from its commerce with human beings, from all its significance as a
means, he has felt its significance as an end in itself?

What is the significance of anything as an end in itself? What is that
which is left when we have stripped a thing of all its associations, of
all its significance as a means? What is left to provoke our emotion?
What but that which philosophers used to call "the thing in itself" and
now call "ultimate reality"? Shall I be altogether fantastic in
suggesting, what some of the profoundest thinkers have believed, that
the significance of the thing in itself is the significance of Reality?
Is it possible that the answer to my question, "Why are we so profoundly
moved by certain combinations of lines and colours?" should be, "Because
artists can express in combinations of lines and colours an emotion felt
for reality which reveals itself through line and colour"?

If this suggestion were accepted it would follow that "significant form"
was form behind which we catch a sense of ultimate reality. There would
be good reason for supposing that the emotions which artists feel in
their moments of inspiration, that others feel in the rare moments when
they see objects artistically, and that many of us feel when we
contemplate works of art, are the same in kind. All would be emotions
felt for reality revealing itself through pure form. It is certain that
this emotion can be expressed only in pure form. It is certain that most
of us can come at it only through pure form. But is pure form the only
channel through which anyone can come at this mysterious emotion? That
is a disturbing and a most distasteful question, for at this point I
thought I saw my way to cancelling out the word "reality," and saying
that all are emotions felt for pure form which may or may not have
something behind it. To me it would be most satisfactory to say that the
reason why some forms move us aesthetically, and others do not, is that