eauty of the sensible world.

But our hold upon our thoughts extends even further. We not only
construct visible unities and recognizable types, but remain aware
of their affinities to what is not at the time perceived; that is, we
find in them a certain tendency and quality, not original to them, a
meaning and a tone, which upon investigation we shall see to have
been the proper characteristics of other objects and feelings,
associated with them once in our experience. The hushed
reverberations of these associated feelings continue in the brain,
and by modifying our present reaction, colour the image upon
which our attention is fixed. The quality thus acquired by objects
through association is what we call their expression. Whereas in
form or material there is one object with its emotional effect, in
expression there are two, and the emotional effect belongs to the
character of the second or suggested one. Expression may thus
make beautiful by suggestion things in themselves indifferent, or it
may come to heighten the beauty which they already possess.

Expression is not always distinguishable in consciousness
from the value of material or form, because we do not always
have a distinguishable memory of the related idea which the
expressiveness implies. When we have such a memory, as at
the sight of some once frequented garden, we clearly and
spontaneously attribute our emotion to the memory and not to the
present fact which it beautifies. The revival of a pleasure and its
embodiment in a present object which in itself might have been
indifferent, is here patent and acknowledged.

The distinctness of the analysis may indeed be so great as to
prevent the synthesis; we may so entirely pass to the suggested
object, that our pleasure will be embodied in the memory of that,
while the suggestive sensation will be overlooked, and the
expressiveness of the present object will fail to make it beautiful.
Thus the mementos of a lost friend do not become beautiful by
virtue of the sentimental associations which may make them
precious. The value is confined to the images of the memory; they
are too clear to let any of that value escape and diffuse itself over
the rest of our consciousness, and beautify the objects which we
actually behold. We say explicitly: I value this trifle for its
associations. And so long as this division continues, the worth of
the thing is not for us aesthetic.

But a little dimming of our memory will