The Life of the Caterpillar 



with the crew. A nail-paring, curved like a 

 horn, encompasses the ship and serves as a 

 speaking-trumpet; a tooth-pick, which touches 

 the vessel with its tapering end and the lips 

 of the giant, some thousand fathoms above, 

 with the other, serves as a telephone. The 

 outcome of the famous dialogue is that, if we 

 would form a sound judgment of things and 

 see them under fresh aspects, there is nothing 

 like changing one's planet. 



The probability then is that the Sirian 

 would have had a rather poor notion of our 

 artistic beauties. To him our masterpieces 

 of statuary, even though sprung from the 

 chisel of a Phidias, would be mere dolls of 

 marble or bronze, hardly more worthy of in- 

 terest than the children's rubber dolls are to 

 us; our landscape-paintings would be re- 

 garded as dishes of spinach smelling unpleas- 

 antly of oil; our opera-scores would be de- 

 scribed as very expensive noises. 



These things, belonging to the domain of 

 the senses, possess a relative aesthetic value, 

 subordinated to the organism that judges 

 them. Certainly the Venus of Melos and the 

 Apollo Belvedere are superb works; but even 

 so it takes a special eye to appreciate them. 

 18 



