Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/73

58 and precise in its sequences, than the simple language of rhythm or the decorative pattern. For the mind of man is open to us as the extension of our own, and has its own necessity, which weaves its great patterns on the face of the whole world. And in these patterns — the patterns of life itself — the fullest feeling finds embodiment.

If we now proceed to say something of what is involved in the classification of the arts, it is not for the sake of advocating any particular arrangement. Mere classification is always an idle study, but the general condition and essence of the difference between kindred things usually throws a searching light on their inmost nature.

Why, then, are there different arts? The simple answer to this question takes us, I believe, to the precise root and source of the whole principle of aesthetic expressiveness, which we have already analysed in more general terms.

We should begin, I am convinced, from the very simplest facts. Why do artists make different patterns, or treat the same