The first aim of art is sensorial beauty, because sensorial experience must precede the impression of beauty upon the mind. The extent to which something appears to be sensorially harmonious depends upon the condition or character of the nerves conveying the impression of it to the brain. We know from experience that exercise of these nerves results in the removal or partial removal of natural irregularities therein, and enables a complex form of beauty to be recognized which was not before perceived. The vast majority of the people have not cultivated their sense nerves except involuntarily, and consequently can only recognize more or less simple beauty: thus, as the sign combinations become more complicated, so is diminished the number of persons capable of appreciating the beauty thereof. The highest form of beauty conceivable to the imagination is that of the human being, because here corporeal and intellectual beauty may be combined. This is universally admitted and has been so since the first records of mental activity. The human figure must be regarded as a single sign since the relation of its parts to each other is fixed and invariable; and further it is the simplest, because of all signs none is so quickly recognized by the rudimentary understanding. In the Associated Arts therefore, the highest beauty is to be found in the simplest sign, and this is the one supremely important sign in these arts, for without it only the lowest forms may be produced. From all this we determine that the higher the beauty in a work of the Associated Arts, the larger is the number of persons capable of recognizing it; so that if we say that something in these arts is beautiful because it pleases, we imply that it is still more beautiful if we say that it generally pleases, and the highest of all standards of beauty is involved in the interpretation of Longinus: "That is sublime and beautiful which always pleases, and takes equally with all sorts of men." Thus, in the Associated Arts, the general opinion as to the æsthetic value of a work of high art is both demonstration and law.[27] In music the significance of the signs is inverted compared with the progression in the Associated Arts, for while in the latter the highest form of beauty is produced by the simplest of single signs, in music the higher forms are the result of complex combinations of signs. The greatest musical compositions consist of an immense variety of signs arranged in a hitherto unknown order. Thus, while the immature or uncultivated mind recognizes the higher forms of beauty before the lower in the Associated Arts, it first recognizes the lower forms in music. In the Associated Arts therefore, cultivation results in the further appreciation of the forms of art as they descend, and in music as they ascend.