evidently in this particular
pleasure a complication which is not present in others and which is
the basis of the distinction made by consciousness and language
between it and the rest. It will be instructive to notice the degrees
of this difference.

The bodily pleasures are those least resembling perceptions of
beauty. By bodily pleasures we mean, of course, more than
pleasures with a bodily seat; for that class would include them all,
as well as all forms and elements of consciousness. Aesthetic
pleasures have physical conditions, they depend on the activity of
the eye and the ear, of the memory and the other ideational
functions of the brain. But we do not connect those pleasures with
their seats except in physiological studies; the ideas with which
aesthetic pleasures are associated are not the ideas of their bodily
causes. The pleasures we call physical, and regard as low, on the
contrary, are those which call our attention to some part of our own
body, and which make no object so conspicuous to us as the organ
in which they arise.

There is here, then, a very marked distinction between physical and
aesthetic pleasure; the organs of the latter must be transparent, they
must not intercept our attention, but carry it directly to some
external object. The greater dignity and range of aesthetic pleasure
is thus made very intelligible. The soul is glad, as it were, to forget
its connexion with the body and to fancy that it can travel over the
world with the liberty with which it changes the objects of its
thought. The mind passes from China to Peru without any
conscious change in the local tensions of the body. This illusion of
disembodiment is very exhilarating, while immersion in the flesh
and confinement to some organ gives a tone of grossness
and selfishness to our consciousness. The generally meaner
associations of physical pleasures also help to explain their
comparative crudity.

_The differetia of aesthetic pleasure not its disinterestedness._

Sec. 8. The distinction between pleasure and the sense of beauty has
sometimes been said to consist in the unselfishness of aesthetic
satisfaction. In other pleasures, it is said, we gratify our senses and
passions; in the contemplation of beauty we are raised above
ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the
recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess. The painter
does not look at a spring of water with the eyes of a thirsty man,
nor at