Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/34

Rh ence. In addition to the examples which I suggested above, one might select cases within the same progression — a square, a cube, a Doric column, a decorative pattern. As the object reveals more form the feeling which is united to it has, as we say, “more in it”; more to take hold of, to dwell upon, to communicate. Great objects of art contain myriads of elements of form on different levels, knit together in more and more complex systems, till the feeling which they demand is such as to occupy the whole powers of the greatest mind, and more than these if they were to be had.

We have spoken constantly of the fusion of feeling with the object or semblance, and more especially with its form, or connecting and pervading correlations — what we have briefly summarised as its life or soul. The root of this possibility we mentioned at the beginning; it is that every feeling is a feeling of something. It is the sense of the special difference made in the vitality of our body-and-mind by living in a certain experience. How