merely attribute
this value to the object by a projection which is the ground of the
apparent objectivity of beauty. Sometimes this value may be
inherent in the process by which the object itself is perceived; then
we have sensuous and formal beauty; sometimes the value may be
due to the incipient formation of other ideas, which the perception
of this object evokes; then we have beauty of expression. But
among the ideas with which every object has relation there is one
vaguest, most comprehensive, and most powerful one, namely, the
idea of self. The impulses, memories, principles, and energies
which we designate by that word baffle enumeration; indeed, they
constantly fade and change into one another; and whether the self
is anything, everything, or nothing depends on the aspect of it
which we momentarily fix, and especially on the definite object
with which we contrast it.

Now, it is the essential privilege of beauty to so synthesize and
bring to a focus the various impulses of the self, so to suspend
them to a single image, that a great peace falls upon that perturbed
kingdom. In the experience of these momentary harmonies we
have the basis of the enjoyment of beauty, and of all its mystical
meanings. But there are always two methods of securing harmony:
one is to unify all the given elements, and another is to reject and
expunge all the elements that refuse to be unified. Unity by
inclusion gives us the beautiful; unity by exclusion, opposition,
and isolation gives us the sublime. Both are pleasures: but the
pleasure of the one is warm, passive, and pervasive; that of the
other cold, imperious, and keen. The one identifies us with the
world, the other raises us above it.

There can be no difficulty in understanding how the expression of
evil in the object may be the occasion of this heroic reaction of the
soul. In the first place, the evil may be felt; but at the same time the
sense that, great as it may be in itself, it cannot touch us, may
stimulate extraordinarily the consciousness of our own wholeness.
This is the sublimity which Lucretius calls "sweet" in the famous
lines in which he so justly analyzes it. We are not pleased because
another suffers an evil, but because, seeing it is an evil, we see at
the same time our own immunity from it. We might soften the
picture a little, and perhaps make the principle even clearer by so
doing. The shipwreck observed from the shore does not leave us
wholly unmoved; w