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should not be what we are. dise around them-man's is ever before him, moving forward as he moves.

Whatever our ideals are, false or true, elevated or low, they are sure to exert a most healthful or a most baneful influence upon satisfaction and success. It is much less what we are and possess than what we imagine that we ought to be and to have, that is decisive of happiness and misery.

All that can be said, then, tends to enforce the culture and discipline of the imagination—imagination as distinguished from that seductive and enervating state known as reverie or castle-building. This culture is needed primarily to counteract the proneness to materialism and earthiness. It is needed to enable us to see the great power, beauty, and wisdom of things; to subordinate the means of living to the ends of life, to beget in us a noble unrest, an ever-renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on of the motions of life. The very existence of the imagination is proof that it may be improved to our good, or neglected and abused to our harm. Of direct means, the whole is comprised in two words - food and exercise. Seek true visions, dream noble dreams. Goethe advises us to have constantly before our eyes, that is, in the room we most frequent, some work of the best attainable art. Cultivate fellowship with nature, and in literature surround yourselves with the genial presence of the high-minded.

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CHAPTER XII.

ESTHETICS OF EXPRESSION - TASTE.

Taste, like Imagination, is a word which has been forced to extend its services far beyond the point to which philosophy would have confined them. It is a metaphor, taken from a passive sense of the human body, and transferred to things which are in their essence not passive to intellectual acts and operations.-WORDSWORTH.

WHEN in the sphere of sense certain objects are

brought in contact with the appropriate physical organ, there is first an affection of the sensibility, a mere feeling, of which we are cognizant; then a judgment that the object so affecting us possesses such and such qualiis sweet, sour, bitter, etc. In other words, we say

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that the thing tastes so and so.

When, again, we regard

a splendid sunset or a noble statue, we are conscious of an emotion—an emotion of pleasure and delight; then find ourselves exclaiming mentally or aloud, 'How beautiful!' or 'How grand!' We may presently observe with careful eye the details, and the relation of the several parts to the whole, seeking to know what it is in the one or the other that pleases us; and we are gratified the more or the less, in proportion as we ascertain its merits or defects.

Between the two cases there is some analogy, sufficient to suggest a transfer of name from the former to the latter; and hence, in many languages, the power of perceiving the beautiful and sublime in nature, art, and literature, is called Taste. High sensibility, lovingness, which is an attribute of all noble minds, is, indeed, the foundation, the spring, the life. There is neither motive

nor opportunity for the exercise of perceptive power, if pleasure be wanting. Hence Burke's definition of taste'That faculty or those faculties of the mind which are affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and the elegant arts'; and Alison's "That faculty of the mind by which we perceive and enjoy whatever is beautiful or sublime in the works of nature and art.' Philosophically, however, the word denotes the intellectual rather than the emotional element of the process. The two are closely related, yet clearly distinguishable. The latter is passive-is the capability of being moved; the former is active is the capability of judging as to the beauty or deformity, merit or demerit, of a thing-of discerning the fitness of particular causes to produce in us particular effects. The one is more native; the other, more acquired. The peasant and the savage have lively sensibility, but little or no discrimination. The accomplished musician has most critical knowledge, but the listening and wondering child, who judges scarcely or not at all, may feel most. Of taste, therefore, in the metaphorical meaning, it has been said with much. justness: The essential element which constitutes it, pertains to the reason; it is, in truth, only one of the forms of this sovereign power, which takes different names according to the objects which it deals with reason, properly speaking, when it employs itself in the sphere of speculative truth; conscience, when it reveals to us truths moral and practical; tuste, when it appreciates the beauty and suitableness of objects in the real world, or of works of art.'

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Nor is taste to be confounded with imagination. The first may be essentially defective where the second exists. in a high degree, as happens always with children and barbarians, and not infrequently with the productions of

1 Benard.

the poet, the painter, the orator. The second is producer, creator; the first is lawgiver, director. The distinction is much the same as between talent and genius. One is executive power, power of criticism, power of conscious reflection, power to adapt means to ends. The other is superior power of instinct, spontaneous intuition, power to originate new forms out of old matter. Both are royal guests, not often lodged in the same body.

Taste, like every other faculty of the mind, depends on circumstances for the degree of its development, and the mode of its action. What one age or individual approves another will condemn. The Indian rejoices in the disfigurement of his body by tattooing, paint, and feathers. The Asiatics preferred in poetry and eloquence the tumid, the ornamental, the gaudy; the Greeks admired the chaste and simple. Rome thought the architectural style of Athens too tame, and in all her public buildings sought to dazzle by luxurious decoration. The Middle Age loved the dark and massive, and reviving Europe gave her favor to the imposing and bewildering Gothic. The metaphysical quibbling of the Dark Age had its day of popularity. The Elizabethan Euphuists, now fallen into neglect, enjoyed unbounded applause. During the Restoration, an affected brilliancy of wit was the fashion in vogue. We speak not of the diversity among contemporaneous nations, nor of that which is matter of daily and familiar observation with each. Birth, previous training, habits of thought, are modifying influences. You have all heard of the mathematician that could never find anything sublime in Paradise Lost, but 'could never read the queries at the end of Newton's Optics without feeling his hair stand on end and his blood run cold.'

Civilization moves forward. The ideals of yesterday are shown to be false by the ideals of to-morrow, which are only relatively true. The finalities of the past yield

to the larger generalizations of the present, and each denotes the height of the human soul in its hour. Otherwise expressed, taste is variant but progressive, as are other forms of mental activity - conscience, for instance. Its decisions are not all equally correct, and where they are conflictive, those must be esteemed just and true that coincide with the concurrent voice of the majority of the educated, reflective, and practiced. But have we, then, it will be said, no other criterion of what is beautiful, than the approbation of the majority? Must we collect the voices of others, before we form any judgment for ourselves, of what deserves applause in eloquence or poetry? By no means; there are principles of reason and sound judgment which can be applied to matters of taste, as well as to the subjects of science and philosophy. He who admires or censures any work of genius, is always ready. if his taste be in any degree improved, to assign some reasons for his decision. He appeals to principles, and points out the grounds on which he proceeds. Taste is a sort of compound power, in which the light of the understanding always mingles, more or less, with the feelings of sentiment.'

That we are bound to like one thing rather than another, is granted generally by men's speaking of bad or good taste, though frequently denied, when we pass to particulars, by the assertion of each that he has a right to his opinion. Good taste conforms to the authority of judges who stand for that ultimate approximation or unity of preferences to which changes of opinion arrive in consequence of experience. Bad taste violates the rules and principles by which sensitive and well informed. minds are guided in such matters. "Our purity of taste,' says Ruskin, 'is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we may be sure that

1 Dr. Blair.

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