Page:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Huebsch 1916).djvu/253

 —Then MacCann is a sulphuryellow liar—said Lynch energetically.

—There remains another way out—said Stephen, laughing.

—To wit?—said Lynch.

—This hypothesis—Stephen began.

A long dray laden with old iron came round the corner of sir Patrick Dun's hospital covering the end of Stephen's speech with the harsh roar of jangled and rattling metal. Lynch closed his ears and gave out oath after oath till the dray had passed. Then he turned on his heel rudely. Stephen turned also and waited for a few moments till his companion's ill-humour had had its vent.

—This hypothesis—Stephen repeated—is the other way out: that, though the same object may not seem beautiful to all people, all people who admire a beautiful object find in it certain relations which satisfy and coincide with the stages themselves of all esthetic apprehension. These relations of the sensible, visible to you through one form and to me through another, must be therefore the necessary qualities of beauty. Now, we can return to our old friend saint Thomas for another pennyworth of wisdom.—

Lynch laughed.

—It amuses me vastly—he said—to hear you quoting him time after time like a jolly round friar. Are you laughing in your sleeve?—

—MacAlister—answered Stephen—would call my esthetic theory applied Aquinas. So far as this side of esthetic philosophy extends Aquinas will carry me all along the line. When we come to the phenomena of artistic conception, artistic gestation and artistic