92 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



more social, has had for its province the systematizing of pure 

 ideas, that is to say, the method of reasoning and the art of 

 conversation; the other, the Itahan, more southern, more artistic, 

 and more given to imagery, has had for its province the ordi- 

 nation of sensible forms, that is to say, music and the arts of 

 design.' 31 



As Professor Barzun has indicated, with impressive documenta- 

 tion, such arguments as these were commonplaces of the late nine- 

 teenth century and helped provide the rationale for nationalistic 

 wars. 32 



In The Philosophy of Art in the Netherlands, however, the first part, 

 on 'Permanent Causes', includes separate sections on Race and 

 Nation. The former makes a distinction between the Latin and 

 Germanic races, but the discussion is not restricted to biology, 

 referring also to differences of social arrangements (family life, 

 politics) and intellectual activities (Classic versus Romantic in 

 literature and art. Catholic versus Protestant in religion). Here 

 Race is a relatively broad concept, covering large groups of 

 nations; derived from 'innate qualities' which are related to 

 'blood' and 'animal faculties' and 'climate' ^3; and resulting in a 

 special type of psychology and history. 34 



The Nation, in the section which follows, is a narrower con- 

 cept, more intimately associated with milieu, and especially with 

 geography: 'This race, thus endowed, has received various im- 

 prints, according to the various conditions of its abiding-place. . . . 

 Ten centuries of habitation have done their work ... in addition 

 to its innate character, there is an acquired character.' 35 The latter 

 is a product of 'the soil and the sky', and so forth36; in brief, 'AH 

 circumstances, moral and physical, their geographical and 

 political state, the past and the present, combine to one end', 37 

 and that is the production of a nation in which 'one faculty and 

 one tendency' is dominant. In painting, a certain kind of colouring 

 results: 'Here, as at Venice, art has followed nature, the hand 

 having httn forcibly guided by optical sensations. '38 



Similarly, The Philosophy of Art in Greece begins with a discussion 

 of Race, and here the line between physiology and geography is 

 especially hard to draw, because, for lack of a detailed history of 

 art itself, 'we are more than ever obliged to consider the people 

 who executed it, the social habits which stimulated it, and the 

 milieu out of which it sprung'. 39 The previously mentioned divi- 



