more profoundly (_i.e._ has greater significance) than the same object
considered as a means to practical ends or as a thing related to human
interests--and this undoubtedly is the case--we can only suppose that
when we consider anything as an end in itself we become aware of that in
it which is of greater moment than any qualities it may have acquired
from keeping company with human beings. Instead of recognising its
accidental and conditioned importance, we become aware of its essential
reality, of the God in everything, of the universal in the particular,
of the all-pervading rhythm. Call it by what name you will, the thing
that I am talking about is that which lies behind the appearance of all
things--that which gives to all things their individual significance,
the thing in itself, the ultimate reality. And if a more or less
unconscious apprehension of this latent reality of material things be,
indeed, the cause of that strange emotion, a passion to express which is
the inspiration of many artists, it seems reasonable to suppose that
those who, unaided by material objects, experience the same emotion have
come by another road to the same country.

That is the metaphysical hypothesis. Are we to swallow it whole, accept
a part of it, or reject it altogether? Each must decide for himself. I
insist only on the rightness of my aesthetic hypothesis. And of one
other thing am I sure. Be they artists or lovers of art, mystics or
mathematicians, those who achieve ecstasy are those who have freed
themselves from the arrogance of humanity. He who would feel the
significance of art must make himself humble before it. Those who find
the chief importance of art or of philosophy in its relation to conduct
or its practical utility--those who cannot value things as ends in
themselves or, at any rate, as direct means to emotion--will never get
from anything the best that it can give. Whatever the world of aesthetic
contemplation may be, it is not the world of human business and