e complex
vision has a wider field than is commonly supposed. I regard it, in
fact, as including much more than the mere sense of beauty. I regard
it as a direct organ of research, comparable to instinct or intuition,
but covering a different ground. I regard it as a mysterious
clairvoyance of the soul, capable of discriminating between certain
everlasting opposites, which together make up an eternal duality in
the very depths of existence.

These opposites imply larger and more complicated issues than are
implied in the words beautiful and ugly. The real and the unreal, the
interesting and the uninteresting, the significant and the
insignificant, the suggestive and the meaningless, the arresting and
the commonplace, the exciting and the dull, the organic and the
affected, the dramatic and the undramatic, are only some of the
differences implied.

The fact that art is constantly using what we call the ugly as well as
what we call the commonplace, and turning both these into new
forms of beauty, is a fact that considerably complicates the
situation. And what art, the culminating creative energy of the
aesthetic sense, can do, the aesthetic sense itself can do with its
critical and receptive power.

So that in the aesthetic sense, or in what I call "taste," we have an
energy which is at once receptive and creative; at once capable of
responding to this eternal duality, and of creating new forms of
beauty and interest _out of_ the ugly and uninteresting. A new name
is really required for this thing. A name is required for it that
conveys a more creative implication than the word "taste," a word
which has an irresponsible, arbitrary, and even flippant sound, and a
more passionate, religious, and ecstatic implication than the word
"aesthetic," a word which suggests something calculated, cold,
learned, and a little tame. I use the word "taste" at this particular
moment because this word implies a certain challenge to both
reason and conscience, and some such challenge it is necessary to
insist upon, if this particular energy of the soul is to defend its
basic integrity.

This ultimate attribute of personality, then, which I call "taste"
reveals to us an aspect of the system of things quite different from
those revealed by the other activities of the human soul. This aspect
of the universe, or this "open secret" of the universe, loses itself,
as all the others do in unfathomable abysses. It descends to the very
roots of