to do so. If a general concept expresses, as it should, the place
of Beauty in the hierarchy of metaphysical values, it is for the
psychologist of aesthetics to develop the means by which that end
can be reached in the various realms in which works of art are
found.

Nor can we agree with Santayana's dictum<1> that philosophical
aesthetics confuses the import of an experience with the
explanation of its cause. It need not. The aesthetic experience
is indeed caused by the beautiful object, but the beautiful object
itself is caused by the possibility of the aesthetic experience,--
beauty as an end under the conditions of human perception. Thus
the Nature of Beauty is related to its import, or meaning, or
end, as means to that end; and therefore the import of an
experience may well point out to us the constitution of the cause
of that experience. A work of art, a piece of nature, is judged
by its degree of attainment to that end; the explanation of its
beauty--of its degree of attainment, that is--is found in the
effect of its elements, according to psychological laws, on the
aesthetic subject.

<1> The Sense of Beauty, 1898. Intro.

Such a psychological study of the means by which the end of
Beauty is attained is the only method by which we can come to
an explanation of the wealth of concrete beauty. The concept
of explanation, indeed, is valid only within the realm of
causes and effects. The aim of aesthetics being conceded, as
above, to be the determination of the Nature of Beauty and the
explanation of our feelings about it, it is evident at this