An Introduction to the Study of Aesthetics (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. INTELLECTIONS MINISTERING TO BEAUTY--TRUTH. But the mind is not only capable of receiving impressions from the external world, it is the owner of stores within itself, which, if not more numerous, are of a higher and more enduring kind. From its own nature spring its highest enjoyments and most humbling afflictions; all the delights of sense are but childish toys, till taken up by the mind, and woven into the web of its own creation. By combination with its hopes and fears, its warm emotions and clear conceptions of power, of relations, and of truth, the humbler pleasures of the bodily sense acquire a dignity which can never be their own. To this nobler part of consciousness, the art of literature addresses itself most immediately, employing the former as but the channels and signs, whereby impressions of the external world are to be communicated; but even those arts which must submit to the external senses, aim to reach beyond them, and to take hold upon a nobler approbation, accounting it their proudest achievement to have passed the gates of sensation, and to have their merits acknowledged in the presence of the pure intellect. While they, however, have to struggle toward this coveted distinction by indirect and dubious means, literature claims the right of immediate presentation and hearing, both in her own name, and as the interpreter of the whole, employing a system of signs, which to the senses are as idle air, and are really meaningless, except as symbols to address the understanding. To literature, the materials of sensation are valuable as stone and mortar to the architect; but that which animates a whole production with beauty, must be drawn from the same spiritual source to which it aspires. Truth, in every form, when clearly seen, ..