he true thesis of this whole book. Our esthetic discussion showed us
that it is the aim of art to isolate a significant part of our
experience in such a way that it is separate from our practical life and
is in complete agreement within itself. Our esthetic satisfaction
results from this inner agreement and harmony, but in order that we may
feel such agreement of the parts we must enter with our own impulses
into the will of every element, into the meaning of every line and color
and form, every word and tone and note. Only if everything is full of
such inner movement can we really enjoy the harmonious cooeperation of
the parts. The means of the various arts, we saw, are the forms and
methods by which this aim is fulfilled. They must be different for every
material. Moreover the same material may allow very different methods of
isolation and elimination of the insignificant and reenforcement of that
which contributes to the harmony. If we ask now what are the
characteristic means by which the photoplay succeeds in overcoming
reality, in isolating a significant dramatic story and in presenting it
so that we enter into it and yet keep it away from our practical life
and enjoy the harmony of the parts, we must remember all the results to
which our psychological discussion in the first part of the book has led
us.

We recognized there that the photoplay, incomparable in this respect
with the drama, gave us a view of dramatic events which was completely
shaped by the inner movements of the mind. To be sure, the events in the
photoplay happen in the real space with its depth. But the spectator
feels that they are not presented in the three dimensions of the outer
world, that they are flat pictures which only the mind molds into
plastic things. Again the events are seen in continuous movement; and
yet the pictures break up the movement into a rapid succession of
instantaneous impressions. We do not see the objective reality, but a
product of our own mind which binds the pictures together. But much
stronger differences came to light when we turned to the processes of
attention, of memory, of imagination, of suggestion, of division of
interest and of emotion. The attention turns to detailed points in the
outer world and ignores everything else: the photoplay is doing exactly
this when in the close-up a detail is enlarged and everything else
disappears. Memory breaks into present events by bringing up pictures of
the past: the ph