 A second important idea, which he already develops in the Critical Forests and then repeats in the Calligone, concerns the very concept of beauty. He argues, plausibly, that the concept’s origins lay in visual experience (as, he thinks, is suggested by an etymological connection in German between the words schön [beautiful] and Schein [shine, appearance]), but that it has since been extended from that primary domain to cover virtually “everything that has a pleasurable effect on the soul”, that in this sense “sight … allegorizes the images, the representations, the conceits of the soul”, so that beauty just becomes our most general term of approval for whatever we find pleasing in relation to any of the senses and indeed even mental life more broadly (G2:289–291).