Since the pleasurableness of the beautiful rests on the fact that it establishes a pleasing harmony between the imagination and the understanding, hence between sensuous and intellectual apprehension, the aesthetic attitude is possible only in sensuous-rational beings.  The agreeable exists for the animal as well, and the good is an object of approval for pure spirits; but the beautiful exists for humanity alone.  Kant succeeded in giving very delicate and felicitous verbal expression to these distinctions:  the agreeable gratifies (vergnuegt) and excites inclination (Neigung); the good is approved (gebilligt) and arouses respect (Achtung); the beautiful “pleases” (gefaellt) and finds “favor” (Gunst).

In the progress of the investigation the principle that beauty depends on the form alone, and that the concept, the purpose, the nature of the object is not taken into account at all in aesthetic judgment, experiences limitation.  In its full strictness this applies only to a definite and, in fact, a subordinate division of the beautiful, which Kant marks off under the name of pure or free beauty.  With this he contrasts adherent beauty, as that which presupposes a generic concept to which its form must correspond and which it must adequately present.  Too much a purist not to mark the coming in of an intellectual pleasure as a beclouding of the “purity” of the aesthetic satisfaction, he is still just enough to admit the higher worth of adherent beauty.  For almost the whole of artificial beauty and a considerable part of natural beauty belong to this latter division, which we to-day term ideal and characteristic beauty.  Examples of free or purely formal beauty are tapestry patterns, arabesques, fountains, flowers, and landscapes, the pleasurableness of which rests simply on the proportion of their form and relations, and not upon their conformity to a presupposed significance and determination of the thing.  A building, on the contrary—­a dwelling, a summer-house, a temple—­is considered beautiful only when we perceive in it not merely harmonious relations of the parts one to another, but also an agreement between the form and the purpose or generic concept:  a church must not look like a chalet.  Here the external form is compared with an inner nature, and harmony is required between form and content.  Adherent beauty is significant and expressive beauty, which, although the satisfaction in it is not “purely” aesthetic, nevertheless stands higher than pure beauty, because it gives to the understanding also something to think, and hence busies the whole spirit.

The analytical investigations concerning the nature of the beautiful receive a valuable supplement in the classical definition of genius.  Kant gives two definitions of productive talent, one formal and one genetic.

Natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial beauty, a beautiful representation of a thing.  The gift of agreeably presenting a thing which in itself, perhaps, is ugly, is called taste.  To judge of the beautiful it is sufficient to possess taste, but for its production there is still another talent needed, spirit or genius.  For an art product can fulfill the demands of taste and yet not aesthetically satisfy; while formally faultless, it may be spiritless.