ns so large a part of the sensuous field, the
idea of beauty as a unity of space-relations giving pleasure is so
simple, and the experience is so usual, that the word has been carried
over to the life of the more limited senses in which analogous phenomena
arise, differing only in the fact that they exist in another sense. Thus
in the dominion of the ear especially, we speak commonly of the beauty
of music; but the life of the minor senses, touch, taste, and smell, is
composed of too simple elements to allow of such combination as would
constitute specific form in ordinary apprehension, though in the blind
and deaf the possibility of high and intelligible complexity in these
senses is proved. Similarly, the term is carried over to the invisible
and inaudible world of the soul within itself, and we speak of the
beauty of Sidney's act, of Romeo's nature, and, in the abstract, of the
beauty of holiness, and, in a still more remote sphere, of the beauty of
a demonstration or a hypothesis; by this usage we do not so much
describe the thing as convey the charm of the thing. This charm is more
intimate and piercing to those of sensuous nature who rejoice in visible
loveliness or in heard melodies; but to the spiritually minded it may be
as close and penetrating in the presence of what is to them dearer than
life and light, and is beheld only by the inner eye. It is this charm,
whether flowing from the outward semblance or shining from the unseen
light, that wins the heart, stirs emotion, wakes the desire to be one
with this order manifest in truth and beauty, in the spirit and the body
of things, to go out toward it in love, to identify one's being with it
as the order of life, mortal and immortal; last the will quickens, and
its effort to make this order prevail in us and possess us is virtue.
The act through all its phases is, as has been said, one act of the
soul, which first perceives, then loves, and finally wills. Emotion is
the intermediary between the divine order and the human will; it
responds to the beauty of the one and directs the choice of the other,
and is felt in either function as love controlling life in the new
births of the spirit.

The emotion, to return to the world of art, which is felt in the
presence of imaginary things is actual in us; but the attempt is made to
fix upon it a special character differentiating it from the emotion felt
in the presence of reality. One principle of difference is sought in