73 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



memory. But two of them, ?md the most intelligent ones among the 

 tribe, such as can count as far as four, ventured on a remark. One 

 said, " It is a boat " — the other, " It is a kangaroo." 



All savages would answer in the same way, yet they are men. But, 

 although they too love beauty after their fashion, though they have a 

 strong liking for ornament, a great disposition for coquetry, savages 

 do not go further than the special and individual object ; they do not 

 rise to a general, abstract idea ; they know no more than the dog 

 knows about seeing life in the representation of a living being. 

 Therefore we need to correct the formula of Darwin's opponents, and 

 may possibly thus succeed in bringing friends and enemies into agree- 

 ment ; their phrase must read, " The aesthetic sense belongs to civil- 

 ized man alone. 



In truth, it is not an innate faculty ; it is a faculty acquired by 

 tradition, by personal study, by the development of all the other fac- 

 ulties. The Australians must first learn to count as far as the number 

 of fingers on the hand, and something more than that, before they can 

 be able afterward to understand that pictures of a man and a woman, 

 even if disfigured with a cap or crown, are neither boats nor kangaroos. 



This assertion, that the aesthetic sense belongs only to civilized 

 man, may be proved by both philosophic methods and by arguments 

 which I take the liberty of stating concisely, as I have set them out at 

 length in a treatise on the question " How should art be encouraged ? " 

 The subject is worth the risk of incurring ridicule for copying one's self. 

 We may call it, if you choose, a second edition. 



A priori, were we to assert that equality before the law means 

 equality in intelligences, and that every man who has the right to be 

 a citizen has the power to be an artist, we should commit a funda- 

 mental mistake. This would be confounding the feeling of the good 

 in our nature with the feeling of the beautiful. The former is the in- 

 stinctive knowledge of good and evil, of the just and the unjust ; it is 

 born with us, it is conscience itself, and, as such, it is necessary for 

 all. The latter is a certain delicacy of sensation and of judgment 

 which is formed very gradually in the course of life ; it is called taste, 

 and is useful only to a few. The feeling of the good, which marks the 

 grand superiority of man over the animals, and forms the common 

 basis of all societies, is an essential element in our nature, a gift we 

 are forced to accept from the creative power. Without it, man would 

 not be man. On the contrary, the feeling of the beautiful, which is 

 less necessary, and may well be rare because it is superfluous, is an 

 acquisition won by intelligence, slowly, painfully, uncertainly, and is 

 often denied to the most honest efforts. One, like rank, costs nothing 

 but the trouble of being born : the other demands, as all acquired 

 knowledge does, a previous fitness, a kind of revelation, in which 

 chance must often lend Nature its aid, besides time, reflection, mental 

 labor in bodily leisure. 



