III

THE METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS


For the present I have said enough about the aesthetic problem and about
Post-Impressionism; I want now to consider that metaphysical
question--"Why do certain arrangements and combinations of form move us
so strangely?" For aesthetics it suffices that they do move us; to all
further inquisition of the tedious and stupid it can be replied that,
however queer these things may be, they are no queerer than anything
else in this incredibly queer universe. But to those for whom my theory
seems to open a vista of possibilities I willingly offer, for what they
are worth, my fancies.

It seems to me possible, though by no means certain, that created form
moves us so profoundly because it expresses the emotion of its creator.
Perhaps the lines and colours of a work of art convey to us something
that the artist felt. If this be so, it will explain that curious but
undeniable fact, to which I have already referred, that what I call
material beauty (_e.g._ the wing of a butterfly) does not move most of
us in at all the same way as a work of art moves us. It is beautiful
form, but it is not significant form. It moves us, but it does not move
us aesthetically. It is tempting to explain the difference between
"significant form" and "beauty"--that is to say, the difference between
form that provokes our aesthetic emotions and form that does not--by
saying that significant form conveys to us an emotion felt by its