, if a savage prefers somewhat cruder colors than the rest
of us, so are the feelings which they express for him (and for us) more
crude than the feelings we may wish to enjoy. I repeat that there is
no evidence that culture determines color feeling, but only that it
affects color preference or evaluation, a very different thing. It is one
thing to find the play a sad one; it is quite another to like or not to
like it, to prefer or not to prefer it to a gay one.
Similar remarks apply to musical discords. ‘There is no reason to
suppose that the coming into vogue of a certain combination of
sounds previously condemned as inharmonious means that the feeling
tone of this combination becomes something quite new. There is
the other possibility, namely, that a feeling tone previously disliked
comes now, in a more robust, less saccharine and conventionalized
age, to be appreciated for its very painfulness, its slight spice of
tragedy. Precisely such changes in attitude toward feelings do occur.
Nor, again, is there any reason to suppose that the nasal chanting
in Chinese theaters is enjoyed because to the audience it conveys
the quintessence of meltingly sweet sentiment, such as we seem to
require. “Sweet” intonations are used on occasion, but it appears on
the whole that the Chinese appreciate other feelings,? with a more
2 The funeral ceremonies of any ancestor-worshiping people are partly designed to

placate or serve the spirits of the departed. The Chinese carry effigies, such as
paper automobiles, to be burned and thus sent to the departed. Not only white
but red and other colors are used. Clearly there is no intention of furnishing the
emotional equivalent of our own ghastly, spiritless ceremony. The origin of black
clothes seems to have been an intention to warn of the uncleanness of those
having to do with a corpse rather than to indicate mourning. Black is a perfect
symbol of death, but a less perfect one of grief.
8 Ozenfant, however, says: “There are some people who question the universality
of art. They say: “Chinese music means little to us.’ But does jazz mean nothing
to the Chinese? It moves them despite their conventions. . . . Chinse music is
super-refined, but for the Chinese themselves, is it, after all, any more than a
lulling caress? ...
“The ‘Pastoral Symphony’ might seem gross to a refined Manchu, for the very
mildly sweet character about them (for they are not to us wholly
harsh) than some of our sentimentalists do. The instruments used
with the action have a spicy, dramatic character, an emotional tense-
ness and piquancy, which one need only attend to, to feel; and
doubtless many who have said that “the acting was wonderful but
the music was too much for me,” did not know that in fact the music
conveyed its message to them at many a moment when they forgot
to think about it or to indulge in mistaken theorizing about the
purpose of art, which is to convey a feeling to you, to a certain
extent whether you like the feeling or not.4
But the objections to the cultural theory go still deeper. There
are at least two groups of facts which tempt us to conceive of certain
important aesthetic associations as common to the human race, and
even, in some cases, to the higher animals. On the one hand, there is
scarcely any doubt but that such connections as light with goodness,
darkness with evil, or such sounds as the growl or snarl with a
hostile intention, are experienced at least by all humankind if not
also by the higher animals. On the other hand, the causes which
would tend to bring about such a uniformity are no utter mystery.
All day-living animals at least must feel the directly beneficent
reason that the decadent of today prefers a ‘modern’ figurine to some magnificent
Easter Island idol, and a complicated musical trifle to the impressive tom-toms
of Thibet. But it is Easter Island that prevails against Monet, Beethoven against
the Chinese, Goethe against Mallarmé, the Thibetans against the Conservatoire
of Music” (op. cit., pp. 309-10).
4 There is also the well-known argument that, whereas in Europe the minor scale
is regarded as sad, many peoples have songs written in this scale which to them
are joyous. But this of course is not a difference of aesthetic experience but of
(highly careless) aesthetic theorizing. Nobody can, except in a very special sense,
experience “the minor key,” which is not a sensory quality or any particular pat-
tern of such qualities, but rather a highly complicated and abstract system of
such patterns. To be sure, on the affective theory, the difference between
the two systems must be an emotional difference, but this could not possibly be
so elementary and direct a contrast as that of joy—sorrow, which must be capable
of some degree of expression in any such system. It is as though, because the
Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries differ in structure, we were to infer that
the one must be devoted exclusively to straight lines and angles and the other
to curves and their intersections. The minor-key sadness, major-key gladness
theorists are the aesthetic equivalents of those lay physicists whose knowledge of
Einstein is exhausted in familiarity with the phrase “curved space.” As for real
experience, surely anyone can be made to sense happiness and sadness by music
in any key through the appropriate melodic and tonal devices permitted in each.
No difference in experience between persons or groups has here been demon-
strated.
character of sunlight, in which they may be seen to bask so lux-
uriously. But more than this, such classifications as warm colors,
joyous colors, etc., as are to be found in almost any manual for
workers in the visual arts correspond closely to a pattern of associa-
tions rooted in the biological past of the race. To take one example
only, the warm, aggressive, insistent character of red can be ascribed
to the fact that it is the color of blood, the only important, per-
vasively present red object in nature, and an object of the highest
and most immediate concern in many ways. All the great color
meanings lend themselves to such explanations; and the correlations
are too exact to leave much likelihood that these interpretations are
purely fanciful. Sounds present a more complicated problem, but
here too there is universality with a natural biological basis. It is
upon such elemental “associations,” if they are truly that, that the
artist relies, not upon the trivial idiosyncrasies of personal history,
nor even upon those of national history. ‘The reasonableness of the
artistic enterprise appears thus to be proportional to the power of
these elemental linkages to hold their own in spite of all personal
factors.
If we seek a more thorough analysis of the nature of the associa-
tions in question, we find three possibilities. First, the connections
may not be inherited but may be developed anew in each individual.
The uniformity of result, so far as it exists, would be due to the
uniformity of environmental factors. Everyone sees much of the sky,
most men see a good deal at least of foliage and of blood. And be-
sides, these things enter into the tradition, so that the influence of
literature and language and artistic usage would tend to extend their
effects even, for example, upon a child of the city streets. And yet
this account is not wholly satisfactory. It would imply, after all,
rather drastic differences between city dwellers and country folk,
between those living in regions where snow is common and those
who have never seen snow (with clouds, the chief experience of
white in nature); moreover, it would be strange if personal and
eccentric associations should not frequently exert a decisive influence.
Many will allege that precisely such variations occur. I am content
here to urge that while the evidence is somewhat uncertain, it is
clear that it would be an advantage to the artist if such variations
were not to be feared, and that it is also doubtful whether any artist
works with the possibility of them in mind.
Let us therefore consider the remaining possibilities of explana-
tion. These are two views of innate associations. According to one
of these, the mechanism which produces the sensations in question
is innately integrated with a mechanism which produces the feelings.
I shall call this the dualistic form of innate associations. This doctrine
is open to many objections of a serious kind. There is the general
fact that such innate integrations appear rather exceptional in the
makeup of the human mind, which is characterized by a remarkable
freedom in its responses from any such predetermined patterns. Con-
sider, for example, the discovery that all but two or three causes of
fear are such because of individual experience or learning, and that
this is true even of the higher animals as well as of human beings.
Yet, since one of these innately fearful sensations is a loud sound,
and since this fact is obviously relevant to the question of musical
expression, the possibility of innate associations as the basis of ex-
pression may be taken seriously. In a later chapter, however, we shall
consider a form of association which admits innateness while yet
demanding nothing further of the biologist than just the unques-
tioned innateness of the sensory response itself.
Our present task, however, is to point out a difficulty inherent
in all forms of associations (except that form above referred to which
identifies the associative and the sensory response) and which I hold
to be decisive against all of them. This is the fact that aesthetic
experience directly reveals a more intimate connection between sense
quality and feeling tone than that of mere togetherness, even in-
herited. For example, to glow with pleasure at the sight of a house
with which we have agreeable associations is not identical with find-
ing it aesthetically satisfactory. Nothing is more perfectly possible
than to perceive clearly in such a case the aesthetically mediocre
character of the object. And does anyone suppose that sufficiently
happy associations would transform the harsh grindings and groan-
ings of street cars into sublime music, or the sight of an average brick
pile into a design to be compared with a fine oriental rug? Some-
thing further besides mere emotional associations is required. This
something further is the factor of objectification; the feelings are not
given merely as connected with the sensations, but as seeming to
inhere in them, appearing to be “spread out upon the object.” ‘Thus
the associational theory is forced to take on a more unambiguously
expressionist tinge. The transition is seen clearly in Santayana’s
famous definition of beauty as “objectified pleasure.” This objectifica-
tion of the feeling into or upon the object as datum is more than
even the tightest bond whereby the occurrence of the one element in
consciousness entails the occurrence of the other. In addition to
association, in short, we have fusion, the (actual or illusory) im-
manence of the feeling in the sense datum.
SENSE QUALITIES AND ADAPTATION
That immediately intuited qualities may serve to adapt the organism

to its environment is evidenced by pleasure and pain, which seem of
themselves to induce opposite behavioristic modes of acceptance
and rejection, under circumstances which in the main render these
activities appropriate. But few seem to have ascribed this third mode
of adaptiveness to the simple qualities of external sensation. Any
quality whatever, it seems to be held, could have conveyed the
behavioristic meaning of red—such as danger signal, rose, anger,
embarrassment, etc.—just as well as red, if only it had occurred con-
stantly in the same contexts as those in which red has actually been
found. To be sure, some thinkers have held with crude common
sense that only red could have been appropriate, inasmuch as the
physical objects in question are themselves red, possess the same
quality as the sensation. But the biological significance of this view
is hard to see, since it is not the color of an object, in this sense of
a simple quality, which is relevant to the fate of the organism, but
rather certain underlying physical forces and complexes whose nature
seems by no resemblance or logical relationship to be indicated by
the quality.
The question stands at once in a new light if the doctrine of
sensory affectivity is taken seriously. If redness is essentially an ob-
jectified feeling attitude, akin to pleasure or pain, then the question
of its behavioristic appropriateness becomes the question of whether
or not the emotional content of red corresponds to the average
practical significance of the principal objects of nature which reflect
the longer rays of the spectrum. That the qualities of one sense
possess this appropriateness has been remarked by one psychologist
at least.° ‘The most positive emotionality in the sphere of taste is
sweetness; and there is no class of objects in nature that are so
5] refer to my former teacher, L. T. Troland, whose remarks in a class lecture
first suggested to me the view which follows.
uniformly nutritious and wholesome as those that taste sweet. The
most negative gustatory quality is bitterness; and the bitter substances
include many poisonous and non-nutritious plants. Sour and salt are
intermediate both affectively* and nutritively, their relative order
being perhaps a little ambiguous. The question which obviously sug-
gests itself is whether similar principles apply to all the senses.
‘The facts which reveal the adaptive value of the sensory qualities
are, for the most part, well known. But they have been interpreted
in such fashion as entirely to obscure this implication. I refer to all
those facts which have been held to confirm an associational ex-
planation of the aesthetic content of sense qualities. Thus, if green
is cool, this is said to be simply because green foliage has been ex-
perienced in connection with protection from the sun’s heat. Now
that the facts do suggest a connection, which might perhaps be
called an “association,” based upon past experience, as the basis of
the emotional qualities of colors and other sense data, I am in-
clined to believe. But I do not believe that the most illuminating
interpretation of this connection is one which posits a duality of
emotional and sensory quality, but rather one which asserts their
identity.
The ordinary associational doctrine conceives as terms of the
connection in question two entities, both of which are directly given
and psychological. The association, in short, is between “ideas.”
The doctrine I wish to suggest is that the most fundamental associa-
tions are not in this fashion intra-psychological but psycho-physical.
One and only one term of the relation is a state of the human psyche;
and the other is a state of the physical environment, namely, the
stimulus. Now sensation is beyond doubt a means whereby two
factors are brought into connection on the basis of past (racial)
experience, the external or environmental situation, and the internal
psychological response. If, then, the response is, say, a feeling char-
acterizable as cool—the sensation green, for example—then the
mechanism which habitually sets off this response under certain
external conditions may be said to associate the feeling of coolness,
not with the sense datum green—for that is the coolness itself—but
with light-rays of a certain wavelength. Assuming the affective
theory of sensation, the only inborn factor that need be supposed in
6 See Beebe-Center, Pleasantness and Unpleasantness, pp. 144 ff.

Zaz CHARLES HARTSHORNE
the sensing of the trees as green and cool in color is simply the
sensory mechanism itself. The fact to be explained is not, upon this
assumption, why red, in the psychological sense, is warm, for that is
like asking why a circle is round. The question is rather why red in
the physical sense—that is, light-radiations of a certain frequency—
should occasion the sense datum red and not the sense datum
green or blue, and this again is identical with the question as to why
such radiations should be responded to visually with that objectified
warm feeling we call “red” rather than with the opposite feeling we
call “green.”
The usual view of the emotional aspects of sensations as accre-
tions added to them after they were otherwise fully constituted is a
profoundly unbiological doctrine. For the basis of these emotionalities
is fully as old in the world as the sense organs themselves. The
experience of the beneficent effects of moderate light, for example,
is incomparably older than vision itself. Surely we should expect
such things to explain not simply how certain responses could be
added to the sensations of color once on the scene, but also the
very evolution and nature of these sensations, what they biologically
and psychologically are.
Vision and Behavior
The distribution of colors in the natural environment exhibits a plan

so strikingly simple and clear in its broad outlines that glimpses of
this plan were long ago perceived by philosophers. The plan is as
follows. Barring biologically insignificant details, green is in nature
the color of vegetable life and hence of the normal foreground; blue
is the color of distant masses (the horizon, mountains, sky, and large
bodies of water), hence of the normal background (including, to
some extent, shadows); red is the color of blood, representing food,
danger, death, combat; yellow is the color of sunlight; white, with
yellow, the color of light, but further of snow and so of the winter
landscape; black is the color of deep shadows and lowering clouds,
the color of night and the absence of light, the color of ignorance,
uncertainty, difficulty, danger, mystery, storm, and the absence of
the life-giving solar energy, in which all higher animals delight to
bathe themselves.
The connection of yellow with sunlight can be seen by observing
the yellowish tinge of foliage or grass in a sunlit clearing as compared
with that in the shaded forest. Thus we may say that blue-green
is the color of the normal moderately lighted foreground, and yellow-
green of the foreground in brilliant sunlight. For surely a foreground
whose color is not primarily determined by vegetation and light is
the exception, even in nontropical countries, if we except the arctic
regions, which are not the probable original home of man. In bright
sunlight there is also a tendency toward white, but the only syste-
matic occurrence of pure white is found in snow, and in the lighter
clouds. The latter are of little practical account; but the snow-
covered landscape is the outstanding color index of cold, and cold
is a fundamental factor. Blackness is found in certain rocks and soils,
certain tree trunks, and the hair of some animals and races of man;
but all this is haphazard and incidental compared to the universal
tendency of shadows (including that shadow of the earth itself,
night) toward this color, which psychologists have been so eager to
describe, with unconscious half-truth, as “no less positive” than the
remaining colors.
Such is the classification of colors according to the biologically
important objects which reflect them. We have now to analyze the
specific character of this biological importance in each case, in order
that we may compare it with the emotional significance of the
respective colors.
The vegetable covering of the normal foreground is not for the
most part, to man or to animals akin to man, of direct significance as
food or danger or other vital condition. It affords shade and at the
same time reflects the sun’s rays with less loss of brightness than do
distant objects. It is in no way an exciting fact, but a harmless and
agreeable one. Those plants that are important as food, and those
dangerous as poisons, are in neither case especially represented as a
class by the color green. In short, the green vegetable covering of
the earth is just the normal fact of existence. Psychologically, then,
we should expect green to appear as a feeling of quiet cheerfulness.
Who does not feel this to be in fact the character of green?
The behavioristic significance of the blue background is partly
that of mere background and partly that of sky—that is to say, the
source of light and the limit of the upward dimension of space, the
realm of illumination and of triumph over gravity. However, these
two blues are not the same, since the violet and the purple of distant
hills is very different from the far brighter blue of the usual clear
sky. The blue of seas and lakes is the reflection of that of the sky
et CHARLES HARTSHORNE
and is of far less independent significance. Bodies of water can be
recognized as such for all primordial needs apart from this color,
which indeed does not attach to them except on clear days. On the
other hand, the blue sky as an index of clear weather might impress
itself even upon animals. The experience of that blue is bound up
inseparably with that of an abundance of light, and is itself a lumi
nous, “ethereal” blue. Nevertheless, neither the sky nor the distant
land is an object of important and frequent direct reaction. The one
thing to do about them, normally speaking, is to pay them no atten-
tion. A strong preoccupation with them as objects of vision might
easily and frequently have fatal results with no likelihood of as fre-
quent compensating advantages. On the psychological side this
implies a desiderated lack of insistency or aggressiveness in blue as
a datum of sense. Blue should not seem too clamorous or lively; it
should “take a back seat” throughout. This it does by virtue of its
blend of passivity (green) and somberness (violet).
Red offers perhaps the simplest problem of all. No other color
can compare with it in the systematic way in which it stands for the
dramatic crises of life, among all the higher animals. It is not merely
that arterial blood, the central life-fluid, is of that color. We have
to remember also that from the standpoint of vision it is chiefly by
its color that blood is identified. Otherwise it cannot by sight be
distinguished from water or other common fluids. Outside of vege-
tation nothing in nature probably is so readily and safely to be
identified by its mere color as is the blood of the higher animals.
But the identification of blood is the knowledge that edible flesh is
at hand, or that foes or friends or members of the pack or the animal
itself are in danger and pain. Blood is interwoven with success in the
the hunt, with consuming of the prey, with combat, and with being
one’s self, in person or in the group, preyed upon. Here are nearly
all the great instinctive emotions, social solidarity, everything save
sex, which depends visually upon form rather than color, and other-
wise chiefly upon hearing and smell. What is life for a higher animal
but a shedding of blood and a struggle to conserve his own or that
of certain of his neighbors? If the color of blood is not to excite and
move the higher animal, the remaining colors ought to put him to
sleep! What, psychologically, do we find? That red is precisely the
most dramatic and stirring of colors; that it lacks the light-hearted
gaiety of yellow, the sunshine color; the cold intensity of white, the
snow-and-cloud color; the quiet cheerfulness of green; the gentle
EXPRESSION AND ASSOCIATION Zt
affectionate quality of blue; and possesses, as no other color, the
quality of excitement or activity. There is no other color which it is
so necessary to take seriously.
There are two principal difficulties in the foregoing explanation
of color. On the one hand, we have to conceive a mechanism whereby
the adjustment of sensory response to environment can have come
about. Here the inheritance of acquired characters and the survival
of the fittest variations seem almost the only available principles,
and of these the latter alone has much in biological knowledge to
support it. The trouble is that it is hard to form even the vaguest
estimate of the survival value involved in sensory affectivities, such
as the coolness of green. We can only point, for instance, to the not
infrequent instances in which constant contact with red has pro-
duced nervous exhaustion; and urge that the more primitive the
man or the animal the more we should expect the influence of
sensation to predominate over more sophisticated responses, such as
the cognitive perception of the red object in terms of its causal
implications. On the other hand, the entire reasoning proceeds upon
the assumption that other modes of sensory response to the same
stimuli would have been psycho-physically possible, even if bio-
logically less useful or appropriate. But there must be a priori limits
to what is possible, i.e., consistently conceivable. For instance, it
cannot be wholly because of utility that light gives us the sense of
intense activity, and darkness that of inactivity, which they do in
fact arouse. For darkness is inactivity and light, intense activity,
and the effect upon the organism is in mere logic bound to exhibit
these facts. But here again we have no accurate measure of the extent
of the possible as compared to the impossible situations. If and when
we have so clarified our concepts that we see somewhat definitely
into the a priori possibilities and into their relative utilities, we shall
be in a position to reason with more confidence concerning the
selective action of the struggle for survival upon the evolution of the
senses.
Hearing
The biological function of sound is, at least in degree if not in kind,
unique. The clue to this uniqueness is seen if we consider the situa-
tion of an animal totally deaf. There seems to be only one important
difference which this handicap would make to the animal. Adjust-
ment to the inorganic and vegetable world would go on much as
usual. To be sure, wind, waves, and landslides could no longer be
identified by their audible effects, but touch and vision would as a
rule supply all necessary information in regard to these things. But
consider the animal’s relations to the rest of the animal world. How
seriously would these be impeded! It could be taken by surprise by
an animal approaching from the lee side, it could not be called to its
mate or young, it could not adequately convey a combat-saving
warning to any foe or sex rival who should underestimate its pugna-
city. In short, its control over its relations to its animal fellows would
be seriously impoverished. We may express the uniquely social char-
acter of hearing by remarking that it is the only sense organ whose
important responses are almost entirely brought forth by stimuli
produced by other animals. ‘This means, from an evolutionary stand-
point, that the adaptation of responsive organism to stimulus may
here be met more or less halfway by an adaptation of stimulus to
response. Evolution here has its grip not only upon the reception of
the stimulus but also upon its production. This double control is
also found in other sense—in vision and smell particularly. In so far,
for example, as coloration is sex lure or camouflage or symbol of herd
unity, it is of this social type. But on the whole it is not mainly by
color that social relationships are realized, except in the case of
blood-red, and here the chemical needs of the organism determine,
I take it, the structure of the hemoglobin so that here the social
reference could hardly have played any part in the evolution of the
stimulating factor. In the main, coloration is social chiefly as camou-
flage—that is, its purpose is really antisocial, not to reveal environing
animal life, but to conceal it. Smells are either inevitable by-products
of the necessary chemistry of the body or else are sex lures or warn-
ing signals against attack or deterrents to consumption as food
(skunk, stinkbugs). But these latter, the social instances, cannot
well determine the systematic meanings of odors, since the primary
function of smell must be to detect the presence of the chemically
more or less inevitable bodily odors, and so to identify friend, foe,
or quarry, and, further, to report upon the edibility of foods. In
hearing alone, where the stimuli are produced largely by the con-
traction of muscles whose action is capable of endless variability
without essentially altering the basic chemical and organic plan of
the species, do we find life in a position largely to control the major
stimuli with reference to their social effect. And yet, even here, we
must not pass lightly over the question as to how free from organic
necessities these variations are. Could a cat in a state of peaceful
pleasure, as when being stroked, growl fiercely, as it does when dis-
turbed while gnawing a bone? “How could a general placidity be
made physiologically consistent with the tense state of lung muscles
and vocal cords necessarily involved in growling? We see clearly that
the evolution of emotional expression does not, as it were, have its
hands entirely free to alter the stimulus side of the communication,
any more than we can see how an ear could readily evolve which
would hear physically intense sounds as faint, and vice versa. From
the standpoint of bodily engineering, there are limits, at least of
convenience, set to these things. However, if we concede that neither
vocal cords nor ear were physiological necessities, apart from the
need to communicate, the need for language and social awareness,
we will not hesitate to grant also that the exact form and function-
ing of both receiving and sending organs must also be partly contin-
gent upon, hence possibly rendered adaptive to, these functions.
It is a remarkable fact that the cries of the higher animals are
intelligible, in their demonstrable behavioristic meanings, apart from
the necessity for learning these meanings from further experience of
such animals. No musician could fail to discriminate between the
discontented “meow” of the cat and the sense of delicious pleasure
in those soft purling sounds, quite distinct from purring, which
experience adequately yet superfluously shows to denote pleasure or
contentment. I say superfluously, for the hearing of the sound con-
veys the meaning at once and directly. We should be astonished,
upon first hearing it, if the creature should at the same time behave
in a manner inconsisent with this interpretation, which we could
not avoid making if we really attended to the sound.
The cries of distress of dog or cat, of bird or human being, all
show a family likeness. When the nest is being robbed, the parent-
birds do not sing or merely utter usual call notes. Their voices take
on strained, distressful, plaintive tones appropriate, to any human
ears, to the situation. The songs, on the other hand, are usually
joyous. But there are exceptions—that of the wood pewee, for in-
stance, which is strangely minor and plaintive. Still even these are
not really distressful. Now birds do not sing when there is reason to
think them physiologically depressed, but only in a mood of exalta-
tion—frequently, to be sure, that of the “joy of battle”—as evidenced
by behavior.
tf
RUDOLF ARNHEIM
EXPRESSIVENESS
The perception of expression is much too immediate and com-

pelling to be explainable merely as a product of learning. When we
watch a dancer, the sadness or happiness of the mood seems to be
directly inherent in the movements themselves. Wertheimer con-
cluded that that was true because formal factors of the dance repro-
duced identical factors of the mood. The meaning of this theory
may be illustrated by reference to an experiment by Binney in which
members of a college dance group were asked individually to give
improvisations of such subjects as sadness, strength, or night. The
performances of the dancers showed much agreement. For example,
in the representation of sadness the movement was slow and con-
fined to a narrow range. It was mostly curved in shape and showed
little tension. The direction was indefinite, changing, wavering, and
the body seemed to yield passively to the force of gravitation rather
than being propelled by its own initiative. It will be admitted that
the physical mood of sadness has a similar pattern. In a depressed
person the mental processes are slow and rarely go beyond matters
From Rudolf Amheim, Art and Visual Perception, Chapter 10. Reprinted
by permission of the author and the University of California Press.
218
EXPRESSIVENESS Z19
closely related to immediate experiences and interests of the mo-
ment. In all his thinking and striving are softness and a lack of
energy. ‘There is little determination, and activity is often controlled
by outside forces.
Naturally there is a traditional way of representing sadness in a
dance, and the performances of the students may have been influ-
enced by it. What counts, however, is that the movements, whether
spontaneously invented or copied from other dancers, exhibited a
formal structure so strikingly similar to that of the intended mood.
And since such visual qualities as speed, shape, or direction are im-
mediately accessible to the eye, it seems legitimate to assume that
they are the carriers of an expression directly comprehensible to the
eye.
If we examine the facts more closely, we find that expression is
conveyed not so much by the “geometric-technical” properties of
the percept as such, but by the forces they can be assumed to arouse
in the nervous system of the observer. Regardless of whether the
object moves (dancer, actor) or is immobile (painting, sculpture),
it is the kind of directed tension or “movement”
—its strength, place,
and distribution—transmitted by the visible patterns that is per-
ceived as expression. . .
THE PRIORITY OF EXPRESSION
The impact of the forces transmitted by a visual pattern is an in-

