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II
THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE IN ITS EMBODIMENTS — “NATURE” AND THE ARTS.
The natural order in which to approach
the problems of any enquiry is the order
of their difficulty. When you have solved
the simplest, its solution affords the basis
for an approach to the next simplest, and
so on.
Therefore we are not at all concerned with the historical order of things. What we want to do to-day is to form some idea of the rank taken by the different achievements of the aesthetic spirit, arranged in accordance with the difficulties which are overcome in each of them, or in other words, with the degree of aesthetic embodiment which they respectively achieve.
