  He does so by means of the more particular argument that our pleasure in beauty is in fact a pleasure in our sensed or felt recognition of an object’s adaptation to its environment, together with the premise that such a pleasure cannot be felt without a recognition of the application of a relevant concept to the object. Herder argues for this premise by going through a series of cases, precisely the kinds of particular examples that he accuses Kant of neglecting. First he considers figures (Gestalten), then colors and tones, and then a series of kinds of natural things, from stones and crystals to a series of living things ranging from flowers to human beings. In all of these cases, he argues, we respond to a recognition of the character of a thing and its relation to its environment that is necessarily mediated by our application of a concept to it. Before we consider whether this is a fair objection to Kant, more generally whether there is as much distance between Kant’s views and Herder’s as Herder himself believes, let us ask why Herder thinks such perception of an object’s essence and its well-being in its environment is so pleasing to us and so important for our own sense of well-being.