trinsic part of the percept, just as shape or color. In fact, expression
can be described as the primary content of vision. We have been
trained to think of perception as the recording of shapes, distances,
hues, motions. The awareness of these measurable characteristics is
really a fairly late accomplishment of the human mind. Even in the
Western man of the twentieth century it presupposes special con-
ditions. It is the attitude of the scientist and the engineer or of the
salesman who estimates the size of a customer's waist, the shade of
a lipstick, the weight of a suitcase. But if I sit in front of a fireplace
and watch the flames, I do not normally register certain shades of red,
various degrees of brightness, geometrically defined shapes moving at
such and such a speed. I see the graceful play of aggressive tongues,
flexible striving, lively color. The face of a person is more readily
220 RUDOLF ARNHEIM
perceived and remembered as being alert, tense, concentrated rather
than as being triangularly shaped, having slanted eyebrows, straight
lips, and so on. This priority of expression, although somewhat modi-
fied in adults by a scientifically oriented education, is striking in
children and primitives, as has been shown by Werner and Kohler.
The profile of a mountain is soft or threateningly harsh; a blanket
thrown over a chair is twisted, sad, tired.
The priority of physiognomic properties should not come as a
surprise. Our senses are not self-contained recording devices operating
for their own sake. They have been developed by the organism as an
aid in properly reacting to the environment. The organism is primarily
interested in the forces that are active around it—their place, strength,
direction. Hostility and friendliness are attributes of forces. And the
perceived impact of forces makes for what we call expression.
If expression is the primary content of vision in daily life, the
same should be all the more true for the way the artist looks at the
world. ‘The expressive qualities are his means of communication. ‘They
capture his attention, through them he understands and interprets
his experiences, and they determine the form patterns he creates.
Therefore the training of art students should be expected to consist
basically in sharpening their sense of these qualities and in teaching
them to look to expression as the guiding criteria for every stroke
of the pencil, brush, or chisel. In fact many good art teachers do
precisely this. But there are also plenty of times when the sponta-
neous sensitivity of the student to expression not only is not de-
veloped further, but is even disturbed and suppressed. There is, for
example, an old-fashioned but not extinct way of teaching students
to draw from the model by asking them to establish the exact length
and direction of contour lines, the relative position of points, the
shape of masses. In other words, students are to concentrate on the
geometric-technical qualities of what they see. In its modern version
this method consists in urging the young artist to think of the model
or of a freely invented design as a configuration of masses, planes,
directions. Again interest is focussed on geometric-technical qualities.
This method of teaching follows the principles of scientific defi-
nition rather than those of spontaneous vision. There are, however,
other teachers who will proceed differently. With a model sitting on
the floor in a hunched-up position, they will not begin by making
the students notice that the whole figure can be inscribed in a tri-
EXPRESSIVENESS yaa |
angle. Instead they will ask about the expression of the figure; they
may be told, for example, that the person on the floor looks tense,
tied together, full of potential energy. They will suggest, then, that
the student try to render this quality. In doing so the student will
watch proportions and directions, but not as geometric properties in
themselves. These formal properties will be perceived as being func-
tionally dependent upon the primarily observed expression, and the
correctness and incorrectness of each stroke will be judged on the
basis of whether or not it captures the dynamic “mood” of the sub-
ject. Equally, in a lesson of design, it will be made clear that to the
artist, just as to any unspoiled human being, a circle is not a line of
constant curvature, whose points are all equally distant from a center,
but first of all a compact, hard, restful thing. Once the student has
understood that roundness is not identical with circularity, he may
try for a design whose structural logic will be controlled by the
primary concept of something to be expressed. For whereas the arti-
ficial concentration on formal qualities will leave the student at a
loss as to which pattern to select among innumerable and equally
acceptable ones, an expressive theme will serve as a natural guide
to forms that fit the purpose.
It will be evident that what is advocated here is not the so-called
“self-expression.” ‘The method of self-expression plays down, or even
annihilates, the function of the theme to be represented. It recom-
mends a passive, “projective” pouring-out of what is felt inside. On
the contrary, the method discussed here requires active, disciplined
concentration of all organizing powers upon the expression that is
localized in the object of representation.
It might be argued that an artist must practice the purely formal
technique before he may hope to render expression successfully. But
that is exactly the notion that reverses the natural order of the artistic
process. In fact all good practicing is highly expressive. This first
occurred to me many years ago when I watched the dancer Gret
Palucca perform one of her most popular pieces, which she called
“Technical Improvisations.” This number was nothing but the sys-
tematic exercise that the dancer practiced every day in her studio in
order to loosen up the joints of her body. She would start out by
doing turns of her head, then move her neck, then shrug her
shoulders, until she ended up wriggling her toes. This purely tech-
nical practice was a success with the audience because it was thor-
Py RUDOLF ARNHEIM
oughly expressive. Forcefully precise and rhythmical movements pre-
sented, quite naturally, the entire catalogue of human pantomime.
They passed through all the moods from lazy happiness to imperti-
nent satire. .
In order to achieve technically precise movements, a capable
dance teacher may not ask students to perform “geometrically” de-
fined positions, but to strive for the muscular experience of uplift,
or attack, or yielding, that will be created by correctly executed
movements. (Comparable methods are nowadays applied therapeu-
tically in physical rehabilitation work. For example, the patient is
not asked to concentrate on the meaningless, purely formal exercise
of flexing and stretching his arm, but on a game or piece of work
that involves suitable motions of the limbs as a means to a sensible
ends ane
We perceive the slow, listless, “droopy” movements of one per-
son as contrasted to the brisk, straight, vigorous movements of
another, but do not necessarily go beyond the meaning of such
appearance by thinking explicitly of the psychical weariness or alert-
ness behind it. Weariness and alertness are already contained in the
physical behavior itself; they are not distinguished in any essential
way from the weariness of slowly floating tar or the energetic ringing
of the telephone bell. It is true, of course, that during a business
conversation one person may be greatly concerned with trying to
read the other’s thoughts and feelings through what can be seen in
his face and gestures. “What is he up to? How is he taking it?” But
in such circumstances we clearly go beyond what is apparent in the
perception of expression itself, and secondarily apply what we have
seen to the mental processes that may be hidden “behind” the outer
image. ...
A steep rock, a willow tree, the colors of a sunset, the cracks in
a wall, a tumbling leaf, a flowing fountain, and in fact a mere line
or color or the dance of an abstract shape on the movie screen have
as much expression as the human body, and serve the artist equally
well. In some ways they serve him even better, for the human body
is a particularly complex pattern, not easily reduced to the simplicity
of shape and motion that transmits compelling expression. Also it is
overloaded with nonvisual associations. The human figure is not the
easiest, but the most difficult, vehicle of artistic expression.
The fact that nonhuman objects have genuine physiognomic
EXPRESSIVENESS 223
properties has been concealed by the popular assumption that they
are merely dressed up with human expression by an illusory “pathetic
fallacy,” by empathy, anthropomorphism, primitive animism. But if
expression is an inherent characteristic of perceptual patterns, its
manifestations in the human figure are but a special case of a more
general phenomenon. ‘lhe comparison of an object’s expression with
a human state of mind is a secondary process. A weeping willow does
not look sad because it looks like a sad person. It is more adequate
to say that since the shape, direction, and flexibility of willow
branches convey the expression of passive hanging, a comparison
with the structurally similar state of mind and body that we call
sadness imposes itself secondarily. ‘The columns of a temple do not
strive upward and carry the weight of the roof so dramatically be-
cause we put ourselves in their place, but because their location,
proportion, and shape are carefully chosen in such a way that their
image contains the desired expression. Only because and when this
is so, are we enabled to “sympathize” with the columns, if we so
desire. An inappropriately designed temple resists all empathy.
12
O. K. BOUWSMA
THE EXPRESSION
THEORY OF ART
The expression theory of art is, I suppose, the most commonly held
of all theories of art. Yet no statement of it seems to satisfy many
of those who expound it. And some of us find all statements of it
baffling. I propose in what follows to examine it carefully. In order
to do this, I want first of all to state the question which gives rise
to the theory and then to follow the lead of that question in pro-
viding an answer. I am eager to do this without using the language
of the expression theory. I intend then to examine the language of
that theory in order to discover whether it may reasonably be inter-
preted to mean what is stated in my answer. In this way I expect to
indicate an important ambiguity in the use of the word ‘expression’,
but more emphatically to expose confusions in the use of the word
‘emotion’. This then may explain the bafflement.
1
And now I should like to describe the sort of situation out of which
by devious turnings the phrase ‘expression of emotion’ may be con-
ceived to arise.
First published in a collection of essays entitled Philosophical Analysis,
edited by Professor Max Black and published by Cornell University Press, 1950.
Reprinted by permission of the author and Cornell University Press.
224
THE EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART 225
Imagine then two friends who:attend a concert together. They
go together untroubled. On the way they talk about two girls, about
communism and pie on earth, and about a silly joke they once
laughed at and now confess to each other that they never understood.
‘They were indeed untroubled, and so they entered the hall. The
music begins, the piece ends, the applause intervenes, and the music
begins again. Then comes the intermission and time for small talk.
Octave, a naive fellow, who loves music, spoke first. ‘It was lovely,
wasn’t it? Very sad music, though.’ Verbo, for that was the other’s
name, replied: ‘Yes, it was very sad’. But the moment he said this
he became uncomfortable. He fidgeted in his seat, looked askance
at his friend, but said no more aloud. He blinked, he knitted his
brows, and he muttered to himself. ‘Sad music, indeed! Sad? Sad
music?’ ‘Then he looked gloomy and shook his head. Just before the
conductor returned, he was muttering to himself, ‘Sad music, cry-
baby, weeping willows, tear urns, sad grandma, sad, your grand-
mother!’ He was quite upset and horribly confused. Fortunately,
about this time the conductor returned and the music began. Verbo
was upset but he was a good listener, and he was soon reconciled.
Several times he perked up with “There it is again’, but music calms,
and he listened to the end. The two friends walked home together
but their conversation was slow now and troubled. Verbo found no
delight in two girls, in pie on earth, or in old jokes. There was a
sliver in his happiness. At the corner as he parted with Octave, he
looked into the sky, “Twinkling stars, my eye! Sad music, my ear!’
and he smiled uncomfortably. He was miserable. And Octave went
home, worried about his friend.
So Verbo went home and went to bed. To sleep? No, he couldn’t
sleep. After four turns on his pillow, he got up, put a record on the
phonograph, and hoped. It didn’t help. The sentence ‘Sad, isn’t it?’
like an imp, sat smiling in the loud-speaker. He shut off the phono-
graph and paced the floor. He fell asleep, finally, scribbling away at
his table, like any other philosopher.
This then is how I should like to consider the use of the phrase
‘expression of emotion’. It may be thought of as arising out of such
situations as that I have just described. The use of emotional terms—
sad, gay, joyous, calm, restless, hopeful, playful, etc.—in describing
music, poems, pictures, etc., is indeed common. So long as such
descriptions are accepted and understood in innocence, there will be,
of course, no puzzle. But nearly everyone can understand the motives
226 O. K. BOUWSMA
of Verbo’s question ‘How can music be sad?’ and of his impulsive
‘Tt can’t, of course’.
Let us now consider two ways in which one may safely escape
the expression theory.
Imagine Verbo at his desk, writing. This is what he now writes
and this gives him temporary relief. ‘Every time I hear that music
I hear that it’s sad. Yet I persist in denying it. I say that it cannot
be sad. And now what if I were wrong? If every day I met a frog,
and the frog said to me that he was a prince, and that there were
crown jewels in his head (“wears yet a precious jewel in his head”),
no doubt I should begin by calling him a liar. But the more I’d
consider this the more troubled I should be. If I could only believe
him, and then treat him like a prince, I’d feel so much better. But
perhaps this would be more like the case of this music: Suppose I
met the frog and every day he said to me, “I can talk,” and then
went on talking and asked me, “Can I talk?” then what would I do?
And that’s very much how it is with the music. I hear the music,
and there it is again, sad, weeping. It’s silly to deny this. See now,
how it is? There’s a little prince, the soul of a prince, in the frog,
and so there’s the soul in this music, a princess, perhaps. See then
how rude I was denying this princess her weeping. Why shouldn’t
music have a soul too? Why this prejudice in favour of lungs and
livers? And it occurs to me that this is precisely how people have
talked about music and poems. Art lives, doesn’t it? And how did
Milton describe a good book? Didn’t Shelley pour out his soul? And
isn’t there soul and spirit in the music? I remember now that the
poet Yeats recommended some such thing. There are spirits; the air
is full of them. They haunt music, cry in it. They dance in poems,
and laugh. Pan-psychism for the habitation of all delicacies! So this
is how it is, and there is neither joke nor puzzle in this sad music.
There’s a sad soul in it.’
And then it was that Verbo fell asleep. His resistance to the
music had melted away as soon as he gave up his curious prejudice
in favour of animal bodies, as soon as he saw that chords and tones,
like rhymes and rhythms, may sigh and shed invisible tears. Tears
without tear glands—oh, I know the vulgar habit! But surely tones
may weep. Consider now how reasonable all this is. Verbo is sud-
THE EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART Ley,
denly surprised to discover something which he has always known;
namely, that music is sad. And the discovery startles him. Why?
Because in connexion with this, he thinks of his sister Sandra (Cassie
to all who saw her cry). And he knows what her being sad is like.
She sobs, she wipes her eyes, and she tells her troubles. Cassie has a
soul, of course. So Cassie is sad and the music is sad. So the question
for Verbo is ‘How can the music be like Cassie?’ and he gives the
answer ‘Why shouldn’t there be a soul of the music, that flits in and
fits out (People die too!) and inhabits a sonata for a half-hour? Or
why shouldn’t there be a whole troupe of them? ‘The music is sad”
is just like “Cassie is sad”, after all. And Octave who was not dis-
turbed was quite right for he must have a kind of untroubled belief
in spirits. He believes in the frog-prince, in the nymphs in the wood,
and in the psyche of the sonnet.’
This then is one way of going to sleep. But there is another one,
and it is based upon much the same sort of method. Both accept as
the standard meaning for “Ihe music is sad’, the meaning of ‘Cassie
is sad’. We saw how Verbo came to see that the meaning is the
same, and how then it was true in the case of the music. He might
however have decided that the meaning certainly was the same, but
that as applied to the music it simply made no sense at all, or was
plainly false. Souls in sonnets! Don’t be silly. There is the story
about Parmenides, well known to all readers of Dionoges,! which
will illustrate the sort of thing I have in mind. According to the
story, Parmenides and his finicky friend Zeno once went to a chariot
race. The horses and chariots had been whizzing past and the race
had been quite exciting. During the third round, at one turn a chariot
broke an axle and horse and chariot and rider went through the
fence. It was a marvellous exhibition of motion done to a turn at a
turn. Parmenides was enjoying himself thoroughly. He clutched at
the railing and shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Go, Buceph! Run!’
The race is close. But at about the seventh round, with Buceph now
some part of a parasang behind, Parmenides began to consider: “Half
the distance in half the time; a quarter of the length of a horse in
a quarter of the pace it takes. . .. Suddenly, before the race was half
over, Parmenides turned to Zeno. ‘Zeno’, he said, ‘this is impossible.’
Zeno, who was ready for his master, retorted, ‘I quit looking a long
1 An author of no repute at all, not to be confused with Diogenes.

228 O. K. BOUWSMA
time ago’. So they left the chariot race, a little embarrassed at their
non-existence showing as they walked, but they did not once look
back to see how Buceph was doing.
This then is the story about Parmenides. It may be, of course,
that this story is not true; it may be one of Dionoges’ little jokes.
But our concern is not with Parmenides. The point is that it illu-
strates a certain way of disposing of puzzles. Parmenides has been
disciplined to a certain use of such words as ‘run’, ‘go’, ‘turn’, ‘walk’,
etc., so that when he is thoughtful and has all his careful wits about
him, he never uses those words. He is then fully aware that all forms
of motion are impossible. Nevertheless, the eyes are cunning tempters.
In any case, as soon as Parmenides reflects, he buries himself in his
tight-fitting vocabulary, and shuts out chariots and horses, and
Buceph, as well. ‘Motion is impossible, so what am I doing here?
Less than nothing. N’est pas is not.’ This disposition of the puzzle
is, of course, open only to very strong men. Not many of those people
who believe in the impossibility of motion are capable of leaving a
horse race, especially when some fleet favourite is only a few heads
behind.
Now something like this was a possibility also for Verbo. When,
puzzled as he was, asking ‘How can that be?’ he hit upon the happy
solution “Why not?’ But he might surely have said, stamping his
foot, ‘It can’t be’. And in order then to avoid the pain of what
can’t be, he might have sworn off music altogether. No more con-
certs, no more records! The more radical decision is in such cases
most effective. One can imagine Parmenides, for instance, sitting out
the race, with his eyes closed, and every minute blinking and squint-
ing, hoping he’d see nothing. So too Verbo might have continued
to listen to music, but before every hearing invigorating his resolution
never to say that the music was sad. Success in this latter enterprise
is not likely to be successful, and for anyone who has already been
puzzled it is almost certainly futile.
We have now noticed two ways in which one may attempt to
rid oneself of the puzzle concerning “The music is sad’, but inci-
dentally we have also noticed the puzzle. The puzzle is identified
with the question ‘How can music be sad?’ We have also noticed
how easy it is, once having asked the question, to follow it with
‘Well, it can’t’. I want now to go on to consider the expression theory
in the light of the question ‘How can it be?’ In effect, the expression
theory is intended to relieve people who are puzzled by music, etc.
They listen and they say that the music is sad. ‘They ask, troubled
and shaking their heads, ‘How can it be?’ Then along comes the
expression theory. It calms them, saying, ‘Don’t you see that the
music expresses sadness and that this is what you mean by it’s being
sad?’ The puzzled one may be calmed too, if he isn’t careful. In
any case, I propose to consider the question ‘How can it be?’ before
going on further.
This question, ‘How can it be?’ is apparently then not a question
primarily about the music. One listens to the music and hears all
that there is to hear. And he is sure that it is sad. Nevertheless, when
he notices this and then returns to the music to identify just what is
sad in it, he is baffled. If someone, for instance, had said that there
is a certain succession of four notes on the flute, in this music, and
he now sought to identify them, he could play the music, and when
they came along, he would exclaim, “There they are’, and that would
be just what he aimed at. Or again if someone had said that a
certain passage was very painful, and he explained that he meant by
this that when it is heard one feels a stinging at one’s finger tips,
then again one could play the music and wait for the stinging.
Neither is it like the question which leaped out of the surprise of the
farmer at the birth of his first two-headed calf. He looked, amazed,
and exclaimed, ‘Well, I'll be switched! How can that be?’ He bedded
the old cow, Janus, tucked in the calf, and went to consult his book.
He did not stand muttering, looking at the calf, as Verbo did
listening to the record on the phonograph. He took out his great
book, The Cow, and read the chapter entitled “Iwo Heads Are
Better than One?’ He read statistics and something about the inci-
dence of prenatal collusion and decided to keep an eye on collabora-
tors among his herd. And that was all. When now it comes to “The
music is sad’, there’s no such easy relief. What is there to listen for?
What statistics are there?
We have noticed before how Verbo settled his difficulty. He
did this, but not by examining the music any further. He simply
knew that the music was sad, and supplied the invisible tears, the
unheard sobs, the soul of the music. If you had asked him to identify
the tears, the unheard sobs, the soul of the music, he could not have
230 O. K. BOUWSMA
done this. He might have tried, of course, and then he would have
been baffled too. But the point is that he tries to think of the sadness
of the music in the way in which he thinks of Cassie’s sadness. Now
we may be ready to explain the predicament, the bafflement. It arises
from our trying to understand our use of the sentence “Ihe music is
sad’ in terms of our uses of other sentences very much like this. So
Verbo understands in terms of the sentence ‘Cassie is sad’. One can
imagine him saying to himself, ‘I know what sadness is, of course,
having Cassie in the house, so that must be how it is with the music’.
Happily, as in the case of Parmenides, he thought of only one use,
and as with a sharp knife he cut the facts to suit the knife. But
suppose now that there are several uses of sentences much like “The
music is sad’; what then? Is it like this use or this use or this use?
And suppose that sometimes it’s like this and at other times like this,
and sometimes like both. Suppose further that one is only vaguely
aware that this is so, and that one’s question ‘How can that be?’ is
not stated in such a way as to make this possibility explicit, would
it then be any wonder that there is bafflement?
Let us admit then that the use of “he music is sad’ is baffling,
and that without some exploration, the question “How can that be?’
cannot be dealt with. Merely listening to the music will not suffice.
We must then explore the uses of other sentences which are or may
be similar to this, and we may hope that in this process we may see
the expression theory emerge. At any rate, we'll understand what
we are about.
What now are some of these other types of sentences which might
be helpful? Well, here are a few that might serve: ‘Cassie is sad’,
‘Cassie’s dog is sad’, ‘Cassie’s book is sad’, ‘Cassie’s face is sad’. Per-
haps, one or the other of these will do.
Though we have already noticed how Verbo came to use ‘Cassie
is sad’, I should like to consider that sentence further. Verbo under-
stood this. When, as he remembered so well, the telephone call
came and little Cassie answered—she had been waiting for that call
—she was hurt. Her voice had broken as she talked, and he knew
that the news had been bad. But he did not think she would take
THE EXPRESSION: THEORY OF ART 231
it so hard. And when she turned to him and he asked her what the
man had said, at first her chin quivered and she didn’t speak. Then
she moved towards him and fell into his arms, sobbing: ‘Poor Felicia,
poor Felicia!’ He stroked her hair and finally, when she was calm,
she began to pour out her confidences to him. She loved her cat so;
they had been brought up together, had had their milk from the
same bottle, and had kept no secrets from each other. And now the
veterinary had called to say that she had had another fit. And she
burst into tears again. This was some years ago. Cassie is older now.
But this is not the only way in which ‘Cassie is sad’ is used.
Verbo had often heard his father and mother remark that it was
good that Cassie could cry. They used to quote some grandmother
who made a proverb in the family. It went: ‘Wet pillows are best’.
She had made this up many years ago when some cousin came to
sudden grief. This cousin was just on the verge of planned happiness,
when the terrible news came. (Her picture is the third in the album.)
She received the news in silence and never spoke of it or referred to
it as long as she washed the dishes in her father’s house, for, as you
may have guessed, she never married. She never cried either. No one
ever heard her sniffing in the middle of the night. She expressed no
regrets. And she never told cat or mirror anything. Once she asked
for a handkerchief, but she said she had a cold. All the family knew
what had happened, of course, and everyone was concerned, but
there was nothing to do. And so she was in many ways changed. She
was drooping, she had no future, and she tried to forget her past.
She was not interested. They all referred to her as their sad cousin,
and they hoped that she would melt. But she didn’t. Yet how can
Cassie’s cousin be sad if she never cries?
Well, there is a third use of ‘Cassie is sad’. Tonight Cassie, who
is eighteen now, quite a young lady, as the neighbours say, goes up
to her room with her cat, her big book, and a great bowl of popcorn.
She settles into her chair, tells kitty to get down, munches buttery
corn, and reads her book. Before very long she is quite absorbed in
what she reads and feels pretty bad. Her eyes fill with tears and the
words on the page swim in the pool. It’s so warm and so sweet and
so sad! She would like to read this aloud, it’s so wonderful, but she
knows how the sadness in her throat would break her words in two.
She’s so sorry; she’s so sad. She raises her eyes, closes them, and revels
in a deep-drawn sigh. She takes up a full hand of popcorn and returns
ey O. K. BOUWSMA
to her sadness. She reads on and eats no more corn. If she should sob
in corn, she might choke. She does sob once, and quite loud, so that
she is startled by it. She doesn’t want to be heard sobbing over her
book. Five minutes later she lays her book aside, and in a playful
mood, twits her cat, pretending she’s a little bird. Then, walking
like old Mother Hubbard, she goes to the cupboard to get her poor
cat a milk.
Cassie is sad, isn’t she? Is she? Now that you consider it, she
isn’t really sad, is she? That cosy chair, that deliberate popcorn, that
playing sparrow with her cat, that old Mother Hubbard walk—these
are not the manners of a sad girl. She hasn’t lost her appetite. Still
one can see at once how we come to describe her in this way. Those
are not phony tears, and she’s as helpless in her sobs and in keeping
her voice steady and clear as she was years ago when her dear cat
had that fit. And she can, if you are so curious, show you in the
book just what made her feel so sad. So you see it is very much like
the case in which Cassie was sad. There’s_an obvious difference, and
a similarity too. And now if you balk at this and don’t want to say
that Cassie in this situation is sad, your objection is intelligible. On
the other hand, if Cassie herself laughingly protests, ‘Oh, yes, I was
sad’, that will be intelligible too. ‘This then may serve as an illustra-
tion of the way in which a puzzle which might become quite serious
is fairly easily dealt with. How can Cassie be sad, eating popcorn and
playing she’s a sparrow?
In order to make this clear, consider Cassie now a grown woman,
and an accomplished actress. She now reads that same passage which
years ago left her limp as a willow, but her voice is steady and clear,
and there are no tears. She understands what she reads and everyone
says that she reads it with such feeling—it’s so sad—but there isn’t
a sign of emotion except for the reading itself, which, as I said, goes
along smoothly and controlled even to each breath and syllable. So
there are no wet eyes, no drunken voice, and not a sob that isn’t in
the script. So there. Is she sad? I take it not. The spoken words are
not enough. ‘Tears, real tears, a voice that breaks against a word, sighs
that happen to one, suffered sobs—when the reading occasions these,
then you might say that Cassie was sad. Shall we say, however, that
the reading is sad? How can that be? Well, you see, don’t you?
Let us now attend to a sentence of a different type: ‘Cassie’s
dog is sad’. Can a dog be sad? Can a dog hope? Can a dog be dis-
appointed? We know, of course, how a Cartesian would answer. He
might very well reply with this question, ‘Can a locomotive be sad?’
Generous, he might allow that a locomotive might look sad, and so
give you the benefit of a sad look for your dog. But can a dog be
sad? Well, our dog can. Once during the summer when Cassie left
her for three weeks, you should have seen her. She wouldn’t look at
the meatiest bone. She’d hang her head and look up at you as woe-
begone as a cow. And she’d walk as though her four hearts would
break. She didn’t cry, of course, and there were no confidences
except those touching ones that come by way of petting and snug-
gling and looking into those wailing eyes. In any case, our dog acted
very much like that sad cousin who couldn’t cry. She had plenty of
reason, much too much, but she kept her wellings-up down. It’s clear,
in any case, what I mean when I say that our dog was sad. You
mustn’t expect everything from a sad dog.
So we pass to another type of sentence: ‘Cassie’s book is sad’.
Well, obviously books don’t cry. Books do not remember happier
days nor look upon hopes snuffed out. Still, books that are sad must
have something to do with sadness, so there must be sadness. We
know, of course. Books make people sad. Cassie reads her book and
in a few minutes, if she’s doing well, she’s sad. Not really sad, of
course, but there are real tears, and one big sob that almost shook
the house. It certainly would be misleading to say that it was
imaginary sadness, for the sadness of Cassie isn’t imagined by any-
one, not even by herself. What she reads, on the other hand, is
imaginary. What she reads about never happened. In this respect
it’s quite different from the case in which she is overwhelmed by the
sad news over the telephone. That was not imaginary, and with the
tears and sobs there was worry, there was distress. She didn’t go twit-
tering about, pretending she was a little bird five minutes after that
happened. So a sad book is a book that makes Cassie, for instance,
sad. You ask, ‘Well, what are you crying about?’ And she says, “Booh,
you just read this’. It’s true that this is how you will find out, but
you may certainly anticipate too that it will be a story about a little
boy who died, a brave little boy who had stood up bravely for his
father, about a new love and reconciliation come almost too late,
about a parting of friends and tender feelings that will die, and so
on. At any rate, if this is what it is like, you won’t be surprised. It’s
a sad book.
234 O. K. BOUWSMA
There is one further sentence to consider: ‘Cassie’s face is sad’.
The same sort of thing might be said about her speaking, about her
walk, about her eyes, etc. There is once again an obvious way of
dealing with this. What makes you say her face is sad? Anyone can
tell. See those tear stains and those swollen eyes. And those curved
lines, they all turn down. Her face is like all those sad faces in simple
drawings where with six strokes of my neighbour’s pencil I give you
‘Sad-Eye, the Sorry Man’. The sad face is easily marked by these few
unmistakable signs. Pull a sad face, or droop one, and then study it.
What have you done? In any case, I am supposing that there is
another use of ‘Cassie’s face is sad’, where this simplicity is absent.
Oh, yes, there may be certain lines, but if you now ask, ‘And is this
all you mean by Cassie’s face being sad?’ the answer may very well
be ‘No’. Where then is the sadness? ‘Take a long look and tell me.
Cassie, hold still. The sadness is written all over her face, and I can’t
tell you it’s here and not there. The more I look, the more I see it.
The sadness in this case is not identified with some gross and simple
signs. And you are not likely to find it there in some quick glance.
Gaze into that face, leisurely, quietly, gently. It’s as though it were
composed not of what is sad in all sad faces, but rather of what is
sad only in each sad face you’ve ever known. This sad face is sad
but when you try now to tell someone what is sad in it, as you might
with the drawing I made, you will have nothing to say. But you may
say, ‘Look, and you will see’. It is clear, of course, that when Cassie’s
face is sad, she need not be sad at all. And certainly when you look
as you do, you need not be sad.
We have noticed briefly several types of sentences similar to
“The music is sad’, and we have seen how in respect to several of
these the same sort of puzzling might arise that arose in respect to
“The music is sad’. We have also seen how in respect to these more
obvious cases this puzzling is relieved. The puzzling is relieved by
discerning the similarity between the offending use and some other
use or uses. And now I should like to ask whether the puzzle con-
cerning “The music is sad’ might not also be relieved in some similar
fashion. Is there not a use of some type of sentence, familiar and
relatively untroubled, which is like the use of “The music is sad’?
We have these types of sentences now ready at our disposal:
There are two uses of ‘Cassie is sad’, in the first of which she is
concerned about her cat, and in the second of which she is cosy and
tearful, reading her book. We have ‘Cassie’s cousin is sad’, in which
Cassie’s cousin has real cause but no tears, and ‘Cassie’s dog is sad’,
in which her dog is tearless as her cousin, but with a difference of
course. You could scareely say that Fido restrained his tears. Then
there were the uses of ‘Cassie’s face is sad’ and ‘Cassie’s reading is
sad’. And, of course, there is the use of ‘Cassie’s book is sad’. I am
going to take for granted that these uses are also intelligible. Now
then is the use of “The music is sad’ similar to any of these?
I suppose that if the question is stated in this way, one might
go on by pointing out a similarity between it and each one of these
other types of sentences. But what we must discover is enough
similarity, enough to relieve the puzzle. So the question is: To which
use is the use of “The music is sad’ most similar? Certainly not to
‘Cassie is sad (about her cat)’, nor to ‘Cassie’s cousin is sad’, nor to
‘Cassie’s dog is sad’.
There are two analogies that one may hopefully seize upon. The
first is this: “Cassie is sad, reading a book,’ is very much like ‘Verbo
is sad, listening to music’. And this first is also very much like ‘Cassie
is sad, hearing the news over the telephone’. And just as the first
involves “The book is sad’, so the second involves “The music is sad’,
and the third involves “lhe news is sad’. Now let us consider the first.
Reading the book is one thing, and feeling sad is quite another, and
when you say that the book is sad, you mean by this something like
this: When Cassie reads, she feels sad about what she reads. Her
feeling sad refers to her tears, her sobs, etc. So too listening to the
music and hearing it is one thing, and feeling sad is another, and
when you say that the music is sad, you mean that while Verbo
listens to the music, he feels sad. And shall we add that he feels sad
about it? This might, if you like, refer to something like his half-
tears, sub-sobs, etc.
Suppose now we try to relieve Verbo in this way. We say, ‘Don’t
you see? “This music is sad” is like “The book is sad”. You under-
stand that. That’s very much like “The news is sad”.’ Will that
satisfy him? I think that if he is very sharp, it won’t. He may say, ‘I
can see how “The book is sad” is like “The news is sad”. But when
it comes to these you can easily point out the disturbance, the weep-
ing, but the music—that’s different. Still there might be something.’
What now bothers him?
I think what bothers him may be explained in this way. When
you say that a book is sad, or a certain passage in a book is sad, you
may mean one or other or both of two things. You may mean what
236 O. K. BOUWSMA
has already been defined by the analogy above. But you may also
mean something else. The following illustration may exhibit this.
Imagine Cassie, then, in her big chair, reading, and this is the
passage she reads:
‘I say this in case we become bad’, Alyosha went on, ‘but there’s no
reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and
above all, kind, then honest, and let us never forget each other! I say
that again. I give you my word, for my part, that I’ll never forget one of
you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty
years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that he did not care to know
whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and
that he is blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of
Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my
dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and
generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he
grows up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov.
But why am I talking about those two! You are all dear to me, boys,
from this day forth I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you
to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us in
this kind, good feeling which we shall remember, and intend to remem-
ber all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear boy, precious
to us for ever! Let us never forget him. May his memory live for ever in
our hearts from this time forth.’
Cassie reads this and Cassie cries. Let us call this Cassie’s sad-
ness. But is there now any other emotion, any other sadness, present?
Well, there may very well be. ‘There may be the Alyosha emotion.
Whether that is present, however, depends upon how the passage in
question is read. It may be read in such a way, that though Cassie
understands all she reads, and so knows about the Alyosha emotion,
yet she will miss it. This will be the case if she cries through the
reading of it. If she reads the passage well, controlled, clear, unfalter-
ingly, with feeling, as we say, which does not mean with crying, then
the Alyosha emotion will be present. Otherwise only signs of it will
be present. Anyone who has tried to read such a passage well, and
who has sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded, will understand
what I have in mind. Now then we have distinguished the Cassie
emotion and the Alyosha emotion. They may be present together,
but only, I think, when the Cassie emotion is relatively weak. And
so when someone says that the passage in question is sad, then in
order to understand we must ask, ‘Is it sad in the Cassie emotion or
is it sad in the Alyosha emotion?’
THE EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART 237)
And now we are prepared again to examine the analogy: ‘The
music is sad’ is like “The book is sad’, where it is sad with the
Alyosha emotion. This now eliminates the messiness of tears. What
we mean by Alyosha’s emotion involves no tears, just as the sadness
of the music involves no tears. And this now may remind us of Cassie
reading the passage, cool, collected, reading with feeling. But more
to the point it suggests the sentence ‘Cassie’s face is sad’. For see,
when the music is sad, there are no tears, and when the passage is
read, well read, there are no tears. And so when I look into this face
and find it sad, there are no tears. The sadness in all these cases may
be unmistakable, and yet in none of these is there anything to which
I might now draw your attention, and say, “That’s how I recognize it
as sad’. Even in the case of the reading, it isn’t the sentences, it isn’t
the subject, that make it sad. The sadness is in the reading. Like a
musical score, it too may be played without feeling. And it isn’t now
as though you both read and have these feelings. ‘There is nothing
but the reading, and the feeling is nothing apart from this. Read the
passage with and without feeling, and see that the difference consists
in a difference in the reading. What baffles in these cases is that
when you use the word ‘sadness’ and the phrase ‘with feeling’, you
are certain to anticipate sadness and feeling in the ordinary sense.
But if the sadness is in the sounds you make, reading or playing, and
in the face, once you are forewarned you need no longer anticipate
anything else. There is sadness which is heard and sadness which is
seen.
This then is my result. “The music is sad’ is like “The book is
sad’, where “The book is sad’ is like “The face is sad’. But “The music
is sad’ is sometimes also like “The book is sad’, where “The book is
sad’ is like “The news is sad’. If exhibiting these analogies is to be
helpful, then, of course, this depends on the intelligibility of such
sentences as “The book is sad’, “The face is sad’, “The news is sad’,
etc.
So far I have tried to do two things. I have tried to state the problem
to which the expression theory is addressed, and then I have gone on
to work at the solution of that problem in the way in which this
statement of the problem itself suggests that it be worked out. In
238 O. K. BOUWSMA
doing this I have sought deliberately to avoid the language of the
expression theory.
Here then is the phrase to be studied. The expression theory
maintains: The music is sad means: ‘he music is the expression of
sadness or of a certain sadness. The crucial word is the word ‘ex-
pression’. There are now at least two contexts which determine the
use of that word, one is the language of emotion, and the other is
the language of or about language.
Let us consider first the use of the word ‘expression’ in the
language of emotion. In the discussion of the types of sentences
above, it will be remembered that Cassie’s cousin is sad, but doesn’t
cry. She does not ‘express’ her emotion. Cassie, on the other hand,
carries on, crying, sobbing, and confiding in everyone. She ‘expresses’
her emotion, and the expression of her emotion is tears, noises, talk.
That talk is all about her cat, remember. When she reads her book,
she carries on in much the same way. In this latter case, there was
some question as to whether there was really any emotion. She was
so sad, remember, and ate popcorn. But in terms of what we just
now said, whether there is emotion or not, there certainly is ‘ex-
pression’ of emotion. These tears are just as wet as other tears, and
her sobs are just as wet too. So in both cases there is expression of
emotion, and in the first case there is emotion, thick as you please,
but in the second case, it’s not that thick.It appears, then, that you
might find it quite natural to say that there is expression of emotion
but no emotion, much as you might say that there was the thought
of an elephant, but no elephant. ‘This may not seem so strange, how-
ever, if we reflect that as in the case of Cassie’s cousin, there may be
emotion, but no or very little expression of emotion.
In order to probe the further roots of the uses of this phrase,
it may be useful to notice that the language of emotion is dom-
inantly the language of water. So many of our associations with the
word ‘emotion’ are liquid. See then: Emotions well up. Children
and young girls bubble over. There are springs of emotion. A sad
person is a deep well. Emotions come in waves; they are like the
tides; they ebb and flow. There are floods and ‘seas of passion’.
Some people gush; some are turbulent. Anger boils. A man blows up
like a boiler. Sorrow overwhelms. The dear girl froze. We all know
the theory of humours. In any case, it is easy enough, in this way,
to think of a human being as like a reservoir and an everflowing pool
THE EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART Pe3)
and stream of emotions. All flow on toward a dam, which may be
raised or lowered, and over and through which there is a constant
trickle. Behind the dam are many currents, hot, cold, lukewarm, swift,
slow, steady, rippling, smooth. And there are many colours. Perhaps
we should say that currents are never exhausted and do not altogether
trickle away. Emotions, like our thoughts, are funded, ready to be
tapped, to be rippled, to be disturbed.
Let us see how the term ‘expression’ fits into this figure. How
was it with Cassie’s cousin? Well, once there was a clear, smooth-
flowing current of affection, and it flowed, trickle, trickle, over the
dam in happy anticipation and a chestful of hope’s kitchen and linen
showers. And suddenly a planet falls, in the form of a letter, into that
deep and flowing pool. Commotion follows, waves leap, eddies swirl.
The current rushes on to the dam. And what happens? The dam
rises. Cassie’s cousin resists, bites her lip, intensifies her fist. She
keeps the current back. Her grief is impounded. She does not ‘ex-
press’ her emotion. And what happened to Cassie, when she felt so
bad about the cat? That’s easy. Then too there was a disturbance.
The current came down, splashed over the dam which did not rise
at all, and it flowed away in a hurly-burly of ‘Oh! It’s awful! My
poor kitty!’ Cassie let herself go. She ‘expressed’ her emotion.
The use of the word ‘expression’ in the light of this figure is, I
take it, clear enough. And the use of the word in this way describes
a familiar difference in the way in which good news and bad news
may affect us. And now we may ask, ‘And is it something like this
that people have in mind when they say that art is the expression of
emotion?’ Certainly something like this, at least part of the time.
Consider how Wordsworth wrote about poetry: ‘Poetry is the spon-
taneous overflow of powerful emotions’. Overflow! This suggests the
pool and the dam and the ‘powerful’ current. An emotion, lying
quiet, suddenly gets going and goes over. There is spontaneity, of
course. No planet falls and no cat is sick. The emotion is unprovoked.
There is also the common view that artists are people who are more
emotional than other people. They are temperamental. This once
again suggests the idea that they have particular need of some over-
flow. Poetry is a little like blowing off steam. Write poetry or
explode! |
This isn’t all that Wordsworth said about poetry. In the same
context he said: ‘Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity’. Again
240 O. K. BOUWSMA
this suggests a hiding place of emotion, a place where past heart-
aches are stored, and may be taken up again, ‘recollected’. We store
ideas. We also put away emotions. So we have the pool as we had
the pool before in describing Cassie’s cousin and Cassie. But now
we have something else, ‘the spontaneous overflow’ and the ‘recol-
lection in tranquillity’.
Let us consider this for a moment, again in order to notice the
use of the word ‘expression’. Cassie hears bad news and cries. She
‘expresses’ her emotion. The emotion is aroused and out it flows.
What now happens in the case of the poet? Ostensibly in his case
too emotions are aroused, but they do not flow out. Poets do not cry
enough. Emotions are stored up, blocked. Emotions accumulate.
And what happens now? Well, one of two things may happen.
Emotions may quite suddenly leap up like spray, and find a way
out, or again a poet may dip into the pool with his word dipper, and
then dip them out. It’s as though the emotions come over the dam
in little boats (the poems) and the little boats may be used over
and over again to carry over new surges. And this too may be de-
scribed in this way: The poet ‘expresses’ his emotion. Cassie cries.
The real incident is sufficient. The poet does not cry. The real
incident is not sufficient. He’s got to make poems in order to cry.
All men must cry. This may seem a bit fantastic, but this sort of
phantasy is common in explaining something as old, for instance, as
Aristotle’s use of the word ‘catharsis’.
The analogy which we have tried to exhibit now is this one:
As Cassie ’expresses’ her emotion at hearing the news, so the poet or
reader ‘expresses’ his emotion at reading the poem. The news and
the poem arouse or evoke the respective emotions. Now most people
who expound the expression theory are not content with this analogy.
They say that Cassie merely vents or discharges her emotion. This is
not ‘expression’ of emotion. Cassie merely gets rid of her emotion.
And what does the poem do? Perhaps in terms of our figure we may
say: It ripples it, blows a gentle wind over it, like a bird skimming
the water. At any rate the emotion stays. And so the theory seeks a
more suitable analogy and finds it conveniently in the language about
language.
I should like first to notice certain distinctions which lead to
this shift from the first to the second analogy. In the first place poems
and music are quite different from the occasions that make Cassie
and Cassie’s cousin so sad. Tones on a piano and a faithless lover or
a dying cat are not much alike, and this is enough to disturb the
analogy. But there is also an unmistakable difference in the use of
the word ‘emotion’ in the two cases. An ‘emotion recollected in tran-
quillity’ is, after all, as I suggested before, more like a ripple than
like a tempest. It is, accordingly, these distinctions that determine
the shift. It may be useful to notice that the general form of the first
analogy is retained in the second. For the poem and the music are
still conceived as ‘arousing’, as ‘evoking’, the emotion.
The new analogy accordingly is this one: Music ‘expresses’ sad-
ness (art expresses emotion) as sentences ‘express’ ideas. And now,
I think, it is easy to see why this analogy should have been seized
upon. In the first place so much of art involves symbols, sentences
themselves, and representations. There are horses in pictures. It is
quite easy then to fall into regarding art as symbolic; that is, as like
sentences. And now just as sentences symbolize ideas and serve to
evoke them as distinguished from real things, of which ideas are
more like shadows, so too music and poems serve to evoke emotions
of a peculiar sort, emotions which are like the shadows of real emo-
tions. So this analogy is certainly an improvement. Art is after all an
artifice, like sentences, and the emotions involved are related to the
real things in much the way that ideas are to real things, faint copies.
All this fits in very well with the idea that art is like a dream, a
substitute of real life, a vicarious more of what you cannot have, a
shadowland.
And now how does this analogy succeed?
Before answering this question, I should like to notice the use
of the words ‘evoking’ and ‘arousing’. Sentences ‘evoke’ ideas. As one
spieler I know says: ‘When I read a sentence, an idea pops into my
head’. Pops! This is something like what, according to the analogy,
is meant by sentences ‘expressing’ ideas. I am not interested in
criticizing this at this point. I wish only to clarify ideas. Pop! Con-
sider the sentence “The elephant ate a jumbo peanut’. If at the
moment when you read this sentence you see in your mind’s eye a
big elephant nuzzling around a huge peanut, this will illustrate what
“evoking’ is like. The sentence evokes; the idea pops. There is the
sentence and there is this unmistakable seeing in your mind’s eye.
And if this happened, surely you would have got the idea. What I
wish to point out is that it is this view or some similar view of how
242 O. K. BOUWSMA
sentences work, that underlies this present analogy. They ‘evoke’.
But the word ‘evoke’ has other contexts. It suggests spirits, witch-
craft. The spirit of Samuel appearing at the behest of the witch of
Endor is an ‘evocation’. Spiritualistic mediums ‘evoke’ the living
spirits of the dead. And the point of this association is that the spirits
are waiting, in the second or third canto of Dante’s Comedy, petr-
haps, to be called. They are in storage like our ideas, like our emo-
tions. And the word ‘arouse’ is like the word ‘evoke’. Whom do you
arouse? The sleeper. And so, sleeping ideas and sleeping emotions
lie bedded in that spacious dormitory—hush!—we call the mind.
Waiting to be called! And why now have I made a point of this?
Because this helps to fill out this analogy by which in particular we
are led to use the word ‘feeling’ or ‘emotion’ in the language of the
expression theory. ‘he music ‘evokes’, ‘arouses’ feelings.
Now then, do poems and music and pictures evoke emotions as
sentences evoke images? I think that they frequently do. Cassie
reading her book may be cited as an instance. ‘his seems to me a
very common type of experience. It happens at the movies, in read-
ing novels, and even in listening to music. People are moved to tears.
If, accordingly, the expression theory were intended merely to de-
scribe experience of this sort, I should say, “Very well’. In that case
there would be no particular puzzle, beyond presenting this analogy
clearly. But I, at least, am convinced that this is not all.
The difficulty, then, does not arise concerning experiences of
this sort. The puzzle arises and remains most stubbornly where the
sadness is dry-eyed. And here the analogy with language seems, at
least, to be of no use. Cassie may read the passage with feeling, but
without the flicker of an eyelash. And she may listen to sad music
as cool and intent as she is gazing at a butterfly. She might say that
it was more like watching, fascinated, the pain in a suffering face,
herself quite undistressed. Santayana identifies the experiences in
this way: ‘Not until I confound the impressions (the music, the
sentences) and suffuse the symbols with the emotions they arouse,
and find joy and sweetness in the very words I hear, will the ex-
pressiveness constitute a beauty. . ..2 I propose now to study this
sentence.
Now notice how curious this is. Once more we have the sen-
2 Sense of Beauty (1896), p. 149.

