Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/51

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LECTURES ON AESTHETIC
lect.


But I should suppose that for the complete realisation of the critical attitude something further is required. I take it that the critic must go back in memory and reflection upon his full imaginative experience, and draw out and emphasise the points at which failure or success in expression have forced themselves on his feelings with a completeness of analysis which would hardly be compatible with the full enjoyment of the imaginative experience itself. And we have to remember that the critic’s principal duty after all is not to point out blemishes, but rather to teach us to enjoy. And therefore even for him the greatest possible fulness of the imaginative experience is the main and indispensable condition.

We may conclude then that the aesthetic attitude so far as enjoyable may fairly be described in some such words as these: The pleasant awareness of a feeling embodied in an appearance presented to imagination or imaginative perception; or,