we are more acutely sensitive to results or to processes, we find
the most agreeable effect nearer to one or to the other of these
extremes of a tedious beauty or of an unbeautiful expressiveness.
But these principles, as is clear, are not coordinate. The child who
enjoys his rattle or his trumpet has aesthetic enjoyment, of
however rude a kind; but the master of technique who should give
a performance wholly without sensuous charm would be a gymnast
and not a musician, and the author whose novels and poems should
be merely expressive, and interesting only by their meaning and
moral, would be a writer of history or philosophy, but not an artist.
The principle of purity is therefore essential to aesthetic effect, but
the principle of interest is subsidiary, and if appealed to alone
would fail to produce beauty.

The distinction, however, is not absolute: for the simple sensation
is itself interesting, and the complication, if it is appreciable by
sense and does not require discursive thought to grasp it, is itself
beautiful. There may be a work of art in which the sensuous
materials are not pleasing, as a discourse without euphony, if the
structure and expression give delight; and there may be an
interesting object without perceived structure, like musical notes,
or the blue sky. Perfection would, of course, lie in the union of
elements all intrinsically beautiful, in forms also intrinsically so;
but where this is impossible, different natures prefer to sacrifice
one or the other advantage.

_Colour._

Sec. 17. In the eye we have an organ so differentiated that it is
sensitive to a much more subtle influence than even that of air
waves. There seems to be, in the interstellar spaces, some
pervasive fluid, for the light of the remotest star is rapidly
conveyed to us, and we can hardly understand how this radiation of
light, which takes place beyond our atmosphere, could be realized
without some medium. This hypothetical medium we call the ether.
It is capable of very rapid vibrations, which are propagated in all
directions, like the waves of sound, only much more quickly.
Many common observations, such as the apparent interval between
lightning and thunder, make us aware of the quicker motion of
light. Now, since nature was filled with this responsive fluid,
which propagated to all distances vibrations originating at any
point, and moreover as these vibrations, when intercepted by a
solid body, were reflected wholly