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The excellence of man, in short, directly or indirectly, was the point about which Greek art turned; that excellence was at once aesthetic and ethical; and the representation of what was beautiful involved also the representation of what was good. This point we will now proceed to illustrate more in detail in connection with the various special branches of art. Section 3. Sculpture and Painting.

But how many more fine old traditions will the extremely sentimental traveller miss in the Italians over whom that little jostled prince in the landau will have come into his kinghood? ... The Pincio continues to beguile; it's a great resource. I am for ever being reminded of the "aesthetic luxury," as I called it above, of living in Rome.

He is to consider the work of art in its historical setting and its psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent illustration of aesthetic law."

Another element, aesthetic in motive and form, obviously related to the reproductive functions of the individual, is the display motive. This motive of display is concerned especially with the idea of courage. It is of course a deep desire of the male to display courage before the female.

If simple poetry produces different impressions I do not, of course, speak of the impressions that are connected with the nature of the subject, but only of those that are dependent on poetic execution the whole difference is in the degree; there is only one way of feeling, which varies from more to less; even the diversity of external forms changes nothing in the quality of aesthetic impressions.

It is by our aesthetic appreciation, more than we commonly understand, that we judge life as a totality, that we estimate the fitness of its parts to belong to the whole, and that indeed we guide life when we judge it not according to principles which so often are seen to be inadequate, but when we try to bring to bear our utmost of powers of appreciation and to find ultimate values.

The popular taste in these matters is to be seen in the prevalent high appreciation of topiary work and of the conventional flower-beds of public grounds. Perhaps as happy an illustration as may be had of this dominance of pecuniary beauty over aesthetic beauty in middle-class tastes is seen in the reconstruction of the grounds lately occupied by the Columbian Exposition.

Madeline whom her sisters addressed affectionately as "Mad" professed a wider intellectual scope; less given to the melting mood than Barbara, less naive in her enthusiasms, she took for her province aesthetic criticism in its totality, and shone rather in censure than in laudation.

'Ah, but it isn't everybody who can isolate himself so utterly from the workaday world and live so completely in his own little paradise of art as you can, my dear fellow. Non omnia possumus omnes. You seem to be always up in the aesthetic clouds, with your own music automatically laid on, and no need of cherubim or seraphim to chant continually for your gratification.

Not only do we find it naively employed in the works of secondary personages who have drifted into the ranks of authors merely by accident, as in the account of Caesar's second Spanish war, but we shall meet it also with an impress more or less distinct in literature proper, in the mime, in the semi-romance, in the aesthetic writings of Varro; and it is a significant circumstance, that it maintains itself precisely in the most national departments of literature, and that truly conservative men, like Varro, take it into protection.