ts as
pleasing ones. The most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood
on its head; the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at
through a microscope or from too far off; the most beautiful melody
is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . Here the Reader may
interrupt: "What nonsense! Of course the building _is_ a building
only when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a
microscope; the melody isn't a melody except begun at the
beginning"--all which means that when we speak of a building, a
picture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer
of a _Thing,_ but of one of the possible _Aspects_ of a thing; _and
that when we say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords
one or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction._ But if
a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be
_contemplated,_ if the mountain could not also be climbed or
tunnelled, if the woman could not also get married, bear children
and have (or not have!) a vote, we should say that the mountain and
the woman were not _real things._ Hence we come to the conclusion,
paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking
about, _that what we contemplate as beautiful is an Aspect of a
Thing, but never a Thing itself._ In other words: Beautiful is an
adjective applicable to Aspects not to Things, or to Things only,
inasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other
potentialities) beautiful Aspects. So that we can now formulate:
_The word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the
contemplation not of things but of aspects._

This summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject; and
I should wish the Reader to get it by heart, until he grow
familiarised therewith in the course of our further examinations.
Before proceeding upon these, I would, however, ask him to reflect
how this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless,
squabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth,
and whether art, as certain moralists contend, is a school of lying.
For _true_ or _false_ is a judgment of existence; it refers to
_Things;_ it implies that besides the qualities and reactions shown
or described, our further action or analysis will call forth certain
other groups of qualities and reactions constituting the _thing which
is said to exist._ But aspects, in the case in which I have used that
word, _are_ what they are and do n