A new esthetic cocoon is broken; where will the butterfly's wings carry him?
We have at last reached the real problem of this little book.

We want to study the right of the photoplay, hitherto ignored by esthetics, to be classed as an art in itself under entirely new mental life conditions.
What we need for this study is evidently, first, an insight into the means by which the moving pictures impress us and appeal to us.

Not the physical means and technical devices are in question, but the mental means.

What psychological factors are involved when we watch the happenings on the screen?
But secondly, we must ask what characterizes the independence of an art, what constitutes the conditions under which the works of a special art stand.

The first inquiry is psychological, the second esthetic; the two belong intimately together.