But we must first add the following remarks to what has been said. Light is the pleasantest and most gladdening of things; it has become the symbol of all that is good and salutary. In all religions it symbolises salvation, while darkness symbolises damnation. Ormuzd dwells in the purest light, Ahrimines in eternal night. Dante’s Paradise would look very much like Vauxhall in London, for all the blessed spirits appear as points of light and arrange themselves in regular figures. The very absence of light makes us sad; its return cheers us. Colours excite directly a keen delight, which reaches its highest degree when they are transparent. All this depends entirely upon the fact that light is the correlative and condition of the most perfect kind of knowledge of perception, the only knowledge which does not in any way affect the will. For sight, unlike the affections of the other senses, cannot, in itself, directly and through its sensuous effect, make the _sensation_ of the special organ agreeable or disagreeable; that is, it has no immediate connection with the will. Such a quality can only belong to the perception which arises in the understanding, and then it lies in the relation of the object to the will. In the case of hearing this is to some extent otherwise; sounds can give pain directly, and they may also be sensuously agreeable, directly and without regard to harmony or melody. Touch, as one with the feeling of the whole body, is still more subordinated to this direct influence upon the will; and yet there is such a thing as a sensation of touch which is neither painful nor pleasant. But smells are always either agreeable or disagreeable, and tastes still more so. Thus the last two senses are most closely related to the will, and therefore they are always the most ignoble, and have been called by Kant the subjective senses. The pleasure which we experience from light is in fact only the pleasure which arises from the objective possibility of the purest and fullest perceptive knowledge, and as such it may be traced to the fact that pure knowledge, freed and delivered from all will, is in the highest degree pleasant, and of itself constitutes a large part of æsthetic enjoyment. Again, we must refer to this view of light the incredible beauty which we associate with the reflection of objects in water. That lightest, quickest, finest species of the action of bodies upon each other, that to which we owe by far the completest and purest of our perceptions, the action of reflected rays of light, is here brought clearly before our eyes, distinct and perfect, in cause and in effect, and indeed in its entirety, hence the æsthetic delight it gives us, which, in the most important aspect, is entirely based on the subjective ground of æsthetic pleasure, and is delight in pure knowing and its method.