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Updated: May 9, 2025
Close by was a peaceful-looking river, flowing between green banks fringed with willow and marestail and pink river-herb. The house itself had a nice little garden, gay with geraniums and gladiolus, and bounded by a hedge of sunflowers which would have gladdened the heart of an aesthete. All was pure, fresh, cleanly, and perfectly quiet.
But before leaving it, we may note that the same argument cuts the other way; I mean that we should not insolently impose our own ideas of what is picturesque any more than our own ideas of what is practical. The aesthete is sometimes more of a vandal than the vandal.
Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the ascetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing.
The modern aesthete, wishing us to believe that he values beauty more than conduct, reads Mallarme, and drinks absinthe in a tavern. But this is not only his favourite kind of beauty; it is also his favourite kind of conduct.
If one reads the reverse of civilisation, or perhaps sea-pirating, or cannibalism, into the word "barbarian," then the distinction is justifiable enough. But what the aesthete obviously wishes to prove to us is, that we may be Philistines and at the same time men of culture. Therein lies the humour which poor Holderlin lacked and the need of which ultimately wrecked him. *
But Becky Sharp's eyes also were green, and the green of the aesthete does not suggest innocence. There will always be wearers of the green carnation; but the popular vogue which green has enjoyed for the last ten or fifteen years is probably passing.
Disobedient to that rule nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things. That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he said: "It is Style that makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style." For, what is Style in its true and broadest sense save fidelity to idea and mood, and perfect balance in the clothing of them?
Let us not attempt to analyse the mysterious nature of that passion which is too precious a plant to tear up by the roots in order to discover the origin of its existence, but learn rather from this lesson, so painful to us both, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of even in the philosophy of Comte, the doctrines of the aesthete, or the politics of Mr Gladstone. Ad.
The intellectualist pins his faith to the immortality of the reason. He is content to let death deprive him of everything except the logical faculty. For the aesthete beauty alone is eternal, and his hope for the future lies in the continuance of his aesthetic sense. The materialist sees permanence only in the indestructibility of the ultimate physical constituents of his body.
One cannot rhapsodize upon the beauties of a sunset, or contemplate the pale witchery of the moon with any real degree of poetic fervor, or any degree of comfort, while hunger gnaws at one's vitals, for comfort is essential to your aesthete, and, after all, soul goes hand in hand with stomach.
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