The connection here indicated between the aesthetic value and the
invidious pecuniary value of things is of course not present in the
consciousness of the valuer. So far as a person, in forming a judgment
of taste, takes thought and reflects that the object of beauty under
consideration is wasteful and reputable, and therefore may legitimately
be accounted beautiful; so far the judgment is not a bona fide judgment
of taste and does not come up for consideration in this connection. The
connection which is here insisted on between the reputability and the
apprehended beauty of objects lies through the effect which the fact of
reputability has upon the valuer's habits of thought. He is in the
habit of forming judgments of value of various kinds-economic, moral,
aesthetic, or reputable concerning the objects with which he has to do,
and his attitude of commendation towards a given object on any other
ground will affect the degree of his appreciation of the object when he
comes to value it for the aesthetic purpose. This is more particularly
true as regards valuation on grounds so closely related to the aesthetic
ground as that of reputability. The valuation for the aesthetic purpose
and for the purpose of repute are not held apart as distinctly as might
be. Confusion is especially apt to arise between these two kinds of
valuation, because the value of objects for repute is not habitually
distinguished in speech by the use of a special descriptive term. The
result is that the terms in familiar use to designate categories
or elements of beauty are applied to cover this unnamed element of
pecuniary merit, and the corresponding confusion of ideas follows by
easy consequence. The demands of reputability in this way coalesce in
the popular apprehension with the demands of the sense of beauty, and
beauty which is not accompanied by the accredited marks of good repute
is not accepted. But the requirements of pecuniary reputability and
those of beauty in the naive sense do not in any appreciable degree
coincide. The elimination from our surroundings of the pecuniarily
unfit, therefore, results in a more or less thorough elimination of that
considerable range of elements of beauty which do not happen to conform
to the pecuniary requirement. The underlying norms of taste are of very
ancient growth, probably far antedating the advent of the pecuniary
institutions that are here under discussion. Consequently, by force of
the past selective adaptation of men's habits of thought, it happens
that the requirements of beauty, simply, are for the most part best
satisfied by inexpensive contrivances and structures which in a
straightforward manner suggest both the office which they are to perform
and the method of serving their end. It may be in place to recall the
modern psychological position. Beauty of form seems to be a question of
facility of apperception. The proposition could perhaps safely be made
broader than this.
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