Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to definebeauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to finda universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most oftenbeen in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Suchdiscussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in artor poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is lessexcellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry,with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, likeall other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and thedefinition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to itsabstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in themost concrete terms possible, to find, not a universal formula for it,but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that specialmanifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.
"To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly said tobe the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticismthe first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to knowone's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise itdistinctly. The objects with which aesthetic criticism deals—music,poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life—are indeedreceptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the productsof nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture,this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to ME? Whateffect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and ifso, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by itspresence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions arethe original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as inthe study of light, of morals, of number, one must realise such primarydata for oneself, or not at all. And he who experiences theseimpressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination andanalysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstractquestion what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truthor experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysicalquestions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable ornot, of no interest to him.
The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has todo, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, aspowers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more orless peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes toexplain, analysing it and reducing it to its elements. To him, thepicture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book,La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable fortheir virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for theproperty each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impressionof pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as oursusceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. Andthe function of the