e affective, but still the predominant characteristics will be found
to be those of an attitude which has the earmarks of appreciation.

Appreciation of beauty has usually been discussed under the head of
aesthetic emotions. As to what rightfully belongs under the head of
aesthetics is in dispute--writers on the subject varying tremendously in
their opinions. Most of the recent writers, however, agree that the
stimulus for aesthetic appreciation must be a sense percept or an image
of some sense object. Ideas, meanings, in and of themselves, are not
then objects of aesthetic enjoyment. The two senses which furnish the
stimuli for this sort of appreciation are the eye and the ear--the
former combining sensations under space form and the latter under time
form to produce aesthetic feelings. Our senses may cause feelings of
pleasure, but the enjoyment is sensuous rather than aesthetic. Nature,
in all its myriad forms, art, architecture, music, literature, and the
dance are the chief sources of aesthetic appreciation. That there is a
definite connection between physiological processes and the feeling of
appreciation is without doubt true, but just what physiological
conditions in connection with visual and auditory perception are
fulfilled when some experience gives rise to aesthetic appreciation, and
just what is violated when there is lack of such appreciation, is not
known. It is known that both harmony and rhythm must be considered in
music, and that the structure and muscular control of the eye plus the
ease of mental apprehension play important parts in rousing aesthetic
feelings in connection with vision, but further than that little is
known.

The chief danger met in developing the aesthetic appreciation is the
tendency to overestimate its dependence on, in the first place, skill in
creative work and the active emotions involved in achievement, and in
the second place, the intellectual understanding of the situation. It
has been largely taken for granted that the constructive work in the
arts or in music increased one's power of appreciation. That, if a child
used color and painted a little picture, or composed a melody, or
modeled in clay, he would therefore be able to appreciate better in
these fields. And further that the very development of this power to do
necessarily developed the power to appreciate. These two beliefs are
true to some extent, but only to a limited extent, and not nearly so far
as practice has