ctification of the elements and their
appearance as qualities rather of things than of consciousness. The
passage from sensation to perception is gradual, and the path may
be sometimes retraced: so it is with beauty and the pleasures of
sensation. There is no sharp line between them, but it depends
upon the degree of objectivity my feeling has attained at the
moment whether I say "It pleases me," or "It is beautiful." If I am
self-conscious and critical, I shall probably use, one phrase; if I am
impulsive and susceptible, the other. The more remote, interwoven,
and inextricable the pleasure is, the more objective it will appear;
and the union of two pleasures often makes one beauty. In
Shakespeare's LIVth sonnet are these words:

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses.
But, for their beauty only is their show,
They live unwooed and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so:
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.

One added ornament, we see, turns the deep dye, which was but
show and mere sensation before, into an element of beauty and
reality, and as truth is here the co-operation of perceptions, so
beauty is the co-operation of pleasures. If colour, form, and motion
are hardly beautiful without the sweetness of the odour, how much
more necessary would they be for the sweetness itself to become a
beauty! If we had the perfume in a flask, no one would think of
calling it beautiful: it would give us too detached and controllable
a sensation. There would be no object in which it could be easily
incorporated. But let it float from the garden, and it will add
another sensuous charm to objects simultaneously recognized, and
help to make them beautiful. Thus beauty is constituted by the
objectification of pleasure. It is pleasure objectified.

PART II

THE MATERIALS OF BEAUTY

_All human functions may contribute to the sense of beauty._

Sec. 12. Our task will now be to pass in review the various elements
of our consciousness, and see what each contributes to the beauty
of the world. We shall find that they do so whenever they