The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to these henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there exist perfect æsthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, we must recommend him to concentrate his attention in the æsthetic fact, upon that which is truly æsthetic pleasure. Æsthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced or rather complicated by pleasures arising from extraneous facts, which are only accidentally found united with it. The poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely æsthetic pleasure at the moment when he sees (or intuites) his work for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amusement, or that of laughingly snatching a nail from his coffin, accompanies the moment of true æsthetic pleasure in the art of the dramatist and actors. The same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the æsthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-complacency satisfied, or even of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. Instances could be multiplied. [Sidenote: _Criticism of apparent feelings._] A category of _apparent_ æsthetic feelings has been formed in modern Æsthetic, not arising from the form, that is to say, from the works of art as such, but from their content. It has been remarked that artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite shades of variety. We tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture and with the melody of music. But these feelings are not such as would be aroused by the real fact outside art; or rather, they are the same in quality, but are quantitatively an attenuation of real things. Æsthetic and _apparent_ pleasure and pain show themselves to be light, shallow, mobile. We have no need to treat here of these _apparent feelings,_ for the good reason that we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have hitherto treated of nothing but them. What are these apparent or manifested feelings, but feelings objectified, intuited, expressed? And it is natural that they do not trouble and afflict us as passionately as those of real life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula of _apparent feelings_ is therefore for us nothing but a tautology, through which we can run the pen without scruple. XI CRITICISM OF ÆSTHETIC HEDONISM