arrested by
aesthetic instinct; but they are the materials of mathematics. And long
after these initial forms have disowned their sensuous values, and
suffered a wholly dialectical expansion or analysis, mathematical
objects again fall under the aesthetic eye, and surprise the senses by
their emotional power. A mechanical system, such as astronomy in one
region has already unveiled, is an inexhaustible field for aesthetic
wonder. Similarly, in another sphere, sensuous affinity leads to
friendship and love, and makes us huddle up to our fellows and feel
their heart-beats; but when human society has thereupon established a
legal and moral edifice, this new spectacle yields new imaginative
transports, tragic, lyric, and religious. AEsthetic values everywhere
precede and accompany rational activity, and life is, in one aspect,
always a fine art; not by introducing inaptly aesthetic vetoes or
aesthetic flourishes, but by giving to everything a form which, implying
a structure, implies also an ideal and a possible perfection. This
perfection, being felt, is also a beauty, since any process, though it
may have become intellectual or practical, remains for all that a vital
and sentient operation, with its inherent sensuous values. Whatever is
to be representative in import must first be immediate in existence;
whatever is transitive in operation must be at the same time actual in
being. So that an aesthetic sanction sweetens all successful living;
animal efficiency cannot be without grace, nor moral achievement without
a sensible glory.

[Sidenote: Even inhibited functions, when they fall into a new rhythm,
yield new beauties.]

These vital harmonies are natural; they are neither perfect nor
preordained. We often come upon beauties that need to be sacrificed, as
we come upon events and practical necessities without number that are
truly regrettable. There are a myriad conflicts in practice and in
thought, conflicts between rival possibilities, knocking inopportunely
and in vain at the door of existence. Owing to the initial
disorganisation of things, some demands continually prove to be
incompatible with others arising no less naturally. Reason in such cases
imposes real and irreparable sacrifices, but it brings a stable
consolation if its discipline is accepted. Decay, for instance, is a
moral and aesthetic evil; but being a natural necessity it can become the
basis for pathetic and magnificent harmonies, when once imaginati