tences or the music. And these arouse emotion. This describes Cassie
reading her book. So we might expect that Cassie would cry and
would sob and so on, But this isn’t all. Cassie is confused. Actually
she is crying but she thinks the words are crying. She wipes her tears
off those words. She sighs but the words heave. The sentence of
Santayana suggests that she sees the sentences she reads through her
tears and now her tears misserve her much as blue moods or dark
glasses do. So Cassie looks through sadness and the sentence is tear-
ful. What a pathetic fallacy! From confusion to suffusion! Are there
misplaced emotions? Imagine what this would be like where sentences
aroused not emotions but a toothache. And now you confused the
toothache with the sentence, and before someone prevented you,
you sent the sentence to the dentist.
Nevertheless, Santayana has almost certainly identified an ex-
perience that is different from that in which Cassie is sad over her
book. We find ‘joy and sweetness in the very words’ we hear. Clearly,
too, Santayana has been misled by these words ‘joy and sweetness’.
For if there is joy and sweetness, where should these be but where
they usually are? Where is joy then and where is sweetness? In the
human breast, in the heart (‘my heart leaps up when I behold’), in
the eye. And if you say this, then indeed there must be some illusion.
The sentence is like a mirror that catches and holds what is in the
heart. And so artful are poets’ sentences that the best readers are the
best confused. I want now, however, to suggest that indeed joy and
sweetness, and sadness too, are in the very words you hear. But in
that case, joy and sweetness must be of the sort that can be in
sentences. We must, accordingly, try to figure out what this ‘joy
and sweetness in the very words’ is like. For even though, making a
mistake, one imagined they were in the words, their being there must
make some sense. And Santayana too does not imagine that sen-
tences cry.
Let me return now to the analogy: The music is sad is like:
The sentence expresses an idea. We saw before how the sentence
‘The elephant ate a jumbo peanut’ might be accompanied by an
image and how this was like sentences or music arousing emotions.
We want now to see how we might use the phrase “joy and sweet-
ness in the very words’. Do we have a meaning for “The idea in the
very words you hear’. Where is the idea of the elephant eating a
jumbo peanut? Suppose we say, ‘It’s in the very words you hear’.
244 O. K. BOUWSMA
Have you ever seen, in your mind’s eye, that is, an elephant eating a
peanut in the very words you hear? A sentence is like a circus tent?
I do not suppose that anyone who said that joy and sweetness are in
the very words you hear would be likely to say that this was like the
way in which you might also see an image in the very sentence
which you hear—a bald head in the word ‘but’. I should like in any
case to try something different.
I do not intend to abandon the analogy with language yet. Music
is expression of emotion as sentences are expression of ideas. But
now how do sentences express ideas? We have noticed one way in
which sentences do sometimes have meaning. Sentences, however,
have been described in many ways. Sentences are like buzzers, like
doorbells, like electric switches. Sentences are like mirrors, like maps,
like pictures; sentences are like road signs, with arrows pointing
the way. And so we might go on to ask, ‘Is music like buzzers, like
pictures, like road sign arrows?’ I do not however intend to do this.
It will be noticed that the same analogy by which we have been
trying to understand music, art, etc., may serve us also to understand
what language is like. The analogy presupposes that we do know
something about music, and so turning the analogy to this use may
be fruitful. It might show us just how enlightening and how unen-
lightening the analogy is.
In order to study the analogy between music and the sentence
and to try in this way to find out what the sentence is like, I now
intend to offer a foolish theory. This may throw into clearer relief
what Santayana says. What is understanding a sentence like? Under-
standing a sentence is speaking the sentence in a certain way. You
can tell, listening to yourself talk, that you are understanding the
sentence, and so can anyone else who hears you speak. Understanding
has its rhythm. So the meaning of the sentence consists in a certain
reading of the sentence. If, in this case, a sentence is spoken and
not understood by someone, there would be only one thing to do;
namely, speak the sentence again. Obviously this account will not do
for there are other ways of clarifying what we mean. Nevertheless,
in some cases it may be all that is necessary.
Now notice. If this were what the meaning of a sentence is like,
we should see at once what was meant if someone said that the
meaning or the idea is in the sentence. For if there is meaning, where
could it be but in the sentence, since the sentence is all there is?
THE EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART haSS
Of course, it is true that the sentence would have to be spoken and,
of course, spoken in some way or other. And with every variation
in reading it might then be said to have a different meaning. If
anyone asked, ‘And what does the sentence mean?’ expecting you
to point to something or to elaborate the matter in gestures or to
translate, it would be clear that he quite misunderstood what mean-
ing is like. One might even correct him, saying it is even misleading
to say that the meaning is in the sentence, as though it were only a
part of the sentence, or tucked away somehow under overlapping
syllables. A sentence having meaning in a case like this would be
something like a living thing. Here too one might ask, ‘Where is the
life in a squirrel and in a geranium?’ Truly the life is the squirrel and
is the geranium and is no part of either nor tucked away in some
hidden fold or tiny vein. And so it is with the sentence, according
to our imaginary theory. We might speak of the sentence as like a
living thing.
And now let us see whether we have some corresponding use
for “The joy and sweetness are in the very words you hear’. People
do ask about the meaning of poems and even about the meaning of
music. Let us first of all say that the meaning is ‘the joy and sweet-
ness’, and the sadness. And where are these? In the very words you
hear, and in the music. And now notice that what was admittedly a
foolish theory in respect to sentences is not a foolish theory in respect
to poems or music. Do you get the poem? Do you get the music? If
you do not, pointing, gestures, translations will not help. (Under-
standing the words is presupposed.) There will be only one thing to
do; namely, read the verses again, play the music once more. And
what will the joy and sweetness and the sadness be like? They will
be like the life in the living thing, not to be distinguished as some
one part of the poem or music and not another part, or as some
shadow that follows the sounded words or tones. ‘In the very words
you hear’, like the squirrel in fur!
I infer now that the analogy between the ‘joy and sweetness’ in
words and the meaning in sentences is misleading and is not likely
to be helpful. The meaning of sentences is translatable, but the
‘meaning’ of poems, of music, is not. We have seen how this is so.
There may, of course, be something in the sounding of all sentences
which is analogous to the ‘joy and sweetness in the very words’, but
it is not the meaning of those sentences. And now this is an inter-
246 O. K. BOUWSMA
esting consequence. It makes sense to ask, “What does the sentence
express?’ It expresses a meaning, of course, and you may have some
way of showing what this is, without using the sentence to do so.
But now it makes no sense to ask, ‘What does the poem express?’ or
‘What does the music express?” We may say, if we like, that both are
expressive, but we must beware of the analogy with language. And
we may prevent the helpless searching in this case, by insisting that
they ‘express’ nothing, nothing at all.
And now let us review. My assumption has been that the ex-
pression theory is plagued with certain analogies that are not clearly
distinguished, and none of which finally is helpful without being
misleading. The first analogy is that in terms of which we commonly
think of emotions. The second is that in terms of which we think of
language, the doorbell view. Besides this there are two different types
of experience that arise in connexion with art. One of these types
may be fairly well described by the analogy with doorbell language.
The similarity of our language, however, in respect to both these
types of experience, conceals the difference between those two types.
Santayana’s sentence reveals the agony that follows the recognition
of this difference in these types of experience and the attempt to
employ the language which describes the one to describe the other.
The language requires very interesting translation. My conclusion,
accordingly, is this: ‘The analogy drawn from language may be useful
in describing one type of experience. It is practically useless in de-
scribing the other. Since, then, these two analogies dominate the use
of the word ‘expression’, I suggest that, for the sake of clarity and
charity, they be abandoned in seeking to describe that ‘expressive-
ness’ which Santayana says constitutes ‘a beauty’.
If we now abandon these analogies, are we also to abandon the
use of the word ‘expression’? Not unless we please to do so. But we
do so at our risk, for these analogies are not easily abandoned. We
may, however, fortify our use of this word by considerations such as
these. We use the word ‘expressive’ to describe faces. And we use
‘expressive’ in much the same way that we use the phrase ‘has
character’. A face that is expressive ‘has character’. But when we
now say that a face has character, this may remind us that the letters
of the alphabet are characters. Let us suppose for a moment that
this is related to ‘He’s a character!’ I suppose that he’s a character
and he has a character do not mean quite the same thing. There are
THE EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART 24/
antics in he’s a character. Try again: The zig-zag line has character
and the wavy line has character. Each letter of the alphabet is a
character, but also has character. The number tokens, 1 23456789
—each has its character. In the same way sounds have character. Let
me say whether we can explain this further. You might say that if
some dancing master were to arrange a dance for each of the num-
bers, you might see how a dance for the number one would not do
at all for number five. Or again if the numbers were to be dressed in
scarfs, again a certain colour and a certain flimsy material would do
for six but would not suit five at all. Now something of the same sort
is true of words, and particularly of some. Words have character. I
am tempted to say that all these things have their peculiar feel, but
this then must be understood on the analogy with touch. If we, for
instance, said that all these things have their peculiar feeling, then
once again it might be supposed that in connexion with them there
is a feeling which is aroused by them.
Let your ears and your eyes, perhaps, too, feel these familiar bits
of nonsense:
Hi diddle diddle!
Fee! fi, fo, fum!
Intery, mintery.
ADTa Cascay Dia.
Each has its character. Each is, in this sense, expressive. But to ask
now ‘What is its character or what does it express?’ is to fall into
the pit. You may, of course, experiment to exhibit more clearly just
what the character, in each case, is. You may, for instance, contrast
the leaping, the stomping, the mincing, the shuffle, with what you
get if you change the vowels. Try:
Ho! doodle doodle!

Fa, fo, fu, fim!
Untery, muntery.
Ay bray cay day bray.
One might also go on to change consonants in order again to exhibit

character by giving the words new edges and making their sides
steeper or smoothing them down. ;
I do not intend, in proposing illustrations of this sort, to suggest
248 O. K. BOUWSMA
that art is nonsense and that its character is simple as these syllables
are. A face, no doubt may bear the impress, the character, of a life’s
torment and of its hope and victory. So too words and phrases may
come blazing out of the burning past. In art the world is born afresh,
but the travail of the artist may have had its beginnings in children’s
play. My only point is that once the poem is born it has its character
as surely as a cry in the night or intery, mintery. And this character
is not something that follows it around like a clatter in a man’s
insides when he reads it. ‘The light of the sun is in the sun, where
you see it. So with the character of the poem. Hear the words and
do not imagine that in hearing them you gulp a jigger to make
yourself foam. Rather suppose that the poem is as hard as marble,
ingrained, it may be, with indelible sorrow.
If, accordingly, we now use the sentence “Art is expression’, or
‘Art is expressive’, and the use of this sentence is determined by
elucidations such as I have just now set out, then, I think that our
language may save us from some torture. And this means that we
are now prepared to use freely those sentences that the expression
theory is commonly inclined to correct. For now, unabashed, we
shall say that the music is sad, and we shall not go on to say that
this means that the music expresses sadness. For the sadness is to
the music rather like the redness to the apple, than it is like the
burp to the cider. And above all we shall not, having heard the
music or read the poem, ask, ‘What does it express?’
And now it’s many words ago since we left Verbo and his friend at
the corner. Verbo was trying to figure out, you remember, how the
music was related to his grandmother. How can music be sad? I
suggested then that he was having word trouble, and that it would
be necessary to probe his sentences. And so we probed. And now
what shall we tell Verbo?
Verbo, we will say, the music is sad. And then we will remind
him that the geranium is living, and that the sun is light. We will
say these things so that he will not look away from the music to
discover the sadness of it. Are you looking for the life in the gera-
nium? Are you looking for the light in the sun? As then the life and
the light describe the geranium and the sun, so too does sadness
describe the music. And then we shall have to go on to tell him
about these fearful analogies, and about Santayana’s wrestle on the
precipice. And about how we cut the ropes! And you may be sure
that just as things are going along so well, Verbo will ask, flicking
the ashes from his cigarette, ‘And what about the sadness?’
And now it’s time to take the cat out of the bag, for so far all
that has been exposed is the bag. The sadness is a quality of what
we have already described as the character, the expressive. One piece
of music is like and unlike some other pieces of music. These simi-
larities and these differences may be perceived. Now then, we have
a class of sad music. But why sad; that is, why use this word? It
must be remembered, of course, that the use of this word is not
precise. So there may be some pieces of music which are unmistak-
ably sad, and others which shade off in gradations to the point where
the question ‘Is it sad?’ is not even asked. Suppose we ask our
question ‘Why sad?’ in respect to the unmistakable cases. Then,
perhaps, some such answer as this will do. Sad music has some of
the characteristics of people who are sad. It will be slow, not tripping:
it will be low, not tinkling. People who are sad move more slowly,
and when they speak, they speak softly and low. Associations of this
sort may, of course, be multiplied indefinitely. And this now is the
kitten in whose interest we made so much fuss about the bag. The
kitten has, I think, turned out to be a scrawny little creature, not
worth much. But the bag was worth it.
The bag was worth it? What I have in mind is that the identi-
fication of music as the expressive, as character, is crucial. ‘That the
expressive is sad serves now only to tag the music. It is introspective
or, in relation to the music, an aside. It’s a judgment that intervenes.
Music need not be sad, nor joyous, nor anything else. A‘stheticians
usually account for this by inventing all sorts of emotions without
names, an emotion for every piece of music. Besides, bad music,
characterless music, the unexpressive, may be sad in quite the same
way that good music may be. This is no objection, of course, to such
classifications. I am interested only in clarifying the distinction be-
tween our uses of these several sentences.
And now that I have come to see what a thicket of tangle-words
I’ve tried to find my way through, it seems to me that I am echoing
such words as years ago I read in Croce, but certainly did not then
understand. Perhaps if I read Croce again now I shouldn’t under-
stand them either. ‘Beauty is expression.’
13
VINCENT A. TOMAS,
DOUGLAS N. MORGAN,
and MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
THE CONCEPT
OF EXPRESSION
IN ART
VINCENT A. TOMAS
Tolstoy, Santayana, Bosanquet, Ducasse, Reid, and Dewey, among

many others, have exploited the concept of expression in their theories
of art and aesthetic objects. They use the term “expression” to refer
to (1) the creative activity of artists, (2) a characteristic of works
of art, and (3) a characteristic of aesthetic objects. Let us refer to
(1), the process, as artistic expression; to (2), the characteristic of
products of art, as objective expression; and to (3), the characteristic
of aesthetic objects, as aesthetic expression. As we shall see, (1) is
defined in terms of (2), and (2) is defined in terms of (3).
The basic concept of expression, then, is (3), and in what fol-
lows I shall be mainly concerned with it. My main thesis will be that
the “two terms theory” of aesthetic expression is untenable, and
that if we want to be clear about (3), and therefore about (1) and
The sections by Professors Tomas and Morgan are reprinted from Science,
Language, and Human Rights, the 1952 Proceedings of the Eastern Division of
the American Philosophical Association. Reprinted by permission of the authors
and the American Philosophical Association. The section by Professor Beardsley
is published here for the first time.
250
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART 251]
(2), we must adopt some version of the theory that in aesthetic
expression, “the expressive thing” and “the thing expressed” are
really “one” thing, not “two.”
1. Artistic expression. Theorists of art generally distinguish be-
tween artistic and nonartistic expression. When dogs and cats express
their feeling in the manner described by Darwin, they are not en-
gaged in artistic activity. Similarly, in man, behavior which is merely
symptomatic of a feeling, such as blushing when one is embarrassed
or swearing when one is angry, is not artistic expression of feeling.
Collingwood says it is just a “betrayal” of feeling,1 Dewey says it is
“just a boiling over” of a feeling,? and Ducasse says it is “a merely
impulsive blowing off of emotional steam.”? As Hospers says, “A
person may give vent to grief without expressing grief.’4 Unlike
merely giving vent to or betraying a feeling, artistic expression con-
sists in the deliberate creation of something which “embodies” or
“objectifies” the feeling.
We should notice that the process of embodying or objectifying
a feeling is one and the same as the process of expressing it. The
definition of artistic expression is not circular, however, because
according to it artistic expression is a consciously controlled making
of a product which, in the second sense, expresses, embodies, or
objectifies a feeling.
2. Objective expression. ‘The expressiveness of a product of
artistic expression is a disposition of it. A painted canvas or a piece
of carved marble “embodies” a feeling, 1.¢., is objectively expressive,
in the sense that it has the capacity to cause, under assigned con-
ditions, an aesthetically expressive effect in a contemplative perceiver
of it. This definition, of course, transfers the problem of analysis to
the concept of aesthetic expression. But by adopting it, we gain two
advantages.
First, we are able to avoid an unsatisfactory feature in what
T. S. Eliot says about objective correlatives. According to Eliot,
1R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (The Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1938)) pp. 421-24.
2John Dewey, Art as Experience (Minton, Balch and Co., New York, 1934),
p 61.
3C. J. Ducasse, Art, the Critics, and You (Oskar Piest, New York, 1944), p.
58.
4John Hospers, Meaning and Truth in the Arts (The University of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1946), p. 62.
252 TOMAS, MORGAN, BEARDSLEY
works of art are expressive in the sense that they are “such that
when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience,
are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”® But just as “a person
may give vent to grief without expressing grief,” so, too, a work of
art may evoke grief without expressing it. What is lost on Eliot's
view that the expressiveness of a work of art is merely its capacity
to evoke a feeling in a spectator is the notion of embodiment, the
same thing that would be lost if we were to think of the process of
expression as being merely the process of betraying, or of giving vent
to, a feeling. If we define both artistic and objective expression
ultimately in terms of aesthetic expression, the notion of embodiment
can be retained.
The second advantage is that on this view we do not make the
class of expressive things co-extensive with the class of works of art.
There are many more things which embody or objectify feelings in
the sense that they objectively express them than there are things
which are products of artistic expression of feelings. Real landscapes,
and not merely pictures of landscapes, are objectively expressive.
Hence, if we hold that anything is objectively expressive if it has the
capacity to cause, under assigned conditions, an aesthetically expres-
sive effect in a contemplator of it, and do not specify the way in
which it must have acquired this capacity, we leave room for those
things which have the capacity by accident, as well as for those
which have it by design. We should thus have no trouble in avoiding
having to speak of a piece of driftwood, which is admittedly objec-
tively expressive, as if it were a work of art, like a man-made carving,
when in fact it is a product not of art but of the blind workings of
water, wind, and weather.
3. Aesthetic expression. Possibly the majority of writers on the
subject since Santayana agree with him that aesthetic expression is
such that the following two propositions are true: (i) “In all ex-
pression we may thus distinguish two terms: the first is the object
actually presented, the word, the image, the expressive thing; the
second is the object suggested, the further thought, emotion, or
image evoked, the thing expressed.”® (ii) “Expression depends upon
the union of two terms. . . . The value of the second must be
5T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays: 1917-32 (Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York,
1932) palao:
8 George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York,
1936),/p. 147.
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART Za3
incorporated in the first.”7 Of course, as Santayana tacitly assumes,
expression involves three terms, the third being the mind in which
the presented object evokes “the thing expressed,” or to which the
value of the second term appears as being “incorporated” in the first.
The import of (i) and (ii) may be illustrated by the stock
example of the music which some listener experiences as sad. When
music expresses sadness, (i) the three terms involved are the listener,
the music, and the sadness. But (ii) the listener apprehends the
music and the sadness as one thing, not as two. The sadness is said
to be incorporated or embodied in, or to be fused with, the music.
This second defining condition is what serves to distinguish an ex-
pression from a sign. In the normal sign situation, something pre-
sented stands for or represents something which is not presented.
Thus, the leitmotif we hear represents Siegfried, who has not yet
made his entrance on the stage. But when music expresses sadness,
it does not represent sadness. It presents it. In Dewey’s terminology,
the expressive object does not “lead” to an experience; it “constitutes
one.”’8
4. Ambiguity of the “two terms.” The contrast between an
expression and a sign raises a so-called problem of expression. It is
the problem of construing the defining conditions (i) and (ii) in
such a way as to make them compatible with each other. For, it
would seem, the concept of aesthetic expression is a concept of
something such that if, for a contemplator C, A expresses B, B is
presented “in” A, though A is something given, and B is not given,
but suggested or evoked. The problem is to explain how this is possi-
ble. The “central problem of the aesthetic attitude,” Bosanquet said,
is “how a feeling can be got into an object.”® As Reid puts it (his
italics), “How do perceived characters come to appear to possess, for
aesthetic imagination, qualities which as bare perceived facts they do
not possess? How does body, a nonmental object, come to ‘embody’
or ‘express,’ for our aesthetic imagination, values which it does not
literally contain? Why should colours and shapes and patterns, sounds
and harmonies and rhythms, come to mean so very much more than
they are?”’?°
7 Ibid., pp. 148-49.
8 Art as Experience, p. 85. ?
9 Bernard Bosanquet, Three Lectures on Aesthetic (Macmillan and Co., Ltd.,
London; 1915), p. 74: ; f
10 Louis Arnaud Reid, A Study in Aesthetics (The Macmillan Company, New
York, 1931), pp. 62-63.
This problem, to which Santayana, Reid, and others have de-
voted so much attention and ingenuity, is, I submit, a pseudo-
problem. It presupposes something false, namely, that (Reid’s italics)
“The embodiment of value in the aesthetic object is of such nature
that the value ‘embodied’ in the perceived object or ‘body’ is not
literally situated in ‘the body.’ The ‘joy’ expressed in music is not
literally in the succession of sounds.”!! To see why this is false, let us
ask what exactly are the two terms of aesthetic expression: “the object
actually presented . . . the expressive thing,” on the one hand, and
“the object suggested . . . the thing expressed,” on the other.
a) The first term is not a physical thing or event. An interpre-
tation of the two terms theory over which, I think, we will not need
to linger is that the first term is a physical thing or event—the picture
or statue which reflects light rays, or the plucking of a string which
produces sound waves in the air. Santayana occasionally makes state-
ments which lend themselves to this interpretation, as when he says,
“The first term is the source of stimulation. ...”1* Similarly, Gotshalk
says that “a person may assert that a certain nonrepresentational
painting expresses calmness and gentleness. . . . since the painting is
the clear causal source of the feeling qualities evoked, these qualities
are immediately taken as suggested by the painting, and their sug-
gestion is taken as an integral feature of the painting’s being.’4*
Passages like these, in which paintings or music are regarded as “the
source of stimulation” or “the clear causal source of the feeling
qualities evoked,” suggest that the first term is Eliot’s objective cor-
relative. If the objective correlative were indeed the first term in
aesthetic expression, we should have to say, in accordance with
Santayana’s second defining condition, and as Gotshalk seems to say,
that the emotion it has the capacity to evoke in a contemplator is
incorporated in, or is “an integral feature of,” the physical state of
affairs which is the cause or the causal condition of the emotion. In
other words, when music expresses sadness to a listener, (i) the three
terms involved would be the listener, sound waves, and sadness, and
(ii) the listener would apprehend the sound waves and the sadness
as one thing, not as two. But the listener does not apprehend sound
11 [bid., p. 60.
12 The Sense of Beauty, p. 54.
13D. W. Gotshalk, Art and the Social Order (The University of Chicago. Press.
Chicago, 1947), p. 138.
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART 255
waves at all. Not these, but sound qualities, are “actually presented,”
1.€., are the content of his contemplative perception. What expresses
sadness to him is an apparent or phenomenological object, not its
presumed physical cause.
b) The two terms are equally “apparent” or “presented.” The
two terms theory might be interpreted in such a way as to make the
first term, “the object actually presented,” that which appears to us
in aesthetic contemplation. The second term would then be, pre-
sumably, something that does not appear, but is “the object sug-
gested.”
What thus appears, it is often said, is the aesthetic surface, con-
sisting of sense qualities (colors, sounds, smells, etc.) and their rela-
tion—in Santayana’s terminology, sensuous material and form; and
what is suggested by the surface is feeling import. On this view, the
first term in the sad music we hear is a pattern of sounds, devoid of
feeling import; and the second term is its sad-feeling import, devoid
of sensuous embodiment.
The very attempt to state this view precisely makes it evident
that the distinction between surface and feeling import (between
“Dody” and “what is embodied,” or between “the expressive thing”
and “the thing expressed”) can be made only by an effort of abstrac-
tion. The idea of what Reid refers to as “bare perceived facts” is, as
Collingwood says, “the product of a process of sterilization.”** An
aesthetic surface does not appear to us stripped of its feeling import;
on the contrary, in aesthetic contemplation, whatever appears is
emotionally charged. Direct inspection of the content of aesthetic
perception reveals no basis whatever for regarding its sterilized sen-
suous pattern as being something “actually presented” and its feeling
import as being something “suggested.” From the phenomenological
point of view, feeling import is “literally in” aesthetic objects in
precisely the same sense that colors are. “Body” and “what is em-
bodied” are equally given in aesthetic experience, and Santayana’s
formulation of the criterion for distinguishing the two terms is, there-
fore, unsatisfactory.
c) A sense in which the two terms are equally “objective.” If
the two terms theory is reformulated so as to make the criterion to
be used in distinguishing between the first and second terms the same
14 The Principles of Art, p. 163.

