stimulation.

The theories of Kulpe and Santayana, while they definitely mark
out the ground, seem to me in need of addition. "Absorption in
the object in respect to its bare quality and conformation" does
not, of course, give the needed information, for objective beauty,
of the character of this conformation or form. But yet, it might
be said that the content of beauty might conceivably be deduced
from the psychological conditions of absorption. In the same
way, Santayana's "Beauty as objectified pleasure," or pleasure as
the quality of a thing, is neither a determination of objective
beauty nor a sufficient description of the psychological state.
Yet analysis of those qualities in the thing that cause us to
make our pleasure a quality of it would supplement the definition
sufficiently and completely in the sense of our own formula. Why
do we regard pleasure as the quality of a thing? Because there
is something in the thing that makes us spread, as it were, our
pleasure upon it. This is that which fixates us, arrests us,
upon it,--which can be only the elements that make for repose.

Guyau, however, comes nearest to our point of view. "The beautiful
is a perception or an action which stimulates life within us under
its three forms simultaneously (i.e., sensibility, intelligence,
and will) and produces pleasure by the swift consciousness of this
general stimulation."<1> It is from this general stimulation that
Guyau explains the aesthetic effect of his famous drink of milk
among mountain scenes. But such general stimulation might
accompany successful action of any kind, and thus the moral and
the aesthetic would fall together. That M. Guyau is so successful
in his analysis is due rather to the fact that just this diffused