Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/122

Rh conscious choice, she must accept discredit for her ugly appearances, as well as credit for her beautiful ones. But one might perhaps rejoin again, “Yes, but in her infinite wealth of contexts and appearances, there is always ample opportunity for the selection of beautiful form, and therefore we have no right to pin her down to an ugliness which does really spring from our limitation.” You may reply again that if it is left to us there is just as much room for seeing ugliness as for seeing beauty. But I doubt this. If the intentional attempt at beauty is the main condition of ugliness, then in nature the main condition of ugliness is certainly absent, while immeasurable stores of form and order are as certainly present for those who can elicit them.

And the same applies in great measure to the world of useful objects, so long as they pretend to be nothing more than they are. So long they cannot be fraudulent; and their solid simplicity of purpose may well make it possible to see a beauty in