aste) bodily
pleasure. But besides these my inventory contained another kind of
item: what I described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply
convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills, picked
up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down
merely to rush up again in long rapid concave curves. And besides
all this, there was the outline of a distant mountain, rising flamelike
against the sky. It was all these items made up of _lines_ (skyline,
outline, and lines of perspective!) which remained unchanged when
the colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass,
and unchanged also when the colouring was reduced to the barest
monochrome of a photograph or a pencil drawing; nay remained the
same despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless
presentment of them. Those items of the aspect were, as we all know,
_Shapes._ And with altered colours, and colours diminished to just
enough for each line to detach itself from its ground, those Shapes
could be contemplated and called beautiful.

CHAPTER V

PERCEPTION OF RELATIONS

WHY should this be the case? Briefly, because colours (and sounds)
as such are forced upon us by external stimulation of our organs of
sight and hearing, neither more nor less than various temperatures,
textures, tastes and smells are forced upon us from without through
the nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin,
muscle, palate and nose. Whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly
willy _seen_ or _heard,_ are, at least until we know them, _looked_
at or _listened_ to, that is to say _taken in_ or _grasped,_ by mental
and bodily activities which meet, but may also refuse to meet, those
sense stimulations. Moreover, because these mental and bodily
activities, being our own, can be rehearsed in what we call our
memory without the repetition of the sensory stimulations which
originally started them, and even in the presence of different ones.

In terms of mental science, colour and sound, like temperature,
texture, taste and smell, are _sensations_; while _shape_ is, in the
most complete sense, a _perception._ This distinction between
_sensation_ and _perception_ is a technicality of psychology; but
upon it rests the whole question why shapes can be contemplated
and afford the satisfaction connected with the word _beautiful,_
while colours and sounds, except as grouped or groupable into
shapes, cannot. Moreover this distinction will