262 THE FACT OF BEAUTY 



ophy of the As If, — have maintained that the Beautiful is 

 one of Man's self-preservative ' fictions ' — whistlings to keep 

 his courage up. But this is an extreme of subjectivism. No 

 doubt the aesthetic emotion implies a racially and individu- 

 ally attuned mind, but this is not thrilled except in the pres- 

 ence of compositions of lines and combinations of colours 

 which have a particular quality. There are other compo- 

 sitions and combinations — usually of our own making — 

 which fail to please us, which have not the quality. Except 

 in reminiscence, we do not have the aesthetic joy unless the 

 thing of beauty is there, and in regard to animate objects 

 there is remarkable congruence of emotion on the part of 

 the observers, after certain readily intelligible difficulties 

 have been overcome. Moreover, as a domesticated animal 

 or cultivated plant degenerates under artificial conditions, 

 becoming obese, or coarse, or scraggy, as the case may be, 

 there is a correlated slackening in our pleasure in it. There 

 is an objective basis of ugliness correlated with our subjective 

 repulsion. 



And again, it cannot be a mental fiction, this aesthetic de- 

 light, for if there is any corner of experience where the 

 unity of body and mind is more forcibly illustrated than 

 elsewhere, it is in connection with the aesthetic emotion. It 

 is a body-and-mind reaction. " If we try," says Professor 

 Bosanquet (1915), ^^ to cut out the bodily side of our world, 

 we shall find that we have reduced the mental side to a mere 

 nothing." 



Speaking of " the aspects of beauty and sublimity which 

 we recognise in Nature, and the finer spirit of sense revealed 

 by the insight of the poet and the artist ", Professor Pringle- 

 Pattison writes : " These things also are not subjective imag- 

 inings ; they give us a deeper truth than ordinary vision. 



