ersity of its manifestations in
history.

The third method in ethics and aesthetics is psychological, as the
other two are respectively didactic and historical. It deals with
moral and aesthetic judgments as phenomena of mind and products
of mental evolution. The problem here is to understand the origin
and conditions of these feelings and their relation to the rest of our
economy. Such an inquiry, if pursued successfully, would yield an
understanding of the reason why we think anything right or
beautiful, wrong or ugly, it would thus reveal the roots of
conscience and taste in human nature and enable us to distinguish
transitory preferences and ideals, which rest on peculiar conditions,
from those which, springing from those elements of mind which all
men share, are comparatively permanent and universal.

To this inquiry, as far as it concerns aesthetics, the following pages
are devoted. No attempt will be made either to impose particular
appreciations or to trace the history of art and criticism. The
discussion will be limited to the nature and elements of our
aesthetic judgments. It is a theoretical inquiry and has no directly
hortatory quality. Yet insight into the basis of our preferences, if it
could be gained, would not fail to have a good and purifying
influence upon them. It would show us the futility of a dogmatism
that would impose upon another man judgments and emotions for
which the needed soil is lacking in his constitution and experience;
and at the same time it would relieve us of any undue diffidence or
excessive tolerance towards aberrations of taste, when we know
what are the broader grounds of preference and the habits that
make for greater and more diversified aesthetic enjoyment.

Therefore, although nothing has commonly been less attractive
than treatises on beauty or less a guide to taste than disquisitions
upon it, we may yet hope for some not merely theoretical gain
from these studies. They have remained so often without practical
influence because they have been pursued under unfavourable
conditions. The writers have generally been audacious metaphysicians
and somewhat incompetent critics; they have represented
general and obscure principles, suggested by other parts
of their philosophy, as the conditions of artistic excellence
and the essence of beauty. But if the inquiry is kept close to the
facts of feeling, we may hope that the resulting theory may have a
clarifying effect on the expe