as the one marking off the subjective from the objective elements in
the phenomenological content, it seems to fare no better. Discussion
of it, however, is complicated by the treacherous ambiguity and
vagueness of the words “subjective” and “objective.”
These sometimes mean “bodily” and “extra-bodily,” respectively.
When they do, those elements of a phenomenological content are
subjective, or “in the subject,’ which are intuited as being situated
in the body of the perceiver; and those elements are objective, or
‘Gn the object,” which are intuited as being outside the body.*® Reid
sometimes uses these notions in formulating the two terms theory.
In one place he writes:
. . in aesthetic experience we are not, normally, thinking about our

bodies, but rather about the sounds and the colours. These are, in per-
ception, taken as existing in the world external to the body. Now, though
these objects are, in the sense just stated, but causes in us of values, we
do not, aesthetically, regard them as causes, but as themselves ‘“‘express-
ing” values. Our question is, How do the values get there? The only
possible answer is that we put them there—in imagination. They are
not, aesthetically, apprehended as belonging to the organism. The focus
of interest is in the external object, and to the external object they
become imputed.1®
As will be indicated in (d) below, Reid also thinks of the sub-

jective and the objective in other senses than the ones just specified.
But in the sense specified, the second term is as objective a feature
of the phenomenological content as aesthetic surface. Reid admits
this when he writes that values “are not, aesthetically, apprehended
as belonging to the organism.” When music expresses sadness to us,
we do not feel the sadness to be in us, the way we feel the nostalgic
sadness evoked by a (possibly gay) popular song, which we knew in
our youth, to be in us. Or, as O. K. Bouwsma says, in his playful
but discerning “The Expression Theory of Art,’ when music ex-
presses sadness, the sadness is to the music like the redness to the
apple, not like the burp to the cider.17 The endeavor to construct a
version of the two terms theory in which the first term is objective
15 Compare Carroll C. Pratt, The Meaning of Music (McGraw-Hill Book Co.,

Inc., New York, 1931), pp. 157-59.
16 A Study in Aesthetics, p. 79.
17In Max Black, ed., Philosophical Analysis (Cornell University Press, Ithaca,
New York, 1950), p. 100.
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART Za,
and the second is subjective, in the senses just specified, leads away
from our subject. We then cease to discuss the concept of expression
and deal with that of evocation instead.18 If we stick to our subject,
and to the senses of “subjective” and “objective” that have been
specified, there is no reason whatever for distinguishing two terms,
one subjective, the other objective, in the aesthetic object.
d) A sense in which the two terms are equally “‘subjective.” It
will be said that the criterion by which we distinguish the two terms
is an epistemological, not a phenomenological, criterion—that, on
general epistemological grounds, we must distinguish between ob-
jective and subjective components in the aesthetic object. People and
probably animals can literally be sad, but music cannot, no more than
the sea-foam, if Ruskin was right, can be cruel or can crawl. Appear-
ances to the contrary notwithstanding, then, feeling import is, in an
epistemological sense, “in us,” not “in the object.” Thus, Ducasse
says that it is true “that in ecpathy the object is not apprehended as
out of us and the feeling as in us... . The feeling is apprehended as
if it were a quality of the object. Nevertheless, when we are not
actually going through the ecpathizing process, but describing it, we
are well aware of the duality of object and subject, and of the fact
that the feeling is experienced by the subject.’”’?® Similarly, Perry says,
“That feeling does somehow color its object is an undeniable fact of
experience, and a fact recognized by common speech in so far as all
of the familiar feelings assume the form of adjectives.” However, “It
seems necessary at some point to admit that the qualities of feeling
may be ‘referred’ where they do not belong, or that an object may for
summary purposes of poetic suggestion be endowed with characters
that accurate judgment will attribute to their effects or to their
context.’”’2° And, still in the same vein, Reid says that although the
hedonic effects of things are “in aesthetic experience apprehended
to some extent as if they were hedonic properties of the external
thing,” the fact is that “they belong, analytically and abstractly re-
garded, to the side of the subject and not of the object.” In Reid’s
opinion, “most philosophers would be ready to admit that.”
18 Compare Carroll C. Pratt, The Meaning of Music, p. 162.
19 C, J. Ducasse, The Philosophy of Art (The Dial Press, New Wous, IAD), i
gg:
20 Ralph Barton Perry, General Theory of Value (Longmans, Green, and Co.,
New York, 1926), p. 31.
Hence, if music expresses sadness to a listener, what is happening
is that his listening to the music causes the listener to be sad, and
he erroneously interprets the sadness affecting him to be a charac-
teristic not of himself but of the music. Again we have the problem
of explaining “how a feeling can be got into an object.” It gets there,
it is variously said, by being incorporated or objectified (Santayana),
empathized (Lee and Lipps), distanced (Bullough), imagined
(Reid), or in some other way “projected” from the subject into the
object. In these versions of the two terms theory, contemplative per-
ception of the sad music is dual. It consists in part in our taking the
first term for what it really is, and in part in our mistaking the
second term, or feeling import, for what it really is not.
The prima facie plausibility of these versions largely vanishes, I
think, when we notice their tacit shifts in the meaning of the word
“object,” or, better, the way they shuttle back and forth between the
use of “object” in the sense of aesthetic, i.e., phenomenological
object, and its use in the sense of ontological, i.e., “real” object.??
When these shifts or shuttlings are made explicit, what these versions
all contend is that while feeling import admittedly does characterize
the aesthetic object, in precisely the way sense qualities do, there are
reasons for believing that it does not characterize the ontological
object. Feeling import is not “literally in’”” ontological objects in the
sense that it is, after all, an effect in, and therefore existentially
dependent on, the contemplator; if there were no contemplators,
there would be no feeling import, even though there were ontological
objects. At the same time, these versions take it for granted (else
why do they protest so much the objectivity of feeling?) that the
first term characterizes not only the aesthetic object but also the
ontological object. The qualities constituting it are presumed to be
“literally in” the ontological object in the sense that they would
characterize it even if no contemplators existed. We may well ask,
therefore, What, exactly, according to these versions, constitutes the
first term? What qualities of aesthetic objects are “objective” in the
sense that, unlike feeling import, they are also qualities of ontological
objects?
The most likely candidate is the sterilized aesthetic surface—
the pattern of sense qualities devoid of feeling import. The difficulty
here is that if we hold that this surface is objective in the sense
22. Cf. C. D. Broad, The Mind and its Place in Nature (Kegan Paul, Trench
Trubner and Co., Ltd., London, 1925), pp. 141-43. j
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART Zoo
required, i.e., that colors, sounds, and other sense qualities are
“literally in” the ontological object, whereas feeling import never is,
we are accepting some sort of naive realism with respect to the
former, at the same time that we are arbitrarily denying it with
respect to the latter. ‘This is what Reid does most of the time that
he discusses aesthetic expression. Reid never notices that the same
sort of reasons that are given for believing that feeling import does
not characterize ontological objects may also be given for believing
that sense qualities do not characterize ontological objects. Reid
says, “When our blood is stirred and we feel martial, we call the
trumpet’s note martial. From the queer shivers it gives us, we say that
the flute ‘complains.’”?? When we apprehend phenomenologically
objective feeling, that is, the feel of bodily processes is being “im-
puted” to an external thing. Yet the very same thing may be said
about sense qualities. “What is the color of the sky,” Prall asks, “but
the way it strikes our eye, the way it feels through vision?’’24 Hart-
shorne suggests that when we see a red book, “what we intuit as red
is the state of our own nerves. . . .”25
Santayana, in spite of his adherence to the two terms doctrine, is
consistent on this point. When he proposes its phenomenological
objectivity as the differentia of aesthetic pleasure, he writes: “If we
say that other men should see the beauties we see, it is because we
think those beauties are in the object, like its color, proportion, or
size... . But this notion is radically absurd and contradictory. ... A
beauty not perceived is a pleasure not felt, and a contradiction. But
modern philosophy has taught us to say the same thing of every
element of the perceived world; all are sensations; and their grouping
into objects imagined to be permanent and external is the work of
certain habits of our intelligence.” For Santayana, in this place at
least, the status of phenomenologically objective feeling is no dif-
ferent from that of phenomenologically objective color or sound
quality. The one is no more or no less “‘literally in” the ontological
object than the other: “Convenience and economy of thought alone
determine what combination of our sensations we shall continue to
objectify and treat as the cause of the rest.”?°
24D, W. Prall, Aesthetic Analysis (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1936),
, 148.
25Charles Hartshorne, The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation (The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1934), p. 247.
26 The Sense of Beauty, pp. 35-37.
So far, to avoid complicating our argument, we have made no
mention of representation. But a theory of expression must account
for the expressiveness of aesthetic objects which are represented, as
well as presented, entities..‘The expressive thing need not be a
sensuous pattern; it may be something represented by such a pattern.
And it need not be something sensed or perceived; it might be
something conceived or imagined. As Ducasse says, “the realm of
possible objects of aesthetic contemplation includes every entity
which in any way whatever can become a content of attention.”*”
Now, in no matter what way an entity becomes a content of con-
templative attention, it is, qua such a content, “the thing presented
. . . the expressive thing,” with its characteristic feeling import. It
is doubtful that anyone who feels obliged to insist that feeling
import is not literally in the object would want to insist, when the
aesthetic object is a nonexistent, imagined object, that any other
quality is. But then by what criterion would he distinguish between
the two terms?
5. The aesthetically expressive object is one thing, not a fusion
of two. If the preceding contentions are sound, and none of the three
criteria usually put forward for distinguishing two terms in aesthetic
expression is satisfactory, to save the two terms theory we must find
some other criterion which is satisfactory. One possible alternative,
that of the alleged independent variability of the two terms, is re-
served for consideration below. Meanwhile, in view of the difficulties
in the two terms theory so far considered, it seems worth while
entertaining the hypothesis, defended by Pratt, Hartshorne, and
Langer, that the aesthetically expressive object really is but one thing,
and not a distinguishable fusion of two.
All three of these writers hold fast to the phenomenological
distinction between subjective and objective feelings. The sadness
evoked by bereavement is in us, but the sadness expressed by music
is not in us but in the object. If the relation between subjective and
objective sadness were one of identity, this would raise the question
how a feeling can be got into an object in an insoluble form. But,
according to Pratt and Langer, the relation is one of analogy of
structure. Pratt, reserving the word “emotion” for subjective feelings
exclusively, holds that “visual and especially auditory processes in-
27 The Philosophy of Art, p. 224.

trinsically contain certain properties which, because of their close
resemblance to certain characteristics in the subjective realm, are
frequently confused with emotions proper.”28 On his view, sad music
sounds the way (subjective) sadness feels.2® According to Langer,
“there are certain aspects of the so-called ‘inner life’—physical or
mental—which have found properties similar to those of music—
patterns of motion and rest, of tension and release, of agreement and
disagreement, preparation, fulfilment, excitation, sudden change,
etc.”8° What the sad music reflects to the contemplator is “the
morphology” of subjective or “real” sadness.?1 In sum, according to
Pratt and Langer the sad music is like subjective sadness in its struc-
ture, and, when savored in aesthetic contemplation, it feels like it.
Of course, since its quality is “distanced,” “embodied,” “not our
own,” etc., it does not feel exactly like it.
Charles Hartshorne’s view is more radical. In his fascinating but
apparently strangely neglected The Philosophy and Psychology of
Sensation,*? he presents “the contradictory of the doctrine of the
irreducible distinctness of sensory qualities and effective tones.”** He
contends that sensory qualities constitute a subclass of feeling tones,
as do subjective emotions. “Indeed, a maximum of attention upon
sensations themselves shows them to be feelings, to possess emotional
qualities as their intrinsic essence.”** ‘The ‘affective’ tonality, the
aesthetic or tertiary quality, usually supposed to be merely ‘associated
with’ a given sensory quality is, in part at least, identical with that
quality, one with its nature or essence. ‘Thus, the ‘gaiety’ of yellow
(the peculiar highly specific gaiety) is the yellowness of the yellow.
The two are identical in that the ‘yellowness’ is the unanalyzed and
but denotatively identified x of which the ‘gaiety’ is the essential
description or analysis.”®° On Hartshorne’s view, when music ex-
28 The Meaning of Music, p. 191.
29 Ibid., p. 203.
80 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Penguin Books, New York,
1948), pp. 184-85.
81 [bid., p. 193.
82 See note 25. In leafing through a random selection of books dealing with our
subject, and published later than Hartshorne’s work, I found not a single refer-
ence to this book; and this seems odd. Those who accept the two terms theory
will find it contains arguments worth refuting. Those who reject that theory
might welcome its powerful support.
38 The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, pp. 6-7.
84 Tbid., p. 133.
35 [bid., p. 7.
presses sadness to a listener, his experience of the music is a species
of the same genus as his experience of subjective sadness. The two
experiences qualitatively are not merely analogous; they are generi-
cally identical. Hartshorne also contends, rightly, I believe, that qual-
ity as well as structure is expressive.
The three views agree that in aesthetic expression, the feeling
import apprehended is not something numerically identical with sub-
jective feeling, though there are resemblances between them. It is
because of the resemblances that the two are called by the same
name. They all agree that feeling import is emphatically not a
characteristic erroneously imputed to the aesthetic object, but verid-
ically so. And, on all three views, taking the aesthetic attitude is
not a way of shifting gears which makes it possible for us to interpret
“even our ‘subjective’ affections not as modes of our being but rather
as characteristics of the phenomenon.”*¢ Rather, it is a way of making
ourselves receptive to the ordinarily disregarded feeling import of the
phenomenon. The concept of aesthetic expression remains mysterious,
I think, except on a theory in which these assertions, all of which the
two terms theory denies, are incorporated.
6. On the alleged independent variability of the two terms. It
seems widely accepted that any theory that acquiesces in the deliver-
ances of aesthetic observation by asserting that feeling import is in
the aesthetic object, in whatever sense aesthetic surface is, cannot
account for the independent variability of “the expressive thing” and
“the thing expressed”; that this fact, if such it be, can be accounted
for only by some version of the two terms theory, reénforced by the
laws of association. A typical formulation of this point of view is one
by Henry D. Aiken:
Unless the emotional effect of a work of art is located in us rather than

in the object itself, we fall at once into aesthetic paradoxes which have
continually beplagued the theorist. If, as Prall suggests, we identify the
solemnity or gaiety of a work of music with its specifications of tempo,
loudness, timbre, pitch, and so on; if, as he says, a “quick solemnity is a
contradiction in terms,” then, I think, it becomes unintelligible why it is
that the same specifications of tempo, loudness, and so on, do not express
the same specifications of feeling to all people or even to all discriminat-
86 Edward Bullough, “ ‘Physical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic

Principle,” in Melvin Rader, Editor, A Modern Book of Esthetics (Henry Holt
and Co., New York, 1952), pp. 403-4.
ing observers. In point of fact, the different values which different quali-
fied observers attribute to the same work are, in part, due precisely to the
fact that while they perceive the same, or closely similar, sensory surfaces,
these do not succeed in evoking in each of them the same degree or even
the same kind of emotional feeling. Indeed, the variability in the “ex-
pressiveness” which the same work of art has for different observers
largely explains why there exists such a wide discrepancy between the
descriptions of the quality of the impact which the same works of art
produce upon different observers.37
Bearing in mind the distinctions we found to be needful above,

we may observe with respect to the first sentence in Aiken’s passage
that if by “work of art” and “object itself” is meant “physical,” or
more generally, “ontological” object, not only is its emotional effect
“in us,” but so is its sensory effect. The “work of music with its
specifications of tempo, loudness, timbre, pitch, and so on,” if it is
to function as the expressive thing, must be an aesthetic object, ie.,
a content of attention aesthetically contemplated. There is a possible
ambiguity in the phrase “and so on.” The sensory surface experienced
by two contemplators, who are listening to the same orchestra, might
be the same, or closely similar, when what the surface suggests to
them is very different. In such a case, if the listeners are attending
not only to the surface but to what it suggests, they are not attending
to the same aesthetic object; and a difference in the feeling import
they experience can be attributed to a difference between the objects
being attended to.
Aiken, no doubt, means to exclude this and similar possibilities.
His view seems to be that, as a matter of fact, two contemplators,
listening to the same orchestra, and attending only to a sensuous
surface, can (a) both be apprehending the same surface and (b) can
one of them apprehend the surface as solemn and the other appre-
hend it as gay.
The first thing to be said about this possibility is that, far from
its being a “point of fact,” whether it ever occurs is still a subject of
controversy. Hartshorne analyzed what he describes, in what might
very well be an understatement, as “a considerable quantity of ex-
perimental data (chaps. ii, iv, vii) which hitherto has lain scattered
through the psychological literature, largely unknown to philosophers,
37 Henry D. Aiken, “Art as Expression and Surface,” The Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism, IV, 2 (December 1945), p. 91.
and apparently not as yet correlated and seen as a whole even by
psychologists.”*5 One of his conclusions is that “Ihe assumption that
persons whose sense of the-meaning of a piece of music differs can
yet have the very same sense perception of sounds is, so far as I know,
devoid of all evidence.’’*® Gestalt theorists not only deny the assertion
Aiken begins with the words, “In point of fact”; they seem also to
regard “the variability in the ‘expressiveness’ which the same [physical]
work of art has for different observers” as evidence of divergence in
the phenomenal object apprehended.*°
If we left the matter here, we could conclude the case against
the two terms theory by saying that of four criteria for distinguishing
between the two terms, three of them are useless for this purpose,
while the fourth assumes something to be a well-known fact which
is in truth a matter of controversy, yet to be resolved. But the case
becomes stronger when we determine what the root of the controversy
is.
Experimental results which seem to bear on the question whether
sensory surface and feeling import can vary independently are not
facts which speak for themselves. Suppose that when two subjects
listened to an orchestra playing a tune with a brisk tempo, one of
them reported that the music he heard was solemn, and the other
reported that the music he heard was gay. How shall we interpret
this fact? Possibly the subjects heard “the same music,” but each
experienced a different feeling import. But possibly the difference in
feeling import is due to the fact that they did not hear “the same
music.” ‘To decide between these possiiblities, we need first to apply
some criterion which tells us when the music two people hear is “the
same.”*1 | have no idea of what that criterion might be. Obviously,
the criterion of identity of stimulus will not do. Possibly the interpre-
tation one makes of results like our hypothetical one is determined, in
large measure, by the theory one espouses concerning the nature of
sensation, affection, and aesthetic expression. ‘Thus, if one’s theory
implied that “quick solemnity” is not a contradiction in terms, one
might be inclined to attach considerable weight to reports of dis-
88 The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, p. vii.
39 Ibid., p. 186.
40 Cf. Kurt Koffka, “Problems in the Psychology of Art,” Bryn Mawr Notes and
Monographs, IX (1940).
41 Compare Arnold Isenberg, Analytical Philosophy and the Study of Art (A
Report to the Rockefeller Foundation, 1950), p. 36.
agreement in the feeling import experienced by different subjects in
the presence of the same physical stimulus. Reports of such disagree-
ment would count as “evidence” in favor of the independent varia-
bility of the two terms. On the other hand, if one’s theory implied
that “quick solemnity” is a contradiction, one might be inclined to
sift such reports; and one might even emerge with the conclusion that
the assumption of independent variability is, despite the reports,
“devoid of all evidence.”
If this is what the state of affairs is, the decision between the two
terms theory and its rival cannot be made by a mere appeal to
experimental data of the sort Aiken might have had in mind when
he wrote that independent variability of aesthetic surface and feeling
import is a point of fact. What the data tell us is ambiguous, and
to remove the ambiguity we must apply a theory. When we consider
which theory can most fruitfully be applied, we must bear in mind
the logical difficulties involved in the usual versions of the two terms
theory.
7. Application of the concept of aesthetic expression to artistic
expression. If an account of esthetic expression on the lines sug-
gested in section 5 is correct, how should artistic expression, which
is defined in terms of it, be conceived? What is the artist doing when
he is “embodying” or “objectifying” feelings in a sensuous medium?
An enlightening preliminary point is one made earlier. Not all
objectively expressive objects are products of artistic expression. We
may adopt the attitude of aesthetic contemplation toward natural
objects, such as sunsets, real landscapes, and driftwood; and, when
we do, we find our experiences of them have their feeling import.
Yet no one embodied his feelings in them. This fact suggests that
artistic expression of feeling is not a process by means of which an
artist endows a sensuous material with a feeling quality it does not
have, but one in which he is working with materials already charged
with their specific feeling import. Reid says, “Expression, we shall
argue, implies ‘embodiment’ of some sort in a ‘body.’ . . . And in
some sense something other than the ‘body’ must be ‘embodied.’ ”#”
On this view, it would seem, there is the feeling of the artist, and there
is something other than his feeling, say a red patch devoid of feeling
quality, and artistic expression or embodiment is the mysterious act
42 A Study in Aesthetics, p. 47. See also p. 60.

which fuses the feeling with the patch. When the artist objectifies
cheerfulness by painting a rosy apple, he is, so to speak, welding
cheerfulness to a red, round patch. But the artist could not fuse a
cheerful feeling with a depressing gray or a somber black. And when
he does objectify cheerfulness by using cheerful colors, he is not
fusing a feeling to anything.
Rather, in large measure, the task of the artist who is objectify-
ing, embodying, or expressing feeling is one of selecting, from among
a variety of materials each item of which is already charged with
specific feeling import, that one or combination of them which,
when contemplated by him, feels like the feeling he wishes to
express.*8
DOUGLAS N. MORGAN
Lucidity and intelligence are as welcome as they are rare in con-

