exception to the general rule. A disinterested love of understanding
has certainly played a part. Every region of experience invites to the
play of intelligence upon it; the lover of knowledge, as Plato says,
loves the whole of his object. Yet even intelligence, insatiable and
impartial as it is, has its predilections. The desire to understand
a particular type of thing has its roots in an initial love of it. As
the born botanist is the man who finds joy in contact with tree and
moss and mushroom, so the student of aesthetics is commonly a lover
of beauty. And, although the interest which he takes in aesthetic
theory is largely just the pleasure in possessing clear ideas, one may
question whether he would pursue it with such ardor except for the
continual lover's touch with picture and statue and poem which it
demands. For the intelligent lover of beauty, aesthetic theory requires
no justification; it is as necessary and pleasurable for him to
understand art as it is compulsive for him to seek out beautiful things
to enjoy. To love without understanding is, to the thoughtful lover,
an infidelity to his object. That the interest in aesthetic theory is
partly rooted in feeling is shown from the fact that, when developed
by artists, it takes the form of a defense of the type of art which
they are producing. The aesthetic theory of the German Romanticists
is an illustration of this; Hebbel and Wagner are other striking
examples. These men could not rest until they had put into communicable
and persuasive form the aesthetic values which they felt in creation.
And we, too, who are not artists but only lovers of beauty, find in
theory a satisfaction for a similar need with reference to our
preferences.[Footnote: Compare Santayana: The Sense of Beauty, p. 11.]

More important to the average man is the help which aesthetic theory
may render to appreciation itself. If to the basal interest in beauty
be added an interest in understanding beauty, the former is quickened