THE FACT OF BEAUTY 2G1 



well-being; and it grows as we share it with others. In all 

 but its simplest expressions, it strikes the chords of imagina- 

 tion, for, as Professor Bosanquet insists, ^' the aesthetic atti- 

 tude is an attitude in which we imaginatively contemplate an 

 object, being able in that way to live in it as an embodiment 

 of our feeling. . . . The aesthetic attitude so far as enjoy- 

 able '' is '^ the pleasant awareness of a feeling embodied in 

 an appearance presented to imagination or imaginative 

 perception.'' 



§ 3. Beauty a General Quality of Animate Nature, 



ITow, what seems to us to be a fact, and a very interesting 

 fact, is that all natural, free-living, fully-formed, healthy 

 living creatures, which we can contemplate without preju- 

 dice, are in their appropriate surroundings artistic har- 

 monies, having that quality which we call beauty. That is 

 to say they have qualities — objective qualities — which excite 

 in us a particular kind of emotion, often of a very high 

 order. To many of us — of the eye-minded type — the blotting 

 out of the annual pageant, say of flowers and of birds, would 

 be the extinguishing of one of the lights of life. But we 

 must pause to inquire whether our proposition really ex- 

 presses a fact. 



§ 4. Theoretical Objections to the Thesis. 



The first objection is, that beauty is in no sense a quality 

 of things, but is wholly in our minds — purely subjective. 

 Hegel, forgetful of Schelling and Goethe, remarked that 

 it had never occurred to any one to emphasise the aspect 

 of beauty in natural things, that in fact the beauty was not 

 in the things but in the contemplating mind. Some other 

 philosophers, such as Vaihinger, — the author of The Philos- 



