137. ABHINAVAGUPAT'S THEORY OF ÆSTHETICS 157

ABHINAVAGUPAT'S THEORY OF ÆSTHETICS 157

look, paraphernalia and the psychic state, as indicated by the gestures and grimaces, no element of the actor's . personality is distinctly perceptible. Therefore, we cannot recognise the actor in the presented figure. The figure to all intents and purposes is an historical figure. But the time and some other factors do not permit the recogni- tion of the historic person in him. The presentation is thus made up of the conflicting elements. What happens then is this. The mind by its nature is so constituted that once it is drawn to a situation and feels pleasure in it, it ignores all that is dull and conflicting in it. There is the famous saying "there is no rose with- out its thorn." Does it, therefore, follow that there is no beauty in nature ? No, the mind that loves natural beauty, while appreciating the rose, ignores the thorn, though both are presented simultaneously. Hence at the presentation of an æsthetic situation, the mind, because of the æsthetic attitude of the audience, rejects all that is conflicting in the presentation and retains the rest. Thus the three conflicting elements in the presented, the time, the place and the person, as has already been stated, are inhibited and the rest affects the consciousness of the audience. In short, the æsthete is affected by the presented psycho-physical condition of the hero, free from all elements of individuality, time and place. This freedom of the presented from the above three elements is what is technically called universalisation or Sadharanībhava of the objective aspect. But identification is the union of the self-forgetful self of the percipient with the psycho-physical conditions of the hero. How this happens in the case of an æsthetic observer is not difficult to explain. We have already stated that the state of self-forgetfulness is brought about in the spectator, possessed of æsthetic suscepti-