Page:Criticism and Beauty.djvu/49

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CRITICISM AND BEAUTY
43

in the way of explanation. I have described aesthetic feelings as 'members of a great class'. What does this mean? What are the other members of the class? They are many, and the experiences which occasion them are infinite in their variety. Some are emotionally valueless: others are worse than valueless—they are displeasing. Of those which possess value some are closely allied to aesthetic feeling proper—for instance, the delight in what (outside art) is fitting and harmonious, the appreciation of neatness, finish, and skill. Of a different kind are the pleasures of intellectual apprehension; those, for example, which are aroused by a far-reaching scientific generalization, or the solution, brilliant in its simplicity, of some complicated and entangled problem. These pleasures may be very vivid; they may also be far removed from all practical interests. They must therefore be regarded as contemplative, though they cannot, I think, be properly described as aesthetic.

There are, however, other kinds of feeling which are closely associated with the practical side of life. These always look beyond themselves; if not prompting some action they are always on the edge of prompting it. Action is their fitting and characteristic issue. Like the feelings which I have loosely described as contemplative, they are often