Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/38

the base of the jar. Then one accompanies the lift up, so to speak, of the body of the jar by a lift up of one’s own body. . . . Meantime the jar’s equal sides bring both lungs into equal play; the curve outwards of the jar’s two sides is simultaneously followed by an inspiration as the eyes move up to the jar’s highest point.” This very nearly means, “that we have to make a jar of ourselves in order to be absorbed in the jar before us.” In the first place, this gives an unreal prominence to lines and shapes. It is a great mistake to confuse aesthetic form with spatial shape, though shape, as we saw, is very likely the first occasion of our distinguishing form.. And lines and shapes are no more form-giving than colour and tones. Colour-contrast and gradation, as also the harmonic relations of tones, belong to aesthetic form just as much as shape in space or rhythm in time. In the second place, all these bodily tensions and movements would really be inconsistent with each other. Our practised imagination or perception does not require