For Scruton, art and beauty matter in the same way that moral virtues matter: they are ways of fulfilling our human nature and, as we extend and develop our experience of them, we deepen our capacity for thought and feeling. This may sound pious and preachy when summarised so abstractly; but the case he makes is built on concrete examples, and seldom veers away from genuine experience.

Except for one point. When he writes that great art tells us the "truth", in words, images, or melodies, I stumble over that final claim. What "truth" is expressed by a beautiful tune? If it is a sad tune, it may indeed express a sadness that is deeply compelling; but that particular sad feeling is the feeling of that particular tune, and not of some more general sadness which the tune might be "stating", truthfully or otherwise. Words can state things, and it is noticeable that when Scruton tries to make his case about music here, he always falls back on songs-music with words.

Perhaps the answer is that while the feelings expressed by music have some generic connection with our feelings in ordinary life, they are still significantly different: they are musical feelings, which we have gradually learned to feel, as we have learned to listen to music. And if this is true of music, it may also be true of the other arts. Yes, our experience of artistic beauty may be rooted, as Scruton says, in ordinary life. But there can surely be some difference in kind, and some distance, between the root and the flower.