empathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity
to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly
owned up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess
enough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could
never suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable emotional
attitude and the absence of obvious _extrinsic_ (technical or
historical) reasons for scepticism, these elements of resemblance
must awaken the vague idea, especially the empathic scheme, of the
particular master's work, and his name--shall we say Leonardo's?--will
rise to the lips. But _Leonardo_ is a name to conjure with, and
in this case to destroy the conjurer himself: the word _Leonardo_
implies an emotion, distilled from a number of highly prized and
purposely repeated experiences, kept to gather strength in respectful
isolation, and further heightened by a thrill of initiate veneration
whenever it is mentioned. This _Leonardo-emotion,_ once set on
foot, checks all unworthy doubts, sweeps out of consciousness all
thoughts of inferior work (_inferiority_ and _Leonardo_ being
emotionally incompatible!), respectfully holds the candle while the
elements common to the imitation and the masterpiece are gone over
and over, and the differentiating elements exclusively belonging to
Leonardo evoked in the expert's memory, until at last the objective
work of art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces
which impart to it their emotionally communicable virtue. And
when the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule, the
Philistine shrewdly decides that a sham Leonardo is just as good as a
genuine one, that these are all matters of fashion, and that there is
really no disputing of tastes!

CHAPTER XX

AESTHETIC IRRADIATION AND PURIFICATION

THE storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another
fact, with which indeed I began this little book: namely that the
word _Beautiful_ has been extended from whatever is satisfactory in
our contemplation of shapes, to a great number of cases where there
can be no question of shapes at all, as in speaking of a "beautiful
character" and a "fine moral attitude"; or else, as in the case of a
"beautiful bit of machinery," a "fine scientific demonstration" or a
"splendid surgical operation" where the shapes involved are not at
all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such cases the
word _Beautiful_ has been brought over with the em