“But,” I said, “what do you mean by intelligible?”

“I think,” he replied, “that I mean two things, both of which must be present.  First, that there shall be a necessary connection among the elements presented; and secondly, that the elements themselves should be of such a kind as to be, as it were, transparent to that which apprehends them, so that it asks no questions as to what they are or whence they come, but accepts them naturally and as a matter of course, with the same inevitability as it accepts its own being.”

“And these conditions, you think, are fulfilled by the objects of thought as you defined them?

“I think so.”

“I am not so sure of that,” I said, “it would require a long discussion.  But, anyhow, you also seemed to admit, when Ellis pressed you, that thought of that kind could hardly be identified absolutely with Good.”

“I admit,” he replied, “that there are difficulties in that view.”

“But at the same time the Good, whatever it be, ought to be intelligible in the sense you have explained?”

“I should say so.”

“And so should I. But now, the question is, can we not conceive of any other kind of object, which might have, on the one hand, the intelligibility you ascribe to pure ideas, and on the other, that immediate something, ‘luscious and aplomb,’ to borrow Ellis’s quotation, which he desiderated as a constituent of the Good?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “perhaps we might.  What is it you have in your mind?”

“Well,” I replied, “let us recur for a moment to works of art.  In them we have, to begin with, directly presented elements other than mere ideas.”

“No doubt.”

“And further, these elements, we agreed, have a necessary connection one with the other.”

“Yes, but not logically necessary.”

“No doubt, but still a necessary connection.  And it is the necessity of the connection, surely, that is important; the character of the necessity is a secondary consideration.”

“Perhaps.”

“One condition, then, of intelligibility is satisfied by a work of art.  But how is it with the other?  How is it with the elements themselves?  Are they transparent, to use your phrase, to that which apprehends them?”

“Certainly not, for they are mere sense—­of all things the most obscure and baffling.”

“And yet,” I replied, “not mere sense, for they are sense made beautiful; as beautiful, they are akin to us, and, so far, intelligible.”

“You suggest, then, that Beauty is akin to something in us, in a way analogous to that in which, according to me, ideas are akin to thought?”

“It seems so to me.  In so far as a thing is beautiful it does not, I think, demand explanation, but only in so far as it is something else as well.”

“Perhaps.  But anyhow, inasmuch as a work of art is also sense, so far at least it is not intelligible.”