Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/28

Rh suppose that the hand of a blind person, for example, can convey a good deal of aesthetic quality. It seems to me in principle to be as if you had to appreciate a painting by the eye through a narrow slit moving over its surface — I suppose how far you could do it would be a matter of degree. It is difficult to answer in each particular case, but by comparing the cases it is possible to see the nature of the factor in them according to which their aesthetic quality varies. Generally speaking, as we all know, the aesthetic senses are supposed to be those of sight and hearing alone; and no doubt they possess the character we are tracing in a pre-eminent degree.

Here then we are confronted with a new statement of the character which is fundamental in the aesthetic attitude. All that we have so far observed about it is now summed up in a single monosyllable, when we say that the aesthetic attitude is that of feeling embodied in “form.”

This “form” is what is present in vary-