nalyze the assertion before us and seek
its basis in human nature. Before this is done, we should run the
risk of expanding a natural misconception or inaccuracy of thought
into an inveterate and pernicious prejudice by making it the centre
of an elaborate construction.

That the claim of universality is such a natural inaccuracy will not
be hard to show. There is notoriously no great agreement upon
aesthetic matters; and such agreement as there is, is based upon
similarity of origin, nature, and circumstance among men, a
similarity which, where it exists, tends to bring about identity in all
judgments and feelings. It is unmeaning to say that what is
beautiful to one man _ought_ to be beautiful to another. If their
senses are the same, their associations and dispositions similar,
then the same thing will certainly be beautiful to both. If their
natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will
be to another even invisible, because his classifications and
discriminations in perception will be different, and he may see a
hideous detached fragment or a shapeless aggregate of things, in
what to another is a perfect whole -- so entirely are the unities of
function and use. It is absurd to say that what is invisible to a given
being _ought_ to seem beautiful to him. Evidently this obligation
of recognizing the same qualities is conditioned by the possession
of the same faculties. But no two men have exactly the same
faculties, nor can things have for any two exactly the same values.

What is loosely expressed by saying that any one ought to see this
or that beauty is that he would see it if his disposition, training, or
attention were what our ideal demands for him; and our ideal of
what any one should be has complex but discoverable sources. We
take, for instance, a certain pleasure in having our own judgments
supported by those of others; we are intolerant, if not of the
existence of a nature different from our own, at least of
its expression in words and judgments. We are confirmed or
made happy in our doubtful opinions by seeing them accepted
universally. We are unable to find the basis of our taste in our own
experience and therefore refuse to look for it there. If we were sure
of our ground, we should be willing to acquiesce in the naturally
different feelings and ways of others, as a man who is conscious of
speaking his language with the accent of the capital confesses its
arbitrariness with gaye