ABSTRACT
§1. The subject of æsthetic philosophy or reflection or analysis is obviously æsthetic experience. Its presupposition, therefore, is that rational sensitive beings such as men have a set of experiences pretty clearly distinguishable from others. They are those which we usually express by some such phrase as “How beautiful!” (or “How ugly!”) and not by “How true!”, “How good!”, “How useful!”, nor even “How pleasant!” (nor “How false, evil, useless or painful”). No doubt æsthetic experiences are as a rule predominantly pleasant, but in those that are described as tragic there is an essentially painful element, and there are many pleasant experiences, such as a warm bath or a healthy digestive process, which we should not call beautiful unless with conscious humour or exaggeration. We seldom use language carefully and should sometimes loosely speak of a beautiful steak or experiment or operation, but on reflection should admit that such usage was loose.
