Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/17

2 to be learned. We will describe and analyse our object straight away, to the best of our power. In the main, what we have to say will be quite elementary.

In this first lecture we will try to get a prima facie notion of the aesthetic attitude, confining ourselves to its pleasant and satisfactory form. Ugliness and the like raise further problems, which we shall attempt in the third lecture.

I must pause, however, just one moment before plunging into the subject. I must explain what sort of interest in Aesthetic I am presupposing in my audience. It is the interest of a branch of philosophy. It is to consider where in life the aesthetic attitude is to be found, and what is its peculiar form of value, as distinguished from other attitudes and objects in our experience. It is not to prescribe rules for the production of beauty, or for the criticism of artists’ work. And again, it is not the interest in aesthetic science, if that means a detailed explanation of the causes of pleasantness and unpleasantness