temporary aesthetics. Mr. Tomas’ paper gives abundant evidence of
both. As I understand it, he argues as follows: By making one dis-
tinction too few—that between the epistemological object and the
phenomenological object—we have been making one distinction too
many—that between the expressive thing and the thing expressed.
First let us state, as clearly as we can, the position to be dis-
cussed. ‘Tomas claims that, in any sense in which the pitch is “in”
the music, the sadness is “in” the music also. Frequency may be the
physical correlate of pitch, but frequency is not heard; pitch is. There
may be physical correlates of sadness—presumably these would be
highly complex—but these also are not heard; the sadness is heard
as a quality of the music.
On the other hand, we may say that the heard pitch is “in” the
listener, whereas the physical vibrations are “outside” him. But in this
sense, and in this sense only, the sadness is “in” the listener. Thus,
wherever we locate the pitch, there also must we locate the sadness.
More specifically, the expressive quality is not first felt within the
listener, and then later objectified outside himself, “embodied in”
the music. Rather, ‘Tomas suggests, the expressive quality—at least as
“feeling import’”—is “in” the phenomenological object as presented
431 do not want to imply that prior to the act of expression, the artist is fully
aware of what he is trying to express.
to the listener. Only a confusion between an object of knowledge and
an event in experience could give rise to the supposition that there
are in fact two distinct terms: the expressive quality and its vehicle.
Insofar as Tomas’ thesis is clear, it is, in my judgment, true, and
indeed beyond question true; it is much more true than it is theo-
retically important. Unfortunately, not all of it is clear, and much of
that which is unclear seems to me to be both important and highly
dubious. The present paper will contain two parts. Part I will be
devoted to a clarification of the meaning of the question about the
locus of the sadness of the music. In Part II we shall examine the
evidence for the suggested answers to the question.
Certain preliminary linguistic resolutions are in order before we
enter upon the discussion proper. I shall use the term “phenomenal”
to describe events in experience, as appearances or phenomena; my
“phenomenal object” will be Tomas’ “phenomenological object.” I
shall reserve “phenomenological” to describe theories about phe-
nomena. I shall not (as Tomas seems to do) identify “epistemological
object” with “ontological object” and distinguish both from “phe-
nomenal object.” Instead, disclaiming any prior metaphysical com-
mitment, I shall speak simply of “physical object” as contrasted with
“phenomenal object.”
I
Let us consider the issue, or apparent issue, at stake between Mr.
Aiken and Mr. Tomas. The former asserts that two people, listening
to the same music, may find it expressive of different qualities.
Tomas suggests, on the other hand, that when this situation occurs,
the people are not really listening to the “same” music, even though
the physical stimulus may, for all practical purposes, be identical.
If Aiken’s assertion be taken merely to mean that the two peo-
ple in question physically hear physically similar (or “identical’’)
sounds, and that they then present different reports, one finding the
music “gay,” and the other finding the music “sad,” then I cannot
see that Tomas or anybody else would dare to disagree with him.
But Aiken is said to want more than merely this bare assertion; he
claims that, because of the above admitted fact, we must “locate”
the sadness within the listener’s response (or within the listener),
rather than within the object. Tomas argues that this is a non
sequitur, and that the first admitted physical fact is aesthetically
irrelevant, because aesthetic listening is not physical hearing.
We may understand the sentences “The music appears sad,”
“The music is apparently sad,” “The sadness is heard as in the
music,” and “The sadness is in the phenomenal msuic,” all to be
strictly equivalent. I do not know any theorist today who will want
to deny that, in this narrow sense, the sadness is “in” the music;
indeed if this were not the case, the sadness would not seem to be
“embodied” in the music, and the paradox would never have arisen
in the first place. Surely Aiken, in the passage cited by ‘Tomas, need
not deny that the sadness is “in” the music in this sense. But to
admit that the sadness appears to be in the music (or is in the
phenomenal music) is not to admit that the presence of the sadness
there is primarily explicable in “objective” terms, or in terms of
listening. Even though phenomenally objective, the sadness may still
have been projected, and thus be causally subjective.
Tomas suggests that, in Aiken’s example, the phenomenal content
of the two listeners must be understood to be distinct, so that we do
not have two different responses to the same phenomenal stimulus,
but rather two different responses to two different stimuli: in the one
case, the music is actually heard as gay, in the other as sad; gaiety
and sadness are presumably Ehrenfels’ qualities of the respective
(but distinct) pieces of music. ‘Tomas also regrets that he sees no
way of determining the issue, no criterion for decision.
I first suggest that, under the present interpretation, this lack of
a criterion is no mere matter of temporarily inadequate psychological
information, and that no amount of speculation will ever supply such
a criterion. For, whatever additional facts we collect, it will always
remain, and systematically must always remain, open to us to explain
that what had been thought to be a characteristic of the response was
in fact a characteristic of the observed object, or conversely. I am,
therefore, dubious whether we are debating a single significant prob-
lem, if we conceive it in these terms.?
The underlying problem is a large and important one, and one
1'We must note and avoid a familiar ambiguity in the very word “appear”: to
say that the music “appears” sad is to suggest, in some contexts, that the music
is not “really” sad, since it is said merely to “appear” to be so. In the present
technical sense of “appear,” this suggestion must be ruled irrelevant.
2As I shall indicate below the problem can be conceived in more empirical
terms, and when it is so conceived, Tomas’ solution is less satisfactory.
which is not often faced in philosophy. It may well be that ignoring
this problem is a cause of much of our epistemological confusion.
This problem is the meaning of the question we are asking when we
ask “where” the quality is, “in” us or “in” the object. What, exactly,
is meant by saying that a quality is “in” a subject or an object?
Obviously, “in” is a metaphor. The problem here is to indicate what
is involved in explicating the metaphor. We shall find five more or
less plausible senses in which the expression “The sadness is in the
music” may be construed.*
One broad meaning may simply be that the quality in question
is among the qualities “belonging to” the object in that if we were
able to present a complete list of such qualities (which, of course,
we are not) the quality in question would be among those listed,
and would presumably be comparable in status with the other quali-
ties. Let us call this “Sense A” of the sentence “The sadness is in
the music.” This sentence will then mean, “Sadness, like pitch, loud-
ness, etc., is a quality of the (phenomenal) music.”
A related meaning of the word “in” is that in which the object
might be properly described as possessing the quality in question,
even in the absence of any percipient. If there are any naive realists,
they believe that apples are red even if nobody ever looked at them,
while they might deny to the apple the attribute of deliciousness or
desirability if no one ever tasted or desired it; under these conditions,
the color might be said to be “in” the apple, while its deliciousness
and desirability might be said to be attributed to (or “‘projected into”)
the apple from the “outside.” On a more sophisticated and traditional
level, primary qualities are sometimes said to be “out there in the
8 “Tf taken literally, the notion that music can embody or contain an emotion
is psychological nonsense. Emotions can only be located inside the individual who
has them. They do not lie outside the living organism.” Carroll C. Pratt, Music
as the Language of Emotion (The Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.,
1952); p20:
The Herd “sadness” will not be analyzed here, since Mr. Bouwsma, in the
paper cited by Tomas, has already wittily accomplished this. It is at least possible
that “sadness” in “The sadness is in the music” is simply a different word (or
meaning) from “sadness’” in “I feel sadness over the loss of my beloved.” See
Hospers, Meaning and Truth in the Arts (University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill, 1946), p. 97. Ra age Bue
4 Although, of course, both qualities might be understood dispositionally. With-
out a dispositional theory, I see no way to get the color of the apple, the sneezi-
ness of a feather, and the drunkenness of Santayana’s whisky into the same
respective locations in their respective objects.
object,” while secondary qualities are said to be “in here in the
subject.” Let us call “Sense B” of the expression “The sadness is in
the music,” “The music is sad (or would be sad) independent of
any percipient.”
A further sense of “in” is causal, in a way distinct from that
excluded in Tomas’ paper. When we ask about the sadness, we may
be asking not merely whether the sadness is among the qualities of
the music, as heard, but whether the indisputable occurrence of
the sadness among the phenomena in the total experience which we
call “listening to a piece of music” is to be attributed causally to
some feature of the subject’s environment, or to some feature of the
subject’s personality.® Here, “The sadness is in the music” will mean
“The phenomenal sadness is caused by (or primarily caused by) some
aspects of the subject’s environment, rather than by some aspect of
his response to that environment.” We shall call this “Sense C” of
our paradigm.
Still another approximation to the relevant meaning of “in” is
that in which a meaning is said to be “in” a sign. Here we seem to
mean not exactly “belonging to,” nor “independent of the percipi-
ent,” nor “arising out of the environment,” but rather something
like “revealed by.” ‘The “meaning” of a word is in a word only in
that it is “revealed by,” or “uncovered by” the word; the word is
(usually) said to indicate or point at its referent.
Some few musical expressions are referential-meaningful in this
sense, but I take it as generally agreed that “musical meaning” can-
not be generally understood thus naively. If musical reference were
verbal, or even very closely word-like, the so-called paradox of ex-
pression would hardly have arisen. Musical expressions, like most
verbal expressions, would be fully distinct from their referents. In
order to account for the peculiarities of the aesthetic sign-situation, it
has been thought necessary to people the semantic menagerie with
such queer animals as nondiscursive symbols and nonreferential mean-
ings. I doubt that the “in” of “The sadness is in the music” will be
fully explicated until the taxonomy of these sports is fully developed.
Meanwhile, let us call this “Sense D” of our typesentence, which
will here mean that sadness is referred to by the music.
In order to explain our final sense, it will be necessary to make
5 This is a deliberate oversimplification, and will be refined below. “Cause” is to
be understood in the sense of “occasion.”
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART Za
one further set of analytic distinctions. It is said that music “is,”
“sounds,” or “feels” sad; or that we “are” or “feel” sad when we hear
it. Because of the importance (as in Ducasse) of “feeling,” let us
concentrate on the word “feel.”
Setting aside what may be called the propositional-attitude use
of “feel” (as in, “I feel that a given proposition is true,” which seems
to mean merely, “I believe it with no great certainty,” and which
does not enter into our problem), we find a series of relevant senses.
Consider first the sentence “I feel sad.”
Here we have an intransitive use, which might be paraphrased
as “I am sad,” or “Sadness is a pervasive characteristic of my mind
now.” Note that the sentence in question is not normally to be
analyzed as if the verb were transitive, thus: “I am aware of sadness.”
For I may very well be sad without being aware that I am being sad.
Let us simply call this the “intransitive-personal” sense of “feel.”
A transitive-personal sense of “feel” may, evidently, be simply
equated with “intuit,” or “am aware of.” Thus, in the case of sadness,
“I feel sadness” may simply mean “I am aware of sadness (in myself
or in someone else),” without the additional suggestion that I am
experiencing any emotion at all. This becomes more obvious in the
physical-touch sense of “feel” —and presumably all these various senses
are but metaphorical extensions of the physical sense, thus: “I feel
the velvet,” meaning that I touch the velvet and intuit its surface.
Another transitive-personal sense, related to the one just men-
tioned, is that in which we say that we feel not the velvet or its
surface, but the smoothness of the velvet. Here again we have an
“intuit” sense of “feel,” but the object of the feeling is said to be
not an object, but one of the object’s qualities.
Unfortunately, we who speak English also use the word “feel”
in impersonal situations, and consider it perfectly proper to say of
the velvet that it “feels” smooth . . . meaning, presumably, that one
experiences smoothness when and if he transitive-personally feels the
velvet (or its surfaces, if such a distinction must be made). One step
removed from this is the sense in which we say that the velvet
“Iooks” smooth: it looks as if it would feel smooth, were we to touch
it—whether we do in fact touch it or not.
The nouns which correspond to these respective verb-usages
differ, and reveal an important distinction of sense. Thus the ex-
perience which I have will be called a “feeling.” But only persons
Zia TOMAS, MORGAN, BEARDSLEY
have “feelings.” Velvet has rather a “feel” than a “feeling.” ‘Tweed
has not a different “feeling” from velvet, but a different “feel.”
Now, at last, we return to music. When I listen to music I may
(although I rarely do) intransitive-personally feel sad: I may actually
experience sadness. Or, and this may be quite distinct, I may
transitive-personally feel sadness; without inquiring into its source, I
may become aware of sadness, even without experiencing it, as when
I see a sad face on a stranger or a dog.
Or, still again, I may say that a given piece of music is sad (or
“feels” sad) intending to assert by my words only a transitive-
impersonal sense of “feel”: ‘The music “feels” sad in the sense in
which the velvet “feels” smooth. The music may “sound” sad in
the same sense, I suppose.
Just as we would not quite say that the velvet has a feeling of
smoothness, but only a feel of smoothness (it is we who have the
feeling), so we might be well advised to say not that the music has
or contains (or that there is in the phenomenal music) a feeling of
sadness, but rather that it has a feel of it.
Everyone will want to deny that the music as an object physical,
phenomenal or anything else, experiences any feelings at all. But
(as ‘Tomas indicates) this does not commit us to a denial that there
is any real connection between music and feelings. Of course, the
music does not experience sadness, any more than the velvet ex-
periences smoothness. But nobody ever maintained that it did. It
does not follow that the sadness is wholly an individual matter of
actually evoked response. At the very least, the sadness of the music
may be classed as dispositional, and one may say that “sad music”
means music which has a disposition to evoke sadness, just as “smooth
velvet” means velvet which has a disposition to evoke sensations of
smoothness. And just as no one can well deny that some phenomenal
velvet “really” does feel smooth, so no one should want to deny that
some phenomenal music “really” does feel sad.
The important and interesting parallel lies not between “music
feels sad” and “velvet feels smooth.” It lies rather between “music
sounds sad” and “velvet looks smooth,” for in each of these there is
a presentation to one sense, which seems to partake of a quality more
usually associated with some other sense. Even “velvet looks smooth”
does not merely mean dispositionally. In addition to its cue for
touch, the visual experience has a peculiar “smooth” look, as we see
it. We recognize (or so we think) that “smoothness” is here a
metaphor, that visual objects cannot “really” be smooth; only tactile
objects can. So, in our sophisticated fashion, we attribute the smooth-
ness of the look to the supposed dispositional feel.
Now, it may be that in saying that music “sounds” sad we mean
the sadness to be dispositional also, but if so the disposition is of a
peculiarly refined order, since sad music, when listened to as music,
does not ever make us (intransitively) feel sad. The disposition is
never realized. We may mean something like this—and let us call
this “Sense E”: The music sounds as if, were one to respond to it
emotionally, sadness would be the appropriate emotion to feel.6 Not,
of course, that we here-now are to respond to it in this way—we are too
intently absorbed in the music to trifle with actual emotional experi-
ences—but we recognize what we hear as somehow appropriate to a
sadness which we might in fact feel if we were to feel anything at all.
As I understand Tomas, he wants to assert that the sadness is
“in” the music at least in Senses A and C. As a mete report of
experiential fact, most of us will, I expect, agree. But insofar as
Tomas claims to be making post-experiential empirical assertions of
theoretical interest or usefulness, I have serious doubts that we should
want to go much further than Sense E. It may be that Sense E is
what those who speak of music as symbolic-expressive in Sense D
are getting at.
II
The claim made by Tomas in his paper—namely, that the sadness is
an actually presented quality of the heard content of the music rather
than the exteriorization of a felt response—can be interpreted as
empirical, although of course (as Tomas expressly says) the facts do
not unequivocally confirm or disconfirm his answer. ‘The claim can-
not be intended merely as a discovery of philosophical analysis, or
as a revealing tautology, for Tomas admits that he does not know
how one could determine its truth, and cites certain empirical evi-
dence as relevant. I suppose that reference to psychological categories
6 My suggested Sense E is consistent with the Pratt-Langer position referred to

by Tomas; that position will be an empirical explanation of Sense E. But how
can it be made consistent with Tomas’ own position (unless Tomas is withhold-
ing some special definition of “emotion’’)? See note 3 above, and also: “Objects
of art, whether regarded as independent physical events or as dependent percep-
tual data, cannot themselves embody emotion. The emotions do not exist ‘out
there’ in visual or auditory forms.”’ Pratt, op. cit., p. 10.
ait TOMAS, MORGAN, BEARDSLEY
is therefore in order. Unfortunately, the categories are not entirely
clear, and the evidence, so far as I can make out, is inconclusive. I
am entirely certain of the extent to which psychological considera-
tions are relevant, but ‘Tomas himself has raised the issue. If we
attend to the way in which categories are actually used in psychology,
the weight of evidence seems to support Aiken’s position.
Tomas may of course claim that the phenomenal report is both
incorrigible and ultimate, and thereby reject a priori all psychological
considerations. The sadness is “in” the music simply because it is
heard there, and no better evidence to the contrary is even con-
ceivable, let alone admissible. In this sense, the phenomenal report
may be self-warranting, but it is also theoretically uninteresting. If
we are ever to transcend the privacy of the individual, we must at
least posit common areas of experience. Such common areas we may
conceptually reify in psychology, as we do in physics. ‘The thing or
object thus reified then comes to exercise a normative function: our
private perceptions are measured against it, and corrected in the
light of the properties we have posited as belonging to it. Some such
procedure seems necessary in order to make possible any general
empirical theory.
It may not be necessary to posit physical objects; I do not wish
to debate the metaphysical issue here. But unless I can perceive “the
same object” more than once—however “‘same object” be defined—
and unless two or more of us can perceive “the same object,” science
is solipsistic soliloquy.
It is granted that my perceptions differ, one from another, and
that my perceptions differ from yours. It is always open to us
logically to claim that these are perceptions of different phenomenal
objects, and hence strictly incomparable, just as it is open to the
color-blind person to insist truly that his phenomenal apple is gray,
rather than red. But grounded agreement, communication, and
knowledge always require more than merely private phenomenal
reports; at the very least it must be possible to make assertions about
states of affairs other than one’s own phenomena. It is absurd to try
to base any general theory on systematically discrete and strictly
incomparable phenomenal reports; it is equally absurd to try to re-
fute any theory on the admitted evidence of such reports.
We must confess the impossibility of proving the “sameness” of
the common object, and go ahead to assume it anyway. We must
hold literally all perceptions, all phenomena, as in some sense cor-
THE CONCEPT OF EXPRESSION IN ART LT)
rigible. And we must devise ways of distinguishing trustworthy from
untrustworthy perceptions.
All this, if obvious, is as true in theoretical aesthetics as any-
where else; its denial, consistently carried out, commits us to radical
skepticism. Its relevance to the present discussion should be clear.
‘The next step will be to examine certain of the principal means
of distinguishing among perceptions those which will be called
“trustworthy” because they depend upon “external evidence,” in
contrast to those which will be called “untrustworthy”? because they
are “projections” or “exteriorizations” of the subject’s personality.
Parenthetically, it must be noted that the entire categorical “in
here-out there” polarity is exaggerated by the Aiken-Tomas dispute.
It is probable that even the most “subjective” response is qualified
by some external stimuli, and that even the most “stimulus-bound”
response is qualified by some characteristics of the perceiving sub-
ject.° Nevertheless, a continuum may be usefully conceived without
any commitment to the actual occurrence of either pole. Admitting
the inadequacy of the terminology, let us say that some qualities or
characteristics are “recognized” or relatively objective in origin, while
others are “projected” or relatively subjective.®
The first psychological category which comes to mind is that
called “projection.” In its more strictly technical sense,!° projection
7 “Untrustworthy,” of course, only for the purpose of constructing a theory about

what is “objectively” in the environment, although these very perceptions may
well be the most trustworthy for the purpose of understanding the attitudes and
even the behavior of the individual.
8 Cf. Hartshorne, op. cit. by Tomas, p. 187: “. . . in all sense experience, the
sensory material intuited is only partially determined by the external stimulus.’
It is worth noting that a Deweyan “contextualist” might claim to avoid the
two-term paradox at the outset, by taking as primary some category like “situa-
tion” or “context,” and thus avoiding the categorial polarity of “subject” and
“object,” each of these latter being defined in terms of the more fundamental
category. For such a contextualist, the sadness will be as “fused” in the music
as the sweetness in the lemonade, and the phenomenal occurrence of the sad-
ness, like that of the sweetness, will be explicable only in terms of the interrela-
tions between “subject” and “object.” But see Hartshorne, pp. 18n., 174-75.
9 Hartshorne, op. cit., p. 203, calls these respectively “content forms” and
“awareness forms.” ~% ae
10 Robert Sears (“Experimental Studies of Projection: I. Attribution of Traits,
The Journal of Social Psychology, 1936, No. 7, reprinted in Tomkins (ed.),
Contemporary Psychopathology, Harvard, Cambridge: 1946, p. 561), cites the
following definition from Healy, Bronner and Bowers: “a defensive process under
sway of the pleasure principle whereby the Ego thrusts forth on the external
world unconscious wishes and ideas which, if allowed to penetrate into con-
sciousness, would be painful to the Ego.”
is obviously irrelevant to the present problem, and will be ignored.
In a more popular sense, the term has been defined as
the process whereby psychic elements—needs, feelings and emotions, or

images and contexts of images activated by such affective states—are
referred by the experiencing subject to the external world without sufh-
cient objective evidence.1!
Two kinds of situations prevail in psychology, and two different

answers are given to our question.2 The general problem is how to
distinguish between “projection,” as above defined, and “recognition”
of “genuinely objective” features of the environment. Given a sub-
ject’s report of his phenomenal field, by what criterion shall we say
that this feature is projected from within his personality, while that
is truly found outside him?
In the usual color-blindness tests, one is asked to report what
one sees, or what number one sees. “Normal” people (“normality”
being statistically defined) report, say, a red seven on a green ground.
Color-blind people report no recognizable shape, or a different shape.
In the usual “projective” tests (Rorschach’s and ‘TAT’s) one is
asked to describe, explain, or tell a story about certain presented
images. Most of the images presented are deliberately ambiguous in
some degree; it is occasionally necessary to reject a card, the responses
to which run too consistent. On the basis of the protocols, numbers
of responses are counted, content-analyses are run and speculative
personality pictures are drawn.
In the case of the color-blindness tests, we should presumably
say that the subjects are reporting what is in fact presented to them:
that they are recognizing a fact about the object “out there,” rather
than projecting, exteriorizing, or objectifying a subjective feeling
from “in here.” This is precisely what we want them to do. In the
11 Henry A. Murray, “The Effect of Fear Upon Estimates of the Maliciousness

of Other Personalities,” The Journal of Social Psychology, 1933, No. 3, reprinted
in Tomkins, Contemporary Psychopathology, p. 547. The problem, of course, is
to determine what “objective evidence” is, and how much of it is “sufficient.”
12A third answer, clearly inapplicable to the aesthetic situation, will not be
discussed. This is the pragmatic answer. The pink elephant isn’t “there” on the
ceiling, because we can’t feed peanuts to him. But we can’t feed peanuts to a
painted elephant either, even though he is “there” phenomenally in a sense in
which the hallucinated clephant is not “there” . . . namely, according to both
of the criteria to be considered in the text.
case of the projective tests, on the other hand, we should presumably
say that the subjects are not recognizing any “presented” fact (we
have gone to considerable pains to present them with no “recog-
nizable fact”);* rather, we hope, they are simply putting into the
picture their own personalities.
The relevance of the present discussion is simply this: if there
is a ground for any real distinction between “recognizing what is out
there” and “exteriorizing what is in here,” this ground should be
equally applicable to the problem of the sadness of the music. But,
unhappily, the only empirical ground available in these cases is a
mere consensus. If very few people reported the red seven on the
green ground, we should not say that it was “there” but that almost
nobody recognized it; we should instead say that it wasn’t “there,”
and that those few who said that they “saw” it there were merely
exteriorizing. If, on the other hand, almost everybody reported that
he saw a bloody bear chasing a nude woman on a Rorschach card,
we should say that this image was there, and that those who didn’t
see it were in some sense blind; except negatively, the card would be
useless. In these cases, there simply doesn’t seem to be any loftier
criterion. of the -hére’ and the “there,” the “in” and the “out,” than
mere consensus.
In some sense, the man who, even though in the distinct mi-
nority, finds the bear chasing the woman in the Rorschach card is
truthfully reporting what he “finds.” Tomas is perfectly correct in
asserting that we “find” the sadness in the phenomenal music. But
such a man would be mistaken in saying that anybody who didn’t
“find” the bear chasing the woman was blind, since in fact the man
had projected his own personality traits into the card, rather than
strictly “finding” them. This is a causal explanation of how the card
came to appear as it does to him. But, if the analogy holds, the man
who claimed that anybody who didn’t hear the sadness in the music
was deaf, might be said to be mistaken, since he failed to recognize
that other people may exteriorize other responses.
It is of course perfectly possible, as Tomas suggests, that our
actual perceptive fields may differ importantly. The man who sees
13 An interesting exception is the butterfly on Rorschach card #5, which is

almost universally “recognized,” rather than “‘projected.” It is worth noting that
a failure to project on Rorschach (as in the response “I see an inkblot”) is as
revelatory as is any projection.
the bear and the woman may argue that in his perceptual field, the
bear is chasing the woman, whereas in the perceptual field of one
who does not see what he sees, the bear is climbing a tree, or there
isn’t any bear there at all. True enough, but so what? To what theo-
retical end can this distinction be put? I who hear some music as
sad may honestly claim that I am hearing something different from
what is being heard by the man who finds it gay, even though the
physical stimulus is nearly identical in the two cases. But again, so
what? How is this of any theoretical interest?
For we wish, above all, to generalize. And what is phenomenally
or phenomenologically peculiar to my perception is of idiosyncratic
interest to me and my psychoanalyst but to nobody else. I could,
always and everywhere, maintain that my perceptions are veridical,
and that when I hear the sadness as “in” the music, then, by God,
the sadness is in the music, simply because I hear it there. When I
see pink elephants upon the ceiling, then, by God, there are pink
elephants upon the ceiling, simply because I see them there. Ad-
mittedly, no one can demonstrate my error to me by any rationally
conclusive technique. I may eventually discover that nobody else
reports that the elephants are there, and that I cannot feed peanuts
to them, and I may conclude that I am exteriorizing some character-
istic of my disordered mind. So, too, I may try to fit my intuition of
sadness into a social-pragmatic framework, and find that it doesn’t fit.
Many other people don’t report this music as sad, and I can’t locate
the sadness conceptually. I still “hear” the sadness, of course, just as
I still “see” the pink elephants. ‘The phenomenal content may well
remain unchanged. But the theoretical interpretation of the content
has changed. And in trying to understand the aesthetic experience,
or in trying to understand art, or in trying to understand anything
else, we are engaged in a theoretical enterprise which commits us
to certain extra-personal criteria of validity.
This suggests that the “two-term theory” of expression is per-
haps not quite so ill-founded as Tomas makes it out to be. At the
very least, it is a theory of expression, and I do not quite see that
any private phenomenal report, as such, is a theory about anything.
Suppose we ask, quite simply, “Is there, or is there not, some generic
phenomenal object?” If not, the sadness of the music is an individual
difference of no particular interest. The sadness certainly is not a
characteristic of the generic physical object, and the examination of
this generic physical object seems to exhaust theory. Aesthetics be-
comes a branch of physics, physiology, and psycho-physical psy-
chology.
If there is a generic phenomenal object, it will remain possible to
ask of this object—although obviously not of the physical object—
whether it is properly called “sad,” or whether the sadness “found”
be not imputed by the subject to the object. In other words, you and
I must in our experiences of a piece of music share a common
(phenomenal) object. If you find it sad and I do not (and Tomas
can hardly claim this to be logically impossible, without begging his
question by definition) ,44 we may inquire why this is so. Is it that I
am deaf to the sadness that really is in the music? Or is it that you
are merely exteriorizing some aspect of your response?
It may be possible to approach a solution to our problem, even
if not definitely to solve it, if we consider the extremes, setting aside
for the time the entire question of the physical object, and asking
merely which characteristics we wish to attribute causally to the
phenomenal object, and which to the phenomenal subject. Clearly,
we shall want to say that the heard sound (not merely the sound
waves) is “there,” and is not projected by the listener, in that the
heard sound is phenomenally presented; anyone who doesn’t hear any
sound is deaf, and anyone who hears only some of the sound is
partially deaf. More specifically, the usual psychological dimensions
of sound: pitch, tempo, rhythm, overtone structure, and loudness
—these, we shall say, are “there”; the Seashore tests determine rela-
tive degrees of deafness to these various dimensions. Less obviously,
the familiar modes of musical structure—rhythm, melody, and har-
mony—will be treated as “there”; at least we can, within limits, teach
people from other cultures to hear our harmonies, and we ourselves
can learn to hear theirs.
On the other hand, I suppose that we should all want to consider
such a characteristic as “familiarity” to be an instance of exterioriza-
tion. The musical object may indeed sound “familiar,” but it would
seem odd indeed to say that the familiarity is a characteristic of the
musical object proper, since it will sound familiar only to a person
who has heard some such music before. If I say of a given piece of
music that it sounds “familiar” (or “nostalgic” or “reminiscent’’),
14To affirm “quick solemnity” to be a contradiction is to come very near to
such question-begging.
I am simply saying that it sounds familiar to me. The predicate is at
least two-termed, rather than one-termed. Any one-term predicate can
be (and presumably is, by some people, primitive, childish, or so-
phisticated) attributed causally to the object. But neither the phe-
nomenal “discovery” nor the grammatical attribution prove anything
about the causal locus of the quality.
Again, consider the familiar case in which one finds a piece of
music exciting on first hearing, less so on second, and dull thereafter.
Limit the discussion to the phenomenal object. Shall we say that
the music altered its characteristics, or that our response altered, or
both? Tomas will presumably say that the music has altered: that,
although the physical stimuli remain constant, the phenomenal con-
tent has changed. I shall say that this may be true, but that this is
not a very interesting fact. For the only sense in which serious theory
is possible is the sense in which we shall be able to say that I was
hearing the same music, the music being a common object among
my different hearing experiences. Heard tonal changes remain, heard
harmonic modulations remain, heard rhythmic patterns remain, but
heard excitement does not. Why, then, is it not plausible to attribute
the “heard” excitement to the listener, rather than to the object
listened to? And why, if plausible with heard excitement, not with
heard sadness?
In contrast to those instances already considered, there is another
group in which we do not need to rely on a consensus. Even though
very few people hear and discriminate extremely subtle differences
in pitch, we nevertheless ascribe the differences to the object, and
do not say of such people that they are projecting or hallucinating.
Presumably the ground for our distinction in these cases is the fact
that we have physical correlates for the phenomenal events. This
gives us the second of our criteria for distinguishing the “in here”
from the “out there.” Professional color-matchers make hue-discrimi-
nations much more subtly than the rest of us do; but we say that they
are making “real” discriminations (and not merely “projecting”) be-
cause we trust a spectroscopic report over our own eyes. As in the
case with pitches, we have physical correlates which function nor-
matively.
We find, then, two working definitions of “objective”: 1) con-
sensus, or degree of agreement among observers; and 2) physical
correlation. In psychology, we use the latter whenever possible and
the former (despite its counterintuitive implications)? in all other
cases.
. On the psychological evidence, we may conclude that the sadness
is properly ascribable to the phenomenal object, rather than to the
phenomenal subject, if and only if either or both of the following
tests holds:
1) Most people report sadness as present in their phenomena caused by

the “same” physical-stimulus music. This is the case analogous with
the color-blindness consensus solution.
2) In some music, some people report sadness and these reports corre-
late consistently with some physically measurable characteristics: a
minor key, a slow tempo, or the like. This is the case analogous with
the acute ear which detects subtle pitch differences.
Neither of these tests seems, on evidence thus far collected, to

indicate very strongly that the musical object, apart from its subject,
can properly be called “sad.” On the contrary, such evidence as is
available indicates that there is, in such an attribution, a pathetic
fallacy, and that we should properly hesitate before alleging of a
given piece of (say) Chinese music that it is sad, since it all sounds
sad to most of us unsophisticated Westerners. If the claim is extended
across cultural boundaries (and we wish, at least, to speak significantly
about all music, as when we say that all music has some rhythmic-
tempic character or other), it simply is not yet evidentially supported.
And the burden of proof seems to lie upon those who claim the
cross-cultural community.
If it were possible for Tomas to spell out the status of heard
sadness specifically enough to enable us to find physical correlates
for it (as we do for heard pitch or for seen redness)
,16 his case would
be much stronger. One useful meaning for “objective” is “varies
consistently with some physically measurable correlates.” Unfor-
tunately, however, it is difficult to decide what kinds of correlation
we should look for. Shall we look to harmonic mode? ‘Tempo?
Rhythm? But we already have “experts” demonstrably able to dis-
criminate in these realms much more accurately than the rest of us,
15 The assertion of the consensus test of “objectivity,” for example, implies the
peculiar consequence that a mass hallucination is logically impossible.
16 Note that there is here no question of confusion between phenomenal and
physical objects. Changes in the former are simply observed to correlate with
(what are believed to be) changes in the latter.
yet we do not say that such people are experts in discriminating
sadness.17 Shall we look to some complex of physical qualities which
can be correlated with phenomenal sadness? Perhaps so, yet I wonder
whether, having done so, we should be content to say even of people
who could demonstrably discriminate these complexes that they were
“sadness-experts,” as we unhesitatingly say of a man that he is a
“pitch-expert” or a “hue-expert.”
Further, we now know that it is possible, within reasonably
broad limits, to train sensory acuity, and we have techniques for
accomplishing this. We can teach people to see color and hear
harmony more subily than they could before. If Tomas’ analogy
holds, it would be interesting to learn how we should go about
teaching someone to hear sadness more accurately than he did before.
I can well imagine that a Trobriander could learn to distinguish
slow Western music from fast, minor from major, and the like; he
might also learn to use the word ‘“‘sad” to describe (say) slow music
in a minor key. It would not follow that he had discriminated any
sadness “in” the music, but merely that he had learned the English
language and a certain psychological fact about the people who use
it, namely that the emotion sadness (with which the robriander
may be presumed to be acquainted) is believed by English-speaking
people to have some kind of relevance (causal, structural-iconic, or
other) to certain kinds of music.1$
Within a given culture-pattern, on the other hand, there seems
to be a good deal more to be said for ‘Tomas’ claim. Probably on the
basis of considerable common conditioning, most of us find certain
pieces of music and certain kinds of music sad, and other pieces and
other kinds gay.’® If the option be forced, most of us will call the
Overture to the Marriage of Figaro “gay,” and the Eroica’s Funeral
March “sad.” We shall pronounce them such even though we actually
feel sad while listening to the Mozart and gay while listening to the
17] dare say that those whom we today recognize as “experts” in general music
discrimination, the critics themselves, are those least likely to find the sadness as
“Sn,” or even relevant to, the music! But see Hartshorne, pp. 120 ff., for the
contrary claim.
18 It is, of course, easy to teach a color-blind person that objects have different
colors, which he cannot see. How would we go about teaching him that musical
objects have different degrees of sadness, which he cannot hear?
19] am by no means claiming that such “discoveries” are definitive of musical
value, or even in any aesthetically interesting sense relevant to the music. For all
my argument here, Hanslick may be perfectly correct.
Beethoven. And—albeit with overtones of metaphor—we might even
say of a man within our culture who reversed these adjectives that
he is “deaf” to the actual characteristics of the musical object.
But I, at least, would hesitate to say this of a representative of
some other culture who pronounced the Figaro “morbid,” although
I should not hesitate to pronounce him “color-blind” if he failed to
see the red seven on the green field. His way of interpreting music
would seem to me to be excessively odd, and would interest me. I
should confess surprise, but I should not be inclined to say that I am
actually hearing the gaiety which is there, while he is projecting the
morbidity which isn’t.?°
What, then, can we say, consistently with plausible interpreta-
tions of the evidence, and with hope for theoretical advancement?
Is the sadness “in” the music? In Sense A, I think not, because al-
though sadness is a quality of the phenomenal object, it is not strictly
comparable with pitch, loudness, etc. Discriminations need to be
made among the phenomenal qualities which will attribute some
(like pitch and loudness) primarily to the phenomenal object, and
others (like sadness and familiarity) primarily to the phenomenal
subject. In Sense B the sadness is not in the music; I doubt that any
other qualities are either. In Sense C, I also doubt, pending evidence
of the sort requested above, that the sadness is in the music. In Sense
D, as it stands, the answer is an unequivocal No; but refinement may
make it plausible. In Sense E I believe, but shall not here argue, that
the answer is Yes.
I conclude that Mr. Tomas’ thesis may be interpreted in either
of two ways. As an analytic claim that phenomena are phenomena
and that the sadness appears to be in the music, the thesis is clear
and true. As an empirical allegation of the “proper” location of the
sadness, the thesis is open to various interpretations, none of which
is yet borne out by any important body of evidence; if true, this claim
would be of considerably greater interest and importance.
20 Note once again: I freely admit the logical possibility that our views may be
consistent. As Tomas points out, my exotic friend may be hearing different
phenomenal music. His heard music may “really” be sad, and mine “really” gay.
But, as I have already argued, this fact is of no particular theoretical interest. As
theorists, our problem is to describe the music (or the experience) in general,
not to exchange gossip about idiosyncratic introspective peculiarities. That such
a difference as the example suggests is generic rather than idiosyncratic remains
for Tomas to demonstrate.
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
When the word “express” is used in aesthetics as a relational term,

