or precedence over others. And nothing is known of what happens prior to
having received it, for the distinctions made after reflexion have
nothing to do with art.

The theory of the aesthetic senses has also been presented in another
way; that is to say, as the attempt to establish what physiological
organs are necessary for the aesthetic fact. The physiological organ or
apparatus is nothing but a complex of cellules, thus and thus
constituted, thus and thus disposed; that is to say, it is merely
physical and natural fact or concept. But expression does not recognize
physiological facts. Expression has its point of departure in the
impressions, and the physiological path by which these have found their
way to the mind is to it altogether indifferent. One way or another
amounts to the same thing: it suffices that they are impressions.

It is true that the want of given organs, that is, of given complexes of
cells, produces an absence of given impressions (when these are not
obtained by another path by a kind of organic compensation). The man
born blind cannot express or have the intuition of light. But the
impressions are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by the
stimuli which operate upon the organ. Thus, he who has never had the
impression of the sea will never be able to express it, in the same way
as he who has never had the impression of the great world or of the
political conflict will never express the one or the other. This,
however, does not establish a dependence of the expressive function on
the stimulus or on the organ. It is the repetition of what we know
already: expression presupposes impression. Therefore, given expressions
imply given impressions. Besides, every impression excludes other
impressions during the moment in which it dominates; and so does every
expression.