 That means that beauty makes demands on us, demands that, according to the romantics, are analogous to the demands that other persons make on us. Beautiful objects make a claim on us to respond to them as the specific individuals that they are, on their own terms: “See your statues, your paintings, your friends as they are” (Diderot, Salon of 1767). Hence, the romantic declaration, “one cannot really speak of poetry except in the language of poetry” (F. Schlegel, DP). 