Project Gutenberg

“ In the poetic contemplation of nature, her forces, her gladness and other moods, this imaginative activity, though still deriving leading to an investment of natural objects with a new and more fanciful meaning, as when we ``apperceive'' a willow drooping over a pond or the front of an old cottage under a quasi-human form, endowing it with something akin to our own feelings and memories. What, it may be asked, is the whole range of this freer play of a life-giving fancy in our aesthetic enjoyment? ”

“ In Brittany the people flock into the cemeteries at nightfall to kneel bare-headed at the graves of their loved ones, and to toll the hollow of the tombstone with holy water or to pour libations of milk upon it, and at bedtime the supper is left on the table for the soul's refreshment. ”

“ According to Schelling a new philosophical significance is given to art by the doctrine that the identity of subject and object—which is half disguised in ordinary perception and volition—is only clearly seen in artistic perception. The perfect perception of its real self by intelligence in the work of art is accompanied by a feeling of infinite satisfaction. Art in thus effecting a revelation of the absolute seems to attain a dignity not merely above that of nature but above that of philosophy itself. Schelling throws but little light on the concrete forms of beauty. ”

“ Some contemplation and appreciation of the beautiful aspects of nature is not only prior in time to art, but is a condition of its genesis. The enjoyment of the pleasing aspects of land and sea, of mountain and dale, of the innumerable organic forms, has steadily grown with the development of culture; and this growth, though undoubtedly aided by that of the feeling for art—-especially painting and poetry—-is to a large extent independent of it.12 Some of the finest insight into the secrets of beauty has been gained by those who had only a limited acquaintance with art. ”

“ ABSOLUTISM, in aesthetics, a term applied to the theory that beauty is an objective attribute of things, not merely a subjective feeling of pleasure in him who perceives. It follows that there is an absolute standard of the beautiful by which all objects can be judged. The fact that, in practice, the judgments even of connoisseurs are perpetually at variance, and that the so-called criteria of one place or period are more or less opposed to those of all others, is explained away by the hypothesis that individuals are differently gifted in respect of the capacity to appreciate. ”

“ Great Britain and Portugal, when they found their interests threatened, bestirred themselves, while Italy also conceived it necessary to become an African power. Great Britain awoke to the need for action too late to secure predominance in all the regions where formerly hers was the only European influence. She had to contend not only with the economic forces which urged her rivals to action, but had also to combat the jealous opposition of almost every European nation to the further growth of British power. Italy alone acted throughout in cordial co-operation with Great Britain. ”

“ That city, founded by Alexander the Great about the time when Greece, in losing her national independence, lost also her intellectual supremacy, was in every way admirably adapted for becoming the new centre of the world's activity and thought. Its situation brought it into commercial relations with all the nations lying around the Mediterranean, and at the same time rendered it the one communicating link with the wealth and civilization of the East. The great natural advantages it thus enjoyed were artificially increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt. ”

“ As to the precise forms in which the idea of beauty reveals itself, Plato is not very decided. His theory of an absolute beauty does not easily adjust itself to the notion of its contributing merely a variety of sensuous pleasure, to which he appears to lean in some dialogues. He tends to identify the self-beautiful with the conceptions of the true and the good, and thus there arose the Platonic formula kalokagathia. So far as his writings embody the notion of any common element in beautiful objects, it is proportion, harmony or unity among their parts. ”

“ Similarly, when we delight in the divided spaces of a Gothic roof, so far from being imaginatively engaged in taking part in the efforts and strains of pillar, arch and the rest, we move in fancy along the pathways defined by the designer, tactually feeling and appreciating each dimension, each detail of form. The attempt to force a theory fitted for poetry on sculpture and architecture would rob these of their distinctive aesthetic values; in the one case, of the plastic beauty of finely moulded marble surfaces as realized by imaginative excursions of the hand ”

“ It has substituted pomp for grandeur, school routine for individual inspiration, elaborateness for simplicity, fadeur and the monotony of literary orthodoxy for variety, the source and spring of intellectual life; and in the works produced under its auspices we discover the rhetorician and the writer, never the man. By all its traditions the academy was made to be the natural ornament of a monarchical society. Richelieu conceived and created it as a sort of superior centralization applied to intellect, as a high literary court to maintain intellectual unity and protest against innovation. ”

