Our joy in artefacts is always vain, but there are, if not degrees of narcissism, more or less direct paths by which the reflection may reach us. Arts which take the roundabout way, such as music as non-representational painting, appear to gesture in the direction of transcendent objectivity, and their admirers, Schopenhauer and his remarks on music are an example, claim that they are free of human self-obsession altogether. But the applauding audience at any concert, the great prices paid for a picture, are conclusive proof that they are very far from that. Once detected, these arts become all the more distasteful for their failed deception, and their persistent apologists little better than those who take their whisky from a teapot.