sfaction. But while each work of nature and art is thus
apparently blighted by his greater demands and keener susceptibility,
the world itself, and the various natures it contains, are
to him unspeakably beautiful. The more blemishes he can see
in men, the more excellence he sees in man, and the more bitterly
he laments the fate of each particular soul, the more reverence and
love he has for the soul in its ideal essence. Criticism and
idealization involve each other. The habit of looking for beauty in
everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things; our sense,
hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.
But this demand for perfection becomes at the same time the
nucleus of our observation; from every side a quick affinity draws
what is beautiful together and stores it in the mind, giving body
there to the blind yearnings of our nature. Many imperfect things
crystallize into a single perfection. The mind is thus peopled by
general ideas in which beauty is the chief quality; and these ideas
are at the same time the types of things. The type is still a natural
resultant of particular impressions; but the formation of it has been
guided by a deep subjective bias in favour of what has delighted
the eye.

This theory can be easily tested by asking whether, in the case
where the ideal differs from the average form of objects, this
variation is not due to the intrinsic pleasantness or impressiveness
of the quality exaggerated. For instance, in the human form, the
ideal differs immensely from the average. In many respects the
extreme or something near it is the most beautiful. Xenophon
describes the women of Armenia as kalai kai megalai, and we
should still speak of one as fair and tall and of another as fair but
little. Size is therefore, even where least requisite, a thing in which
the ideal exceeds the average. And the reason -- apart from
associations of strength -- is that unusual size makes things
conspicuous. The first prerequisite of effect is impression, and size
helps that; therefore in the aesthetic ideal the average will be
modified by being enlarged, because that is a change in the
direction of our pleasure, and size will be an element of beauty.[8]

Similarly the eyes, in themselves beautiful, will be enlarged also;
and generally whatever makes by its sensuous quality, by its
abstract form, or by its expression, a particular appeal to our
attention and contribution to our delight,