Beauty, according to subjectivists like Hume, is in the eye of the beholder, it is not a question of taste. Subjectivism eventually degenerates into commercialism, where market-price determines taste and substitutes for value. The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth. The concept of beauty has been reduced to conceptual formalisms. A good practice carried to an extreme and worked in accordance with the letter of the law becomes a positive evil. There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. The sun is the width of a human foot.

The artist is making something exist by observing it, and his hope is that others will also make it exist by ‘creative observation’. A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man, argues author. Plotinus argues that we take ordinary things for granted, preventing the power of their aesthetic smile from shining through. Of course, the artist does reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary. Isn’t that the point of pop art? says author. “We must admit, then, that each particular thing has an unreasoned power… has a share of soul.”