  As the popularity of Schopenhauer’s subsequent presentation of this view demonstrates, Moritz has surely here captured an aspect of the experience of artistic—or for that matter natural—beauty that many people have felt. But so far his conception of and argument for the idea of the beautiful as that which is perfect and complete in itself has been entirely negative; what is it in a beautiful object that can so please us and yet distract us completely from our ordinary concern with ourselves and our own pleasures?