beauty has lost its value. It is no longer significant. What non-significant beauty can mean, if it is not an alternative expression for non-contemplated beauty, I have never been able to discover. But in what sense can it be said that no value attaches to uncontemplated beauty? Dr. G. E. Moore has dealt with the point in his Principia Ethica: "Let us imagine one world," he says, "exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can: put in it whatever in this world you most admire-mountains, rivers, the sea, trees, sunsets, stars and moon. Imagine all this combined in the most exquisite proportions, so that no one thing jars against another, but each contributes to increase the beauty of the whole. And then imagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. Imagine it simply a heap of filth, containing everything that is most disgusting to us for whatever reason, and the whole, so far as may be, without one redeeming feature . . . . . The only thing we are not entitled to imagine is that any human being ever has, or ever by any possibility can see and enjoy the beauty of the one or hate the foulness of the other Is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist than the one which is ugly?"

It requires, I think, a certain amount of mental audacity, combined with mental honesty, to answer that it is irrational. Whatever be the meaning of beauty, we must, I think, answer

that it is better that a supremely beautiful world should exist than a supremelv ugly one, even if we can never behold either of them.

And this, I think, constitutes a cogent argument against those who hold, either that objects which are not mentally perceived cease to be beautiful, or that, even if beautiful, their beauty has no value. It is important, however, to remember that, as has already been remarked, questions of this type are not capable of logical proof or disproof. If it be contended that there is no intrinsic superiority in the never to be beheld beautiful world over the never to be beheld ugly one, there is no more to be said. I can only register my own belief that nobody really does think so. On the other hand, evidence for the existence of something intrinsically valuable in beauty is always occurring.

If you confront the hypothetical "plain man of philosophical terminology with a magnificent sunset, which he pronounces beautiful, and ask him whether it is only beautiful because he thinks it is, he will, as a matter of course, answer "No!" We all of us, in fact, feel when regarding a sunset that it is really beautiful in a sense which justifies us in asserting that any man who does not think it so is simply wrong, that is, devoid of the æsthetic sense. It is not merely a case of difference of opinion permitting the sunset to be beautiful to one man, and to leave another indifferent. I believe that there is in fact no recorded

instance of a man who did not find something beautiful in a fine sunset, although the extent of the appreciation amongst different people varies enormously. We all feel as a matter of actual psychical history that the thing is beautiful, and that its beauty is a thing apart which in no way depends for its existence on our contemplation or perception of it, or on any mental cognisance at all.

This could hardly be the case if, as in purely subjective questions of taste-whether meringues are nice or not-different people took different views. It is possible for a meringue to be both nice and not nice at the same time-its niceness being not an intrinsic quality, but dependent on the consumer's appreciation of it. But it is not possible for a sunset to be both beautiful and not beautiful at the same moment. The answer to those who think it not beautiful, if any, being simply the dogmatic one that they are blind.

If we now put the question, "What do we mean by saying that the sunset is beautiful ? the answer will be, according to Plato-and in my view it is the true answer-because it partakes of the dos of beauty.

Now it is a curious thing that testimony to the truth of the theory of Forms is continually being offered by modern writers who would probably hesitate to subscribe to it in its orthodox form. The feeling that there is something behind the manifold things of sense and beauty that we see,

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something more real than they, something which bestows on them that amount of beauty which they do possess, is apparent, to a remarkable degree, in the works of novelists, writers, and thinkers of to-day. I will take two examplesthat I may not cite philosophers whose views are well-known and in certain cases deliberately founded on Plato-from the writings of men of widely different schools of modern thought, both of whom have given considerable attention to the question of æsthetics, Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Edward Carpenter. In Mr. Wells's novel Tono-Bungay " we find him saying: "I stumble and flounder, but I know that over all the many immediate things-there are other things that are great and serene, very high, beautiful things— the reality, I haven't got it, but it's there nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses. I've never seen the goddesses, nor ever shall-but it takes all the fun out of the mud, and at times I fear it takes all the kindliness too." And again, All my life has been at bottom, seeking, disbelieving always, dissatisfied always with the thing seen and the thing believed, seeking something in toil, in force, in danger, something whose name and nature I do not clearly understand, something beautiful, worshipful, enduring, mine profoundly and fundamentally, and the utter redemption of myself." Mr. Wells, of course, is very much of a Platonist in his love of order, purpose and

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definition; but these passages might be a colloquial translation of the aspirations of the Platonic philosophers of the Sixth Book of the " Republic," so clearly do they indicate the striving after the apprehension of the Forms which Plato was the first to emphasise.

Edward Carpenter maintains on the whole a subjectivist attitude towards Art. He is too convinced a democrat not to mistrust the value of artistic productions which do not inspire the enthusiasm of the common people, and like Tolstoy is frequently led to take the further step of making the criterion of value depend upon the effect produced. At times, however, and somewhat inconsistently, he quotes with approval passages from the works of great artists which bear testimony to the existence of what Plato would call the objective form of Beauty. The following significant passage is quoted in "Angels' Wings" from a letter by Beethoven to Wegeler: "Every day I come nearer to the object which I can feel, though I cannot describe it, and on which alone your Beethoven can exist." Now what precisely Beethoven meant by this object it may be difficult to say. But the following interpretation both of the criterion and purpose of artistic production, which is also an interpretation of his remark, seems to me to present at once the fewest difficulties and to square best with the facts as we know them.

The Form of Beauty exists independent and transcendent. It is neither in space nor time, and