The Psychology of Inspiration : an Attempt to Distinguish Religious From
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mR %m Mm, bbwot o?. ^M PRINCETON, N. J. ^ Presented by c)Va<£/ C\\^-V\^OV~ Division Section 6<W Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://www.archive.org/details/psychologyofinspOOraym — — —— — Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 27 & 29 West 23d St., New York A SERIES OF SEVEN VOLUMES CONTAINING A SYSTEM OF COMPARATIVE AESTHETICS. By GEO. L. RAYMOND, L.H.D., Professor of Esthetics, Princeton and George Washington Universities. "We consider Professor Raymond to possess something like an ideal equipment for the line of work he has entered upon. His own poetry is genuine and delicately constructed, his appreciations are true to high ideals, and his power of scientific analysis is unquestionable." . He "was known, when a student at Williams, as a musician and a poet— cue latter be- cause of taking, in his freshman year, a prize in verse over the whole college. After gradu- ating in this country, he went through a course in aesthetics with Professor Vischer (if the University of Tubingen, and also with Professor Curtius at the time when that historian of Greece was spending several hours a week with his pupils among the marbles of the Berlin Mu- seum. Subsequently, believing that all the arts are, primarily, developments of different forms of expression through the tones and movements of the body. Professor Rcynumd made a thorough study, chiefly in Paris, of methods of cultivating and using the voice in both sing- ing and speaking, and of representing thought and emotion through postures and gestures. It is a result of these studies that he afterwards developed, first, into his methods of teaching elocution and literature" (as embodied in his 'Orator's Manual' and 'The Writer') "and later into his esthetic system. ... A Princeton man has said of him that he has as keen a sense for a false poetic element as a bank expert for a counterfeit note: and a New York model who posed for him, when preparing illustrations for one of his books, said that he was the only man that he had ever met who could invariably, without experiment, tell him at once what posture to assume in order to represent any required sentiment."— A'czt' York Times. I—Art in Theory. 8vo, doth extra .... $1.75 Analyzes art and beauty, and the different formulated theories concerning- them. "A well grounded, thoroughly supported, and entirely artistic conception of art as a whole, that will lead observers to apply its principles . and to distrust the charlatanism that imposes an idle and superficial mannerism upon the public in place of true beauty and honest workmanship."—77ig New York Times. "A book like this is especially welcome at the present day, when the plague of putrid anaemia is wasting the very substance of mind, when in literature egoism dominates, and in art impressionism, to the exclusion in the one case of truth and in the other of thought. We cordially recommend this book to all who desire to import something of deliberation and ac- curacy into their thinking about matters of art." The (London) Realm. "His style is good, and his logic sound, and ... of the greatest possible service to the student of artistic theories." Art Journal (London). "Scores an advance upon the many art-criticisms extant. Twenty brilliant chapters, pregnant with suggestion. An author not bound by mental servitude." Popular Science Monthly. "Every careful reader must be delighted at the handling of the subject at once so har- monious and symmetrical as well as natural. ... It appears in a form which one may almost call artistic in itself." The Dial, signed by E. E. Hale, Jr. "The work is one that has been inspired by the true spirit of asstheticism— a genuine 'art-inspiration.' By nature the author is himself an artist. His books have been freely criti- cised, but the breadth of his thought and knowledge, the combined assurance and subtlety of his reasoning, his suggestiveness and enthusiasm must be allowed by his keenest reviewers." —New Haven Register. "Professor Raymond is doing a genuine service by these profound and fascinating books. He raises the standard of intelligence upon art subjects by a considerable measure. He helps make the United States more ready for the day when true art shall abound much more widely, and be understood much more clearly." Public Opinion. II—The Representative Significance of Form, 8vo, cloth extra, $2.00 Considers thought and emotion as attributable to matural forms and to subconscious and conscious mental action, and to genius and acquired skill in religion, science, and art, and to the epic, realistic, and dramatic in each art. "A ripe work of a ripe scholar. Professor Raymond recalls the two incomplete tendencies in art; the first, that of the transcendentalists, who confounded artistic inspiration with