A study of the individual differences in attitude towards tones / by C.S. Myers and C.W. Valentine.
- Charles Samuel Myers
- Date:
- [1914?]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: A study of the individual differences in attitude towards tones / by C.S. Myers and C.W. Valentine. Source: Wellcome Collection.
38/52 page 100
![X. Relation between Aspect and Aesthetic Appreciation {continued) [by C. W. Valentine], It is characteristic of the aesthetic attitude that it is essentially objective and disinterested; self is ‘ lost ’ in the beautiful object. Attention is completely concentrated upon it. From this point one must class the intra-subjective aspect^ in these experiments as very low on the aesthetic scale, perhaps lowest (following Bullough), though in some cases the intra-subjective aspect may be adopted only when the aesthetic experience proper is over, and introspection begins. From a similar point of view a low aesthetic value characterizes the non-musical associative judgments (where the interval suggests an object which might have given rise to a similar sound, e.g. a gong, a clock striking). Attention is not concentrated upon the musical interval, and the transition of thought to the associated object is obvious. Such cases may be compared to the badly fused associations in Bullough’s experiments with colours. From this same point of view a higher type of aesthetic judgment is found where there are musical associations proper, which imply some knowledge of or familiarity with music, and sometimes a memory of a definite musical composition. So far we have taken as a criterion of the aesthetic value of a mental attitude its objectivity or ‘ autotelicity^’ the extent to which the attention is concentrated upon the aesthetic object itself rather than upon non-fused associations or upon the self. But another criterion is possible, namely the degree of pleasure accompanying the perception of the object presented. No implication is here made that pleasureableness and aesthetic value are synonymous. But even if there may be aesthetic value without any pleasure (which would seem doubtful) it is still probably true that when judgments are given upon a series of comparatively simple objects, such as musical intervals, there is likely to be a distinct correlation between the order of the degree of pleasingness of the experiences produced by the intervals, and the order of the aesthetic value of these experiences. Accordingly in the following table the various aspects have been arranged according to the proportionate frequency with which each 1 It is worth noting that Dr Myers’s use of this aspect is not (juite the same as mine. In particular, his sub-aspect Ia(i) includes a number of judgments which I classified as ‘ objective,’ e.g. hard, thin, soft. The distinction is important in considering the hedoniq and aesthetic value of this aspect. 2 See Bullough, op. cit. p. 461.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30620715_0038.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
