ABSTRACT
The former is concerned with perceptual beauty and the latter with conceptual beauty. In music and contemplation of natural beauty, however, the factor philosophers have called appreciation often predominates almost to the exclusion of imagination. The beauty of a work of art depends upon its power to stimulate the imagination, but only so far as it stimulates and directs it in a self-harmonious activity. The beauty seems to belong to the picture and the music almost as intimately as the colour or sound; and only a little less close seems to be the connection between the words of a poem and their beauty. The beauty may even be enhanced by certain elements of sensory unpleasantness, or by recognition of the disutility of the aesthetic object. The social ideal should be the cultivation of the aesthetic capacity of all as fully as possible and the provision of an abundance of the objects of beauty suited to all levels.
