ABSTRACT
E. von Hartmann defines beauty as 'the appearance of the Idea', is partly metaphysical and partly realistic, but we shall concern ourselves here with the realistic concept of 'appearance'. But mental reality is equally inaccessible to art; it is represented only indirectly, by means of those causes, concomitants, and effects, which can themselves be directly perceived. Hence it is that beauty is only to be found in perceptual appearance, be it real or imaginative, in subjective appearance as a mental phenomenon and neither in the real movements of the air or ether nor in any other actual things. Not that reality is simply indifferent to our aesthetic experience; on the contrary, it provides a necessary and indispensable condition; for the cause of the beauty of the image resides exclusively in the structure of the real thing. Aesthetic appearance in general manifests itself both in perceptual and imaginative appearance, the former, again, appealing either to the eye or to the ear.
