232 LANGUAGE AND MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
provides momentary relief but no genuine or lasting satisfaction.
It is catharsis by instalments that can never be completely paid.
Too great an indulgence in it brings about an atrophy of the
higher forms of human sensibility. After all, it is a consolation
to remember that the greatest satisfactions cannot be had for
the mere asking.
13. BEAUTY AND ENJOYMENT
As we have already indicated, it must not be thought that the
purest form of aesthetic feeling which arises from the contemplation
of great art depends for its existence upon a highly developed
organization of our moral and intellectual life. Perhaps at the
highest levels, art and morality are not inseparable, even though
the Greeks frequently employed the same term for them both;
and, in spite of Keats, beauty and truth are not always the same
thing. As we have already implied, the infant who croons with
delight at the sight of a pretty-coloured toy has the root of the
matter in him, while the Air on the G String is enjoyed by many
whose morals are not as they should be. At bottom the aesthetic
feeling is nothing but a particular form of delight, a delight in
what is regarded as being in its own way, and without reference
to our human needs, as perfect as it can possibly be. The difficulty
about isolating it is that while in itself it has nothing to do with
truth or morality, it nevertheless is apt to become inextricably
complicated with them, since no one can bring an absolutely
open and empty (or rather, emptied) mind to the contemplation
either of natural objects or works of art: indeed, we all of us
bring minds that differ greatly from one another. It is interesting
and, indeed, important for our general thesis to note that the
contemplation of pictures is influenced by our reading methods.
The Western European reads horizontally and so looks at pictures
differently from the Chinese, who read vertically. This is one
reason why we may fail to observe the rhythms of Chinese art,
and why the Chinese do not always appreciate ours.
A great deal of nonsense is talked about getting the aesthetic
feeling at its best by allowing an object to have its way with us,
as it can only do when we give over analysing its elements and
reflecting as to its meaning, and yield ourselves up to the sensa-
tions it will then arouse in us. We fool ourselves in thinking this
possible. It is probable that the critics who talk of art as being
purely a matter of the senses with the mind non-operative have
been misled into supposing that the impersonal view is an un-
personal view and that ^interested feeling is sm-interested. The
idea of aesthetic perception as something which ignores the con-
tent of what is perceived is a figment of the imagination.