But it may be said that stimulation and repose are contradictory concepts, and we must indeed admit that the absolute repose of the hypnotic trance is not aesthetic, because empty of stimulus. The only aesthetic repose is that in which stimulation resulting in impulse to movement or action is checked or compensated for by its antagonistic impulse; inhibition of action, or action returning upon itself, combined with heightening of tone. But this is TENSION, EQUILIBRIUM, or BALANCE OF FORCES, which is thus seen to be A GENERAL CONDITION OF ALL AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. The concept is familiar in pictorial composition and to some extent also in music and poetry, but here first appears as grounded in the very demand for the union of repose with activity. Moreover, this requirement, which we have derived from the logical concepts of unity and totality, as translated into psychological terms, receives confirmation from the nature of organic life. It was the perfect moment that we sought, and we found it in the immediate experience of unity and self-completeness; and unity for a living being CAN only be equilibrium. Now it appears that an authoritative definition of the general nature of an organism makes it "so built, whether on mechanical principles or not, that every deviation from the equilibrium point sets up a tendency to return to it."<1> Equilibrium, in greater or less excursions from the centre, is thus the ultimate nature of organic life. The perfect equilibrium, that is, equilibrium with heightened tone, will then give the perfect moment. <1> L.T. Hobhouse, _Mind in Evolution_. The further steps of aesthetics are then toward analysis of the psychological effect of all the elements which enter into a work of art, with reference to their effect in producing stimulation or repose. What colors, forms, tones, emotions, ideas, favorably stimulate? What combinations of these bring to repose? All the modern studies in so-called physiological aesthetics, into the emotional and other--especially motor-- effects of color, tone-sensation, melodic sequence, simple forms, etc., find here there proper place.