THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF ESTHETICS 435 



like metamorphosis. The subjective impression might indeed be sup- 

 posed to remain the same, in spite of objective differentiations. But 

 even that is not the case. Living human beauty an acknowledged 

 passport for its possessor speaks to all our senses; it often stirs 

 sex-feeling in however delicate and scarce conscious a way; it 

 involuntarily influences our actions. On the other hand, there hangs 

 about the marble statue of a naked human being an atmosphere 

 of coolness in which we do not consider whether we are looking 

 upon man or woman: even the most beauteous body is enjoyed as 

 sexless shape, like the beauty of a landscape or a melody. To 

 the aesthetic impression of the forest belongs its aromatic fragrance, 

 to the impression of tropical vegetation its glowing heat, while 

 from the enjoyment of art the sensations of the lower senses are 

 barred. In return for what is lost, as it were, art-enjoyment involves 

 pleasure in the personality of the artist, and in his power to over- 

 come difficulties, and in the same way many other elements of pleas- 

 ure, which are never produced by natural beauty. Accordingly, 

 what we call beautiful in art must be distinguished from what goes 

 by that name in life, both as regards the object and the subjective 

 impression. 



Another point, too, appears from our examples. Assuming that 

 we may call the pure, pleasurable contemplation of actual things 

 and events aesthetic, and what reason against it could be adduced 

 from common usage ? it is thus clear that the circle of the aesthetic 

 is wider than the field of art. Our admiring and adoring self-abandon- 

 ment to nature-beauties bears all the marks of the aesthetic attitude, 

 and needs for all that no connection with art. Further: in all in- 

 tellectual and social spheres a part of the productive energy expresses 

 itself in aesthetic forms; these products, which are not works of art, 

 are yet aesthetically enjoyed. As numberless facts of daily experience 

 show us that taste can develop and become effective independently 

 of art, we must then concede to the sphere of the aesthetic a wider 

 circumference than that of art. 



This is not to maintain that the circle of art is a narrow section of 

 a large field. On the contrary, the aesthetic principle does not by 

 any means exhaust the content and purpose of that realm of human 

 production which taken together we call "art." Every true work of 

 art is extraordinarily complex in its motives and its effects; it arises 

 not alone from the free play of aesthetic impulse, and aims at more 

 than pure beauty at more than aesthetic pleasure. The desires 

 and energies in which art is grounded are in no way fulfilled by 

 the serene satisfaction which is the traditional criterion of the aes- 

 thetic impression, as of the aesthetic object. In reality the arts 

 have a function in intellectual and social life, through which they are 

 closely bound up with all our knowing and willing. 



