t is not so much art in its own
field that men of science look askance upon, as the love of glitter and
rhetoric and false finality trespassing upon scientific ground; while
men of affairs may well deprecate a rooted habit of sensuous absorption
and of sudden transit to imaginary worlds, a habit which must work havoc
in their own sphere. In other words, there is an element of poetry
inherent in thought, in conduct, in affection; and we must ask ourselves
how far this ingredient is an obstacle to their proper development.

[Sidenote: They are primordial.]

The fabled dove who complained, in flying, of the resistance of the air,
was as wise as the philosopher who should lament the presence and
influence of sense. Sense is the native element and substance of
experience; all its refinements are still parts of it existentially; and
whatever excellence belongs specifically to sense is a preliminary
excellence, a value antecedent to any which thought or action can
achieve. Science and morals have but representative authority; they are
principles of ideal synthesis and safe transition; they are bridges
from moment to moment of sentience. Their function is indeed universal
and their value overwhelming, yet their office remains derivative or
secondary, and what they serve to put in order has previously its
intrinsic worth. An aesthetic bias is native to sense, being indeed
nothing but its form and potency; and the influence which aesthetic
habits exercise on thought and action should not be regarded as an
intrusion to be resented, but rather as an original interest to be built
upon and developed. Sensibility contains the distinctions which reason
afterward carries out and applies; it is sensibility that involves and
supports primitive diversities, such as those between good and bad, here
and there, fast and slow, light and darkness. There are complications
and harmonies inherent in these oppositions, harmonies which aesthetic
faculty proceeds to note; and from these we may then construct others,
not immediately presentable, which we distinguish by attributing them to
reason. Reason may well outflank and transform aesthetic judgments, but
can never undermine them. Its own materials are the perceptions which if
full and perfect are called beauties. Its function is to endow the parts
of sentience with a consciousness of the system in which they lie, so
that they may attain a mutual relevance and ideally support one another.
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