Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/62

Rh

But it was, as the comparison of natural science shows, a little overstated. Because, it is not a mere dead fact of my experience that a man’s body in a certain position indicates a certain sort or phase of vitality. It is true that I must know something about a man’s body before I can live myself into it at all; but when I can do so, the attitude of the disc-thrower’s body is after all necessary in relation to my feeling, and not a bare disconnected fact. It has, to use my former phrase, something of a priori expressiveness. When you know its structure, its position does become inevitable. It is hopeless, indeed, to reduce the expressiveness of representation, or of the contemplation of nature which raises the same problem, to the a priori expressiveness of a pattern like a square. True, the appearance which is the object will, in principle, fail to be a satisfactory embodiment of feeling, unless it is at least satisfactory as a mere pattern, or a priori expression; but also and additionally, in harmony with this satisfactoriness, it must