Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/26

10 sense, which will surely result unless he carefully avoids the narrowing of his interests. It teaches, further, that there is no validity in the distinction between fine art and æsthetics, on the one hand, and beauty, on the other, on the ground, commonly accepted by the highly trained artist and connoisseur, that a work of art may deal with what is not beautiful.

For it appears that, while the sense of beauty is the same for each of us, the objects which call it out are in some measure different for each.

Now it happens naturally that the objects which arouse the sense of beauty in a large proportion of men of culture get the word, beauty, firmly attached to them in common speech.

But, under the view here maintained, it must be that the highly trained artist or critic will pass beyond these commoner men and find his sense of beauty aroused by objects and objective relations quite different from those which arouse the sense of beauty in the commoner man; so that often he may deal with the beauty of elements in connection with which beauty is unknown to the commoner man, and even with elements which arouse a sense of ugliness in the commoner man; while, on the other hand, the objects which the commoner man signalizes as most beautiful, and which are currently so called, may not arouse in the trained artist or critic the sense of beauty which is now aroused in him by effects of broader nature, and of less common experience.

The critic and skilled artist thus often finds his æsthetic sense aroused no longer by the objects to which the word 'beauty' has by common consent come to be attached, although, with the commoner man, he still uses the word 'beauty' as descriptive of the object which arouses the æsthetic thrill in the mass of normally educated men. He may even find his æsthetic sense aroused by what the common man calls ugly, although it is for himself really beautiful. And he comes thus quite improperly to think of the highest art as in a measure independent of what he calls 'mere beauty.' What he has a right to say, however, is merely this, that the highest art deals with sources of beauty which are not appreciated by even the generally well-cultivated man.