Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/111

96 how slowly, e.g., the beauty of old age, I mean of real wrinkled old age, not stately and splendid old age, gains recognition in sculpture; I think not before the Alexandrine period.

Before going further, it will be best to return upon one fundamental point and make it quite clear. We started in the first lecture by describing the aesthetic attitude as involving a pleasant feeling of such and such a kind. But we have now seen that the pleasant feeling which is one with the appreciation of beauty is not a previous condition of beauty. It is not on some other ground a pleasure, and then by being expressed becomes beautiful. It is a pleasantness not antecedent to the appreciation of beauty, but arising in and because of it, in the freedom or expansion which the mind enjoys in and through the act which gives or finds adequate embodiment for its feeling, and so makes the feeling what it is. Therefore, you must not say pleasantness is a condition precedent of beauty; rather, beauty