Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/35

20 exactly a feeling can be identified with an object seems to demand some further explanation, and as a mere illustration we may refer to a theory which sometimes sets itself up as almost the whole of aesthetic. It is of this kind. You see a mountain on the horizon, and you say it rises from the plain. This idea of the mountain rising is full of all sorts of associations of life and energy and courage. How is it at once a feeling in you and a characteristic of the mountain? The answer given is that in your act of perception of the lofty object you actually raise your eyes and strain your head and neck upwards, and this fills you with the feeling of an effort of exaltation, and this, with all its associated imaginative meaning, you unconsciously use to qualify the perception of the mountain, which as a perceived object is the cause of the whole train of ideas, and this, it is said, is so throughout. You always, in contemplating objects, especially