Browning's, is full of the
record of such experience.

I have said that the difference between this aesthetic heightening of
our vitality (and this that I have been describing is, I pray you to
observe, the aesthetic phenomenon _par excellence_), and such other
heightening of vitality as we experience from going into fresh air and
sunshine or taking fortifying food, the difference between the
aesthetic and the mere physiological pleasurable excitement consists
herein, that in the case of beauty, it is not merely our physical but
our spiritual life which is suddenly rendered more vigorous. We do not
merely breathe better and digest better, though that is no small
gain, but we seem to understand better. Under the vitalising touch of
the Beautiful, our consciousness seems filled with the affirmation of
what life is, what is worth being, what among our many thoughts and
acts and feelings are real and organic and important, what among the
many possible moods is the real, eternal _ourself_.

Such are the great forces of Nature gathered up in what we call the
_aesthetic phenomenon_, and it is these forces of Nature which, stolen
from heaven by the man of genius or the nation of genius, and welded
together in music, or architecture, in the arts of visible design or
of written thoughts, give to the great work of art its power to
quicken the life of our soul.

VII.

I hope I have been able to indicate how, by its essential nature, by
the primordial power it embodies, all Beauty, and particularly Beauty
in art, tends to fortify and refine the spiritual life of the
individual.

But this is only half of the question, for, in order to get the full
benefit of beautiful things and beautiful thoughts, to obtain in the
highest potency those potent aesthetic emotions, the individual must
undergo a course of self-training, of self-initiation, which in its
turn elicits and improves some of the highest qualities of his soul.
Nay, as every great writer on art has felt, from Plato to Ruskin, but
none has expressed as clearly as Mr. Pater, in all true aesthetic
training there must needs enter an ethical element, almost an ascetic
one.

The greatest art bestows pleasure just in proportion as people are
capable of buying that pleasure at the price of attention,
intelligence, and reverent sympathy. For great art is such as is
richly endowed, full of variety, subtlety, and suggestiveness; full of
delightfulness enough for a lifetime, th