an interpretation, and it is a very interesting one. It puts beauty in
the same relation to morals in which morals stand to pleasure and
pain; both would be intuitions, qualitatively new, but with the same
materials; they would be new perspectives of the same object.

But this theory is actually inadmissible. Innumerable aesthetic
effects, indeed all specific and unmixed ones, are direct
transmutations of pleasures and pains; they express nothing
extrinsic to themselves, much less moral excellences. The detached
lines of our figure signify nothing, but they are not absolutely
uninteresting; the straight line is the simplest and not the least
beautiful of forms. To say that it owes its interest to the thought of
the economy of travelling over the shortest road, or of other
practical advantages, would betray a feeble hold on psychological
reality. The impression of a straight line differs in a certain almost
emotional way from that of a curve, as those of various curves do
from one another. The quality of the sensation is different, like that
of various colours or sounds. To attribute the character of these
forms to association would be like explaining sea-sickness as the
fear of shipwreck. There is a distinct quality and value, often a
singular beauty, in these simple lines that is intrinsic in the
perception of their form.

It would be pedantic, perhaps, anywhere but in a treatise on
aesthetics, to deny to this quality the name of expression; we might
commonly say that the circle has one expression and the oval
another. But what does the circle express except circularity, or the
oval except the nature of the ellipse? Such expression _expresses_
nothing; it is really impression. There may be analogy between it
and other impressions; we may admit that odours, colours, and
sounds correspond, and may mutually suggest one another; but this
analogy is a superadded charm felt by very sensitive natures, and
does not constitute the original value of the sensations. The
common emotional tinge is rather what enables them to suggest
one another, and what makes them comparable. Their expression,
such as it is, is therefore due to the accident that both feelings have
a kindred quality; and this quality has its effectiveness for sense
independently of the perception of its recurrence in a different
sphere. We shall accordingly take care to reserve the term
"expression" for the suggestion of some other and assignable
object, from wh