Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/18

Rh in sensation and imagination. From such a science we have much to learn, and we may often borrow illustrations from the very elementary cases which are all that it can deal with. But science — the tissue of causal explanations and general laws — and philosophy, — the analysis of forms of reality and their values — are for us different things. And our aesthetic is a branch of philosophy.

A great deal indeed is said about philosophical aesthetic being deductive, arguing downwards from above, not inductively from below, and therefore pursuing an obsolete and metaphysical method. I confess that all this talk about method in philosophy seems to me rather foolish and wearisome. I only know in philosophy one method; and that is to expand all the relevant facts, taken together, into ideas which approve themselves to thought as exhaustive and self-consistent.

Now to plunge into our subject. The simplest aesthetic experience is, to begin with, a pleasant feeling, or a feeling of