The scientific value to be attached in Aesthetic and in aesthetic criticism to these distinctions of _realistic and symbolic_, of _style and absence of style_, of _objective and subjective_, of _classic and romantic_, of _simple and ornate_, of _proper and metaphorical_, of the fourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of _word_ and of _sentence_, and further of _pleonasm_, of _ellipse_, of _inversion_, of _repetition_, of _synonyms and homonyms_, and so on; is _nil_ or altogether negative. To none of these terms and distinctions can be given a satisfactory aesthetic definition. Those that have been attempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid of sense. A typical example of this is the very common definition of metaphor as of _another word used in place of the word itself_. Now why give oneself this trouble? Why take the worse and longer road when you know the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is generally said, because the correct word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the so-called incorrect word or metaphor? But in that case the metaphor becomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it were used, would be _but little expressive_ and therefore most improper. Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the other categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. One can ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally? In that case it must always remain separate. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression, indistinguishable from the whole. It is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefully preserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence. Rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant in literary production, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode of writing ill which is called fine writing or writing according to rhetoric. [Sidenote] _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._ The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools, where we all of us learned them (certain of never finding the opportunity of using them in strictly aesthetic discussions, or even of doing so jocosely and with a comic intention), save when occasionally employed in one of the following significations: as _verbal variants _of the aesthetic concept; as indications of the _anti-aesthetic_, or, finally (and this is their most important use), in a sense which is no longer aesthetic and literary, _but merely logical_. [Sidenote] _Use of these categories as synonyms of the aesthetic fact._