Appreciation is an attitude of mind which is passive, contemplative.  It may grow out of an active attitude or emotion, or it may lead to one, but in either case the state changes from one of appreciation to something else.  In appreciation the individual is quiescent.  Appreciation, therefore, has no end outside of itself.  It is a sufficient cause for being.  The individual is satisfied with it.  This puts appreciation into the category of recreation.  Appreciation then always involves the pleasure tone, otherwise it could not be enjoyed.  It is always impersonal.  It takes the individual outside and beyond his own affairs; it is an other-regarding feeling.  Possession, achievement, and the like do not arouse appreciation, but rather an egoistical emotion.

One of the salient characteristics of emotions is their unifying power.  It has aptly been said that in extreme emotional states one is the emotion.  The individual and his emotional state become one—­a very different state of affairs from what is true in cognition.  This element of unification is present to some extent in appreciation, although, because of its complex nature, to a lesser extent than in a simpler, more primitive feeling state.  Still, in true appreciation one does become absorbed in the object of appreciation; he, for the time being, to some extent becomes identified with what he is appreciating.  In, order to appreciate this submerging of one’s self, this identification is necessary.

Appreciation is bound up with four different types of situations which are of most importance to the teacher—­(1) appreciation of the beautiful, (2) appreciation of human nature, (3) appreciation of the humorous, (4) appreciation of intellectual powers.  The appreciation found in these four types of situations must vary somewhat because of the concomitants, but the characteristics which mark appreciation as such seem to be present in all four.  True, in certain of the situations occurring under these types the emotional element may be stronger than in others—­in some the intellectual element may seem to almost outweigh the 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