A further objection to the assumption of a peculiar æsthetic attitude is that it makes smooth the way for the idea of a peculiar æsthetic value, a pure art value. Postulate a peculiar kind: of experience, æsthetic experience, and it is an easy step to the postulation of a peculiar unique value, different in kind and cut off from the other values of ordinary experiences. “To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions.”[7] So runs a recent extreme statement of the Æsthetic Hypothesis, which has had much success. To quote another example less drastic but also carrying with it the implication that æsthetic experiences are _sui generis_, and their value not of the same kind as other values. “Its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but a world in itself independent, complete, autonomous.”[8] This view of the arts as providing a private heaven for æsthetes is, as will appear later, a great impediment to the investigation of their value. The effects upon the general attitudes of those who accept it uncritically are also often regrettable; while the effects upon literature and the arts have been noticeable, in a narrowing and restriction of the interests active, in preciousness, artificiality and spurious aloofness. ~Art~ envisaged as a mystic, ineffable virtue is a close relative of the ‘æsthetic mood’, and may easily be pernicious in its effects, through the habits of mind which, as an idea, it fosters, and to which, as a mystery, it appeals. [1] Hegel’s _dictum, History of Philosophy_, iii, 543. [2] _Critique of Judgment_, transl. by Meredith, p. 15. [3] Dr Bosanquet was one of the last adherents. See his _Three Lectures on Æsthetics_. [4] E.g. Vernon Lee, _The Beautiful_. [5] E.g. Any choice for which the chooser cannot give his reasons tends in the laboratory to be called an ‘æsthetic choice.’ [6] Cf. Chapters X and XXXII, and Impersonality, _Index_. [7] Clive Bell, _Art_, p. 25. [8] A.C. Bradley, _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, p. 5. CHAPTER III The Language of Criticism . . . . I too have seen My vision of the rainbow Aureoled face Of her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere: Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world. . . . _The Dominion of Dreams_. Whatever the disadvantages of modern æsthetics as a basis for a theory of Criticism, the great advance made upon prescientific speculation into the nature of Beauty must also be recognised. That paralysing apparition Beauty, the ineffable, ultimate, unanalysable, simple Idea, has at least been dismissed and with her have departed or will soon depart a flock of equally bogus entities. Poetry and inspiration together, it is true, still dignify respectable quarters with their presence.