Yet the thinkers of antiquity were aware that a problem lay in the direction of Aesthetic, and Xenophon records the sayings of Socrates that the beautiful is "that which is fitting and answers to the end required." Elsewhere he says "it is that which is loved." Plato likewise vibrates between various views and offers several solutions. Sometimes he appears almost to confound the beautiful with the true, the good and the divine; at others he leans toward the utilitarian view of Socrates; at others he distinguishes between what is beautiful In itself and what possesses but a relative beauty. At other times again, he is a hedonist, and makes it to consist of pure pleasure, that is, of pleasure with no shadow of pain; or he finds it in measure and proportion, or in the very sound, the very colour itself. The reason for all this vacillation of definition lay in Plato's exclusion of the artistic or mimetic fact from the domain of the higher spiritual activities. The _Hippias major_ expresses this uncertainty more completely than any of the other dialogues. What is the beautiful? That is the question asked at the beginning, and left unanswered at the end. The Platonic Socrates and Hippias propose the most various solutions, one after another, but always come out by the gate by which they entered in. Is the beautiful to be found in ornament? No, for gold embellishes only where it is in keeping. Is the beautiful that which seems ugly to no man? But it is a question of being, not of seeming. Is it their fitness which makes things seem beautiful? But in that case, the fitness which makes them appear beautiful is one thing, the beautiful another. If the beautiful be the useful or that which leads to an end, then evil would also be beautiful, because the useful may also end evilly. Is the beautiful the helpful, that which leads to the good? No, for in that case the good would not be beautiful, nor the beautiful good, because cause and effect are different. Thus they argued in the Platonic dialogues, and when we turn to the pages of Aristotle, we find him also uncertain and inclined to vary his definitions.[5] Sometimes for him the good and pleasurable are the beautiful, sometimes it lies in actions, at others in things motionless, or in bulk and order, or is altogether undefinable. Antiquity also established canons of the beautiful, and the famous canon of Polycleitus, on the proportions of the human body, fitly compares with that of later times on the golden line, and with the Ciceronian phrase from the Tusculan Disputations. But these are all of them mere empirical observations, mere happy remarks and verbal substitutions, which lead to unsurmountable difficulties when put to philosophical test.