Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/24

Rh not the feeling and its embodiment. The embodiment, as you feel it, is the aesthetic feeling.

This leads to a paradox. We can make the two statements,

i. In the aesthetic attitude, the object which embodies the feeling is valued solely for what it is in itself.

ii. In the aesthetic attitude, the object which embodies the feeling is valued solely for its appearance to perception or imagination.

This is because the embodiment of aesthetic feeling can only be an object as we perceive or imagine it. Anything in real existence which we do not perceive or imagine can be of no help to us in realising our feeling. So we may know a great deal about a thing as it really exists — its history, composition, market value, its causes or its effects; all that is as good as not there for the aesthetic attitude. It is all incidental; not present in the aesthetic object. Nothing can help us