On the Nature of Æsthetic Emotion

In raising the question, “What is Beauty?” we are admittedly dealing with very various phenomena. Some elements, it may be, are obviously given as common throughout the whole range of the beautiful; such, it might be alleged, are the formal feelings, those states of pleasure and pain which accompany ease or obstruction in the flow of ideas. But it will hardly be proposed to-day to restrict the feeling of beauty and the reverse to those simple elements; and I may rely on the support of Mr. Bain and other British psychologists for the view that in considering the nature of beauty it is necessary to examine a “circle of effects.” ¹ But while accepting this as a starting-point, I cannot but think it a self-contradiction for any science to acquiesce in a “plurality of causes” ² as ultimate. “Plurality of causes” in Mill's sense, which I assume that Mr. Bain intends to adopt, means of course the recognition not of “a plurality of constituent factors” ³ or co-operating conditions resulting in a certain effect, but of a number of alternative causes from any one of which the same effect may spring.