Relation between these concepts and æsthetic concepts.
The facts, classified as far as possible in these psychological concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond the general one, that all of them, in so far as they constitute the material of life, can become the object of artistic representation; and the other, an accidental relation, that æsthetic facts also may sometimes enter the processes described, such as the impression of the sublime aroused by the work of a Titanic artist, such as Dante or Shakespeare, and of the comic produced by the attempts of a dauber or scribbler.
But here too the process is external to the æsthetic fact, to which is linked only the feeling of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. Dante's Farinata is æsthetically beautiful and nothing but beautiful: if the force of will of that personage seem also sublime, or the expression that Dante gives him seem, by reason of his great genius, sublime in comparison with that of a less energetic poet, these are things altogether outside æsthetic consideration. We repeat again that this last pays attention always and only to the adequateness of the expression, that is to say, to beauty.
[XIII]
THE "PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL" IN NATURE AND IN ART
Æsthetic activity and physical concepts.
Æsthetic activity, distinct from the practical activity, is always accompanied by it in its manifestations. Hence its utilitarian or hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain which are, as it were, the practical echo of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. But this practical side of the æsthetic activity has in its turn a physical or psycho-physical accompaniment, which consists of sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, and so on.
Does it really possess this side, or does it only seem to possess it, through the construction which we put on it in physical science, and the useful and arbitrary methods which we have already several times set in relief as proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our reply cannot be doubtful, that is, it must affirm to the second of the two hypotheses.