“ not only is artistic achievement not cumulative, but it seems even to depend upon a certain freshness and naïveté of impulse and vision which civilisation tends to destroy. ”
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1910). copy citation
| Author | Bertrand Russell |
|---|---|
| Source | Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays |
| Topic | achievement freshness |
| Date | 1910 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm |
Context
“the men of Greece or of the Renaissance did better than any men do now; the triumphs of former ages, so far from facilitating fresh triumphs in our own age, actually increase the difficulty of fresh triumphs by rendering originality harder of attainment; not only is artistic achievement not cumulative, but it seems even to depend upon a certain freshness and naïveté of impulse and vision which civilisation tends to destroy. Hence comes, to those who have been nourished on the literary and artistic productions of former ages, a certain peevishness and undue fastidiousness towards the present, from which there seems no escape except into the deliberate vandalism which ignores tradition and in the search after originality achieves only the eccentric.”
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