exclusively bound to any
particular object, and therefore do not account for the relative
beauty of things. They are loose and unlocalized, having no special
organ, or one which is internal and hidden within the body. They
therefore remain undiscriminated in consciousness, and can serve
to add interest to any object, or to cast a general glamour over the
world, very favourable to its interest and beauty.

The aesthetic value of vital functions differs according to their
physiological concomitants: those that are favourable to ideation
are of course more apt to extend something of their intimate
warmth to the pleasures of contemplation, and thus to intensify the
sense of beauty and the interest of thought. Those, on the other
hand, that for physiological reasons tend to inhibit ideation, and to
drown the attention in dumb and unrepresentable feelings, are less
favourable to aesthetic activity. The double effect of drowsiness
and reverie will illustrate this difference. The heaviness of sleep
seems to fall first on the outer senses, and of course makes them
incapable of acute impressions; but if it goes no further, it leaves
the imagination all the freer, and by heightening the colours of the
fancy, often suggests and reveals beautiful images. There is a kind
of poetry and invention that comes only in such moments. In them
many lovely melodies must first have been heard, and centaurs and
angels originally imagined.

If, however, the lethargy is more complete, or if the cause of it is
such that the imagination is retarded while the senses remain
awake, -- as is the case with an over-fed or over-exercised body, --
we have a state of aesthetic insensibility. The exhilaration which
comes with pure and refreshing air has a marked influence on our
appreciations. To it is largely due the beauty of the morning, and
the entirely different charm it has from the evening. The opposite
state of all the functions here adds an opposite emotion to
externally similar scenes, making both infinitely but differently
beautiful.

It would be curious and probably surprising to discover how much
the pleasure of breathing has to do with our highest and most
transcendental ideals. It is not merely a metaphor that makes us
couple airiness with exquisiteness and breathlessness with awe; it
is the actual recurrence of a sensation in the throat and lungs that
gives those impressions an immediate power, prior to all reflection
upon their significa