Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/541

SUGGESTIONS ON ESTHETIC. 525 "difficulty" or contradiction. Now quality of this kind requires, in order that it may be perceived, at least two items, each of which exemplifies it, and each of which is concurrently present. A geometrical design would not bring home to us the sameness that persists from one half of it to the other unless both halves were before us. If you cut away a geometrical pattern till there were no two similar portions left, you would leave no trace of aesthetic effect. A single dog will, .it is true, recall the familiar quality of caninity without the presence of a second dog ; but such a quality does not, to our accustomed eyes, seem to have to overcome any " opposition " each time it reappears. But when, as with all aesthetic quality, such opposition has to be overcome, at least two items must be present. And when they are present, it seems that there does indeed occur what may well be described as a continuous re-establishment of disturbed equilibrium. There may be said to be an enforced hovering of the attention backwards and forwards from one item to the other ; neither alone will make manifest the rare and precarious quality that is felt to be before us ; each item seems to tilt the attention over to the other. And the same may be said in the case of such beauty as that of the five-syllabled line or the theorem. Take the latter instance. Here, too, there is a highly precarious quality before us, the quality of (apparent) incommensur- ability which is nevertheless commensurability. To con- stitute this unique quality we emphatically must have both of its representative items present ; and they are in the given instance both present, coinciding. And the two irreconcilables, meeting in a unity, seem to keep the consciousness gently rocking backwards and forwards ; to dwell on either by itself disturbs equilibrium ; the complex oneness of the two, to be realised, requires a constant transi- tion of consciousness from one to the other. These rather desultory remarks, which I here bring to a close, pretend to no sort of completeness ; I do not even claim that all my suggestions are mutually consistent. They are suggestions and no more.