All Art Does But Consist In The

One Of The Most Beautiful Passages Of Rousseau Is That In The Sixth Book Of Confessions, Where He Describes The Awakening In Him Of The Literary Sense. Of Such Wisdom, The Poetic Passion, The Desire Of Beauty, The Love Of Art For Its Own Sake, Has Most.

To Burn Always With This Hard, Gemlike Flame, To Maintain This Ecstasy, Is Success In Life. ... While All Melts Under Our Feet, We May Well Grasp At Any Exquisite Passion, Or Any Contribution To Knowledge That Seems By A Lifted Horizon To Set The Spirit Free For A Moment, Or Any Stirring Of The Senses, Strange Dyes, Strange Colours, And Curious Odours, Or Work Of The Artist's Hands, Or The Face Of One's Friend.

Poetry, At All Times, Exercises Two Distinct Functions: It May Reveal, It May Unveil To Every Eye, The Ideal Aspects Of Common Thingsor It May Actually Add To The Number Of Motives Poetic And Uncommon In Themselves, By The Imaginative Creation Of Things That Are Ideal From Their Very Birth.

What Is Important, Then, Is Not That The Critic Should Possess A Correct Abstract Definition Of Beauty For The Intellect, But A Certain Kind Of Temperament, The Power Of Being Deeply Moved By The Presence Of Beautiful Objects.

Beauty, Like All Other Qualities Presented To Human Experience, Is Relative; And The Definition Of It Becomes Unmeaning And Useless In Proportion To Its Abstractness. To Define Beauty Not In The Most Abstract, But In The Most Concrete Terms Possible, Not To Find A Universal Formula For It, But The Formula Which Expresses Most Adequately This Or That Special Manifestation Of It, Is The Aim Of The True Student Of Aesthetics.