as I also told you before, to the
storing of impressions in our mind, and to the combining of them there
with other impressions. Indeed, it is for this reason that I have made
no difference, save in intensity between aesthetic creation, so called,
and aesthetic appreciation; telling you, on the contrary, that the
artistic layman creates, produces something new and personal, only in
a less degree than the professed artist.

For the aesthetic life does not consist merely in the perception of the
beautiful object, not merely in the emotion of that spiritual contact
between the beautiful product of art or of nature and the soul of the
appreciator: it is continued in the emotions and images and thoughts
which are awakened by that perception; and the aesthetic life _is_
life, is something continuous and organic, just because new forms,
however obscure and evanescent, are continually born, in their turn
continually to give birth, of that marriage between the beautiful
thing outside and the beautiful soul within.

Hence, full aesthetic life means the creating and extending of ever new
harmonies in the mind of the layman, the unconscious artist who merely
enjoys, as a result of the creating and extending of new harmonies in
the work of the professed artist who consciously creates. This being
the case, the true aesthete is for ever seeking to reduce his
impressions and thoughts to harmony; and is for ever, accordingly,
being pleased with some of them, and disgusted with others.

X.

The desire for beauty and harmony, therefore, in proportion as it
becomes active and sensitive, explores into every detail, establishes
comparisons between everything, judges, approves, and disapproves; and
makes terrible and wholesome havoc not merely in our surroundings, but
in our habits and in our lives. And very soon the mere thought of
something ugly becomes enough to outweigh the actual presence of
something beautiful. I was told last winter at San Remo, that the
scent of the Parma violet can be distilled only by the oil of the
flower being passed through a layer of pork fat; and since that
revelation violet essence has lost much of the charm it possessed for
me: the thought of the suet counterbalanced the reality of the
perfume.

Now this violet essence, thus obtained, is symbolic of many of the
apparently refined enjoyments of our life. We shall find that luxury
and pomp, delightful sometimes in themselves, are distilled through a
l