ls is
never exactly similar. But the eventual decay of our personal
energies does not destroy the natural value of objects, so long as
the same will embodies itself in other minds, and human nature
subsists in the world. The sun is not now unreal because each one
of us in succession, and all of us in the end, must close our eyes
upon it; and yet the sun exists for us only because we perceive it.
The ideal has the same conditions of being, but has this advantage
over the sun, that we cannot know if its light is ever destined to fail
us.

There is then a broad foundation of identity in our nature, by virtue
of which we live in a common world, and have an art and a
religion in common. That the ideal should be constant within these
limits is as inevitable as that it should vary beyond them. And so
long as we exist and recognize ourselves individually as persons or
collectively as human, we must recognize also our immanent ideal,
the realization of which would constitute perfection for us. That
ideal cannot be destroyed except in proportion as we ourselves
perish. An absolute perfection, independent of human nature and
its variations, may interest the metaphysician; but the artist and the
man will be satisfied with a perfection that is inseparable from the
consciousness of mankind, since it is at once the natural vision of
the imagination, and the rational goal of the will.

_Conclusion._

Sec. 67. We have now studied the sense of beauty in what seem to be
its fundamental manifestations, and in some of the more striking
complications which it undergoes. In surveying so broad a field we
stand in need of some classification and subdivision; and we have
chosen the familiar one of matter, form, and expression, as least
likely to lead us into needless artificiality. But artificiality there
must always be in the discursive description of anything given in
consciousness. Psychology attempts what is perhaps impossible,
namely, the anatomy of life. Mind is a fluid; the lights and
shadows that flicker through it have no real boundaries, and no
possibility of permanence. Our whole classification of mental facts
is borrowed from the physical conditions or expressions of them.
The very senses are distinguished because of the readiness with
which we can isolate their outer organs. Ideas can be identified
only by identifying their objects. Feelings are recognized by their
outer expression, and when we try to recall an emotion, we must