424 AESTHETICS 



But if this theory of mine is found wanting, the aesthetician will 

 not cease to call upon the psychologist for some other which shall 

 meet the demands of introspection; and which shall accord with our 

 experiences of the sense of beauty, which in all their wealth of impres- 

 sion the acsthetician offers to the psychologist as data for the labor- 

 ious study asked of him. 



Before leaving this subject I may perhaps be allowed to call 

 attention to the fact that the theoretical view, which places the essence 

 of the sense of beauty in pleasure-getting, if it prove to be true, is 

 not without such practical applications as are so properly demanded 

 in our time. For if this view is correct, it teaches to the critic a lesson 

 of sympathetic tolerance; for he learns from it that the sources from 

 which the sense of beauty are derived differ very markedly in people 

 of diverse types: and it warns him also against the danger of an 

 artificial limitation of his own aesthetic sense, which will surely 

 result unless he carefully avoids the narrowing of his interests. 



It teaches further that there is no validity in the distinction 

 between fine art and aesthetics on the one hand, and beauty on the 

 other, on the ground, commonly accepted by the highly trained 

 artist and connoisseur, that a work of art may deal with what is not 

 beautiful. 



For it appears that while the sense of beauty is the same for each 

 of us, the objects which call it out are in some measure different for 

 each. 



Now it happens naturally that the objects which arouse the sense 

 of beauty in a large proportion of men of culture get the word beauty 

 firmly attached to them in common speech. 



But under the view here maintained, it must be that the highly 

 trained artist or critic will pass beyond these commoner men, and 

 find his sense of beauty aroused by objects and objective relations 

 quite different from those which arouse the sense of beauty in the 

 commoner man; so that often he may deal with the beauty of 

 elements in connection with which beauty is unknown to the com- 

 moner man, and even with elements which arouse a sense of ugliness 

 in the commoner man; while on the other hand the objects which 

 the commoner man signalizes as most beautiful, and which are cur- 

 rently so called, may not arouse in the trained artist or critic the 

 sense of beauty which is now aroused in him by effects of broader 

 nature, and of less common experience. 



The critic and the skilled artist thus often find their aesthetic sense 

 aroused no longer by the objects to which the word beauty has by com- 

 mon consent come to be attached ; although with the commoner man he 

 still uses the word beauty as descriptive of the object which arouses 

 the aesthetic thrill in the mass of normally educated men. He may 



