With the rise of beauty we have a new utility. Here is a new pleasure which once experienced is sought and sought again, is developed, and with some natures becomes absorbing passion, the life. Objects fitted to give this pleasure are desired, are bought and sold. The beautiful is used to effect all kinds of ends. The lover adorns himself to make himself attractive, the advertiser distributes his bills in artistic shape, the real estate dealer ornaments his houses and grounds. Whatever will afford æsthetic pleasure we are willing to pay for and pay high. In fact, in the person of a Patti the æsthetic thrill becomes the most expensive taste which humanity can indulge. Art then is a utility—a something which satisfies desire—and as such it is not free or shareable. But one at a time can observe a picture from the best point of view. Rich men buy the most sightly spots in nature, the places of magnificent vistas and open to beautiful sunsets. Beautiful things are then desirables just like edible things or warm things, and as such they are not shareable. The feeling for beauty, just because it is self-contained, is far from being disinterested. It is essentially selfish. CHAPTER XVIII _THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LITERARY STYLE_ Mr. Herbert Spencer’s famous essay, entitled, “The Philosophy of Style”—by which is meant the Psychology of Style—propounds what we may term the economic theory of literary effect. The secret, he tells us, of the pleasing effect of diction, rhythm, figurative language, sentence structure, lies in this, that these are labour-saving devices to economize mental effort, that by their use we get with the least attention the greatest apprehension; and hence we receive pleasure as reflex of the facile and full cognition functioning. Literary pleasure is thus brought under the law of pleasure in general. Take the quotation from Shelley cited by Mr. Spencer:— “Methought among the lawns together We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn, And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, Shepherded by the slow unwilling wind.”