something, 'luscious and aplomb,' to borrow Ellis's
quotation, which he desiderated as a constituent of the Good?"

"I don't know," he said, "perhaps we might. What is it you have in
your mind?"

"Well," I replied, "let us recur for a moment to works of art. In them
we have, to begin with, directly presented elements other than mere
ideas."

"No doubt."

"And further, these elements, we agreed, have a necessary connection
one with the other."

"Yes, but not logically necessary."

"No doubt, but still a necessary connection. And it is the necessity
of the connection, surely, that is important; the character of the
necessity is a secondary consideration."

"Perhaps."

"One condition, then, of intelligibility is satisfied by a work
of art. But how is it with the other? How is it with the elements
themselves? Are they transparent, to use your phrase, to that which
apprehends them?"

"Certainly not, for they are mere sense--of all things the most
obscure and baffling."

"And yet," I replied, "not mere sense, for they are sense made
beautiful; as beautiful, they are akin to us, and, so far,
intelligible."

"You suggest, then, that Beauty is akin to something in us, in a
way analogous to that in which, according to me, ideas are akin to
thought?"

"It seems so to me. In so far as a thing is beautiful it does not, I
think, demand explanation, but only in so far as it is something else
as well."

"Perhaps. But anyhow, inasmuch as a work of art is also sense, so far
at least it is not intelligible."

"True; and here we come by a new path upon the defect which we
noticed before in works of art--that their Beauty, or Goodness, is not
essential to their whole nature, but is something imposed, as it were,
on an alien stuff. And it is this alien element that we now pronounce
to be unintelligible."

"Yes; and so, as we agreed before, we cannot pronounce works of art to
be absolutely good."

"No. But what are we to do then? Where are we to turn? Is there
nothing in our experience to suggest the kind of object we seem to
want?"

No one answered. I looked round in vain for any help, and then, in
a kind of despair, moved by I know not what impulse, I made a direct
appeal to Audubon.

"Come!" I cried, "you have said nothing for the last hour! I am sure
you must have something to suggest."

"No," he said, "I haven't. Your whole way of dealing with these things
is a mystery to me. I can't conceive, for example,