SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 167 



element coming in, and truth to nature depends entirely 

 upon the intellectual culture of the person to whom art is 

 addressed. If you are in Australia, you may get credit for 

 being a good artist — I mean among the natives — if you can 

 draw a kangaroo after a fashion. But, among men of 

 higher civilisation, the intellectual knowledge we possess 

 brings its criticism into our appreciation of works of art, 

 and we are obliged to satisfy it, as well as the mere sense of 

 beauty in colour and in outline. And so, the higher the 

 culture and information of those whom art addresses, the 

 more exact and precise must be what we call its "truth to 

 nature." 



If we turn to literature, the same thing is true, and you 

 find works of literature which may be said to be pure art. 

 A little song of Shakespeare or of Goethe is pure art; it is 

 exquisitely beautiful, although its intellectual content may 

 be nothing. A series of pictures is made to pass before your 

 mind by the meaning of words, and the effect is a melody 

 of ideas. Nevertheless, the great mass of the literature we 

 esteem is valued, not merely because of having artistic form, 

 but because of its intellectual content; and the value is the 

 higher the more precise, distinct, and true is that intellectual 

 content. And, if you will let me for a moment speak of the 

 very highest forms of literature, do we not regard them as 

 highest simply because the more we know the truer they 

 seem, and the more competent we are to appreciate beauty 

 the more beautiful they are? No man ever understands 

 Shakespeare unt!l he is old, though the youngest may ad- 

 mire him, the reason being that he satisfies the artistic in- 

 stinct of the youngest and harmonises with the ripest and 

 richest experience of the oldest. 



I have said this much to draw your attention to what, 

 in my mind, lies at the root of all this matter, and at the 



