ABSTRACT
Gustav Theodor Fechner was a German philosopher, physicist and experimental psychologist. Proceeding on inductive lines, Gustav Theodor Fechner discovers a long series of aesthetic laws or principles: the aesthetic threshold; assistance or increment; unity in variety; absence of contradictions; clarity; association; contrast; consequence; conciliation; the correct mean; economic use; persistency; change; measure; and so on without end. The Æsthetics of Hippolyte Taine and Professor Ernst Grosse have been described by the epithet sociological. Genius, true genius is destined to preserve the two tendencies: decadents and degenerates deprive art of its social sympathetic aim by setting aesthetic sympathy at war against human sympathy. Naturalistic is the best term with which to qualify the aesthetic derived from that identification of genius with degeneracy which made the fortune of Lombroso and his school. The derangements come under the head of the pathological concept of illness, degeneration, madness. Therefore genius is identical with illness, degeneration and madness.
