THE FACT OF BEAUTY 263 



just as the more developed eye or ear carries us farther into 

 Nature's refinements and beauties " (1917, p. 127). " Phi- 

 losophy does not require us, then, to treat the beauty and 

 sublimity of natural objects as subjective emotions in the 

 bystander: we are entitled, on the principles I have been 

 advocating, to treat them as qualities of the object just as 

 much as the vaunted primary qualities" ... (p. 129). 

 ^' Things are as they reveal themselves in their fullness to 

 the knowing mind '' (p. 130). 



It is highly probable that our likes and dislikes, our 

 standards and criteria, have been to some extent wrought 

 out in the course of ages of familiarity with Nature. It is 

 highly probable that certain arrangements of lines and colours 

 please us greatly because of racial and even pre-human asso- 

 ciations, for we are strange medleys of organic memories. 

 But no one can say that he knows much about this. There 

 are some cases of apparent aesthetic delight among animals, 

 e.g., that of the Bower-birds which decorate their honey- 

 moon bower with brightly coloured objects, apparently pro- 

 ductive of pleasant excitement. But we do not wish to 

 make much of the rather problematical aesthetic predisposi- 

 tions inherited from pre-human ancestry, especially since 

 whatever was thus entailed had to pass muster with Man 

 himself, had to be assimilated or eliminated, approved or 

 rejected by an evolving rational being. Allowing something 

 for hereditary associations, we have to face the fact that 

 man has a great pleasure in the lines and colours of, say, 

 flowers and birds; and our point is that these are not ' any- 

 how ' lines and colours, but have a positive quality. 



It is worth noting (1) that many quite unfamiliar living 

 creatures — such as deep-sea animals — are recognised at first 

 glance as triumphantly beautiful; (2) that it is among the 



