often make it so. Let the
images of the past fade, let them remain simply as a halo and
suggestion of happiness hanging about a scene; then this scene,
however empty and uninteresting in itself, will have a deep and
intimate charm; we shall be pleased by its very vulgarity. We shall
not confess so readily that we value the place for its associations;
we shall rather say: I am fond of this landscape; it has for me an
ineffable attraction. The treasures of the memory have been melted
and dissolved, and are now gilding the object that supplants them;
they are giving this object expression.

Expression then differs from material or formal value only as habit
differs from instinct -- in its origin. Physiologically, they are both
pleasurable radiations of a given stimulus; mentally, they are both
values incorporated in an object. But an observer, looking at the
mind historically, sees in the one case the survival of an experience,
in the other the reaction of an innate disposition. This experience,
moreover, is generally rememberable, and then the extrinsic source
of the charm which expression gives becomes evident even to the
consciousness in which it arises. A word, for instance, is often
beautiful simply by virtue of its meaning and associations; but
sometimes this expressive beauty is added to a musical quality in
the world itself. In all expression we may thus distinguish two
terms: the first is the object actually presented, the word, the image,
the expressive thing; the second is the object suggested, the further
thought, emotion, or image evoked, the thing expressed.

These lie together in the mind, and their union constitutes
expression. If the value lies wholly in the first term, we have no
beauty of expression. The decorative inscriptions in Saracenic
monuments can have no beauty of expression for one who does not
read Arabic; their charm is wholly one of material and form. Or if
they have any expression, it is by virtue of such thoughts as they
might suggest, as, for instance, of the piety and oriental
sententiousness of the builders and of the aloofness from us of all
their world. And even these suggestions, being a wandering of our
fancy rather than a study of the object, would fail to arouse a
pleasure which would be incorporated in the present image. The
scroll would remain without expression, although its presence
might have suggested to us interesting visions of other things. The
two terms would be too i