Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/425

THE BEAUTIFUL. 403 assent of all, and its universal validity is demonstrable. The judgment concerning the agreeable is not capable of demonstration, but neither does it pretend to possess universal validity ; we readily acknowledge that what is pleasant to one need not be so to every other man. In regard to the beautiful, on the contrary, we do not content ourselves with saying that tastes differ, but we expect it to please all. We expect everyone to assent to our judgment of taste, although it is able to support itself by no proofs. Here there is a difficulty : since the judgment of taste does not express a characteristic of the object, but a state of mind in the observer, a feeling, a satisfaction, it is purely subjective; and yet it puts forth a claim to be universally communicable. The diflficulty can be removed only on the assumption of a common aesthetic sense, of a correspond- ing organization of the powers of representation in all men, which yields the common standard for the pleasurableness of the impression. The agreeable appeals to that in man which is different in different individuals, the beautiful to that which functions alike in all ; the former addresses itself to the passive sensibility, the latter to the active judgment. The agreeable — because of the non-calculable differences in our sensuous inclinations, which are in part conditioned by bodily states — possesses no universality whatever, the good possesses an objective, and the beautiful a subjective universality. The judgment concerning the agreeable has an empirical, that concerning the beautiful an a priori, determining ground : in the former case, the judgment follows the feeling, in the latter, it precedes it. An object is considered beautiful (for, strictly speaking, we may say only this, not that it is beautiful) when its form puts the powers of the human mind in a state of harmony, brings the intuitive and rational faculties into concordant activity, and produces an agreeable proportion between the imagination and the understanding. In giv- ing the occasion for an harmonious play of the cognitive activities (that is, for an easy combination of the manifold into unity) the beautiful object is purposive for us, for our function of apprehension ; it is — here we obtain a deter- mination of the judgment of taste from the standpoint of