beauty may be recognized and subsequently appear to vanish altogether. From this it is obvious that any æsthetic system based upon the existence of an objectivity of beauty must fall to the ground. On the other hand, without an objectivity there can be no system, because in its absence a line of reasoning explaining cause and effect in the perception of beauty, which is open to demonstration, is naturally impossible. Nor may we properly speak of a philosophy of art.2 We may reasonably consider æsthetics a branch of psychology, but the emotions arising from the recognition of beauty vary only in degree and not in kind, whether the beauty be seen in nature or art. Consequently there can be no separate psychological enquiry into the perception of beauty created by art as distinguished from that observable in nature.

It must be a natural attraction for the insoluble mysteries of life that has induced so many philosophers during the last two centuries to put forward æsthetic systems. That no two of these systems agree on important points, and that each and every one has crumbled to dust from a touch of the wand of experience administered by a hundred hands, are well-known facts, yet still the systems continue to be calmly presented as if they were valuable contributions to knowledge. Each new critic in the domain of philosophy carefully and gravely sets them up, and then carefully and gravely knocks them down.3 An excuse for the systems has been here and there offered, that the explanations thereof sometimes include valuable philosophical comments or suggestions. This may be, but students cannot reasonably be expected to sift out a few oats from a bushel of husks, even if the supply be from the bin of a Hegel or a Schopenhauer. Is it too much to suggest that these phantom systems be finally consigned to the grave of oblivion which has yawned for them so long and so conspicuously? Bubbles have certain measurements and may brilliantly glow, but they are still bubbles. It is as impossible to build up a system of philosophy upon the perception of beauty, which depends entirely upon physical and physiological laws, as to erect a system of ethics on the law of gravitation, for a feasible connection between superstructure and foundation cannot be presented to the mind.

We may further note that a proper apprehension of standards of judgment in art cannot be obtained unless the separate and relative æsthetic values of the two forms of beauty are considered, because the beauty of a work may appear greater at one time than at another, according as it is more or less permanent or fleeting, that is to say, according as the balance of the sensorial and intellectual elements therein is more or less uneven; or if the beauty present be almost entirely emotional, according as the observer may be affected by independent sensorial conditions of time or place. Consequent upon these considerations, an endeavour has been made in this work to distinguish between the two forms of beauty in the various arts, and the separate grades thereof.

It will be noticed that the writer has adopted the somewhat unusual course of including fiction among the fine arts. Why this practice is not commonly followed is hard to determine, but no definition of a fine art has been or can be given which does not cover fiction. In the definition here accepted, the art is clearly included, for the primary object of fiction is the beautiful representation of nature for the purpose of giving disinterested pleasure.

Art is independent of conditions of peoples or countries. Its germ is unconnected with civilization, politics, religion, laws, manners, or morals. It may appear like a brilliant flower where the mind of man is an intellectual desert, or refuse to bloom in the busiest hive of human energy. Its mother is the imagination, and wherever this has room to expand, there art will grow, though the ground may be nearly sterile, and the bud wither away from want of nourishment. Every child is born a potential artist, for he comes into the world with sensorial nerves, and a brain which directs the imagination. The primitive peoples made beautiful things long before they could read or write, and the recognition of harmony of form appears to have been one of the first understandings in life after the primal instincts of self-preservation and the continuation of the species. Some of the sketches made by the cave men of France are equal to anything of the kind produced in a thousand years of certain ancient civilizations, commencing countless centuries after the very existence of the cave men had been forgotten; and even if executed now, would be recognized as indicating the possession of considerable talent by the artists. The greatest poem ever written was given birth in a country near which barbaric hordes had recently devastated populous cities, and wrecked a national fabric with which were interwoven centuries of art and culture. That the author of this poem had seen great works of art is certain, or he could not have conceived the shield of Achilles, but the laboured sculpture that had fired his imagination, and the legends which had perhaps been the seed of his masterpieces were doubtless buried with his own records beneath the tramp of numberless mercenaries. Fortunately here and there the human voice could draw from memory's store, and so the magic of Homer was whispered by the dying to the living; but even his time and place are now only vaguely known, and he remains like the waratah on the bleached pasture of some desert fringe—a solitary blaze of scarlet where all else is drear and desolate.