ppreciation, for the appreciation which others can have quite
equally, and without which there is no reality at all in ownership.

Hence, the deeper our enjoyment of beauty, the freer shall we become
of the dreadful delusion of exclusive appropriation, despising such
unreal possession in proportion as we have tasted the real one. We
shall know the two kinds of ownership too well apart to let ourselves
be cozened into cumbering our lives with material properties and their
responsibilities. We shall save up our vigour, not for obtaining and
keeping (think of the thousand efforts and cares of ownership, even
the most negative) the things which yield happy impressions, but for
receiving and storing up and making capital of those impressions. We
shall seek to furnish our mind with beautiful thoughts, not our houses
with pretty things.

VIII.

I hope I have made clear enough that aesthetic enjoyment is hostile to
the unkind and wasteful pleasures of selfish indulgence and selfish
appropriation, because the true possession of the beautiful things of
Nature, of Art, and of thought is spiritual, and neither damages, nor
diminishes, nor hoards them; because the lover of the beautiful seeks
for beautiful impressions and remembrances, which are vested in his
soul, and not in material objects. That is the negative benefit of the
love of the beautiful. Let us now proceed to the positive and active
assistance which it renders, when genuine and thorough-paced, to such
thought as we give to the happiness and dignity of others.

IX.

I have said that our pleasure in the beautiful is essentially a
spiritual phenomenon, one, I mean, which deals with our own
perceptions and emotions, altering the contents of our mind, while
leaving the beautiful object itself intact and unaltered. This being
the case, it is easy to understand that our aesthetic pleasure will be
complete and extensive in proportion to the amount of activity of our
soul; for, remember, all pleasure is proportionate to activity, and,
as I said in my first chapter, great beauty does not merely _take us_,
but _we_ must give _ourselves to it_. Hence, an increase in the
capacity for aesthetic pleasure will mean, _caeeteris paribus_, an
increase in a portion of our spiritual activity, a greater readiness
to take small hints, to connect different items, to reject the lesser
good for the greater. Moreover, a great, perhaps the greater, part of
our aesthetic pleasure is due,