it creates pseudo-problems. Mr. Tomas has very convincingly shown
that it cannot sensibly be used to name a relation between aesthetic
objects and something else, and consequently that statements of the
apparent form “‘X expresses Y”, where X is an aesthetic object, must
be understood as subject-predicate statements. I would go further and
question the intelligibility of statements of the form “X expresses
Y”, where X is an artistic creator: in other words, I don’t think the
word makes sense in its other typical aesthetic use, as when people
say, “The artist expressed his feelings in the work.” Nothing but
confusion can result until the word-is eliminated from the vocabulary
of aesthetics. Since I am so deeply in agreement with Mr. ‘Tomas,
what I have to say is only a series of footnotes to his thesis, with
special reference to one respect in which it appears to be doubted
by Mr. Morgan.
To begin with, I think Mr. Tomas’s own terminology obscures
the rigor of his argument and nourishes the very confusions that
blossom in the two-term expression theory. He speaks of the “phe-
nomenological distinction between subjective and objective feelings”
(p. 260); and he also speaks of the distinction between “sensory
surface and feeling import” (p. 255). In his usage, “objective feel-
ing” and “feeling import” are synonymous terms, and both a little
misleading, though clear in context. The “objective feelings” are not
feelings at all, but those qualities of the phenomenal object that are
usually described (metaphorically) by words that are (literally)
names of feelings. ‘To contrast “feeling import” with “sensory sur-
face” is to beckon us dangerously close to the two-term expression
theory again, by suggesting that the quality called “sadness” is not
heard as a quality of the music’s sensory surface.
The distinction between “sensory surface” and “feeling import”
must be formulated more neutrally if we are to beg no questions
about the facts of phenomenal experience. The difference in music
between qualities like the one called “sadness” and qualities like
softness is a matter of (a) the scope of what they qualify, and (b)
their functional relationship to other qualities. A single note can be
soft, but a single note cannot be sad. A musical passage, part or all
of which is soft, can have the quality called “sadness”; thus, relative
to each other, softness can be called a “part-quality” and the quality
called “sadness” can be called.a “whole-quality.” When we say we
hear in the music a quality that is not strictly a part of its “sensory
surface,” we mean, I think, that a certain portion of the music is
pervasively qualified by a quality that none of its discriminable parts
possesses, but that this whole-quality is dependent upon some of the
qualities of the parts, and their relations to one another. In short,
we mean that it is an emergent quality of the sensory surface.
We ought next, I think, to separate two questions about the
attribution of such qualities as sadness to music. The first question
concerns the meaningfulness of this attribution. A person may be in
doubt whether to call a certain piece of music sad—say, the “Cava-
tina” of Beethoven’s string quartet in B flat, Op. 130. Such a person
may be perceiving a certain quality in the music without knowing
whether he would be describing this quality adequately to other
people if he should say that it is sadness. He does not doubt that he
perceives the quality, and that it is phenomenally objective, but he
is not sure what to call it. The question here is what, if anything,
justifies us in selecting a term that literally means an emotional
state, in order to apply it metaphorically to a musical object. If I am
not mistaken, Hanslick was the first one clearly to see this question
and to give an answer: namely, that musical and psychological pro-
cesses share certain patterns of dynamic relationship. Unlike some
later theorists, he was careful not to say that this dynamic similarity
constitutes a semantical relation; he did not call it an “iconic sign”
or “presentational symbol.”
Now, it is plain enough that a musical passage carrying through
a crescendo has something in common with a teakettle boiling over
and with an angry human being blowing his top; in virtue of that
similarity, we succeed in communicating when we take words for any
of these processes and use them metaphorically for the others. But
some theorists who speak of the “morphology of emotion” and the
“structure of feeling” seem to want to say more than Hanslick, and
these terms are not very clear. What dynamical characteristics do
all, or most, cases of sadness have in common, that we can identify
in such very different musical processes as, say, the “Crucifixus” of
Bach’s B minor mass, the slow movement of Debussy’s quartet, and
the opening melody of Schubert’s Winterreise? If, as Spinoza says,
sorrow is the passage from a greater to a less perfection, that is, a
diminution of vitality, the answer would be easy. But it seems that a
good deal of psychological inquiry, phenomenological description, as
well as verbal analysis, remains to be done before we can clarify and
improve our terminology for describing the emergent qualities of
music. In the meantime, our linguistic inadequacy here makes it
harder to answer the second question about musical sadness.
The second question is the one Mr. Morgan stresses. I agree
with him that we want descriptive statements about aesthetic objects
to be publicly significant and therefore corrigible. ‘That is, we want to
conceive the aesthetic object in such a way that it can be the referent
of various people’s reports at various times, and in such a way that
when such reports conflict, one of them must be wrong. To do this
we have to have a criterion for determining when they are correct
and when they are not. And I believe the criterion we use is this:
When an emergent quality is lawfully related to certain qualities of
parts of the field it qualifies, then the emergent quality is to be attri-
buted to the aesthetic object. If the quality called “sadness” is a
function of some set of qualities, such as slowness, low pitch, small
intervals, falling melodic patterns, then it is a quality of the musical
object. ‘To test the existence of such lawful dependencies, of course,
we have to specify experimental conditions, such as the presence of
full attention and the absence of distracting noise and prior feelings.
No doubt these conditions have never been worked out carefully and
agreed upon explicity, but the criterion appears to be the one we
actually, if often negligently, employ. In contradiction to Mr. Mor-
gan, I think it is not general agreement, under all conditions, nor
correlation with the physical stimulus, but rather positive correlation
with other perceived qualities, that is the criterion of correctness of
attribution.
From this point of view, Mr. Morgan’s doubts about the objec-
tivity of musical sadness seem to me unnecessarily skeptical. Mr.
Tomas seems to me to be right in saying that we are justified in
attributing the quality called “sadness” to aesthetic objects. Not that
quick solemnity is a contradiction in terms; it is merely improbable.
The difficulties of getting reliable experimental results in this field
are considerable, but not insurmountable. Some experimenters, for
example, get a very small positive correlation between the quality
called “sadness” and other qualities, because they ask their subjects
whether the music “is in a sad mood” or “makes them feel sad.”
These questions turn the subject’s attention from the music to him-
self, so it is not to be wondered at that the results are mixed. Usually
the experimenter fails to make sure that his subjects are discriminat-
ing the part-qualities on which the sadness may depend. Usually he
makes no attempt to ensure that his subjects agree to some extent
beforehand about the way these vague metaphorical adjectives are
to be used. However, those experimenters who have done most to
control these and other sources of error, have succeeded in getting a
good deal of positive psychological evidence that some music is sad.
May I add a moral here, and, in the light of my comments, sug-
gest a new direction for Mr. ‘Tomas’s conclusion? Artistic creation,
he says (p. 265), “is not a process by means of which an artist en-
dows sensuous material with a feeling quality it does not have, but
one in which he is working with materials already charged with their
specific feeling import.” Here we must agree with him, I think, but
add that this is only half the story. For the artist is also discovering
the emergent qualities of materials already charged, not only with
their own qualities, but also with the capacity to take on hitherto
unheard and unseen qualities. Composition is invention, and inven-
tion is discovery. When Berlioz first combines low flutes with violas,
or Barték makes his quartet players slide their fingers up and down
the strings, new sounds are heard—that is, new qualities come into
the world. And the important question is not, after all, whether these
qualities feel “like the feeling [the composer] wishes to express,”
but whether they are qualities worth having around.
14
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
MUSICAL EXPRESSION
Even after we have analyzed a piece of music with some thorough-

ness, tracing its favored intervals, its melodies and figures, its
modulations and developments—in short, exposing the details of its
structure and texture—there is, of course, something important we
have left out of our description. For we have not mentioned those
pervasive regional qualities that are distinctive to it and relished in it.
When we list such qualities—it is dramatic, it is turbulent, it is
restrained and lyrical, it is boisterous and bluff—we know our de-
scription can never be complete. Yet we feel vaguely that even if it
were there would still be something further to say about the music.
For it seems as though there is more in the music than what it
presents to our attentive ears—an intimation beyond itself, a refer-
ence, however indirect, to the world or to the life of man. And this
feeling is understandable. ‘The experience of music is sometimes like
an experience of revelation: we feel we are discovering something for
the first time. . . . Thus arises the view that music has not only
From Aesthetics by Monroe C. Beardsley, pp. 318-332, © 1958, by

Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc. and reprinted by kind permission of the author
and the publisher.
288
MUSICAL EXPRESSION 289
qualities of its parts and whole, but a meaning—a semantical dimen-
sion, like words and gestures. It is then part of the music critic’s task,
where apropos, to declare what that meaning is, and to help the
handicapped or inexperienced listener find that meaning. To do this
would be to interpret the music—a different thing from describing it.
And the consequent problem for aesthetics concerns this process of
interpretation: Does music have meaning, in some noteworthy sense?
If so, how do we know what that meaning is? . . .
Tchaikovsky wrote to ‘Taneev, “I should be sorry if symphonies
that mean nothing should flow from my pen, consisting solely of a
progression of harmonies, rhythms and modulations.” Tchaikovsky
was insisting that “most assuredly” his F Minor Symphony (No. 4)
had a program: it wasn’t just music. . . . We must ask whether
musical compositions ever have a semantical dimension, analogous
perhaps to the representational dimension of the fine arts: that is, a
capacity to mean, as well as to be.
There are three familiar but relatively trivial ways in which
music can remind us of other things. ‘They are trivial in relation to
our present concerns because they are quite easily distinguishable as
contingent and peripheral aspects of music. It will therefore be well
to mention them briefly at once, and then set them aside.
First, of course, the music of a song can remind us of the words
if we know it well. The melodic phrase deathlessly associated with
the exclamation, “How dry I am!” will make the same comic point
as the words themselves if they are played, let us say, in the score to
a motion picture as a character pushes his way into a bar and grill.
You can say that in this context the notes “mean” the words, in the
sense of being a recognizable substitute for them, as well as a kind of
mocking comment upon them, but this particular sense of musical
meaning is not a very important one, though it is found in the music
of Bach, who frequently quotes snatches of hymn-tunes to recall their
words.
Second, music that is customarily played on certain occasions
can become associated with those occasions. There is dance music,
funeral music, military music, religious music—taking these terms
not as descriptions of the musical qualities, which they might be, but
as indications of the things that are usually done to their accompani-
ment. If the record companies succeed in their apparent aim to pro-
vide Gebrauchsmusik for all conceivable occasions, there is no telling
290 MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
to what degree of specialization this second sort of musical associa-
tion can be carried: we already have Music to Study By, Music to
Cook By, and Music to Love By. Soon we shall have Music to Eat
French Cuisine By, and Music to Go with Martinis. ‘There are col-
lege songs, hillbilly songs, Negro spirituals, barbershop ballads, and
other such species—a circumstance of which composers have some-
times made use for topical purposes, for example Brahms with
“Gaudeamus Igitur’ in his Academic Festival Overture. ‘There are
historical associations, as with the French and Russian national an-
thems in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, or the first four notes of
Beethoven’s C Minor Symphony that were made into a symbol of
victory in World War II, because they have the rhythm of a Morse
Code V (+++ —). Finally, there are associations of a more personal
sort: the song that always makes your eyes water because you heard
it at the Junior Prom or on shipboard.
That all these are uses of music cannot be denied; they have no
bearing upon the central problems of musical meaning, however. If
there is such a thing as Music to Study By, which I doubt, its capa-
city to fulfill this function presumably depends upon its having cer-
tain desirable qualities. Whether it also depends upon the music’s
having a certain meaning is not evident; in any case, the fact that
music can be studied by is not enough to prove that music has a
meaning, much less that it “means” study.
Third, there is the imitative aspect of music. Any event that
makes a sound—a battle, a brook, a spinning wheel, an iron foundry,
a train, a thunder storm, the bleating of sheep, the croaking of a
frog—can be imitated by another sound. And scattered throughout
musical literature there are, of course, a great many examples of this
imitation of sound by sound. Since a representational painting imi-
tates a sight by a visual design, the imitation of sound by an auditory
design—whether the dropping of the guillotine is imitated by pizzi-
cato strings, as in Berlioz’ Fantastic Symphony, or by an actual
guillotine specifically called for in the score by one of our more
realistic composers—might be called the “representational” aspect of
music. ‘The analogy is close; familiarity with the relevant bird songs
is all that is required to recognize Beethoven’s imitation of the quail
and the cuckoo—or the yellowhammer, as Schindler insists—in the
coda to the slow movement of his “Pastoral” Symphony in F Major
(No. 6), just as familiarity with the visual appearance of the relevant
objects is all that is required to recognize a visual representation.
MUSICAL EXPRESSION eae
However, it will not be necessary for our purposes to press the com-
parison; we can speak of “sound-imitation,” or the imitation of
sounds by sounds.
THE IMAGE-EVOCATION THEORY
This third preliminary, and relatively trivial, way in which music can
remind us of things outside itself prompts a further line of thought
that seems to promise more important results. For granted that
sounds can imitate sounds, we may ask whether sounds can imitate
anything but sounds. Music is sometimes said to imitate sights, too:
the sea, clouds, a trout darting silently through the water, a mist
lifting from the mountain, a fairy, or moonlight. Honegger said that
in his Pacific 231 he was “depicting” not only the sound, but the
“visual impression” of the locomotive. If he succeeded, we can build
upon his success one theory of musical meaning that may be worth
considering. Consider a certain musical passage, say, from Debussy’s
La Mer, that is said to imitate the sea—not the sound of the sea
alone, but the way it looks. Suppose the composer first forms an
image of the sea in his mind, and then composes music of such a
nature that a qualified listener hearing the music will form the same
or similar images. In that case, we could say that the music “means”
the sea.
It is doubtful if any serious student of music has ever main-
tained this theory, which I shall call the Image-Evocation Theory of
musical meaning. But it is quite certain that many things written
about music, especially in reviews and in concert programs, make
sense only if this theory, or something like it, is true. Indeed, when
people say that they do not “understand” a piece of music, and ask
what it means, sometimes their predicament is exactly that they feel
they should form some images of objects or historical events to go
with the music, and do not know what images to form. “Image”
here does not have to mean eidetic imagery, only the concept of a
visible thing. If the theory seems plausible only when left vague and
half-explicit, that is all the more reason for seeing what it looks like
when dragged into the open. And even if it is obviously wrong, its
mistakes may be instructive.
People often report that music evokes images, that is, suggests to
them some objects or events; in fact, listeners have been classified
according to their tendency to respond this way. But the notion of
image-evocation requires serious qualifications. If a person takes a
hot bath and falls to daydreaming, it would be misleading to say
that the bath evokes the daydreams. It provides a favorable condition
for daydreaming, to be sure, and perhaps we could say that it stimu-
lates the fantasy. But by itself it exercises very little control over the
content of the daydream; it is not sufficiently directive. Similarly, it
is misleading to say that music evokes a listener’s images if in fact he
merely takes advantage of the general musical ambiance to relax his
mental control and lapse into reverie.
The answer to the question whether music evokes images, then,
depends on the control the music exercises over the images. If it can
exercise a high degree of control, the description is apt. If not, not—
though no doubt it does exercise more control than a hot bath.
The direct evidence on this matter derives from reports of lis-
teners, and experimental studies support our common experience. Of
half a dozen serious people invited to imagine appropriate objects
and events while listening to a musical selection that they have never
heard before, and whose name and composer they do not know,
hardly two of them will come up with the same results. Where one
sees a tornado, another will see a fight between a wolf and a wild
boar (with tusks); where one sees a white-robed maiden bidding
good-bye to her fiancé, another will see a Zen Buddhist priest medi-
tating.
This direct evidence is supported, and its significance explained,
by a careful consideration of the question we raised a few para-
graphs back and temporarily set aside. Can music imitate the visual
appearances of things? For only if the music can, let us say, imitate
the white-robed maiden so accurately that she will not be mistaken
by a careful listener for a Buddhist priest, is there any plausibility in
the Image-Evocation Theory.
Similar qualities can appear in different sensory fields. But there
are serious limits to this correspondence. Consider first physical ob-
jects or states of affairs, as opposed to events. Can music sound so
much the way the sea looks that we can pick out the sea uniquely
as its special object? Tchaikovsky’s Sugarplum Fairy, in The Nut-
cracker Suite, is evidently a different sort of fairy from those that
dance about in the Overture of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer-Night’s
Dream music or those that are “tripping hither, tripping thither” in
the opening scene of Iolanthe. Yet I defy anyone to draw a picture
of a fairy—standing still—that will ft Tchaikovsky but not Mendels-
sohn or Sullivan. The same difficulties arise in distinguishing, by
musical means alone, between mist and a light snow, or between
moonlight and lamplight.
If we set aside physical objects as such and consider physical
events—the things that objects do, or that happen to them—the
imitative power of music becomes considerably more notable. Music
is at least a process, and certain things can be said of all processes,
including physical changes, whether locomotion (change of position)
pace, tension, momentum, climax, crescendo, dying away. And one
or qualitative change. All processes have such kinetic qualities as
process, say a musical one, can be similar to another in its kinetic
pattern. ‘Thus music can undoubtedly imitate to some extent the
kinetic aspects of physical motion: rushing, staggering, bounding,
creeping, wavering, romping, driving, soaring, gliding, surging, flying,
falling, blowing up and collapsing.
And it seems evident that it is just this capacity of music that
makes possible the dance-with-music as an aesthetic object. We shall
not have space here to deal with the art of dance, though some of
the points to be considered in the following section will relate to it.
But the existence of such an art depends on the possibility of per-
ceived correspondence between the patterns of music and the pat-
terns of bodily movement.
It does not, however, follow that music can mean these pro-
cesses. For music can never imitate any one of them so precisely that
it can refer to that alone. When music is said to imitate the darting
of the trout, for example, this is in need of careful restriction: it can
present the darting, all right, but not the trout—unless it should
happen that trout are the only things that dart. It can present
muddying, as when the chords become thick at Bar 59 of Schubert’s
Die Forelle, but cannot tell us, without words, that the fisherman is
stirring the water with a stick to confuse the poor fish. ‘Thus in most
cases where musical process is compared with physical processes,
several comparisons are sure to be equally apt. Consider, for a brief
illustration, the scherzo of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony (No. 7):
THIRD MOVEMENT Beethoven, Symphony in A Major (No. 7)

Presto SMW. Cee oe te ee
There is absolutely no need for us to compare this with any physical
motion at all. But in order to test the Image-Evocation Theory, let’s
see what physical processes we can think of that are similar to it in
kinetic pattern. .
Someone goes up an inclined plane in two quick jumps, and
then comes tripping down. Someone squirts water on the roof, and
it trickles off. Something is blown up and the air splutters out. Per-
haps some of these stories are more enjoyable to contemplate than
others; none is very edifying. If that’s what the music means, you
may prefer not to think about it. There is no way of determining
whether Beethoven had any of these images, or any images at all, in
his mind. It would be silly to encourage people to spend their time
trying to think of physical analogues of music instead of listening to
the music, and it would be even sillier to say that until the listener
has hit upon the correct analogue he has not understood the music.
Now the defender of the Image-Fvocation Theory is not, of
course, compelled to claim that all music has meaning in his sense.
But I think we are in a position to say that no music without words
has meaning in this sense. It is therefore very misleading to speak
of music as “describing” or “narrating” or “depicting.” There is no
such thing. Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony does not describe
London, nor does Ravel’s “Le Gibet,” in Gaspard de la Nuit, describe
a gallows.
THE EXPRESSION THEORY
The Expression Theory of musical meaning takes as its key concept

the formula
X expresses Y,
where X is the musical work, or some part of it, and Y is a psycho-

logical state or quality: heroic fortitude, moping melancholy, romp-
ing gaiety. For example,
The scherzo of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony expresses joy.
This may seem like a harmless enough statement—it is certainly a

common one. But how do we know what the scherzo expresses: that
it is joy rather than fear or fretfulness? What evidence are we to
look for in deciding? At this point we find that those who profess
the Expression Theoryin fact have three very different things in
mind. ;
Sometimes when people talk about musical expression, we can
see that they are really talking about the state of mind of the com-
poser; to them,
“The scherzo of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony expresses joy” means

“Beethoven felt joy when composing that scherzo, and was impelled by
that emotion to compose it.”
This use of the term “express” is familiar in other matters. We say,

for example, that a person’s face expresses bafflement or bewilder-
ment; he looks baffled or bewildered, that is, his face has the sort of
look usually accompanying such feelings, so that we can with some
probability infer from his look that he has the feeling. The inference
depends upon a generalization: “People who look that way are gen-
erally baffled.” And we are in a position to obtain such generaliza-
tions about facial expressions, for we can learn to correlate them
with verbal symptoms of bafflement (“I don’t understand this at
all”) and other behavioral symptoms (hesitancy or head-scratching).
It is evident, however, that we know no such generalization as
“People who write music like Beethoven’s scherzo are generally joy-
ous.” For in the first place there is no other music very much like
that scherzo; and a generalization should not be based upon a single
instance. And in the second place, even in this one instance, we have
no independent evidence of Beethoven’s state of mind. It is true that
biographers of the great musicians make this kind of inference con-
stantly, and sometimes offer scraps of not very circumstantial data to
back them up. For example, a recent book of psychoanalytical studies
has much to say about the inhibitions in Brahms’ love life and his
unfulfilled longings for love. ‘““We are not surprised to hear longing
and woe sound through his music.”! If this means that we can pre-
dict that longing and woe will sound through the music of any
composer merely from knowing that he has unfulfilled longings for
love, then psychoanalysis is a lot simpler than I had thought. It is a
plausible guess, but there is no adequate evidence for it.
1 Edward Hitschmann, Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies, New York: Inter-

national Universities, 1956, p. 224.
The first concept of expression, which identifies it with the
venting of emotion, is therefore of no use to us. In this sense, it is
very seldom possible for the critic to verify the statement that such-
and-such a musical composition expresses joy, since to do that he
would either have to know how the composer was feeling at the
time, and also that he was relieving his feelings in writing the music,
or he would have to be in possession of a general law correlating that
sort of music with that emotion. If what the music expresses 1s
something discoverable from listening to the music itself, then ex-
pression is not the same as venting emotions.
Other critics who talk about musical expression are really talking
about their own state of mind when they listen to the music; to
them,
“The scherzo of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony expresses joy’ means

“The scherzo makes me feel joy when I hear it.”
This is not the same as saying that the music makes me want to
tap my feet or rock and roll: those effects of the music can take
place on a physiological level. In this second sense, “express” is
synonymous with “arouse”: the music makes the listener experience
joy or sorrow, calmness or uneasiness.
It is an interesting question whether music, apart from words,
can strictly be said to arouse emotions. Anger and fear, curiosity and
moral indignation, for example, surely involve a conceptual element,
an object to which the emotion is directed, and music can present
no concepts. Thus music cannot arouse anger or fear, though it can
be angry or fearful. But presumably music may be said to arouse
feelings, if we mean by this term something more general than emo-
tions: excitement, serenity, lassitude, relaxation, tension. These are
feelings about the music itself—not the sort of thing the Expression
Theorists usually talk about, such as cheerfulness, human dignity, or
heroism. But it is very hard to see how, without the mediation of
concepts, any such emotions can really be aroused. Can heroic music
make me feel like a hero? Not for a moment.
In any case, the term “expression” is redundant here. We al-
ready have a term for arousing emotions, namely the term “arous-
ing’; if that is what we mean when we say the music expresses
emotions, it is better to say so. For we can talk about the effects of
music upon listeners with no reference at all to the composer and
his feelings about the matter.
Sometimes when people talk about musical expression, we can
see that they are really talking about the regional qualities of the
music itself; to them,
“The scherzo of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony expresses joy’? means

“The scherzo is joyful.”
In this translation we seem to be getting nearer to what some de-

fenders of the Expression Theory have in mind. For, despite the lack
of clarity in parts of their theory, they do generally take pains to
distinguish the act of expression, in the artistic sense, from simple
venting of the emotions, like crying or laughing, and from the calcu-
lation of effects, like advertising or political campaigning. In artistic
expression, it is said, the artist “puts himself into his work”; he “em-
bodies” or “objectifies” his feelings. This is the difference between
art and dreaming or shouting or meditating or cake-baking or knit-
ting to achieve inner calm.
When we ask the Expression Theorists for a fuller account of
their concept of objectification or embodiment, which are their occa-
sional synonyms for “expression,” we get a number of slightly differ-
ent answers. But this seems to be the core:
“The composer has objectified (embodied, expressed) joy in his scherzo”

means “(1) he has been moved by a feeling of joy to compose the
scherzo; (2) he has given the scherzo a joyful quality; and (3) the
scherzo has the capacity to give him the same feeling of joy when he
hears it again, and consequently to give it to other listeners, too.”
It is this compound theory that I shall call the Expression Theory of

Musical Meaning in the strict sense. It involves a statement about the
music, plus a statement about the relationship of the music to both
the composer and the listener.
It is clear that part 2 of this definition is logically independent
of parts 1 and 3, for the music may have a quality even if that
quality is neither the cause nor the effect of emotions. If our pre-
ceding discussion is sound, we have already found cause to reject the
Expression Theory in this compound form, for part 1 is untestable
and part 3 is dubious. But part 2 may still be worth considering, and
to that we shall now tum. Suppose from “This music expresses
joy,” we extract the statement, “This music is joyful,” which is a
description of the music. It is a metaphorical description, to be sure,
but it is no less a description for being metaphorical. However, it
raises several questions.
As it is most often used, the term “express” does not apply to
all regional qualities, but only to some. For music to be called “very
expressive,” it is not enough that it should be definitely in a key, or
have a marked rhythm. Some regional qualities are similar to qualities
of human behavior, especially to mental states and processes: somber-
ness, serenity, frolicsomeness, determination, calm, voluptuousness,
indecisiveness, for example. Let us call such qualities human qualities.
The Expression Theory claims, then, that some of the regional
qualities of music are human regional quadlities.2 The question is
whether this is true.
THE HUMAN QUALITIES OF MUSIC
You might think that anyone who admits that music has regional
qualities at all would have no special reason to balk at the human
qualities. But in fact two doubts have often been raised about them
even by those who do not raise the same doubts about such regional
qualities as tonality or rhythm. The first doubt is whether such
qualities are in fact heard as phenomenally objective qualities of the
music. On this point, it is argued that our use of such terms as
“joyful” shows that we cannot distinguish such qualities but are
really talking about subjective feelings. The second doubt is whether
such qualities, even if in fact phenomenally objective in the auditory
field when they appear, are sufficiently invariant from person to
person to be attributed to the music itself as a perceptual object. On
this peint, it is argued that what one hears when confronted with
musical stimuli varies with training, with age, with perceptual sen-
sitivity, with cultural conditioning, and other factors.
There is ample evidence, from psychological inquiry as well as
lay introspection, to quiet the first doubt, but the situation is more
complex with the second. To justify the attribution of human qual-
? These qualities are sometimes called “physiognomic qualities,” “emotional
qualities,” or “feeling qualities.”
ities to the music we must show that such qualities are a function of
—that is, causally depend upon—its local and subregional qualities.
In other words, we must show that whenever a person hears and
discriminates certain local and subregional qualities of the music—
say, melodic leaps, diatonic intervals, or a fast tempo—he will also
hear the human regional qualities—say, joyfulness. And this is
naturally a difficult thing to show, or to refute. It won’t do just to
point out that the first time we hear Chinese music we can’t tell
whether a Chinese hears it as joyful or sorrowful or neither. For
without the proper training we don’t even hear it as music; we don’t
really hear, in the full sense, its local and subregional qualities in
their true relations.
A certain amount of work has nevertheless been done on the
problem by psychologists, varying greatly, to be sure, in care and
thoroughness, but giving, on the whole, noteworthy results. The main
difficulties have to some extent been overcome. One difficulty is that
we cannot be certain that two subjects do in fact hear the same local
qualities, independently of their reports about the human qualities.
This has limited experimentation with music of other cultures, and
we require much more evidence about that. But it is possible to
determine that the subject is not tone-deaf and to give him music
that is in an idiom not utterly inaccessible to him. Another difficulty
is that the subjects must be given correct instructions so that they
know what it is they are supposed to report, and here many of the
experimenters have multiplied their own obstacles. When the ex-
perimenter asks his subjects to describe the music, he tends to get
convergent responses. Not everyone will choose the same word to
describe it, of course, but the descriptions will tend to correspond
very closely, especially if he does not require the subjects to choose
single adjectives to describe long passages that may have mixed or
varying qualities. On the other hand, when he asks them to say how
they think the composer was feeling, or how the music makes them
feel, or what pictures it calls to mind, the responses begin to diverge.
And no wonder, for these instructions distract their attention from
the qualities of the music itself.
Another difficulty is that communication between the experi-
menter and his subjects is hindered, sometimes fatally, by a linguistic
barrier. For where there is no language but metaphor in which to
describe the music, there is bound to be some deviation in the under-
standing of the metaphors, even if all the subjects are in fact hearing
the same human quality. The quality one describes as “whimsical”
may be the very one that another subject, less gifted in speech, calls
“jumpy” or “wild.” Or, he may say “jejune”’ when he means
“childish.”
This does not mean, however, that such metaphorical descrip-
tions have no objective reference. The minimal condition for apply-
ing metaphorically to B a term that applies literally to A is that B
is similar to A in some respect connoted by the A term. If there is
no term in existence that designates the characteristic in respect to
which A and B are similar, the metaphorical term is all we have. It
may, of course, be highly misleading unless the context limits its
meaning in some way, but it may also be very apt and accurate. In
general, we cannot expect to say much about the total quality of a
large work. In an essay on Mozart’s piano concertos,®? we are told
that K. 414 (A major) has a “fresh, vernal quality,” K. 450 (B flat
major) is “cheerful, intimate,” K. 453 (G major) is “ambiguous .. .
generally serious,” K. 456 (B flat major) has a “strange ambiguity of
mood and character,” K. 459 (F major) is “cheerful,” and K. 466
(D minor) exhibits “tumultuous and, at times, sinister power.”
These, I should think, are fair descriptions as far as they go, but they
do not go far.
Our descriptions can be made more precise when we confine
them to particular movements or to particular passages, but we al-
ways feel that the individual quality of the music is something that
can only vaguely be indicated by words like “cheerful,” which are
built to accommodate a wide range of discriminable qualities. Nor
does it help much to extend and develop the metaphor itself. If we
remark that a certain movement is sad, and we are asked what kind
of sadness it possesses, it is not very helpful to say it is the sort of
sadness one would feel at losing a relative who is close, say, a first
cousin you used to spend much time with as a child but haven’t
seen in several years. It is more helpful to say that it is the sort of
sadness that arises from violins playing, in thirds, on their G and D
strings, melodies containing many falling minor seconds, in slow
8 By A. H. King, in The Concerto, ed. by Ralph Hill, Baltimore: Penguin, 1952.

