But before getting to the final inversion--"this landscape _is_ beautiful" instead of "_I_ like this landscape"--there is yet another, and far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the qualities of the object. This further putting of the cart before the horse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what only the horse can be doing!) falls under the head of what German psychologists call _Einfühlung,_ or "Infeeling"--which Prof. Titchener has translated _Empathy._ Now this new, and comparatively newly discovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which, leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound sensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever satisfaction we connect with the word Beautiful. And I have already given the Reader an example of such Empathy when I described the landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline "_dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves_"; to which I might have added that there was also a plain which _extended,_ a valley which _wound along,_ paths which _climbed_ and roads which _followed_ the _undulations_ of the land. But the best example was when I said that opposite to the man there was a distant mountain _rising_ against the sky. CHAPTER IX EMPATHY _THE mountain rises._ What do we mean when we employ this form of words? Some mountains, we are told, have originated in an _upheaval._ But even if this particular mountain did, we never saw it and geologists are still disputing about HOW and WHETHER. So the _rising_ we are talking about is evidently not that probable or improbable _upheaval._ On the other hand all geologists tell us that every mountain is undergoing a steady _lowering_ through its particles being weathered away and washed down; and our knowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain, so far from rising, is _descending._ Of course we all know that, objects the Reader, and of course nobody imagines that the rock and the earth of the mountain is rising, or that the mountain is getting up or growing taller! All we mean is that the mountain _looks_ as if it were rising. The mountain _looks!_ Surely here is a case of putting the cart before the horse. No; we cannot explain the mountain _rising_ by the mountain _looking,_ for the only _looking_ in the business is _our_ looking _at_ the mountain. And if the Reader objects again that these are all _figures of speech,_ I shall answer that _Empathy_ is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and occasionally employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain, when we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. Very well; then, (says the Reader) we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely: when we look at the mountain _we somehow or other think of the action of rising._ Is that sufficiently literal and indisputable?