that he is conscious of a difficulty here. If the criterion is not the perfection of the experience, but rather the perfection of the object, these arts would reduce to the most vivid possible representation of the most perfect and blooming types. M. Souriau would have to counsel us not to admire Rembrandt's old men, or Velasquez's dwarfs and beggars, in the same way in which he deprecates the admiration of the frozen or tumultuous landscape, because it is destructive to the welfare of all organic life therein dwelling. In fact, the general question of representation in art is bound to make trouble for a theory which recognizes only intrinsic and objective values, and I do not see that M. Souriau has satisfactorily dealt with it. The other difficulty of the intrusion of the pleasure in the perfect function can be met only by admitting an element of 'objectified pleasure' in true beauty; but if this is admitted at all, there would seem to be more logic in going over entirely to the identification of the aesthetic experience with the experience judged or felt as perfect. To such a view the question of 'semblance' presents much less difficulty.
And this brings up the question of method. To M. Souriau the rational æsthetics is not that which rests on a general theory of beauty which has been arrived at by the use of reason, but rather a way of judging objects in which there are good reasons for the judgment. His æsthetics is thus less a science than a moral regimen applied to the special act of responding to an object of contemplation. The opposition of this system to impressionist and subjective theories of beauty, as the only one which can claim to reach an objectively valid theory of beauty, seems logically not quite justified. A judgment for which one can give reasons (as here, reasons of morality and common sense) has not necessarily more objective value in relation to a theory of beauty than an emotional reaction, in which can yet be traced a constant form, which has a universal reference and thus also an objective validity. The term 'rational æsthetics' seems to me for this reason ambiguous.
Adequately to criticise a work like this, almost encyclopedic in its range, would require more space than is at the disposal of the reviewer. Untechnical as it is, and written in a conversational style, it is yet not easy reading, partly owing to the author's habit of putting arguments of all shades of agreement and disagreement at great length into the liveliest direct discourse, so that the reader who has chanced to miss an introductory phrase, finds himself being unexpectedly argued into contradictory positions. But the book is a veritable treasury of original and acute observations, drawn from all æsthetic fields,—a