Compare Hermann Scherchen’s descriptions of the different qualities of each
Contrapunctus in Bach’s Art of Fugue (The Nature of Music, trans. by William
Mann, London: Dobson, 1950).
triple time. This helps us to imagine the music itself more concretely.
But in the last analysis, our descriptions are best when they can be
illustrated by pointing to the music itself and simply calling attention
to its qualities.
In the absence of the music, then, we make more precise a
description of its human quality by analyzing the perceptual con-
ditions of that quality. Such an analysis presupposes that there are
perceptual conditions upon which the human qualities depend, and
that these conditions can in principle be discovered. The local con-
ditions under which a musical composition tends to be joyous or
sad may be called its “joy-making” or “sad-making” qualities. And
the statement, if true, that music having such-and-such features—
slow tempo, low pitch, chromatic falling intervals, a minor key—
tends to be sad, would be an empirical law or generalization.
The difficulty in verifying such laws is that in the incomplete
state of our knowledge they have to be quasi-statistical in form. We
cannot say that all compositions in a minor key are sad: the song
called “The Jolly Miller” and the Rakdédczy March from Berlioz’
Damnation of Faust are both in minor keys, but they are jovial
enough; while on the other hand “The Last Rose of Summer” and
the Dead March from Mendelssohn’s Saul, though in major keys,
are by no means cheerful. Yet we can still say that being in a minor
key is one thing that tends to make a composition sad, though its
effect may be overruled by other features. And the same may be said
about certain tempos, rhythms, intervals, and pitches. ‘The statement
that a composition is sad because it is slow, minor, or falling is not
a tautology, but synthetic and testable. Slow cheerfulness and fast
solemnity are not logical contradictions, they are just very unlikely
or empirically impossible.
There is no methodological error in the project of confirming
such general laws about perceptual conditions and human regional
qualities. We can recognize, that is, hear, the regional quality of a
work before we analyze it in any very detailed way, though the
quality may be heard more intensely or subtly after we have made
some analysis. Suppose we gather a group of movements that all
sound rather joyful or joyous—not only Beethoven’s scherzo, but the
finale of that same symphony and of the E Flat Major (“Emperor”)
Piano Concerto, the finale of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E
Flat Major (K. Anh. 9), the finale of Bach’s Italian Concerto, the
opening of Mendelssohn’s Symphony in A Major (No. 4)—to which
we could add such pieces as Tchaikovsky's “Waltz of the Flowers”
from The Nutcracker Suite, and the dancing theme from Weber's
Oberon Overture—except that these are better described as “gay.”
When we then analyze these compositions to see what they have
in common, we find a number of features in their tempo, melodic
and harmonic progressions, intervals, and so on, that occur with
more than chance frequency, and it is probable that they contribute
to the emergence of that quality of joyousness.
The Expression Theory has called our attention to an important
fact about music—namely, that it has human regional qualities. But
in performing this service it has rendered itself obsolete. We now
have no further use for it. Indeed we are much better off without it.
“The music is joyous” is plain and can be defended. “The music
expresses joy” adds nothing except unnecessary and unanswerable
questions.
For “express” is properly a relational term; it requires an X that
does the expressing and a Y that is expressed, and X and Y must be
distinct. When we say that a rose is red, we have only one thing,
namely the rose, and we describe its quality; in exactly the same way,
when we say the music is joyous, we have only one thing, namely
the music, and we describe its quality. There is no need for the term
Sexpressae
The same conclusion would be reached for other arts to which
the term “express” has been applied. I have taken the Expression
Theory as a theory about music, and examined it as such, because
I think it makes its best case in this domain. But of course many
proponents of the theory set it forth as a general theory about the
arts. ‘They would say that the fine arts, too, besides being designs
and representations, are expressive. But statements about the expres-
siveness of works of fine art, when analyzed correctly, turn out, in
exactly similar fashion, to be translatable into statements about the
human regional qualities of either the design or the subject. Thus,
for example, when Lewis Mumford writes that the Manufacturers
Trust Building in New York City “expresses the classic qualities of
dignity, serenity, and order,” he could as well have used the word
“has” instead of “expresses.” And though this would not, as we have
seen, solve all the problems, it would at least raise the right prob-
lems instead of sending us off in the wrong direction.
15
GUY SIRCELLO
EXPRESSIVE
PREDICATES OF ART
Romantic ideas about mind and art did not receive their clearest and
most level-headed expression until the twentieth century. Then,
philosophers like Croce, Collingwood, Cassirer, Dewey, and Langer
tried to spell out how it is that art expresses and just what it expresses.
Nevertheless, to many other twentieth-century philosophers of art,
especially to those working in the various “analytical” styles whose
intellectual ancestry was anything but Romantic, those philosophical
discussions of expression in art seemed, at very best, puzzling. This
puzzlement can best be discerned in the work of Monroe Beardsley
and O. K. Bouwsma, philosophers who represent, roughly, two
distinct strains in recent analytical philosophy of art.
I think it is not unfair to understand the puzzlement of both
Beardsley and Bouwsma in the following way. We understand rela-
tively well what it is for a person to express such things as feelings,
emotions, attitudes, or moods. But to say that sonatas, poems, or
paintings also express those sorts of things is either to say something
false or to say something true in a very uninformative, misleading,
and therefore pointless way. For to say of art works that they express
Printed by permission of the author.
303
304 GUY SIRCELLO
those sorts of things is to suppose that they are like, indeed very
much like, persons. Therefore, unless we are to believe that philoso-
phers who think of art as expression really do believe the unbeliev-
able, i.e. that art has feelmgs, attitudes, and moods and can express
them, we must believe that these philosophers are trying to come to
grips, however inadequately, with genuine truths about art. Further-
more, there is such an obvious disparity between the nature of art
and the thesis that art can express the same sorts of things that
people do that we cannot understand that thesis as simply a mistaken
belief about art works. Rather, it is to be taken as a kind of theoreti-
cal statement, implying that it is a contrived and elaborated way
of construing some simple facts about art. Both Beardsley and
Bouwsma, thus, speak of the “Expression Theory” of art.
What are the facts about art which the Expression Theory is
meant to interpret? Although Beardsley and Bouwsma differ slightly
in the way they put the point, they essentially agree that works of
art have properties characterizable as “anthropomorphic.” That is,
in describing works of art we may properly, accurately, and informa-
tively characterize them as, for example, gay, sad, witty, pompous,
austere, aloof, impersonal, sentimental, and so on. A “theory” of
art as expression, therefore, in order to be meaningful must be in-
terpreted as coming to no more than that art works have properties
designated by the same words which designate feelings, emotions,
attitudes, moods, and personal characteristics of human beings.
Exactly what sort of properties these might be, however, has not been
probed very deeply. Bouwsma prefers to call them “characters” in-
stead of properties, pointing out their affinity with the “characters”
of a number of things like sounds, words, numerals, and faces. And
in case this is not helpful, Bouwsma further invites us to conceive the
relation of the “character” to the art work in terms of the relation
of redness to apple in a red apple. At this point he is exactly in line
with Beardsley, who mentions a red rose, instead of a red apple.
The Bouwsma-Beardsley position on the question of expression
in art is currently rather widely accepted. Indeed, John Hospers,
writing in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (edited by Paul Edwards)
has, in effect, canonized the view (Vol. I, p. 47). Accordingly, I shall
refer to it henceforth as the Canonical Position. Now however well
that position has illuminated the concept of expression in art—and
there is no question that it has been illuminating—it is, nevertheless,
EXPRESSIVE PREDICATES OF ART 305
false in some respects and inadequate in others. In the following
extended discussion I shall argue (1) that attributions of “char-
acters,” or “anthropomorphic qualities,” to works of art come in a
number of different varieties, (2) that the simple thing-property re-
lation is not an adequate model for understanding all of those
varieties, and (3) that there are far better reasons for calling art
“expressive” than are allowed by the Canonical interpretation of
Expression ‘Theory.
The Canonical Position on the anthropomorphic predicates of works

of art has two incorrect presuppositions. The first is that works of
art are (sufficiently) like natural objects such as roses and apples as
well as, I suppose, such natural quasi- and non-objects as hills, brooks,
winds, and skies. ‘The second is that the anthropomorphic predicates
of works of art are not essentially different from simple color or shape
terms like “red,” “yellow,” “round,” or “square.” No one has, as far
as I know, seriously argued that any art work is just like some natural
“object.” Everyone admits that there are basic and categorial differ-
ences between art and nature, most of them related to the fact that
works of art are made by human beings and natural things are not.
What the first presupposition of the Canonical Position amounts to,
therefore, is that as far as the anthropomorphic predicates are con-
cerned, works of art are no different from natural objects.
It is fairly easy to show that this presupposition is false by the
following strategy. Anthropomorphic predicates are applied to natural
things in virtue of certain properties of those things. Of course, these
properties vary, depending on the particular predicate as well as on
the “thing” to which it applies. Hills, for example, may be austere by
virtue of their color, their vegetation (or lack of it), their contours.
An ocean is angry by virtue of its sound, the force and size of its
waves. A tree may be sad by virtue of the angle of its branches. I
shall inquire, with respect to a number of art works to which anthro-
pomorphic predicates are applied, what it is about those works that
make those predicates applicable. This strategy will yield categorial
features of art which do not pertain to natural things.
(1) Like many of Raphael’s paintings, especially his madonna
306 GUY SIRCELLO
paintings, the one called “La Belle Jardiniere” can be described as
calm and serene. It is fairly clear what there is about this painting
which makes it calm and serene: the regular composition based upon
an equilateral triangle; the gentle and loving expressions on the faces
of the Mother, the Child, and the infant John the Baptist; the
placid landscape; the delicate trees; the soft blue of the sky; the gentle
ripples in the Mother’s garments blown by a slight breeze; and,
finally, the equanimity and quiet with which the artist views his sub-
ject and records the details of the scene.
(2) We might refer, reasonably enough, to Hans Hofmann’s
“The Golden Wall” as an aggressive abstract painting. In this paint-
ing, though, there is no representational content in the usual sense
and, thus, nothing aggressive is depicted. What is aggressive is, first,
the color scheme, which is predominantly red and yellow and mix-
tures of the two. Blue and green are also used as contrasting colors,
but even these colors, especially the blue, are made to look aggressive
because of their intensity. Furthermore, the patches of color are made
to appear, by the way they are juxtaposed, as though they were
rushing out towards the observer and, indeed, were competing with
one another in this rush towards the observer.
(3) We might say of Poussin’s “The Rape of the Sabine
Women” (either version, but especially the one in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City) that it is calm and aloof. Yet it
is quite clear that the depicted scene is not calm and that no one in
it, with the possible exception of Romulus, who is directing the
attack, is aloof. It is rather, as we say, Poussin who calmly observes
the scene and paints it in an aloof, detached way.
(4) Breughel’s painting called “Wedding Dance in the Open
Air” can be aptly, if superficially, described as gay and happy. In this
case, however, it is surely the occasion and the activities of the
depicted peasants which are happy. Perhaps the prominent red color
used throughout the painting can be called “gay.” The faces of the
peasants, however, are neither happy nor gay. They are, rather, bland,
stupid, even brutal. It is this fact which makes the painting basically
not gay or happy but ironic. Yet there is certainly nothing about a
peasant wedding, the heavy dance or the dull peasants which is ironic.
Rather, it is the painter who “views” or “observes” the happy scene
ironically.
(5) John Milton’s “L’Allegro” is not only “about” high spirits,
but it is surely a high-spirited, i.e., gay and joyful, poem. The gaiety
and joy are evident in several ways. First, the scenes and images are
gay and joyful: Zephir playing with Aurora, maids and youths danc-
ing and dallying, the poet himself living a life of “unreproved”
pleasure with Mirth. Second, the diction and rhythms are light-
hearted: “Haste thee nymphs and bring with thee / Jest and youthful
Jollity, / Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, / Nods, and Becks
and Wreathed Smiles.”
(6) Another sort of example entirely is William Wordsworth’s
sentimental poem “We Are Seven.” This poem is quite obviously
not about sentimentality. It purports simply to record the conversa-
tion between the poet and a child. Neither the child nor the poet
(that is, the “character” in the poem), moreover, is sentimental.
The child matter-of-factly reports her firm conviction there are still
seven members of her family despite the fact that two of them are
dead. The poet is trying, in a rather obtuse and hard-headed sort of
way, to get her to admit that there are only five. But the little girl
is made to win the point by having the last word. She is, thus, made
to seem “right,” even though no explicit authorization is given to her
point of view. But by presenting the little girl’s case so sympa-
thetically, Wordsworth (the poet who wrote the poem, not the
“character” in the poem) treats the attitude of the little girl and, by
extension, also the death of her siblings, sentimentally.
(7) The case of “The Dungeon,” by Coleridge, is different
again. This poem or its first half, at least, is angry; but it is not
about anger, or angry persons. It is a diatribe in verse (and certainly
not a poor poem on that account) against the cruelty, injustice, and
wasteful ineffectiveness of prisons.
(8) T. S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” is, I
believe, ultimately a compassionate poem. Its compassion lies in the
understanding and sympathetic way in which the poet portrays, by
means of a dramatic monologue, a man whose dreams of beauty and
love are unfulfilled and unfulfillable because of his drab environment
and his own very self-aware timidity.
(9) Suppose, also, that we say that the second movement of
Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony is sad with a dignified and noble
sadness characteristic of Beethoven. In this case, the sadness is in the
slowness of the tempo, and the special quality of the sadness comes
from the stateliness of the march rhythm, from the use of “heavy”
308 GUY SIRCELLO
instruments like horns and tympani as well as from the sheer length
of the movement. The quality of the second movement contrasts
with the robust exuberance of the third movement with its quick
thythm and its playful alternating of light sounds and big sounds. ;
(10) A somewhat different case is presented by Mozart's music
for Papageno, which is gay, carefree, light-headed, and light-hearted
like Papageno himself. What differentiates this case from the one
immediately above, of course, is that the Mozart music is intended
to suit a certain kind of character, whereas the Beethoven has no
clear and explicit “representational” content. Despite this difference,
however, the “anthropomorphic qualities” of the Mozart music, like
those of the Beethoven, are audible in features of the music: in the
simple harmonies, tripping rhythms, and lilting melodies character-
istic of the songs Papageno sings.
(11) A slightly different case from either (9) or (10) is that
presented by the first movement of Vivaldi’s “Spring” Concerto. ‘The
first lilting, happy theme represents the joyful advent of spring. ‘This
is followed by the gentle music of the winds and waters of spring.
Next, this pleasantness is interrupted by the angry music representing
a thunder shower, after which the happy, gentle music returns. In
this music, of course, the “programmatic” content is clear and explicit
because we know the poetry from which Vivaldi composed the music.
(12) Quite different from the above three cases is the witty
Grandfather theme from Prokoviev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” Grand-
father’s music, played by a bassoon, is large, lumbering, and pompous,
just like Grandfather. But what makes it witty is that it portrays a
dignified old man as just a bit ridiculous. Through the music,
Prokoviev pokes gentle fun at the old man, fun that is well motivated
by the story itself. For, in the end, Peter turns out to be more than
equal to the danger which Grandfather has ordered the little boy to
avoid.
(13) Finally, there is music like the utterly impersonal and de-
tached music of John Cage, exemplified in “Variations IT” played by
David Tudor on (with) the piano. But where can we locate the
“qualities” of impersonality and detachment in Cage’s music? They
do not seem to be “properties” of the sounds and sound-sequences in
the way that gaiety is a property of Papageno’s music or sadness is a
property of Beethoven’s. Indeed, we feel that these “anthropomorphic
qualities” of Cage’s music depend on the very fact that the sounds
themselves are completely lacking in “human” properties. They are
as characterless as any of a thousand random noises we hear every
day; and, in fact, “Variations II” does have the apparent randomness
and disorganization of mere noise. However, we would not be in-
clined to call any random sequences of noises “impersonal” and
“detached,” even if they sounded very much like the sounds of
“Variations II.” Therefore, impersonality and detachment are not
simply properties of the sounds of Cage’s music. These “qualities”
of “Variations IT” arise, rather, from the fact that the composer pre-
sents mere noise, or what sounds like mere noise, as music. Cage
offers this “noise” for us to attend to and concentrate upon. More-
over, he offers it to us without “comment,” and with no intention
that it evoke, represent, or suggest anything beyond itself. That is to
say, Cage offers these noise-like sounds in a totally uninvolved, de-
tached, impersonal way, seeking in no way to touch our emotional
lite?
On the basis of the preceding examples we can see that there
are indeed some respects in which anthropomorphic predicates are
applied to works of art by virtue of features of the works that they
share with (at least some) natural “objects.” ‘Thus in the Raphael it
is the composition of the painting that accounts, in part, for the
“calm” of the painting. But “composition” here refers simply to the
configuration of lines and shapes, which sorts of features are, of
course, shared by natural objects. Similarly, the aggressiveness of
Hofmann’s painting is due to its colors and their arrangement. In
the examples of Beethoven and Mozart, also, the anthropomorphic
qualities are traceable to features of sound which are not foreign to
natural phenomena. The ocean crashing on the shore, a twig tapping
against a windowpane, the gurgle of a stream—all of these can have
“tempi,” “rhythms,” and even “tone color.” Natural “melodies,” too,
are present in the rustle of trees and the howl of winds as well as,
of course, in the “songs” of birds. Even the anthropomorphic qualities
of verbal art can be like the qualities of natural things. For, as the
discussion of “L’Allegro” shows, these qualities can be attributed to
poetry at least partly by virtue of the tempo and rhythm of its verses.
Some of the above examples of anthropomorphic qualities ap-
plied to art show, however, that these sorts of qualities sometimes
belong to works of art by virtue of what those works “represent,”
i.e., describe, depict, portray. Thus, the calm and serenity of the
310 GUY SIRCELLO
Raphael is due in part to the countryside, the sky, the garments, and
the faces depicted. Likewise, the gaiety of the Breughel comes from
the gaiety of the depicted scene, and the high-spirits of Milton’s poem
are due to the gay, happy scenes and images described and presented.
In cases of this sort, it is clear, neither paintings nor poems are
comparable to natural “objects” with respect to the way they bear
their anthropomorphic qualities. And the situation is similar with
respect to all other sorts of “representational” art works, whether
drama, ballet, opera, novels, or sculpture. Only architecture and music
are generally incapable of bearing anthropomorphic qualities in this
way. This is true, moreover, even for music with “representational
content” of sorts, such as the Mozart music mentioned above. For it
is not due to the fact that Mozart’s songs are written for a gay, light-
hearted character that they are gay and light-hearted. Rather, the
songs suit Papageno and, thus, are capable of “portraying” him mu-
sically precisely by virtue of their gaiety and light-heartedness.
There is a second way in which anthropomorphic predicates may
be applied to art works which is unlike the ways in which such
predicates apply to natural things. In the discussion of the above
examples we discovered the following:
(a) “La Belle Jardiniere” is calm and serene partly because
Raphael views his subject calmly and quietly;
(b) “The Rape of the Sabine Women” is aloof and detached
because Poussin calmly observes the violent scene and paints it in an
aloof detached way;
(c) “Wedding Dance in the Open Air” is an ironic painting
because Breughel treats the gaiety of the wedding scene ironically.
(d) “We Are Seven” is a sentimental poem because Words-
worth treats his subject matter sentimentally.
(e) “The Dungeon” is an angry poem because in it the poet
angrily inveighs against the institution of imprisonment.
(f) “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a compassionate
poem because the poet compassionately portrays the condition of
his “hero.”
(g) Prokoviev’s Grandfather Theme is witty because the com-
poser wittily comments on the character in his ballet.
(h) Cage's “Variations II” is impersonal because the composer
presents his noise-like sounds in an impersonal, uninvolved way.
The verbs in the above are italicized in order to point up the
EXPRESSIVE PREDICATES OF ART ose!
fact that the respective anthropomorphic predicate of the work of
att is applied by virtue of something which the artist does in that
work. In order to have a convenient way of referring to this class
of anthropomorphic predicates, I-shall henceforth refer to what verbs
of the sort italicized above designate as “artistic acts.” I do not intend
this bit of nomenclature to have any theoretical import, however.
That is, I do not mean that the viewings, observings, paintings, pre-
sentings, portrayings covered by the term “artistic acts” all belong to
a metaphysical category properly called “acts.” Nor do I mean to
suggest that these sorts of things have anything more in common
than what I have already pointed out and what I shall go on to
specify.
What the preceding discussion has shown is that the view of
art presupposed by the Canonical Position ignores complexities in
works of art which are essential in understanding how they can bear
anthropomorphic predicates. Even more significant, however, is the
discovery that anthropomorphic predicates apply to works of art by
virtue of “artistic acts” in these works. For, as I shall argue presently
at length, it is precisely this feature of works of art that makes them,
on some occasions, expressions and which thereby shows that the
Canonical Position has missed a great deal of truth in classical Ex-
pression Theory. Now, as far as I know, no adherent of the Canonical
Position has, with one exception to be noted below, recognized the
existence of what I call “artistic acts,” much less seen their relevance
to expression in art. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to anticipate the
first defensive move a proponent of the Canonical Position would
likely make against the threat posed by “artistic acts.” It would go
somewhat as follows. What the “discovery” of “artistic acts” shows
is merely that not all applications of anthropomorphic predicates to
works of art attribute qualities to those works. They simply look as
if they do, by virtue of their grammatical form. But, in fact, state-
ments of this sort say nothing at all about the art work; they describe
the artist. After all, “artistic acts” are acts of the artists, and they
cannot possibly be acts of (i. performed by) the works of art
themselves.
However superficially plausible this objection is, though, it can
be shown to have little force. First, the objection presupposes a false
dichotomy: a statement must be descriptive either of a work of art or
of its artist. On the contrary, there seems to be no reason why when
312 GUY SIRCELLO
we talk, as in the above examples, of the painting’s aloofness, the
poem’s sentimentality, and so on, we cannot be talking about both
the work of art and how Poussin painted or how Wordsworth treated
his subject—that is, about the work and its creator. Indeed, it
is the case that we are talking about both. The best proof of this is
that the grounds for the truth of the descriptions of artistic acts in
(a) through (g) above can come from the work of art in question.
One knows by looking at Poussin’s painting that he has painted the
scene in an aloof, detached way. The cold light, the statuesque poses,
the painstaking linearity are all visible in the work. Similarly, we
recognize by reading Wordsworth’s poem that he treats his subject
sentimentally. That is just what it is to give the child, who believes
that the dead are present among the living, the advantage over her
matter-of-fact interlocutor. Likewise, we can recognize, listening to
the neutral, noise-like sounds, the impersonality of “Variations II.”
A test for statements describing art in anthropomorphic terms is
always, and quite naturally, to scrutinize the art, even when the terms
are applied in virtue of “artistic acts.”
Moreover, it is not as if this sort of attention to the work of art
were merely a second-best way of testing such statements. One does
not, in other words, look, listen or read in order to infer something
about the aloof way Poussin painted, or the compassionate way Eliot
portrayed his hero. We must not imagine that, had we actually been
with the artist at work, we could “really” have seen—i.e., immediately
and indubitably have seen—his aloofness, compassion, sentimentality,
etc. How absurd to think that when Poussin’s way of painting is de-
scribed as “aloof,” what is meant is, say, that Poussin arched his eye-
brows slightly, maintained an impassive expression on his face, and
moved his arms slowly and deliberately while he painted the picture.
Or that, because Eliot portrays Prufrock compassionately, he penned
the manuscript of his poem with tears in his eyes. Not only would
such facts not be needed to back up statements about Poussin’s
aloofness or Eliot’s compassion, but they are totally irrelevant to
such statements. For even if we knew the way Poussin looked and
moved when he was painting the Sabine picture or the way Eliot’s
face looked when he penned “Prufrock,” we could not infer that the
painting and poem were, respectively, aloof and compassionate in
the ways we are discussing.
The foregoing considerations do not mean that the “artistic
acts” in question are not truly acts of the artists, that is, are not truly
something which the artists have done. Nor do they imply that these
“artistic acts” are phantom acts, or airy nothings existing mysteriously
in works of art and disembodied from any agents.! They simply mean
that these “acts” are not identifiable or describable independently of
the works “in” which they are done. Probably nothing makes this
point clearer than the fact that descriptions of “artistic acts” of this
sort can be known to be true even when little or nothing is known
about the author, much less what he looked like and what his be-
havior was like at the precise time that he was making his art. It can
be truly said, for example, that Homer describes with some senti-
mentality the meeting of the returned Odysseus and the aged dog
Argos. And yet it would be absurd to say that the truth of that state-
ment waits upon some detailed knowledge about Homer, even the
existence of whom is a matter of considerable dispute.
The “artistic acts” of artists are peculiar in that descriptions of
them are at once and necessarily descriptions of art works. ‘They are,
thus, distinguishable from other sorts of acts of artists that contribute
to the production of works of art, e.g., looking at the canvas, chiseling
marble, penning words, applying paint, revising a manuscript, or
thinking to oneself. Nevertheless, “artistic acts,” for all their peculiar-
ity, are not entirely alone in the universe; there are other sorts of
things which people do which are analogous to “artistic acts” in
significant ways. Note the following: A person may scowl angrily, and
thereby have an angry scowl on his face; he may smile sadly and
thereby have a sad smile on his face; he may gesture impatiently
and thus make an impatient gesture; he may shout defiantly and
produce thereby a defiant shout; he may pout sullenly and a sullen
pout will appear on his face; his eyes may gleam happily and there
will be a happy gleam in his eyes; he may tug at his forelock shyly
or give a shy tug at his forelock. What is interesting about these
clauses is that they show how an “anthropomorphic” term can be
applied either adverbially to “acts” or adjectivally to “things” without
1 Nor are they “virtual,” i.e., unreal, acts, as I have maintained in another place.
Cf, my “Perceptual Acts and Pictorial Art: A Defense of Expression Theory,”
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 62, No. 22, November 18, 1965. Giving these acts
a separate, and unusual, metaphysical status not only complicates the universe
needlessly, it is unfaithful to the commonsense facts of the situation. There are
no good reasons to deny what our ways of talking implicity affirm, namely, that
“artistic acts,” perceptual and otherwise, are “acts” of the artist.
aut GUY SIRCELLO
a difference in the sense of the term or of the sentences in which it
is used. This sort of shift in the grammatical category of a term is
clearly analogous to what is possible with respect to those anthro-
pomorphic predicates applicable to works of art by virtue of “artistic
acts.” Thus, one can, without change of meaning, say either that
Eliot’s “Prufrock” is a compassionate poem or that Eliot portrays
someone compassionately in his poem; that Poussin paints his violent
scene in an aloof, detached way or that the “Sabine” picture is an
aloof, detached painting2 This grammatical shift is possible in both
sorts of cases because of the inseparability of the “act” and the “thing.”
One does not infer from a smile on a person’s face that he is smiling,
anymore than one infers that Eliot portrayed Prufrock compassion-
ately from his compassionate poem, and for analogous reasons. The
“acts” of smiling, pouting, shouting, tugging are not describable in-
dependently of the smile, pout, shout, or tug. Smiling is not an act
which produces or results in a smile so that something could inter-
fere to prevent the smiling from bringing off the smile. “Smiling”
and “smile,” we are inclined to say, are simply two grammatically
different ways of referring to the same “thing.”® Now the parallel I
want to point out is not between smile-smiling, pout-pouting, tug-
tugging, on the one hand, and poem-portraying, picture-(act of)
painting, music-presenting, on the other. For clearly Poussin’s Sabine
painting is more than (is not simply identical with) Poussin’s aloof
way of painting the violent scene; Eliot’s poem is more than his
compassionate way of portraying its title character; Cage’s music is
more than his impersonal presenting of noise-like sounds. That is to
say, when we have described these “artistic acts” we have not by any
means completely described the art works. The analogy is, rather,
between smile-smiling and portrayal-portraying, presentation-present-
? Of course, it is true that sometimes when anthropomorphic terms are predicated

