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 unaffected by the result; for, beyond itself, true sport has, properly speaking, no result. Victory and defeat are subordinate incidents. The final cause of games is the playing of them. In Art, on the other hand, skill is a means to an end; and if the end be not attained there is apt to arise a certain feeling of dissatisfaction. Dexterous versification which does not result in poetry, admirable brush-work expressing a mean design, may in their degree give pleasure; but it is pleasure marred by the reflection that the purpose for which versification and painting exist has not, in these cases, been accomplished.

However this may be, my contention is that the pleasure given by the contemplation of technical dexterity is aesthetic, and that technical dexterity itself is capable of objective estimation. In games of pure skill it is certainly so. He plays best who wins. The scorer is an infallible critic; and his standard of excellence is as 'objective' as any man could desire. In other cases, no doubt, the measure of technical merit may not be so precise. It may be hard, for example, to decide which member of a hunt rides best across country, or which composer shows the greatest mastery of counterpoint and fugue. Yet these also are questions more or less capable of 'objective'