“ A mere glance at the facts will suffice to convince us that we do not. We call the facade of a Greek temple beautiful with special reference to its admirable form; whereas in predicating beauty of the ruin of a Norman castle we refer rather to what the ruin means—-to the effect of an imagination of its past proud strength and slow vanquishment by the unrelenting strokes of time. ”

“ Is beauty a single quality in objects?
At the outset we are confronted with an old and almost baffling question: ``Is beauty a single quality inherent in objects of perception like form or colour?'' Common language certainly suggests that it is. Aesthetics, too, began its inquiry at the same point of view, and its history shows how much pains men have taken in trying to determine the nature of this attribute, as well as that of the faculty of the soul by which it is perceived. ”

“ The navy is the only force that can safeguard the British islands from hostile descents; it is the only force that can protect their vast sea-borne commerce and food supplies; by giving safety to the home country it sets British troops free for operations abroad, and makes their passage secure; and thus, as also by giving command of the sea, the fleet is the means by which the empire is guarded and has become a true imperial bond. It is natural for British admiralty administration to be taken here as the type of an efficient system. ”

“ In Crete, at least, the excavations show that the old civilization must have ended in a social and political cataclysm. The magnificent palace of Minos—there seems no reason to withhold from it the name of the great prince whom Thucydides recognized as the first to hold the empire of the sea—perished by the flames, and it evidently had been plundered beforehand of everything that a conqueror would regard as valuable. The only force in Greek history which we know that could have produced this change was that of the Dorian conquest. ”

“ In one country he meets with women who, after the burial in the winter, become alive again in the spring full of youth and beauty. Having reached the ends of the earth and conquered all nations, he aspires to the dominion of the air. He obtains a magic glass cage, yoked with eight griffins, flies through the clouds, and, thanks to enchanters who know the language of birds, gets information as to their manners and customs, and ultimately receives their submission. ”

“ To unite the Greek race in a war against the Persian empire was set up as the ultimate mark for ambition, the theme of idealists. The great literary achievements of the Greeks in the 5th century lay already far enough behind to have become invested with a classical dignity; the meaning of Hellenic civilization had been made concrete in a way which might sustain enthusiasm for a body of ideal values, authoritative by tradition. ”

“ Even when we are moved by a tragedy our feeling is comparatively restrained. A rare exhibition of beauty may thrill the soul for a moment, yet in general the enjoyment of it is far removed from the excitement of passion. ”

“ If he has seen any one soap so persistently advertised that his memory retains its name, he will ask for it, not because he has any reason to believe it to be better or cheaper than others, but simply because he baffles the shopkeeper, and assumes an authoritative attitude by exerting his own freedom of choice. This curious and obscure principle of action probably lies at the root of all poster advertising, for the poster does not set forth an argument as does the newspaper advertisement. ”

“ It is argued that we do in fact conceive it in as much as we do conceive Unity, Being, Truth. The conception is so clear that its inexplicability (admitted) is of no account. Further, since the unity of our thought implies the absolute, and since the existence of things is known only to thought, it appears absurd that the absolute itself should be regarded as non-existent. The Absolute is substance in itself, the ultimate basis and matter of existence. All things are merely manifestations of it, exist in virtue of it, but are not identical with it. ”

“ While as the highest phase of feeling aesthetic experience appears to belong to our subjective life, the hidden region of the soul, it is connected just as clearly, through the act of sense-perception, with the world of objects which is our common possession. Being thus dependent on a contemplation of things in this common world it raises the question whether, like the perception of these objects, it is a uniform experience, the same for others as for myself. ”

“ On the whole the influence of the French Academy has been conservative rather than creative. It has done much by its example for style, but its attempts to impose its laws on language have, from the nature of the case, failed. For, however perfectly a dictionary or a grammar may represent the existing language of a nation, an original genius is certain to arise—-a Victor Hugo or an Alfred de Musset—who will set at defiance all dictionaries and academic rules. ”

“ The condition of his subjects was deplorable, and if Cesare's rule in Romagna was an improvement on that of the local tyrants, the people of Rome have seldom been more oppressed than under the Borgia. Alexander was not the only person responsible for the general unrest in Italy and the foreign invasions, but he was ever ready to profit by them. Even if we do not accept all the stories of his murders and poisonings and immoralities as true, there is no doubt that his greed for money and his essentially vicious nature led him to commit a great number of crimes. ”