of works of art, they apply to subject matters and to “material” aspects of the
work such as lines, colors, sounds, masses, etc., as well as to “artistic acts.” My
point above is only that anthropomorphic adjectives may be applied to a work
only by virtue of an “artistic act,” in which case it is, without change of mean-
ing, immediately applicable in adverbial form to that act.
3 It is no objection to this assertion that some people in virtue of the natural lay
of their faces, have perpetual “smiles,” “smirks,” “pouts,” etc., on their faces
even though they do not smile, smirk or pout. For a “smile” of this sort is, of
course, different from a smile; that is what the scare quotes mean. But, even
though a person with such a “smile” on his face is not thereby smiling, he is,
significantly, “smiling.”
EXPRESSIVE PREDICATES OF ART B15
ing, treatment-treating, view-viewing, and so on. Thus, when we
designate “artistic acts” by a noun term, such acts come to look like
“parts” of the works of art to which they pertain. We may then
understand the way in which an anthropomorphic adjective applies
to a work of art in virtue of such a “part” in something like the way
in which a person’s face is called sad in virtue of his sad smile or his
sad gaze, or in which a person’s behavior is angry in virtue of his
angry talk or angry shouts.
What the foregoing comparison points up is that not only is
it the case that anthropomorphic predicates do not always apply to
works of art the way predicates, anthropomorphic or not, apply to
natural objects, but that sometimes anthropomorphic predicates
apply to works of art rather like the way that they apply to verbal,
gestural, and facial expressions. And herein lies an all-important
point which the Canonical Position has missed in its interpretation
of the Expression Theory of Art. For sad smiles are characteristic
expressions of sadness in a person; angry scowls, of anger; shy tugs at
forelocks, of diffidence; sullen pouts, of petulance. Had proponents
of the Canonical Position pursued their inquiry into anthropo-
morphic predicates further, then, they would have been forced to
question whether these predicates apply to art in the way they apply
to objects or in the way they apply to common human expressions.
Instead of pursuing this line of questioning, however, they were mis-
led by the noun-adjective form of their favorite example—“sad music”
—into their object-quality interpretation of Expression Theory, an
interpretation which, of course, makes that “theory” seem very far
removed indeed from the “facts” which were alleged to have moti-
vated it. Small wonder, then, that Beardsley’s final judgment on
Expression Theory is that it “renders itself obsolete” after it has re-
minded us that anthropomorphic predicates can, in fact, reasonably
be applied to works of art. Even O. K. Bouwsma, who of all the
proponents of the Canonical Position comes closest to the point I
am maintaining, was not able to see quite where his comparison be-
tween sad music and sad faces leads. For, instead of making a transi-
tion from sad faces to sad expressions on faces, he takes the (rather
longer) way from sad faces to red apples.
There is more to the comparison between works of art with
“artistic acts” and facial, vocal, and gestural expressions than the
formal or grammatical similarities already noted. ‘There are even
316 GUY SIRCELLO
more important parallels between the “significance” of things like
sad smiles and angry scowls and the significance of aloofness or
irony in paintings, sentimentality or compassion in poems, and im-
personality and wit in music. That is, there are parallels between
what facial, gestural, and vocal expressions, on the one hand, and
“artistic acts” on the other, tell us about the persons responsible for
them. And there are parallels between the reasons why they might
tell us nothing about the persons responsible for them. In order to
draw out these parallels explicitly I shall use the examples of an
angry scowl and a compassionate portrayal in the mode of Eliot's
“Prufrock.”
First, it is obvious that an angry scowl on a person’s face might
well mean that the person is angry. It might be more than simply
an expression of anger; it might be an expression of his anger. Now
it should need very little argument to show that a compassionate
poem like “Prufrock” might be an expression of the poet’s general
compassion for sensitive people in this sordid and unheroic century.
In that case, a poem like “Prufrock,” at least a poem with ‘“Pruf-
rock’s” kind of compassion, is precisely what one would expect from
him, just as one understands why an angry man might scowl angrily.
But just as we cannot reasonably expect that every time a person is
angry that he scowl angrily, we cannot expect that every man, who
is a poet, and who feels compassion towards sensitive but cautious
men in the modern world will produce poetry with the compassion
of “Prufrock.” If a man can keep his anger from showing in his face,
a poet can, with whatever greater difficulties and whatever more
interesting implications for himself and his poetty, keep his compas-
sion from showing in his poetry. And thus it is, too, that an angry
scowl on a face does not necessarily betoken an angry person any
more than a compassionate poem necessarily betokens a compas-
sionate poet.
One reason that a man might have an angry scowl on his face
is that he is affecting anger, for any of a number of reasons. Now
although the range of reasons for affecting compassion in his poetry
might be characteristically different from the reasons for affecting
anger in his face, it is nevertheless possible that a corpus of poetry
with “Prufrock’s” sort of compassion might betoken nothing more
than an affectation of compassion. This might be the case if, for
example, the poet is extremely sarcastic and has a tendency to be
EXPRESSIVE PREDICATES OF ART Sy,
overly “hard” but thinks of these traits as weaknesses. He might then,
even with no great self-awareness, write compassionate poetry in
order to mask his true self and present himself to the world as the
soft, sympathetic man he believes he should be.
Furthermore, both angry scowls and compassionate poetry might
be the result of a desire simply to imitate. Children, especially, will
often imitate expressions on people’s faces, but adults, too, sometimes
have occasion to imitate such expressions, e.g., as an accompaniment
to relating an anecdote. A poet, too, might write poems with the
compassion of Eliot in them in imitation of Eliot’s early attitude.
This imitation might be done, say, by a clever teacher in order to
show, more vividly than by merely pointing them out, the means
Eliot used to convey his special compassion in “Prufrock.” Or Eliot
might be imitated because his techniques and style, and the attitudes
that they imply, have become fashionable among serious poets or
because these attitudes strike a responsive chord among serious poets.
The latter sorts of imitation are somewhat more like the imitations
which children might make of persons whom they regard as models
of behavior, occupation, or physical beauty. It is not unusual, thus,
for a gitl who admires a female teacher, say, to practice smiling in
that teacher’s kind, gentle way or for a very young boy to play at
“being angry” in the same way he has seen his father become
angry.
A poet might write poems with the compassion of “Prufrock,”
not because he is either affecting or imitating the “attitude” of that
poem, but because he is practicing writing poetry in different styles
and different “moods.” This may be just something like a technical
exercise for him, or it may be part of a search for a characteristic
attitude or stance which seems to be truly “his own.” He thus “tries
on” a number of different poetic “masks,” so to speak, to see how
they fit him. In a similar way, an adolescent girl grimacing before
her mirror might “try on” various facial expressions to see how they
“look on her” and to discover which is her “best,” or perhaps her
most characteristic face: innocent, sullen, sultry, haughty, or even
angry.
Finally, an angry scowl on a face might be there because the
person is portraying an angry person in a drama. There is a similar
sort of situation in which compassionate poetry might be written not
as betokening a characteristic of the poem’s real author but as be-
318 GUY SIRCELLO
tokening the traits of a character in a play or novel who is repre-
sented as having written the poem. No actual examples of such
a character come immediately to mind; but we surely have no trouble
imagining a master of stylistic imitation writing a novelized account
of modern literature in which he exhibits examples of the “Pru-
frock”-like poetry of an Eliot-like figure.
The immediately preceding discussion does not show that all art
is expression, nor even that all art works with “artistic acts” anthro-
pomorphically qualified are expressions. It does show that “artistic
acts” in works of art do make those works remarkably like common
facial, vocal, and gestural expressions. It also demonstrates that in
some circumstances works of art may function, precisely by virtue of
these sorts of “artistic acts” and of the similarity they bear to com-
mon kinds of expressions, to express those feelings, emotions, atti-
tudes, moods, and/or personal characteristics of their creators that
are suggested by the “anthropomorphic” predicates applicable to the
works of art themselves. It also demonstrates that one presupposition
of the Canonical Position is clearly wrong, namely, that art works,
insofar as they allow of anthropomorphic predicates, are like natural
things untouched by man.
But the second presupposition of the Canonical Position, to wit,
that anthropomorphic predicates of art are like simple color or shape
words, is also false. Indeed, it is false regardless of which of the three
ways, distinguished earlier, that anthropomorphic predicates are ap-
plied to art works. And it is a fortiori false with respect to such
predicates that are applied to art in two or three ways at once, as
most of them are.) The falsity of the presupposition can be brought
out in an interesting way by showing how the three ways of applying
anthropomorphic predicates to art bear a certain resemblance to
color attributions which are rather unlike simply calling a (clearly)
red rose “red” or an (indubitably) green hill “green.”
Suppose that a sign painter is painting a sign in three colors:
yellow, red, and blue. Because the sign is large, he is required to
move his equipment several times during the job. Suppose, further,
that he employs an assistant to attend to this business. Now we can
imagine that the painter will have occasion to give directions to his
assistant. He might say, “Bring me the red bucket, but leave the blue
and yellow ones there, because I’ll need them on that side later.”
Now since we suppose that the color of all the paint containers is
black, when the painter calls for the “red bucket,’ he must mean
“the bucket of red paint,” and would surely be so understood by
most native speakers. The phrase “red bucket” in the context, al-
though it is a colloquial way of saying something quite different,
has, to all appearances, the same grammatical form as “red rose.”
I suggest, then, that to the extent that a painting or other repre-
sentational work of art is called “gay” or “sad” in virtue of its sub-
ject matter, the latter terms are more like “red” in “red bucket” than
in “red rose.”
It has been suggested that “sad” in “sad smile” and “gay” in
“gay laughter” function metaphorically. There may well be a use of
“metaphor,” such that the above suggestion is true. Whether there
is such a use will not be determined until there exists a thorough
philosophical study of metaphor; and I do not intend to offer one
here. But even if it turns out to be true that such uses of anthropo-
morphic words are metaphorical, it cannot be very useful simply to
say so.For such words seem, at least initially, not to be metaphorical
at all. It is not, after all, as if calling a smile sad were representing
the smile as feeling sad, acting sad, weeping, and dragging its feet.
It is much more straightforward, then, to think that a smile is sad
because it is a smile characteristic of a sad person who smiles; that
laughter is gay because such laughter is characteristic laughter of
persons who are gay. Similarly, Slavic cheekbones are cheekbones
characteristic of Slavic people; we certainly do not imagine that
“Slavic cheekbones” compares cheekbones with Slavic people by
virtue of some “similarity.”” Yet to say that a “sad” smile is a smile
characteristic of sad people is not to deny what the Canonical Po-
sition affirms, namely, that “sad” designates a “property” or “char-
acter” of the smile. Surely there is something about the smile which
marks it as sad: its droopiness, the fact that it is not toothy, not
broad, and so on. But the term “sad” still has a different import
from “weak,” “wan,” or “droopy” as applied to smiles, even though
all the latter, too, are characteristic smiles of sad persons. The differ-
ence is that the term “sad” explicitly relates the character of the
smile to sadness of persons. A comparable sort of color term might
be “cherry red,” which is like the term “bright red with bluish under-
tones” in that they both designate a red characteristic of cherries, but
which is unlike it in that it explicitly relates the color to cherries.
It might seem that the Canonical Position would be correct in
320 GUY SIRCELLO
its interpretation of anthropomorphic terms as they apply to those
features of works of art that they share with natural things. Thus,
“sad” applied to the second movement of the “Eroica” and to a
weeping willow must surelysdenote some properties of the music and
the tree. And it does: drooping branches in the tree; slow rhythm
and “heavy” instrumentation in the Beethoven. But “sad” differs
from “drooping,” “slow,” and “heavy,” as in the preceding case; it
relates the properties of the sounds and the branches to properties
of other things that are sad. In particular, “sad” in these cases appears
to function almost metaphorically, “containing,” as it were, a com-
parison within itself. In terms of color words, this use of “sad” is more
like “reddish” than like “ted.” Like “reddish,” which quite self-
consciously does not denote true redness, “sad” in “sad tree” does
not denote true sadness but only a_kind of likeness of it.
In the preceding I have tried to argue that anthropomorphic
terms when applied to art are more like “red” in “red bucket (of
paint),” “cherry red” in “cherry red silk,” or “reddish” in “reddish
grass” than like “red” in “red rose.” But, in truth, anthropomorphic
predicates of art are not very much like any of the above four. The
reason is that what all anthropomorphic predicates ultimately relate
to are human emotions, feelings, attitudes, moods, and personal traits,
none of which are very much at all like colors. But there is point in
drawing out the comparison between anthropomorphic predicates and
color terms which are more complicated than “red” in “red rose.”
And the point is that “red” (as applied to bucket), “cherry red,”
and “reddish” are all in some way relational terms in ways that “red”
said of a rose is not. “Red bucket” means “bucket of red paint’;
“cherry red” means “the red characteristic of cherries”; and “reddish”
means “of a color rather like red.” Had proponents of the Canonical
Position troubled to. refine their comparison between anthropomor-
phic predicates and color predicates, they might have been forced to
recognize these “relational” functions of the terms. Eventually they
might have been led to see that anthropomorphic terms essentially
relate to various forms of the “inner lives” of human beings. And
that is where Expression Theory begins. The Canonical model of the
red rose (or apple) fails utterly to help us understand how anthropo-
morphic predicates apply to art, because those predicates are not
(very much) like simple quality words and what they apply to are
not (very much) like natural objects.
EXPRESSIVE PREDICATES OF ART e721
II
In spite of all of the preceding arguments, the Canonical Position

is not left utterly defenseless. Clearly it is the notion of “artistic acts”
which is most threatening to the Canonical Position, for it is that
notion that completely overthrows its interpretation of Expression
Theory. As I mentioned before, however, proponents of the Canonical
Position have been almost totally unaware of this threat. Almost, but
not quite totally unaware. There is a brief passage in Monroe Beards-
ley’s book Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (pp.
80 ff) in which he mentions an artist’s “treatment” and “handling,”
two examples of which I have called “artistic acts.” Beardsley does
not relate them, however, to the analysis of anthropomorphic terms.
He discusses them under the rubric “misleading idioms,” and he sug-
gests that all talk about art which mentions “handling” and “treat-
ment” not only can be but should be translated into talk which makes
no mention of these sorts of acts.
These are meager clues, but from them it is possible to excogitate
an objection to my notion of “artistic arts” that a defender of the
Canonical Position might make. We should first note a remark which
Beardsley makes elsewhere in his book (p. 332) when he is conclud-
ing his interpretation of Expression ‘Theory. He states that all re-
marks about the expressiveness of an art work can be “translated”
into statements about the anthropomorphic “qualities” either of the
subject matter or of the “design” (i.., roughly, the sorts of proper-
ties that the work shares with natural things). A defense against the
notion of “artistic acts” might, then, run as follows: Any statement
which describes an artistic art “anthropomorphically” can be “trans-
lated” into a statement which describes features of the work of art
other than its artistic acts. So stated, however, the defense is am-
biguous; it has two plausible and interesting interpretations. First, it
might mean that any anthropomorphic description of an artistic act
in a work can be translated, without loss of meaning, into a descrip-
tion of some other aspect of the work in terms of the same anthropo-
morphic predicate. Or it might mean that there are descriptions, of
whatever sort, of aspects of a work other than an “artistic act” which,
given any true anthropomorphic description of an artistic act in that
work, entail that description.
322 GUY SIRCELLO
The first interpretation of this hypothetical objection can be
shown, quite easily and definitely, to be false. All that is required is
that some examples of art be adduced in which an anthropomorphic
predicate is applicable with some plausibility to an “artistic act” but
is in no other way truly attributable to the work. Therefore, let us
look again at the works of Poussin, Eliot, and Prokoviev discussed
in Section I of this chapter.
In the Poussin painting of the rape of the Sabines there is noth-
ing about the violent subject matter which could be called “aloof”
and certainly not the attackers or the attacked. Romulus, the general
in charge, is a calm surveyor of the melee, but cannot be called aloof,
partly because we cannot see him well enough to tell what his
attitude is. As far as the formal elements of the Poussin painting are
concerned, “aloof” does not apply in that regard either. Indeed, it
is difficult even to imagine what “aloof” lines, masses, colors or an
“aloof” arrangement thereof might be. The light in the painting is
rather cold, and that feature does indeed contribute to the aloofness
of the work. Nevertheless, “cold light” is not the same as “aloof
light,” which does not even appear to be a sensible combination of
words.
A similar analysis is possible with respect to Eliot’s “Prufrock.”
If we consider first the “material” elements of the poem such as its
thythm, meter, or sound qualities we realize that “compassionate”
simply cannot apply meaningfully to those features. Even in nature,
things like sounds and rhythms cannot be called “compassionate.”
Furthermore, there is nothing about the subject matter of “Prufrock”
that is compassionate. Certainly Prufrock himself is not “compassion-
ate’; he is, if anything, rather cruelly ironic towards himself. Nor is
anything or anyone in Prufrock’s environment compassionate. That
environment is, at worst, cruel and, at best, merely indifferent to-
wards Prufrock.
Finally, the wittiness of Prokoviev’s Grandfather theme cannot
be supposed a “property” of the music the way its comic qualities
are. The music is amusing, or comic, because the wheeziness of the
bassoon is funny and because the melody imitates the “structure” of
a funny movement (one must move in an amusing way to that
melody). Moreover, although Grandfather himself is funny, he is
definitely not witty. What is comical, amusing, or funny is not always
witty. ‘To be witty is generally to make, say, or do something comical,
amusing, or funny “on purpose.” That is why Prokoviev’s musical
portrayal of a comical grandfather is witty. Similar analyses of the
Breughel painting, the Wordsworth poem, and the Case music men-
tioned previously could obviously be carried out. But the point is, I
take it, already sufficiently well made.
The second interpretation of the hypothetical attack on the
importance of “artistic acts” borrows any initial plausibility it pos-
sesses from the fact that anthropomorphic descriptions of artistic acts
can be “explained” or “justified” in terms that neither mention
artistic acts nor use any of the terms that describe them. For example,
one might point out the irony in the Breughel painting discussed
above by noting the juxtaposition of the gay scene and the dull faces
of its participants. Or one might justify the “aloofness” he sees in
the Poussin by remarking on the cold light, clear lines, and statuesque
poses in a scene of violence and turmoil. Finally, in discussing the
impersonality of “Variations II” it is necessary to mention that the
Cage work sounds like randomly and/or accidentally produced noise
that is senseless and emotionally neutral, but that this noise-like
sound is, to all other appearances, music. That is, it is scored, it is
performed on a musical instrument, it is even reproduced on record-
ings. From these facts about the way in which anthropomorphic
descriptions are justified, it might seem plausible that the justification
of the description entails the description. Such, however, is not the
case, as the following will show.
It has been suggested that the reason that Breughel’s peasant
faces are dull and stupid-looking is that the painter was simply unable
to paint happy faces. Whether the suggestion is true or well-supported
by the evidence is not an issue here. What is important is that were
there any reason for believing that particular incompetence of Breu-
ghel, then there might be (not “would be”) that much less reason
for believing that there is irony in Breughel’s “Wedding Feast.” And
that is because Breughel’s incompetence and Breughel’s irony can in
this case function as mutually exclusive ways of accounting for an
obvious discrepancy in the picture. There are, of course, ways of
admitting both the incompetence and the irony. It is possible, for
example, to suppose that Breughel used his particular incompetence
in making an ironic “statement” about peasant existence. Such a
supposition would imply that Breughel was in some obvious way
aware of his limitation and “took account” of it in his work. Never-
324 GUY SIRCELLO
theless, were it known that the only reason for the discrepancy in the
painting was Breughel’s incompetence, the “irony” would disappear.
It makes no difference, incidentally, that such a thing could possibly
never be known. The point I am making is a logical one regarding
the way an attribution of a certain sort to an “artistic act” relates
to other aspects of a painting like the Breughel. In sum, those aspects
of the painting’s subject matter do indeed “ground” the attribution
but by no means logically entail that attribution. And that is so for
the good reason that the same facts about the subject matter of the
Breughel are consistent with a supposition about Breughel that is
incompatible with the description of the painting as ironic.
A similar point can be illustrated in Poussin’s “Sabine” painting.
In that work there is also a discrepancy—between the violent scene,
on the one hand, and the “still,” clear figures, on the other. ‘T'wo
persons might agree about the character of the figures and the char-
acter of the depicted scene, however, and yet disagree whether these
facts “mean” that Poussin painted the rape of the Sabines in an
aloof, reserved way. One viewer might think simply that the work is
incoherent, that Poussin’s coldly classical means are not suited to the
end he had in mind, namely, to depict the violence of the event. ‘The
discrepancy, in this quite reasonable view, makes the painting “fall
apart” rather than “add up” to an aloof and reserved point of view.
Here, then, are two incompatible descriptions of a work which are
equally well grounded on facts that allegedly “entail” one of the
descriptions. I am mindful, of course, that it might be objected that
there are other features of the “Sabine” painting than the ones
mentioned which preclude the judgment of “incoherence” and ne-
cessitate the judgment of “aloofness.” The best I can say is that
there seem to me to be no such additional features contributing to
the “aloofness” of the painting and that the burden of proof is upon
those who disagree.4
Finally, let us suppose that a devoted listener of traditional
Western music scoffs at the description of Cage’s “Variations IT’ as
“impersonal music.” He insists that it is nothing but what it sounds
*T am also aware that these statements commit me to the position that a positive
judgment about the Poussin cannot be deduced from any descriptions of the
painting of the sort that “ground” its aloofness. For arguments in favor of this
general position see my “Subjectivity and Justification in’ Aesthetic Judgments,”
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 27, Fall, 1968, pp. 3-12.
EXPRESSIVE PREDICATES OF ART BoD.
like, that is, meaningless noise. He charges, furthermore, that Cage
is a fraud whose “music” is a gigantic hoax, a put-on, and that Cage
is laughing up his sleeve at those who take him seriously—perform
his “scores,” record the performances, and listen gravely to his non-
sense. He has, he says, read some of Cage’s “ideological” material
relating to his “music” but he has noted how laden with irony it is.
For him, that shows that Cage is not to be taken seriously because he
does not take himself seriously. Now such a doubter does not dis-
agree with the description of “Variations II” that is used to justify
calling it “impersonal.” The disagreement concerns, rather, the way
we are to assess John Cage; whether or not we judge him to be a
responsible and serious, albeit radically innovative, composer of music.
It is only when Cage’s seriousness is assumed that the term “im-
personality” applies to his music.
What the above three cases demonstrate is that a true anthropo-
morphic description of an artistic act might presuppose conditions
having nothing necessarily to do with the way the formal elements
and/or subject matter are describable. The “conditions” mentioned
are (1) the competence of the artist, (2) the “coherence” of the
work, (3) the seriousness of the artist. But there are surely other
examples that would bring to light other “conditions” of this sort.
What I mean is that with sufficient ingenuity one could discover
and/or construct examples of art in which anthropomorphic descrip-
tions of artistic acts would or would not hold depending upon how
one assessed the artist with respect to, say, his maturity, sanity, con-
sciousness, perceptiveness, or awareness. Now it is probably too rigid to
regard such words as “competence,” “coherence,” “seriousness,” ““ma-
turity,” or “sanity,” as denoting conditions for the legitimate descrip-
tion of artistic acts. For it is probably not true that the artist must
be serious, competent, sane, and so forth or that the work must be
coherent in order for an anthropomorphic description to apply to a
work. What these terms should be taken as denoting is, rather,
“parameters” according to which an artist or a work can be measured
in whatever respect is relevant in a particular case. To do so, would
be to admit that there is probably not a single universal set of par-
ticular conditions of these sorts which applies to all descriptions of
artistic acts. Naming these parameters simply points out the sorts of
considerations that might be relevant in particular descriptions of
artistic acts, leaving it an open question which of these parameters
326 GUY SIRCELLO
are relevant, and to what degree, in particular cases. In any event,
what the recognition of such “parameters” means is that any attempt
to save the Canonical Position by “eliminating” descriptions of ar-
tistic acts in favor of “logically equivalent” descriptions of formal
elements and/or represented subject matter is doomed to fail.
SELECTED READINGS FOR PART II
Aiken, Henry David. “Art as Expression and Surface.” Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 4 (December 1945), pp. 87-95.
Arnheim, Rudolf. Art and Visual Perception. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1957.
Beardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1958. Chapter 7.
Campbell-Fisher, Ivy G. “Intrinsic Expressiveness.” Journal of Gen-
eral Psychology, Vol. 45 (1951), pp. 3-24.
Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. New York: Harpers, 1946.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch & Co.,
1934. Chapter 5.
Gilman, Benjamin. “Report on an Experimental Test of Musical
Expressiveness.” American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 4 (1892),
pp. 558-576, and Vol. 5, pp. 42-73.
Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1968.
Gotshalk, D. W. Art and the Social Order. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1947. Chapter 6.
Gotshalk, D. W. “Aesthetic Expression.” Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, Vol. 13 (September 1954), pp. 80-85.
Grundlach, Ralph. “An Analysis of Some Musical Factors Determin-
ing the Mood Characteristics of Music.” Psychological Bulletin,
Vol. 31 (1934), pp. 592-593.
Grundlach, Ralph. “Factors Determining the Characterization of
Musical Phrases.” American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 47 (1935),
pp. 624-643.
Gurney, Edmund. The Power of Sound. London: Smith, Elder & Co.,
1880.
Hanslick, Eduard. The Beautiful in Music. 1854. Reprinted in Lib-
eral Arts Press edition, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.
327
328 SELECTED READINGS FOR PART II
Hartshorne, Charles. “The Monistic Theory of Expression.” Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 50 (1953), pp. 425-434.
Hartshorne, Charles. The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.
Hepbum, Ronald W. “Emotions and Emotional Qualities.” British
Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 255-65.
Hevner, Kate. “The Affective Character of the Major and Minor
Modes in Music.” American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 47 (1935),
pp. 103-118.
Heyner, Kate. “Experimental Studies of the Elements of Expression
in Music.” American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 48 (1936), pp.
246-268.
Hevner, Kate. “Expression in Music: A Discussion of Experimental
Studies and Theories.” Psychological Review, Vol. 47 (1935),
pp. 186-204.
Hindemith, Paul. A Composer's World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1952.
Hospers, John. “The Concept of Artistic Expression.” Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 55, 1954-1955, pp. 313-344. Re-
printed in John Hospers (ed.), Introductory Readings in Aes-
thetics. New York: The Free Press, 1969.
Hospers, John. “Problems of Aesthetics.” Article in The Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, Macmillan & Free Press 1967. Volume 1, pp. 35-56.
Hungerland, Isabel C. “Iconic Signs and Expressiveness.” Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 3, pp. 15-21.
Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1942. Chapter 8. (Reprinted Mentor
Books, 1948.)
Langer, Susanne K. Problems of Art. New York: Scribners, 1957.
Laszlo, Ervin. “Affect and Expression in Music.” Journal of Aes-
thetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 27 (Winter 1968), pp. 131-134.
Martin, F’. D. “On the Supposed Incompatibility of Expressionism
and Formalism.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 15
(September 1956), pp. 94-99.
Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1956.
Meyer, Leonard B. “Greatness in Music.” Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, Vol. 17 (1958).
Morris, Charles W. “Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs.” Journal
SELECTED READINGS FOR PART II 329.
of Unified Science (Erkenninis), Vol. 8 (1939-1940), pp. 131-150.
Osborne, Harold. Aesthetics and Criticism. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1955. Chapter 7.
Prall, David W. Aesthetic Analysis. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1936.
Chapter 5.
Prall, David W. Aesthetic Judgment. New York: T. Y. Crowell,
1929. Chapter 11.
Pratt, Carroll C. The Meaning of Music. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1938
Reid, Louis Arnaud, Meaning in the Arts. New York: Humanities
Press, 1969. Part Two.
Reid, Louis Arnaud. A Study in Aesthetics. London: Macmillan,
1931. Chapters 2-4.
Rigg, Melvin. “The Expression of Meanings and Emotions in Music.”
In Philosophical Essays in Honor of E. A. Singer, ed. F’. P. Clarke
and Milton Nahm. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1942.
Rudner, Richard. “Some Problems of Non-semiotic Aesthetic ‘Theo-
ties.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 15 (March
1957), pp. 298-310.
Santayana, George. The Sense of Beauty. New York: Scribners, 1896.
Schoen, Max. The Effects of Music. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paula 1977:
Sessions, Roger. “Ihe Composer and His Message.” In The Intent
of the Artist, ed. Augusto Centeno. Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1941.
Sessions, Roger. The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer,
Listener. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.
Sircello, Guy. “Perceptual Acts and Pictorial Art: A Defense of the
Expression Theory.” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 62 (November
18, 1965), pp. 660-677.
Sircello, Guy. “Expressive Qualities of Ordinary Language.” Mind,
Vol. 76 (October 1967), pp. 548-555.
Toch, Emst. The Shaping Forces in Music. New York: Criterion
Music Co., 1958.
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INDEX
Abercrombie, Lascelles, 80n Bosanquet, Bernard, 253

Aesthetic emotion, 43-44, 91-92 Bouwsma, O. K., 112-13, 114, 256,
Aiken, Henry D., 267, 268, 327; 269n, 303-4, 315; selection
quoted, 262-63 by, 224-49
Alexander, Samuel, 78 Brangwin, Frank, 202n
Allen, Grant, 7 Broad, C. D., 258
Anderson, Harold, 102 Bullough, Edward, 262
Anistotle, 33,42, 44n, 62
Arnheim, Rudolf, 112, 327;
selection by, 218-23 Campbell-Fisher, Ivy G., 327
Auber, Daniel F., 155 Camitth) behest 02
Austen, Jane, 47 Cassirer, Ernst, 327
Cezanne, Paul, 184n
Coleridge, Samuel T., 46
Bach,]..9-5 193i Collingwood, Robin G., 6, 51-71,
Beardsley, Monroe, 113-14, 303-4, 102, 250, 255; selection by,
315, 321, 327; selections by 26-50
284-87, 288-302 Colors, 191-200, 212-15
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 50, 153n, Cooper, Lane, 102
156-57; quoted, 134-35, Craft vs. art, 26-29, 63-70
141, 293 Croce, Benedetto, 6, 51-71, 102;
Bell, Clive, 109 quoted, 52, 59; selection by,
Bizet, Georges, 41 16-25
331
350 INDEX
da Vinci, Leonardo, 24, 53, 190n Goodman, Nelson, 327
Delacroix, F. V. E., 180 Gotshalk, D. W., 254, 327
Dewey, John, 5, 6, 102, 251, 253, Grundlach, Ralph, 327
327; selection by, 72-94. Gurney, Edmund, 109, 110, 327;
Diderot, Denis, 92 ‘ selection by, 115-59
Dingle, Herbert, 71
Donagan, Alan, 102
Ducasse, Curt J., 6, 102, 108, 111, Hanslick, Eduard, 109, 282n, 285,
251, 257, 200" selechionmby, BL
95-101 Hardy, Thomas, 49-50
Hartshorne, Charles, 259, 261-62,
263-64, 275n, 282n, 328;
Editor’s introductions, 3-6, 107-14 selection by 204-17
Eloi. 9343902017 Heine, Heinrich, 31
Emergent qualities, 284 Helmholtz, H. von, 123—24n, 127,
Expressing feeling in art, all of Part 150n, 152n
I; expressing vs. arousing, Hepburn, Ronald W., 328
37-39, 54-55, 67-69; Hevner, Kate, 328
expressing vs. betraying, +9-50 Hindemith, Paul, 328
Expression, as process, see Hitschmann, Edward, 295n
Expressing; as characterizing Homer, 169
art-product, 107-326 Hospers, John, 6, 102, 251, 269n,
Expression and association, 164-70, 304, 328; selection by, 51-71
204-10 Hulme, T. E., 89-90
Expressiveness and aesthetic value, Hungerland, Isabel C., 328
146-51
Expressiveness in works of art, all
of Part II; in music, 115-59, Individualization, 40-41
248-49, 264-65, 269-73, Intuition, 16-25, 52-53,
284-86, 288-302, 310; 322; 57
in visual art, 177-203, 212-15, Isenberg, Arnold, 264n
218-23, 305-95 323224500 Ivory tower art, 46-47
literature, 306-7, 310-14,
322-23
Externalization, 21-25, 58-60 James, William, 86
Johnson, Samuel, 92
France, Anatole, 47
Kandinsky, Wassily, selection by,
177-203
Gaugin, Paul, 202n Keats, John, 84
Ghiselin, Brewster, 102 King, A. H., 300n
Gilman, Benjamin, 327 Koestler, Arthur, 102
Goldwater, Robert, 102 Koffka, Kurt, 264n
INDEX 333
Langer, Susanne K., 260, 261, 328 Santayana, George, 100, 111, 242,
Laszlo, Ervin, 328 243, 246, 252-53, 254, 255,
259, 285-86, 329; selection
by, 160-76
Martin, F. D., 328 Scherchen, Hermann, 300n
Means and end in art, 37, 61-68 Schoen, Max, 329
Mendelssohn, Felix, 157 Schubert, Franz, 148; quoted, 129,
Merejkowski, Dimitri, 190n 132, 139-40
Meyer, Leonard B., 328 Schumann, Robert, 148, 152n,
Michelangelo, 24 156n; quoted, 128, 136-37
Milton, John, 92 Scriabin, Alexandre, 179-80n
Morgan, Douglas N., 286; selection Sears, Robert, 275n
by, 266-83 Selection in art, 42-43
Morris, Charles W., 328 Sessions, Roger, 329
Mozart, W. A., 155 Shakespeare, William, 180
Murray, Henry A., 276 Signac, Paul, 180n
Mursell, James L., 102 Sircello, Guy, 114, 329; selection
by, 303-26
Sitwell, Edith, 34-35
Objectification of feeling, 97-98, Stravinsky, Igor, 4
111 Sullivan, J. W.N., 103
Osborne, Harold, 102, 329 Sully-Prudhomme, René, 7, 8
Ozenfant, Amedee, 205n, 206-7n
Technique in art, 33-36, 56-58

Palucca, Gret, 221
Toch, Ernst, 329
Perry, Ralph B., 257
Tolstoy, 6, 95, 103; quoted, 236;
Phenomenal objects, 278-81
selection by, 7-15
Plato, 12, 43n
Tomas, Vincent, 103, 112, 266-68,
Poe, Edgar Allan, 66-68, 87
273-74, 277, 281-82, 283,
Pope, Alexander, 46
284, 286-87; selection by,
Portnoy, Julius, 103
250-65
Prall, David W., 259, 329
Treves, Marco, 102
Pratt, Carroll C., 257n, 260-61,
Troland, L. T., 210n
269, 273n, 329; quoted, 113
Reid, Louis Arnaud, 253-57, 259, Van Gogh, Vincent, 83, 85, 196n
265, 329; quoted, 256 Veron, Eugene, 5, 7,95, 103
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 42
Rigg, Melvin, 329
Rudner, Richard, 329 Wagner, Richard, 33
Wordsworth, William, 5, 83
Sacharjin-Unkowsky, Mme. A.,

179n Yeats, William Butler, 47
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Rockmont College Library

JOHN HOSPERS, Editor

All rights reserved

This book, or parts thereof, must not

Library of Congress Card Number: 71-142225

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PART | THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS

Selected Readings 102

PART II THE EXPRESSIVE PRODUCT

Music as Impressive and Music as Expressive

13 VINCENT ‘Tomas, Douctas Morcan, Monroe BEarDsLEY

When a work of art is created, in what does the creation consist? At

What is art if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses

1‘The foundling of Nuremberg,’ found in the marketplace of that town on 23rd

Knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical

From Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic (2nd ed.), 1922, Chapter 1. Translated

THE MEANING OF CRAFT

From R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art. Reprinted by kind permis-

BREAK-DOWN OF THE THEORY

(1) The first characteristic of craft is the distinction between means

As soon as we take the notion of craft seriously, it is perfectly obvious

2 Nicomachean Ethics, beginning: 1094 a 1-b 10.

8 Aspects of Modern Poetry, ch. vand p. 251.

ART AND EXPRESSION

The central and primary characteristic of craft is the distinction it

EXPRESSING EMOTION AND AROUSING EMOTION

4 Further development of the ideas expressed in this paragraph will make it

EXPRESSION AND INDIVIDUALIZATION

SELECTION AND AESTHETIC EMOTION

It has sometimes been asked whether emotions can be divided into

THE ARTIST AND THE ORDINARY MAN

I have been speaking of ‘the artist’, in the present chapter, as if

THE CURSE OF THE IVORY TOWER

EXPRESSING EMOTION AND BETRAYING EMOTION

Finally, the expressing of emotion must not be confused with what

It is not my intention in this brief essay to give an exhaustive critical

First published in Philosophy, 1956, pp. 3-20. Reprinted by permission of

The aspects of the theory that concern us here are these:

He quotes with approval Michelangelo’s statement, “One paints,

2 Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic, page 9.

3 Op. cit., page 10.

5 R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, Chapter 14.

Another way of putting this is to say that according to the

8 Croce, Aesthetic, page 11.

therefore, Collingwood’s thesis remains inviolate.

18 Herbert Dingle, Science and Literary Criticism, page 37.

Every experience, of slight or tremendous import, begins with an

It is this double change which converts an activity into an act of

Works of art often present to us an air of spontaneity, a lyric

Esthetic emotion is thus something distinctive and yet not cut

ART AND THE

ART AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS 101

Anderson, Harold (ed.). Creativity and Its Cultivation. New York:

A philosophically oriented reader who has completed the readings in

A person says, for example, that he feels restless. A description of what it

The selection by Monroe Beardsley provides a clear summary of

1 Carroll C. Pratt, The Meaning of Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931),

So far we have been considering Music almost entirely as a means of

3 It is hard to word this so as to obviate all possible objections. In modern music

5 Absolute and unquestionable, not of course as final or competent judgments of

presses sentiments of devotion mingled with pious resignation.

the special accent of trouble is given by the unusual start on the

is all that is really wanted, and is on the whole preferable. A beauti-