Excerpt from The Philosophy of the Beautiful It may be presented, in the first instance, through a series Of questions, thus - Why do we call any single Object in Nature beautiful? When we go beneath the surface of commonplace admiration, and affirm that any particular thing possesses Beauty, what do we really mean by the assertion? How comes it that one object partakes of Beauty while another does not Is there any fixed relation between the many different Objects which, taken individually, are called beautiful? If so, what is that relation Does the Beauty they partake of separate them from one another? Or does it unite them together? Leaving individual Objects, what is Beauty in itself? Is its essence knowable approximately, or in fragment? Can it be apprehended by us indirectly, if not directly, and be understood through analogy, if not by intuition? In thus stating the problem from various points of view, questions of Science have been mixed up with those Of Philosophy; but, as we proceed, these will be disengaged, and separately handled. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.