It is of note that the imagination, in a manner quite incomprehensible to us, is able on occasion, even after a long lapse of time, not alone to recall the signs for concepts, but also to reproduce the image and shape of an object out of a countless number of others of a different, or even of the very same, kind.And, further, if the mind is engaged upon comparisons, we may well suppose that it can in actual fact, though the process is unconscious, superimpose as it were one image upon another, and from the coincidence of a number of the same kind arrive at a mean contour which serves as a common standard for all.Say, for instance, a person has seen a thousand full-grown men.Now if he wishes to judge normal size determined upon a comparative estimate, then imagination (to my mind) allows a great number of these images (perhaps the whole thousand) to fall one upon the other, and, if I may be allowed to extend to the case the analogy of optical presentation, in the space where they come most together, and within the contour where the place is illuminated by the greatest concentration of colour, one gets a perception of the average size, which alike in height and breadth is equally removed from the extreme limits of the greatest and smallest statures; and this is the stature of a beautiful man.(The same result could be obtained in a mechanical way, by taking the measures of all the thousand, and adding together their heights, and their breadths [and thicknesses], and dividing the sum in each case by a thousand.)But the power of imagination does all this by means of a dynamical effect upon the organ of internal sense, arising from the frequent apprehension of such forms.If, again, for our average man we seek on similar lines for the average head, and for this the average nose, and so on, then we get the figure that underlies the normal idea of a beautiful man in the country where the comparison is instituted.For this reason a Negro must necessarily (under these empirical conditions) have a different normal idea of the beauty of forms from what a white man has, and the Chinaman one different from the European.And the.process would be just the same with the model of a beautiful horse or dog (of a particular breed).This normal idea is not derived from proportions taken from experience as definite rules: rather is it according to this idea that rules forming estimates first become possible.It is an intermediate between all singular intuitions of individuals, with their manifold variations-a floating image for the whole genus, which nature has set as an archetype underlying those of her products that belong to the same species, but which in no single case she seems to have completely attained.But the normal idea is far from giving the complete archetype of beauty in the genus.It only gives the form that constitutes the indispensable condition of all beauty, and, consequently, only correctness in the presentation of the genus.It is, as the famous "Doryphorus" of Polycletus was called, the rule (and Myron's "Cow" might be similarly employed for its kind).It cannot, for that very reason, contain anything specifically characteristic;for otherwise it would not be the normal idea for the genus.
Further, it is not by beauty that its presentation pleases, but merely because it does not contradict any of the conditions under which alone a thing belonging to this genus can be beautiful.The presentation is merely academically correct.It will be found that a perfectly regular face one that a painter might fix his eye on for a model-ordinarily conveys nothing.This is because it is devoid of anything characteristic, and so the idea of the race is expressed in it rather than the specific qualities of a person.The exaggeration of what is characteristic in this way, i.e., exaggeration violating the normal idea (the finality of the race), is called caricature.Also experience shows that these quite regular faces indicate as a rule internally only a mediocre type of man; presumably-if one may assume that nature in its external form expresses the proportions of the internal -because, where none of the mental qualities exceed the proportion requisite to constitute a man free from faults, nothing can be expected in the way of what is called genius, in which nature seems to make a departure from its wonted relations of the mental powers in favour of some special one.
But the ideal of the beautiful is still something different from its normal idea.For reasons already stated it is only to be sought in the human figure.Here the ideal consists in the expression of the moral, apart from which the object would not please at once universally and positively (not merely negatively in a presentation academically correct).The visible expression of moral ideas that govern men inwardly can, of course, only be drawn from experience; but their combination with all that our reason connects with the morally good in the idea of the highest finality-benevolence, purity, strength, or equanimity, etc.-may be made, as it were, visible in bodily manifestation (as effect of what is internal), and this embodiment involves a union of pure ideas of reason and great imaginative power, in one who would even form an estimate of it, not to speak of being the author of its presentation.The correctness of such an ideal of beauty is evidenced by its not permitting any sensuous charm to mingle with the delight in its object, in which it still allows us to take a great interest.This fact in turn shows that an estimate formed according to such a standard can never be purely aesthetic, and that one formed according to an ideal of beauty cannot be a simple judgement of taste.
Definition of the Beautiful Derived from this Third Moment.
