of its value; for it
has ever been a maxim that faultless logic can win but little credit for
conclusions that are based on premises notoriously false. Every cloud,
however, has its silver lining, and this insensibility, though unlucky
in that it makes my friend incapable of choosing a sound basis for his
argument, mercifully blinds him to the absurdity of his conclusions
while leaving him in full enjoyment of his masterly dialectic. People
who set out from the hypothesis that Sir Edwin Landseer was the finest
painter that ever lived will feel no uneasiness about an aesthetic which
proves that Giotto was the worst. So, my friend, when he arrives very
logically at the conclusion that a work of art should be small or round
or smooth, or that to appreciate fully a picture you should pace smartly
before it or set it spinning like a top, cannot guess why I ask him
whether he has lately been to Cambridge, a place he sometimes visits.

On the other hand, people who respond immediately and surely to works of
art, though, in my judgment, more enviable than men of massive intellect
but slight sensibility, are often quite as incapable of talking sense
about aesthetics. Their heads are not always very clear. They possess
the data on which any system must be based; but, generally, they want
the power that draws correct inferences from true data. Having received
aesthetic emotions from works of art, they are in a position to seek out
the quality common to all that have moved them, but, in fact, they do
nothing of the sort. I do not blame them. Why should they bother to
examine their feelings when for them to feel is enough? Why should they
stop to think when they are not very good at thinking? Why should they
hunt for a common quality in all objects that move them in a particular
way when they can linger over the many delicious and peculiar charms of
each as it comes? So, if they write criticism and call it aesthetics, if
they imagine that they are talking about Art when they are talking about
particular works of art or even about the technique of painting, if,
loving particular works they find tedious the consideration of art in
general, perhaps they have chosen the better part. If they are not
curious about the nature of their emotion, nor about the quality common
to all objects that provoke it, they have my sympathy, and, as what they
say is often charming and suggestive, my admiration too. Only let no one
suppose that what they wr