Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective conditions of the beautiful,_ it has been asked: To what physical facts does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The persistent fruitlessness of the attempt should have given rise before long to some suspicion of its vanity. In our times, especially, necessity for an _inductive_ Æsthetic has been often proclaimed, of an Æsthetic starting _from below,_ proceeding like natural science and not jumping to its conclusions. Inductive? But Æsthetic has always been both inductive and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a true science. But the word "induction" was not pronounced here by chance. The intention was to imply that the æsthetic fact is really nothing but a physical fact, to be studied by the methods proper to the physical and natural sciences. With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Æsthetic or Æsthetic _from below_ (what pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It conscientiously began by making a collection of _beautiful things,_ for example, a great number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and asked which of these give the impression of beauty and which of ugliness. As was to be expected, the inductive æstheticians speedily found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect appeared beautiful in another. A coarse yellow envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped paper, which in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an irony, enclosed in a square envelope of English paper. Such considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive æstheticians that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause them to desist from their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they had recourse to an expedient, as to which we should hardly like to say how far it belongs to the strict method of natural science. They sent their envelopes round and opened a _referendum,_ trying to settle in what beauty or ugliness consists by the votes of the majority. [Sidenote: _The Astrology of Æsthetic._] We will not waste time over this subject, lest we should seem to be turning ourselves into tellers of comic tales rather than expositors of æsthetic science and of its problems. It is a matter of fact that the inductive æstheticians have not yet discovered _one single law._