ABSTRACT
This chapter represents the belief that beauty in an object is timelessly recognizable and can be responded to despite all manner of changes in economy and society, all manner of changes in political, moral, religious and even artistic beliefs. Indeed, there has been no shortage of attempts to specify what it is in something which will unchangeably please through the senses and lead anyone to judge it beautiful. At their most concrete and practical these attempts are exemplified in 'classical' rules for composition, whether in music, painting or prose. People may judge a musical composition or painting done according to the rules to be uninspiring or insipid or feeble, but not actively displeasing hence positively ugly. Art differs from nature in that its works are instances of freely created beauty, but pleasure taken in the beauty of a work of art may not be so very different, subjectively, from pleasure taken in grasping the laws of nature.
