Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/113

98 and therefore embodies a feeling, then it itself falls within the general definition of the beautiful as = what is aesthetically excellent.

You might be tempted to rejoin — ah, but the ugly expresses only something unpleasant. But we have seen why this will not help us. If an object comes within the definition of beauty, then (supposing the definition is right) its being unpleasant to us would merely be due to our weakness and want of education, and it would come within the limits of difficult beauty.

So we go back to the paradox; if it has no expressive form, it is nothing for aesthetic. If it has one, it belongs to the beautiful. This is no quibble. It is a fundamental difficulty about beauty and truth and goodness; it comes when you try to set up an opposite to anything which depends on being complete. Try love and hate. Hate is to be the opposite of love; well, what do you hate and why? What is your hate directed upon? It