ndependent, and the intrinsic values of
each would remain distinct from that of the other. There would be
no visible expressiveness, although there might have been
discursive suggestions.

Indeed, if expression were constituted by the external relation of
object with object, everything would be expressive equally,
indeterminately, and universally. The flower in the crannied wall
would express the same thing as the bust of Caesar or the _Critique
of Pure Reason._ What constitutes the individual expressiveness of
these things is the circle of thoughts allied to each in a given mind;
my words, for instance, express the thoughts which they actually
arouse in the reader; they may express more to one man than to
another, and to me they may have expressed more or less than to
yon. My thoughts remain unexpressed, if my words do not arouse
them in you, and very likely your greater wisdom will find in what
I say the manifestation of a thousand principles of which I never
dreamed. Expression depends upon the union of two terms, one of
which must be furnished by the imagination; and a mind cannot
furnish what it does not possess. The expressiveness of everything
accordingly increases with the intelligence of the observer.

But for expression to be an element of beauty, it must, of course,
fulfil another condition. I may see the relations of an object, I may
understand it perfectly, and may nevertheless regard it with entire
indifference. If the pleasure fails, the very substance and
protoplasm of beauty is wanting. Nor, as we have seen, is even the
pleasure enough; for I may receive a letter full of the most joyous
news, but neither the paper, nor the writing, nor the style, need
seem beautiful to me. Not until I confound the impressions, and
suffuse the symbols themselves with the emotions they arouse, and
find joy and sweetness in the very words I hear, will the
expressiveness constitute a beauty; as when they sing, _Gloria in
excelsis Deo_.

The value of the second term must be incorporated in the first; for
the beauty of expression is as inherent in the object as that of
material or form, only it accrues to that object not from the bare act
of perception, but from the association with it of further processes,
due to the existence of former impressions. We may conveniently
use the word "expressiveness" to mean all the capacity of
suggestion possessed by a thing, and the word "expression" for the
aesthetic modification which