As our illustrations show, the lower senses enter into the beauty of
nature only; they do not enter into the beauty of art. Their beauty
is therefore vague and accidental. It usually depends, moreover, upon
some support from vision, with the beauty of which it fuses. Apart
from the picturesque surroundings seen, the mountain milk and the Rhine
wine would lose much of their beauty; the warmth of sunlight or of
fire, without the brightness of these objects, the odor of flowers
without their form and color, would be of small aesthetic worth. Through
connection with vision the lower senses acquire something of its
permanence and independence. People differ greatly in their capacity
to render the lower senses aesthetic; it is essentially a matter of
refinement, of power to free them from their natural root in the
practical and instinctive, and lift them into the higher region of
sentiment. But every kind of sensation, however low, may become
beautiful; this is not to degrade beauty, but to ennoble sensation.

From a psychological standpoint, sensation is the datum of the aesthetic
experience, the first thing there, while its power to express depends
upon a further process which links it up with thoughts and feelings.
We must inquire, therefore, how this linkage takes place--how, for
example, it comes about that the colors of a painting are something
more than mere colors, being, in addition, embodiments of trees and
sky and foliage, and of liveliness and gayety and other feelings
appropriate to a spring landscape. Let us consider the linkage with
feeling first.

There are two characteristics of aesthetic feeling in its relation to
sensations and ideas which must be taken into account in any
explanation; its objectification in them and the universality of this
connection. Expression is embodiment. We find gayety in the colors of