of motor impulses which "balance,"--a system of energies
reacting on one centre; the sonnet takes us out on one wave
of rhythm and of thought, to bring us back on another to the
same point; the sonata does the same in melody. In the
"whirling circle" of the drama, not a word or an act that is
not indissolubly linked with before and after. Thus the unity
of a work of art makes of the system of suggested energies
which form the foreground of attention an impregnable, an
invulnerable circle.

Not only, however, are we held in equilibrium in the object
of attention; we cannot connect with it our self-background,
for the will cannot act on the object of aesthetic feeling.
We cannot eat the grapes of Apelles or embrace the Galatea of
Pygmalion; we cannot rescue Ophelia or enlighten Juliet; and
of impulse to interfere, to connect the scene with ourselves,
we have none. But this is a less important factor in the
situation. That the house is dark, the audience silent, and
all motor impulses outside of the aesthetic circle stifled, is,
too, only a superficial, and, so to speak, a negative condition.
The real ground of the possibility of a momentary self-
annihilation lies in the fact that all incitements to motor
impulse--except those which belong to the indissoluble ring
of the object itself--have been shut out by the perfection of
unity to which the aesthetic object (here the drama) has been
brought. The background fades; the foreground satisfies,
incites no movement; and with the disappearance of the
possibility of action which would connect the two, fades also
that which dwells in this feeling of transition,--the sense
of personality. The depth of aesthetic feeling lies not in