original constitution of mankind. They belong to the
instinctive, involuntary part of our nature. They are
changeless, just as the "eternal man" is changeless; and as
the basis of aesthetic feeling they can be gathered into a
system of laws which shall be subject to no essential
metamorphosis. So long as we laugh when we are joyful, and
weep when we are sick and sorry; so long as we flush with
anger, or grow pale with fear, so long shall we thrill to a
golden sunset, the cadence of an air, or the gloomy spaces
of a cathedral.

The study of these forms of harmonious functioning of the
human organism has its roots, of course, in the science of
psychology, but comes, nevertheless, to a different flower,
because of the grafting on of the element of aesthetic value.
It is the study of the disinterested human pleasures, and,
although as yet scarcely well begun, capable of a most
detailed and definitive treatment.

This is not the character of those studies so casually alluded
to by the author of "Impressionism and Appreciation," when he
enjoins on the appreciative critic not to neglect the literature
of aesthetics: "The characteristics of his [the artist's]
temperament have been noted with the nicest loyalty; and
particularly the play of his special faculty, the imagination,
as this faculty through the use of sensations and images and
moods and ideas creates a work of art, has been followed out
with the utmost delicacy of observation." But these are not
properly studies in aesthetics at all. To find out what is
beautiful, and the reason for its being beautiful, is the