Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/64

Rh called a priori. Mere association brings us down at once to the level of knowledge of fact, as when my old portmanteau reminds me of Florence.

And further, in the power which very successful representation undoubtedly exercises over our minds, there is active, I have no doubt, a principle which is really of high aesthetic value, although in enhancing the importance of skilful copying it is misconstrued and misapplied.

I will repeat myself so far as to give an example which I gave many years ago, and in which I admit that I take great enjoyment. It is — I am shamelessly quoting from myself — perhaps the earliest aesthetic judgment which Western literature contains. It is in the Homeric description of the metal-working deity’s craftsmanship in the shield of Achilles. He has made upon it the representation of a deep fallow field with the ploughmen driving their furrows on it; and the poet observes, “And behind the plough the earth went black, and looked like ploughed ground,