reli- gious inspiration, and the second, that of the French school, which confuses artistic observation with scientific observation. In these twenty-seven solid chapters, the author has struggled with the tremendous task of restoring that balance between these two extremes which charac- terizes the highest art. The latter part of the volume is especially satisfactory owing to the clear manner in which the definitions and characteristics of epic, realistic, and dramatic art, — — — —— — — Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 27 & 29 West 23d St., New York together with their various subdivisions in the different arts, are made to seem inevitable^' Boston Transcript. "It is a very scholarly study of a most interesting and important topic. It is a careful investigation of the sources of human conceptions, religious, scientific, and artistic, and of the artistic forms through which these conceptions find appropriate expression. The book is evi- dently the ripe fruit of years of patient and exhaustive study on the part of a man singularly fitted for his task. It is profound in insight, searching in analysis, broad in spirit, and thor- oughly modern in method and sympathy. The first and more strictly philosophical part of the work cannot fail to be helpful to ministers who are trying to deal with the great problems of theology as they present themselves today." The Universalist Leader. "Its title gives no intimation to the general reader of its attractiveness for him, or to curious readers of its widely discursive range of interest. ... Its broad range may remind one of those scythe-bearing chariots with which the ancient Persians used to mow down hostile files. The writer must be conceded an equal liberty of spreading with the warrior, and Pro- fessor Raymond has availed himself of it with good reason, to the fullest extent. ! . Profes- sor in his whole work is to get toward that Raymond's endeavor balance between . oppos- ing tendencies which characterized ancient Hellenic art. But this demands a correct recogni- tion both of the relationship of art alike to religion and to science, and of the limitations to art which the double relationship involves. Nothing can be foreign to a thorough treatment of aesthetics that is needed to bring out the facts which define and establish this relationship and the discriminations it requires. Professor Raymond seems justified in his insistence on a larger recognition of the subconscious activity of the mind as the condition of a revival of art and equally of the relief of religion from a deadening materialism and a stifling tradi- tionalism. ... In all departments truth is the product of an activity which is blended of conscious and subconscious factors. Here he comes on ground which some will question, but he does not go beyond what conservative investigators in the field of psychical research regard as satisfactorily established." The Outlook. "An original thinker and writer, the charm of his style and clearness of expression make Mr. Raymond's book possible to the general reader, though worthy of the study of the student and scholar. He proclaims the truth as he finds it, and in view of the sceptical and material- istic tendencies of most scientific criticism, it is not an unimportant task which he has per- formed,—that of showing that all that is needed for the highest spiritual stimulus, all that is vital to practical religion can command acknowledgment and acceptance upon its own merits." —Hartford Courant. "A valuable essay. While . far from being so metaphysical as to be unreadable or lacking in concrete teaching, it deals with general principles and moves in a highly rarefied atmosphere of speculation. It is really in effect a treatise on the meaning of artistic meaning . Professor Raymond goes so deep into causes as to explore the subconscious and the un- conscious mind for a solution of his problems, and eloquently to range through the conceptions of religion, science and metaphysics in order to find fixed principles of taste. He gives the matter a highly interesting discussion from which a student will derive ... a strong and healthy stimulus to independent reflection." The Scotsman (Edinburgh). Ill— Poetry as a Representative Art. Fully illustrated with quota- tions from the foremost poets. 8vo, cloth extra . $1.75 "A remarkable work, alike for the completeness with which a very comprehensive subject is treated, and for an acuteness and originally which open up new relations and applications that render the scope of the subject still more extensive. The technique of versification, the rhetoric of poetical composition, and the mutual bearings of the two, have received no lack of attention; but we know of no book to be compared with this, in bringing the whole into unity as distinctively a 'representative art.' . We can promise the reader that he will find it lu- minous and interesting.