Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/29

14 ing proportions in all the different grades of the aesthetic attitude which we noted, and what is absent in as far as the aesthetic attitude is absent. The conception of it is all-important both for aesthetic theory and for all philosophy, and we shall have gained something from these lectures if only we can master the right, which is also the effective, point of view for dealing with it, once for all.

We will start from two opposite statements about it.

The Form of an object is not its matter or substance.

The Form of an object just is its matter or substance.

The reason why both statements are true is that we apprehend objects with different degrees of insight or energy; and so we may only appreciate them as dull masses of stuff, or again we may appreciate them as living units connected and full of character through and through. The least and lowest interconnection an object can have is its outline in space, and this seems