r
discrimination, by which the distance between beautiful and ugly
things is increased, far from being a loss of aesthetic insight, is a
development of that faculty by the exercise of which beauty comes
into the world.

_Effects of indeterminate organization._

Sec. 32. It is the free exercise of the activity of apperception that gives
so peculiar an interest to indeterminate objects, to the vague, the
incoherent, the suggestive, the variously interpretable. The more
this effect is appealed to, the greater wealth of thought is presumed
in the observer, and the less mastery is displayed by the artist. A
poor and literal mind cannot enjoy the opportunity for reverie and
construction given by the stimulus of indeterminate objects; it
lacks the requisite resources. It is nonplussed and annoyed, and
turns away to simpler and more transparent things with a feeling of
helplessness often turning into contempt. And, on the other hand,
the artist who is not artist enough, who has too many irrepressible
talents and too little technical skill, is sure to float in the region of
the indeterminate. He sketches and never paints; he hints and never
expresses; he stimulates and never informs. This is the method of
the individuals and of the nations that have more genius than art.

The consciousness that accompanies this characteristic is the sense
of profundity, of mighty significance. And this feeling is not
necessarily an illusion. The nature of our materials -- be they
words, colours, or plastic matter -- imposes a limit and bias upon
our expression. The reality of experience can never be quite
rendered through these media. The greatest mastery of technique
will therefore come short of perfect adequacy and exhaustiveness;
there must always remain a penumbra and fringe of suggestion if
the most explicit representation is to communicate a truth. When
there is real profundity, -- when the living core of things is most
firmly grasped, -- there will accordingly be a felt inadequacy of
expression, and an appeal to the observer to piece out our
imperfections with his thoughts. But this should come only after
the resources of a patient and well-learned art have been exhausted;
else what is felt as depth is really confusion and incompetence. The
simplest thing becomes unutterable, if we have forgotten how to
speak. And a habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign
of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has