ABSTRACT
Whenever we have any experience which might be called ‘aesthetic’, that is whenever we are enjoying, contemplating, admiring, or appreciating an object, there are plainly different parts of the situation on which emphasis can be laid. As we select one or other of these so we shall develop one or other of the main aesthetic doctrines. In this choice we shall, in fact, be deciding which of the main Types of Definition 1 we are employing. Thus we may begin with the object itself; or with other things such as Nature, Genius, Perfection, The Ideal, or Truth, to which it is related; or with its effects upon us. We may begin where we please, the important thing being that we should know and make clear which of these approaches it is that we are taking, for the objects with which we come to deal, the referents to which we refer, if we enter one field will not as a rule be the same as those in another. Few persons will be equally interested in all, but some acquaintance with them will at least make the interests of other people more intelligible, and discussion more profitable. Differences of opinion and differences of interest in these matters are closely interconnected, but any attempt at a general synthesis, premature perhaps at present, must begin by disentangling them. A third quotation essentially unlike either of those already given above may help to make this quite clear: By the waters of Babylon We sat down and wept: When we remembered thee, O Sion. As for our harps, we hanged them up: Upon the trees that are therein. For they that led us away captive required of us then a song, And melody in our heaviness: Sing us one of the songs of Sion. How shall we sing the Lord's song: In a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem: Let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth: Yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my mirth. Remember the Children of Edom, O Lord, In the day of Jerusalem: How they said, Down with it, down with it, Even to the ground. O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery: Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, As thou hast served us. Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children: and throweth them Against the stones.
