Excerpt from Beauty Ugliness: And Other Studies in Psychological AEsthetics Dealing with my previous volume, Laura; nobilij, the most intelligent of my critics complained that I took our aesthetic preferences for granted, Without explaining their nature or even proving their exist ence. If that rash reviewer really thirsts for psychological aesthetics, he may find some temporary refreshment in the present volume, Which contains as much of the How and W by of Beauty and Ugliness as I have been able to squeeze out of some rather dry books and out of fifteen years of my own and my fellow-worker's observations. If he, or any other inquisitive person, should then remain With unslaked curiosity about asthetics, he must go to the Psycho logical Laboratories of Germany and America, Where he may, in return for further knowledge, be used up as an experimental subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remain one of the most fascinating aspects of that era. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals such as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism, such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as incontrovertibly intertwined.