Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/71

56 ordinate powers. Neither can do the work of the other. But both reveal something to us in their own way.

We have seen that what we may call pure or a priori expression is not merely the simplest and primary character of aesthetic embodiments, but recurs also at what is almost the climax of aesthetic achievement, that is, in the art of music. This leads us to observe how capriciously, as it would seem, this principle of representation asserts itself in the hierarchy of the arts. In architecture it is present hardly at all; in sculpture and painting it is predominant; in music, it has hardly any place as of right, or a very subordinate one; in poetry, it reasserts itself with almost predominant power. There seems to be in some degree a struggle between the two sides of the aesthetic attitude, the side of direct expression through rhythm and sensuous combinations, and the side which, though its contribution to expression is indirect, yet brings with it in the end the whole resources of the imaginable universe.