forms of snake, bird, bear, fish, may be traced in the most
apparently empty geometric patterns;--but what does this
discovery tell us of the essentially decorative quality of such
patterns or of the nature of beauty of form? The study of the
Gothic cathedral reveals the source of its general plan and of
its whole scheme of ornament in detailed religious symbolism.
Yet a complete knowledge of the character of the religious
feeling which impelled to this monumental expression, and of
the genesis of every element of structure, fails to account
for the essential beauty of rhythm and proportion in the
finished work. These researches, in short, explain the
reason for the existence, but not for the quality, of works
of art.

Thus it is in psychology that empirical aesthetics finds its
last resort. And indeed, our plain man might say, the
aesthetic experience itself is inescapable and undeniable.
You know that the sight or the hearing of this thing gives
you a thrill of pleasure. You may not be able to defend the
beauty of the object, but the fact of the experience you have.
The psychologist, seeking to analyze the vivid and unmistakable
Aesthetic experience, would therefore proceed somewhat as
follows. He would select the salient characteristics of his
mental state in presence of a given work of art. He would then
study, by experiment and introspection, how the particular
sense-stimulations of the work of art in question could become
the psychological conditions of these salient characteristics.
Thus, supposing the aesthetic experience to have been described
as "the conscious happiness in which one is absorbed, and, as
it were, immersed in the sense-object,"<1> the further special