Every _thing_ may have a great number of very different _Aspects;_ and some of these _Aspects_ may invite contemplation, as that landscape invited the third man to contemplate it; while other _aspects_ (say the same place after a proper course of tramways and funiculars and semi-detached residences, or _before_ the needful volcanic and glacial action) may be such as are dismissed or slurred as fast as possible. Indeed, with the exception of a very few cubes not in themselves especially attractive, I cannot remember any _things_ which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects as pleasing ones. The most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood on its head; the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at through a microscope or from too far off; the most beautiful melody is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . Here the Reader may interrupt: "What nonsense! Of course the building _is_ a building only when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a microscope; the melody isn't a melody except begun at the beginning"--all which means that when we speak of a building, a picture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer of a _Thing,_ but of one of the possible _Aspects_ of a thing; _and that when we say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords one or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction._ But if a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be _contemplated,_ if the mountain could not also be climbed or tunnelled, if the woman could not also get married, bear children and have (or not have!) a vote, we should say that the mountain and the woman were not _real things._ Hence we come to the conclusion, paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking about, _that what we contemplate as beautiful is an Aspect of a Thing, but never a Thing itself._ In other words: Beautiful is an adjective applicable to Aspects not to Things, or to Things only, inasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other potentialities) beautiful Aspects. So that we can now formulate: _The word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the contemplation not of things but of aspects._