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 taken for granted.  It is true that some power to do increases power to appreciate, but they parallel each other only for a short time and then diverge, and either may be developed at the expense of the other.  In most people the power to appreciate, the passive, contemplative enjoyment, far surpasses the ability to create.  On the other hand, men of creative genius often lack power of aesthetic appreciation.  This result is natural if one thinks of the mental processes involved in the two.  Power to do is associated with muscular skill, with technique, and with the personal emotions of active achievement.  AEsthetic appreciation, on the other hand, is associated with neither, but with a mental attitude and feelings which are quite different.  Cultivating one set of processes will not develop the other to any great extent and may, on the other hand, be antagonistic to their development.  If the aesthetic emotions, if appreciations of the beautiful, are desired, they must be trained and developed directly.