ness, their
devotion to high moral and intellectual standards, only lift them, as
they do Whitman, out of the world of mere decorative art up to the
world of heroic and creative art where art as such does not obtrude
itself.

XV

Emerson wonders why it is that man eating does not attract the
imagination or attract the artist: "Why is our diet and table not
agreeable to the imagination, whilst all other creatures eat without
shame? We paint the bird pecking at fruit, the browsing ox, the lion
leaping on his prey, but no painter ever ventured to draw a man
eating. The difference seems to consist in the presence or absence of
the world at the feast. The diet is base, be it what it may, that is
hidden in caves or cellars or houses.... Did you ever eat your bread
on the top of a mountain, or drink water there? Did you ever camp out
with lumbermen or travellers in the prairie? Did you ever eat the
poorest rye or oatcake with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness? and
did you not find that the mixture of sun and sky with your bread gave
it a certain mundane savour and comeliness?"

I do not think Emerson hits on the true explanation of why man feeding
is not an attractive subject for the painter. It is not that the diet
is base and is hidden in caves and cellars, or that the world is not
present at the feast. It is because eating is a purely selfish animal
occupation; there is no touch of the noble or the idyllic or the
heroic in it. In the act man confesses his animal nature; he is no
longer an Emerson, a Dante, a Plato--he is simply a physiological
contrivance taking in nutriment. The highest and the lowest are for
the moment on the same level. The lady and her maid, the lord and his
lackey are all one. Eating your bread on a mountain-top or in the camp
of lumbermen or with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness adds a new
element. Here the picture has all nature for a background and the
imagination is moved. The rye and the oatcake now become a kind of
heavenly manna, or, as Fitzgerald has it, under such conditions the
wilderness is Paradise enow. The simple act of feeding does not now
engross the attention. Associate with the act of eating any worthy or
noble idea, and it is at once lifted to a higher level. A mother
feeding her child, a cook passing food to the tramp at the door or to
other hungry and forlorn wayfarers, or soldiers pausing to eat their
rations in the field, or fishermen beside the stream, or the haymaker