(_a_) Now this general feeling of contentment is, in the first place, without any interest, that is to say, it is _devoid of relation_ to our _appetitive faculty._ If we have an interest of curiosity, shall we say, or a sensuous interest excited for a physical want, a desire for possession and use, then the objects are not important for their own sake, but in virtue of our need of them. In a case such as this what exists merely possesses a value in relation to such a need, and the relation is of the kind, that the object is on the one side and on the other is an attribute distinct from the object to which we relate it none the less. As an illustration if I consume the object in order to nourish myself therewith, this interest rests exclusively in me, and remains alien to the object. Now, in Kant's view, our position relatively to the beautiful is not of this description. The aesthetic judgment suffers that which is externally presented to subsist in free independence, proceeding as it does from the desire to permit the object to persist on its own account and to retain its end unimpaired within itself. This is, as we have already observed, an important observation. (_b_) In the second place, Kant maintains that the beautiful is definable as that which without a conception, _i.e._, without a category of the understanding, is placed before us as the object of a _universal_ satisfaction. To estimate the beautiful an educated mind is indispensable. The man in the street[112] has no judgment about the beautiful; this judgment, in fact, claims universal validity. The universal is no doubt in the first instance simply, _as such_, an abstraction, one which, however, is in its essential and on its independent account, true; and consequently carries essentially the property and demand to pass also as universally valid. In this sense, too, the beautiful ought to be universally recognized, although the mere concepts of the understanding are compatible with no judgment thereupon. The good--the right which enters into particular actions, for example--is subsumed under universal concepts, and the action is accepted as good, if it is conformable to such concepts. The beautiful, on the contrary, ought, according to this view, to arouse a universal satisfaction without any such mediation of concept. This simply means that in the contemplation of the beautiful we are not conscious of the notional concept or any subsumption under it, and do not permit the independent passage of the separation between the particular object and the universal concept, which is present in all other cases of the judgment.