work of life is done and the terror of it is allayed.
They must, therefore, fit their forms, like parasites, to the stouter
growths to which they cling.

Herein lies the greatest difficulty and nicety of art. It must not only
create things abstractly beautiful, but it must conciliate all the
competitors these may have to the attention of the world, and must
know how to insinuate their charms among the objects of our
passion. But this subserviency and enforced humility of beauty is
not without its virtue and reward. If the aesthetic habit lie under the
necessity of respecting and observing our passions, it possesses the
privilege of soothing our griefs. There is no situation so terrible
that it may not be relieved by the momentary pause of the mind to
contemplate it aesthetically.

Grief itself becomes in this way not wholly pain; a sweetness is
added to it by our reflection. The saddest scenes may lose their
bitterness in their beauty. This ministration makes, as it were, the
piety of the Muses, who succour their mother, Life, and repay her
for their nurture by the comfort of their continual presence. The
aesthetic world is limited in its scope; it must submit to the control
of the organizing reason, and not trespass upon more useful and
holy ground. The garden must not encroach upon the corn-fields;
but the eye of the gardener may transform the corn-fields
themselves by dint of loving observation into a garden of a soberer
kind. By finding grandeur in our disasters, and merriment in our
mishaps, the aesthetic sense thus mollifies both, and consoles us
for the frequent impossibility of a serious and perfect beauty.

_Negative values in the second term._

Sec. 56. All subjects, even the most repellent, when the
circumstances of life thrust them before us, can thus be observed
with curiosity and treated with art. The calling forth of these
aesthetic functions softens the violence of our sympathetic reaction.
If death, for instance, did not exist and did not thrust itself upon
our thoughts with painful importunity, art would never have been
called upon to soften and dignify it, by presenting it in beautiful
forms and surrounding it with consoling associations. Art does not
seek out the pathetic, the tragic, and the absurd; it is life that has
imposed them upon our attention, and enlisted art in their service,
to make the contemplation of them, since it is inevitable, at least as
tolerable as possible.

The agreeab