Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/33

18 different possibilities of revealing aesthetic form, because its wonderful structure is all variously lit up, and so lit up it is the object or semblance which matters. And that appearance is all our feeling needs to attach itself to, to find form in. This explains an interesting point. It has been thought that you must come to higher aesthetic quality as you go up the scale of creation, because in that way you come to higher structures. But the fact is, that in a sense these higher structures, e.g. of animals, limit your imagination. They do not merge in a new context so readily as do the sea or the clouds, which can take on innumerable variations of appearance. And it is the task of aesthetic perception — perception when it passes into imagination — to choose or create the object, the appearance, whose form or soul or life will satisfy feeling.

Now the principle which it is necessary to grasp is the gradual drawing out or making more of feeling, as a fuller degree of form is appreciated in aesthetic experi-