otion of
satisfied contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the
minds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect,
round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise
_shapely_ thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of
half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic
experience, and evoked by that word _Beautiful_ whose application
they partially justify. Nor is this all. Recent psychology teaches that,
odd as it at first appears, our more or less definite images, auditive
as well as visual, and whether actually perceived or merely
remembered, are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's
contents, coming and going and weaving themselves on to a
constant woof of our own activities and feelings. It is precisely such
activities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply
the words _Beautiful_ and _Ugly._ Thus everything which has come
in connexion with occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation,
will meet with somewhat of the same reception as that shape-contemplation
originally elicited. And even the merest items of information which
the painter conveys concerning the visible universe; the merest
detail of human character conveyed by the poet; nay even the
mere nervous intoxication furnished by the musician, will all be
irradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been conveyed
in, and will therefore be felt as beautiful.

Moreover, as the "beautiful character" and "splendid operation" have
taught us, rare and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a
"platonic" way. And even objects of bodily desire, so long as that
desire is not acute and pressing, may give rise to merely
contemplative longings. All this, added to what has previously been
said, sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which
are irradiated by the word _Beautiful_ and the emotion originally
arising from the satisfied contemplation of mere shapes.

And that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so
life-corroborating and so strangely impersonal, and that its special
emotion should be so susceptible of radiation and transfer, is
sufficient explanation of the elevating and purifying influence which,
ever since Plato, philosophers have usually ascribed to the Beautiful.
Other moralists however have not failed to point out that art has,
occasionally and even frequently, effects of the very opposite kind.
The ever