dependent, for the form and meaning it presents, upon our
past experience and imaginative trend, and less on the structure of
the external object.

Our apperception of form varies not only with our constitution, age,
and health, as does the appreciation of sensuous values, but also
with our education and genius. The more indeterminate the object,
the greater share must subjective forces have in determining our
perception; for, of course, every perception is in itself perfectly
specific, and can be called indefinite only in reference to an
abstract ideal which it is expected to approach. Every cloud has
just the outline it has, although we may call it vague, because we
cannot classify its form under any geometrical or animal species; it
would be first definitely a whale, and then would become
indefinite until we saw our way to calling it a camel. But while in
the intermediate stage, the cloud would be a form in the perception
of which there would be little apperceptive activity little reaction
from the store of our experience, little sense of form; its value
would be in its colour and transparency, and in the suggestion of
lightness and of complex but gentle movement.

But the moment we said "Yes, very like a whale," a new kind of
value would appear; the cloud could now be beautiful or ugly, not
as a cloud merely, but as a whale. We do not speak now of the
associations of the idea, as with the sea, or fishermen's yarns; that
is an extrinsic matter of expression. We speak simply of the
intrinsic value of the form of the whale, of its lines, its movement,
its proportion. This is a more or less individual set of images which
are revived in the act of recognition; this revival constitutes the
recognition, and the beauty of the form is the pleasure of that
revival. A certain musical phrase, as it were, is played in the brain;
the awakening of that echo is the act of apperception and the
harmony of the present stimulation with the form of that phrase;
the power of this particular object to develope and intensify that
generic phrase in the direction of pleasure, is the test of the formal
beauty of this example. For these cerebral phrases have a certain
rhythm; this rhythm can, by the influence of the stimulus that now
reawakens it, be marred or enriched, be made more or less marked
and delicate; and as this conflict or reinforcement comes, the
object is ugly or beautiful in form.

Such an aesthetic value is thus dependent o