ers, those that wallow in
Epicurus' sty, know anything about the latter question. But it is
easier to be impressed than to be instructed, and the public is very
ready to believe that where there is noble language not
without obscurity there must be profound knowledge. We should
distinguish, however, the two distinct demands in the case. One is
for comprehension; we look for the theory of a human function
which must cover all possible cases of its exercise, whether noble
or base. This the Platonists utterly fail to give us. The other
demand is for inspiration; we wish to be nourished by the maxims
and confessions of an exalted mind, in whom the aesthetic function
is pre-eminent. By responding to this demand the same thinkers
may win our admiration.

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to
feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried
by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this
is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be. The
poets and philosophers who express this aesthetic experience and
stimulate the same function in us by their example, do a greater
service to mankind and deserve higher honour than the discoverers
of historical truth. Reflection is indeed a part of life, but the last
part. Its specific value consists in the satisfaction of curiosity, in
the smoothing out and explanation of things: but the greatest
pleasure which we actually get from reflection is borrowed from
the experience on which we reflect. We do not often indulge in
retrospect for the sake of a scientific knowledge of human life, but
rather to revive the memories of what once was dear. And I should
have little hope of interesting the reader in the present analyses, did
I not rely on the attractions of a subject associated with so many of
his pleasures.

But the recognition of the superiority of aesthetics in experience to
aesthetics in theory ought not to make us accept as an explanation
of aesthetic feeling what is in truth only an expression of it. When
Plato tells us of the eternal ideas in conformity to which all
excellence consists, he is making himself the spokesman of the
moral consciousness. Our conscience and taste establish these
ideals; to make a judgment is virtually to establish an ideal, and all
ideals are absolute and eternal for the judgment that involves them,
because in finding and declaring a thing good or beautiful, our
sentenc