the beginning of all aesthetic life. But if by romanticism we mean
indulgence in confused suggestion and in the exhibition of turgid
force, then there is evidently need of education, of attentive labour,
to disentangle the beauties so vaguely felt, and give each its
adequate embodiment. The breadth of our inspiration need not be
lost in this process of clarification, for there is no limit to the
number and variety of forms which the world may be made to wear;
only, if it is to be appreciated as beautiful and not merely felt as
unutterable, it must be seen as a kingdom of forms. Thus the works
of Shakespeare give us a great variety, with a frequent marvellous
precision of characterization, and the forms of his art are definite
although its scope is great.

But by a curious anomaly, we are often expected to see the greatest
expressiveness in what remains indeterminate, and in reality
expresses nothing. As we have already observed, the sense of
profundity and significance is a very detachable emotion; it can
accompany a confused jumble of promptings quite as easily as it
can a thorough comprehension of reality. The illusion of infinite
perfection is peculiarly apt to produce this sensation. That illusion
arises by the simultaneous awakening of many incipient thoughts
and dim ideas; it stirs the depths of the mind as a wind stirs the
thickets of a forest; and the unusual consciousness of the life and
longing of the soul, brought by that gust of feeling, makes us
recognize in the object a singular power, a mysterious meaning.

But the feeling of significance signifies little. All we have in this
case is a potentiality of imagination; and only when this
potentiality begins to be realized in definite ideas, does a real
meaning, or any object which that meaning can mean, arise in the
mind. The highest aesthetic good is not that vague potentiality, nor
that contradictory, infinite perfection so strongly desired; it is the
greatest number and variety of finite perfections. To learn to see in
nature and to enshrine in the arts the typical forms of things; to
study and recognize their variations; to domesticate the
imagination in the world, so that everywhere beauty can be seen,
and a hint found for artistic creation, -- that is the goal of
contemplation. Progress lies in the direction of discrimination and
precision, not in that of formless emotion and reverie.

_Organized nature the source of apperceptive forms; example of