Page:Criticism and Beauty.djvu/52

standard of aesthetic excellence, we seemed irresistibly driven. I see no method of refuting those conclusions; the arguments on which they rest, to me at least, appear irresistible. But are they so very alarming? Do they necessarily lead to a perverse and sceptical individualism? Does the destruction of aesthetic orthodoxy carry with it, as an indirect but inevitable consequence, the diminution of aesthetic values? I think not. And I think not, because no such consequences follow from a like state of things in the great class of feelings which I have described as active or 'practical'. Love is governed by no abstract principles. It obeys no universal rules. It knows no objective standard. It is obstinately recalcitrant to logic. Why should we be impatient because we can give no account of the characteristics common to all that is beautiful, when we can give no account of the characteristics common to all that is loveable? It may be easy enough for the sociologist to explain in general terms how necessary it is for the well-being of any community that there should be found among its members a widespread capacity for disinterested affection. And it is not hard to show that, in the general interests, it is highly desirable that this affection should flow, in the main, along certain well-defined channels. It is