ABSTRACT
My own arguments for the real existence of the supreme self, it will be recalled, are based upon the mechanical nature, or the mechanical aspects of the nature, of the material world. I have not appealed, that is to say, to the content of aesthetic experience except to observe that for a consistent realism all the objects of this experience—beauty, harmony, symmetry, order—are existentially real; this is the familiar principle of the real existence of tertiary qualities. To advance any specific arguments for this realistic position would here be out of place; I shall simply say therefore that I regard it as being well established, and proceed to discuss its bearing upon the present problem with special reference to beauty; for what is true of beauty is likewise true of its allied qualities. The question at issue turns, however, not on the nature or relations of beauty in itself, but once again on the function of natural mechanisms. For it is a familiar fact that at the basis of beauty there always exists a physical mechanism possessing an exquisite delicacy of adjustment, as is at once obvious in the case of colour and sound. But it is not sufficiently recognized, I think, that these indispensable mechanical adjustments, supremely delicate as they ultimately are, are of absolutely vital importance. The popular belief too often is that beauty is the result of happy accident; even when its production is attributed to genius, this is similarly assumed to operate without the slightest effort and difficulty. But all who are practically acquainted with music or the attainment of colour harmony or architectural symmetry will fully realize how fatal the slightest mechanical maladjustment often proves to be, at least to perfection of finish if not to the cruder effects. Precisely the same holds true of all the beauties of the natural world; these likewise spring from molecular and atomic vibrations of an almost inconceivable rapidity and minuteness, in the same way as the conscious appreciation of this beauty is connected with the delicate mechanisms of the brain. This however does not mean that the vibrations themselves are either identical with, or are transformed into, any tertiary qualities; each category remains precisely what it is, fundamentally different in its character from the other, and yet both somehow inseparably associated together; vibrations are vibrations while beauty is beauty, just as the consciousness of beauty is what it is and is neither of the other two. 1
