Now the bare description and analysis of beautiful objects
cannot, logically, yield any result; for the selection of
cases would have to be arbitrary, and would be at the mercy
of any objection. To any one who should say, But this is
not beautiful, and should not be included in your inventory,
answer could be made only by showing that it had such and
such qualities, the very, by hypothesis, unknown qualities
that were to be sought. Moreover, the field of beauty
contains so many and so heterogeneous objects , that the
retreat to their only common ground, aesthetic feeling,
appears inevitable. A statue and a symphony can be reduced
to a common denominator most easily if the states of mind
which they induce are compared. Thus the analysis of objects
passes naturally over to the analysis of mental states--the
point of view of psychology.

There is, however, a method subsidiary to the preceding, which
seeks the elements of Beauty in a study of the genesis and the
development of art forms. But this leaves the essential
phenomenon absolutely untouched. The general types of aesthetic
expression may indeed have been shaped by social forces,--
religious, commercial, domestic,--but as social products, not
as aesthetic phenomena. Such studies reveal to us, as it were,
the excuse for the fact of music, poetry, painting--but they
tell us nothing of the reason why beautiful rather than ugly
forms were chosen, as who should show that the bird sings to
attract its mate, ignoring the relation and sequence of the
notes. The decorative art of most savage tribes, for instance,
is nearly all of totemic origin, and the decayed and degraded