Louis Viardot

“ Art belongs only to certain exceptional natures, very rare because they are highly endowed, whose possessors must combine with the choicest moral faculties, imagination with judgment, feeling with taste, other precious physical faculties, clearness of view, and precision of touch. All men may be artisans; only the best, the aristoi, can be artists.
To conclude, and still taking the phrase "æsthetic sense" in its highest and perfect meaning, we first deny it to animals; and next, holding this delicate sense to be one of the noblest attributes of mankind, we restrict it to civilized man ”

“ Far from that; it is like that aristocratic democracy of Athens, in which each citizen had his personal vote only, and could prevail only on condition of convincing. As in the domain of the good there is but one authority conscience, so there is but one authority—in the domain of the beautiful—taste. ”

“ They find the proof of this rather bold assertion, not in natural selection, which is a result of that struggle for life in which the weakest individuals among species, and the weakest species among genera, must disappear, but in sexual selection, which is a result of the struggle for reproduction, leading straight to the same consequences, namely, to the improvement of species and genera, which reaches, by slow elaboration through ages, even to their transformation. Among all animals, they say, among insects, fish, birds, mammals, the male chooses his female, and the female chooses her mate. ”

“ Now, the slaves, charged with all manual tasks, and practising all the trades, relieved their masters from bodily labor, made them men of leisure, and consecrated them to the exclusive cultivation of the intellect, like the head of a body of which they were themselves the acting and subject limbs. That Athenian democracy, how jealous soever it might be of equality between citizens, was thus a real aristocracy ”

“ A priori, were we to assert that equality before the law means equality in intelligences, and that every man who has the right to be a citizen has the power to be an artist, we should commit a fundamental mistake. This would be confounding the feeling of the good in our nature with the feeling of the beautiful. ”

“ We have never put much faith in the stories invented by the Greeks and collected by Pliny; we have never remarked, in our long experience as a sportsman, that the most intelligent of man's companions ever gave the least attention to any object represented by painting or sculpture, even to his master's portrait, or that he looked with any feeling of satisfaction at one of those charming landscapes set before us at every step by Nature, enchanting as their view is to us. ”

“ They point out that this process of choice, in which beauty wins the prize, takes place only at the season of pairing, and ceases through all the rest of the year; that if we concede to the animal a sense of the beautiful, within those limits, still the sense has but one special object, finds its range within the species merely, never reaches to a less concrete conception, does not widen, does not perfect itself by tradition and culture, remains unchangeably set on the same object, the same time, the same point ”

“ But another dispute has just been opened on this question: "Have animals the sense of beauty, the æsthetic sense?" The famous Charles Darwin, and his numerous followers agreeing with him, displaying even greater generosity than Montaigne, Leibnitz, and La Fontaine, answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative. In their view, just as animals are endowed with intelligence as well as man, though in a lower degree, so in the same way and in the same proportion they are endowed with the sense of beauty. ”

“ The latter is a certain delicacy of sensation and of judgment which is formed very gradually in the course of life; it is called taste, and is useful only to a few. The feeling of the good, which marks the grand superiority of man over the animals, and forms the common basis of all societies, is an essential element in our nature, a gift we are forced to accept from the creative power. Without it, man would not be man. ”

“ On the contrary, the feeling of the beautiful, which is less necessary, and may well be rare because it is superfluous, is an acquisition won by intelligence, slowly, painfully, uncertainly, and is often denied to the most honest efforts. One, like rank, costs nothing but the trouble of being born: the other demands, as all acquired knowledge does, a previous fitness, a kind of revelation, in which chance must often lend Nature its aid, besides time, reflection, mental labor in bodily leisure. ”

“ Among mankind art has been, and always will be, the exclusive share of a small minority; in fact, a very choice and very limited aristocracy. It is assuredly not that of birth, for there is nothing more personal than genius or talent. ”

“ All savages would answer in the same way, yet they are men. But, although they too love beauty after their fashion, though they have a strong liking for ornament, a great disposition for coquetry, savages do not go further than the special and individual object; they do not rise to a general, abstract idea; they know no more than the dog knows about seeing life in the representation of a living being. ”

“ Those who choose to attribute too liberally to all men the sense of the beautiful as well as that of the good, attempt to support their opinion by a fact. They cite the instance of Athens, where, they say, competition in the arts was open to all in the public arena, where the whole people formed the tribunal. ”

“ Without insisting on the special genius of ancient Greece among the other nations of the world, and that of the Athenian people among the other peoples of Greece, I will merely point out that this people of Athens, so small in its territory and population, so great in its deeds and renown, consisted of about forty thousand free citizens, served by four hundred thousand slaves. ”

“ It is not the expression of life in general that he wants; it is life itself, individual life, life which speaks to his senses, and to that of smell much more strongly than to his eyes and ears. He has no concern with the general, the ideal, the admirable ”

“ THE mind of animals is a very old subject of discussion. Descartes and his school regarded an animal as a mere piece of machinery, like a clock or a turnspit. For man alone they reserved intelligence, meaning by that, memory, feeling, will, and reason. ”

“ There is exactly the element worthy of admiration, that is to say, the expression of life by means of the most attractive colors and the most perfect forms. What does the quadruped care for these as he looks at this wonder? ”

“ A petit jury, though it decides on the liberty, life, and honor of an accused person, is drawn merely by lot, because each citizen can judge as well as every other, upon evidence and discussion, of the truth and morality of an alleged fact. ”

“ Only, conscience speaks the same language to all the men of one community; while taste, on the contrary, even acquired and formed taste, is as manifold as temperaments, ideas, and passions are. It varies from country to country in every age, and from age to age in every country. Still further, it varies between man and man, and in each man, at different periods of life. The bear in the fable very sensibly says ”

“ Therefore it is in vain, as if in strict pursuance of a duty, to read all books, listen to all counsels, ask advice from people supposed to be cleverer than one's self, and prop up one's judgment by more sure and authoritative judgments. In the criticism of art, where positive canons are wanting, no one is suffered to deem himself an authority ”

“ This general fact, well established under differences of appearance among all species and all genera, gives the Darwinian school ground for asserting that animals, having the perception of beauty, have consequently the æsthetic sense. ”

“ However, not to overstep the very modest part suited to mere writers and professional critics, let us hasten to add that, if in art the public voice is that of a very small number, but acute, practised, and disinterestedly enthusiastic ”

“ But is M. Lévêque quite certain that all men have any greater faculty for that notice and that knowledge which are wanting in the dog? Have savages got above the level of animals in this respect? A traveler, who has studied Australia thoroughly, relates that at a gathering of some native inhabitants of that country he brought out portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, to see what they would think of them. ”