e senses,
as in the hearing of a singularly lucid and sustained note of a
clarinet, a flute, a voice, or a violin. It may be in the appreciation
of form, as in the case of the symmetry of a temple, an
arch, or an altar. It may be in the simultaneous stirring of
the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, by the presentation
of an idea suffused with music and emotion, as in the case
of an ode by Wordsworth or a sonnet by Milton.

In all these instances we are not interested in anything beyond
the experience itself. The objects of the fine arts are
not drafts on the future, anticipations of future satisfactions
eventually to be cashed in. They are immediate and intrinsic
goods, absolute fulfillments. They are not signals to action;
they are releases from it. A painting, a poem, a symphony,
do not precipitate movement or change. They invite a restful
absorption. It was this that made Schopenhauer regard art
as a rest from reality. During these interludes, at least, we
live amid perfections, and are content there to move and have
our being.

SENSE SATISFACTION. Appreciation of the arts begins in the
senses. Sight and sound, these are unquestionably the chief
avenues by which the imagination is stirred.[1]

[Footnote 1: The so-called lower senses are not regarded as
yielding aesthetic
values. Smell, taste, and touch are not generally, certainly
in Occidental art, made
much of.]

In the words of Santayana:

For if nothing not once in sense is to be found in the intellect,
much less is such a thing to be found in the imagination. If the
cedars of Lebanon did not spread a grateful shade, or the winds
rustle through the maze of their branches, if Lebanon had never
been beautiful to sense, it would not now be a fit or poetic subject of
allusion.... Nor would Samarcand be anything but for the mystery
of the desert, and the picturesqueness of caravans, nor would an
argosy be poetic if the sea had no voices and no foam, the winds and
oars no resistance, and the rudder and taut sheets no pull. From
these real sensations imagination draws its life, and suggestion its
power.[2]

[Footnote 2: Santayana: _Sense of Beauty_, p. 68.]

Satisfaction in sounds arises from the regular intervals of
the vibrations of the air by which it is produced. The rapidity
of these regular beats determines the pitch. But sounds also
differ in _timbre_ or quality, depending on the number of overtones
which occur in different modes of produc