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The philistine yawned and turned his passengers' thoughts to a more interesting matter. "See there." He pointed to a thin low-lying cloud on the western horizon. "That's the city. 'Most sixty miles. Done it in two hours, up-hill more'n half the way, too." "That's very good time, isn't it?" said Jonathan politely. "Humph!" The philistine's disdain was marked. "We'll do better'n that goin' back.
Now, there are many red rags in the various arts with which to encompass the discomfiture of the Philistine's bull, and the raven will always appropriate the feathers of the peacock and look ridiculous in them; but the rapier enwreathed in the red rag of painting is more readily rushed upon, and plumes of appreciation more wantonly borrowed and grotesquely worn in this walk of art than in any other."
Much that she was condemned for venturing to put forward we should simply take for granted in England, where whichever system work the best in practice to the strictest Philistine's ideas of propriety there is nothing unbecoming in a love-match.
The streets were full of rowdy bands of men who sang and shouted all together, now pushing one another in violent rudeness, now shouting "Health to the New Year," here knocking off an angry Philistine's hat, there surrounding and embracing some honest man who was wearily making his way homeward; insulting the police by imitating their military ways, laying hold of their sticks, talking pompously to the night-watchman, and otherwise playing the fool.
In a moment of unlimited frankness, Strauss himself indeed adds: "Merck was always in my thoughts, calling out, 'Don't produce such child's play again; others can do that too!" That was the voice of the real Straussian genius, which also asked him what the worth of his newest, innocent, and lightly equipped modern Philistine's testament was. Others can do that too! And many could do it better.
Hence, instead of being a hindrance, art ought to be a help to a rational morality: its realism should foster sincerity, its imagination, sympathy and justice. The philistine's objection to art is that it is useless. And if we only knew what was really useful, this would be a damning indictment. But, not being much given to abstract reflection, the philistine is usually at a loss to inform us.
That our age permits so few to live beautifully is sad, but it is far worse that it gives to so few the opportunity and the courage to die worthily. Our generation ill understands how to lives but it knows even less how to die. Most die, not the quite unappalling death of the hero, but the horrible Philistine's death, as Goethe called it.
I shall not be myself again till I've been blown up! 'I suppose you are doing it for yourself, and that is worse, said Lance. 'And you know it was all your doing, for going to that disgusting old Philistine's tea and cake. 'What, you and Clem wanted me to lead you about, like two dogs in a string? said Lance. 'No; Tina would have kept the baby-bunting out of harm's way.
Joe, or Noel, or Sabattis may seem to the American Philistine to be a ragged, miserable, ignorant Indian; but to the scholar he is by far the Philistine's superior in that which life is best worth living for. The magic of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot, like the magician himself, is called meteowlin, m'deoolin or m'teoulin. It is the same effectively as meda, which is from the same root.
Innate cowardice, which is the Philistine's birthright, would not be incompatible with this mode of development, and it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible in the want of logic of those sentences of Strauss's which it needed courage to pronounce. They sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air.
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