Such is the social rôle of art. It is immense. There is an Australian bird which builds, as its nest, a big cabin where it spreads all the shining pebbles it finds. The male, amid the mosaic, dances a grave minuet before his troubled companion. This is art surprised at its obscure birth--at the very moment of its intimate association with the expansion of the genital instinct. A red pebble gives an emotion to a bird, and this emotion heightens its desire. Such is the social rôle of art. The people--and by the people, I here mean the mass of men--must admire. They must experience aesthetic emotions, must quiver with long nervous vibrations, must have rich and complicated loves; but, what matters it whence comes the cloud, so long as it rains! I have merely wished to show the legitimacy of all aesthetic emotion, whatever its source, and of all success, whatever its quality; but I shall be readily believed if I confess that I retain my preferences for a certain form of art, for a certain expression of beauty. I depart in this respect from the common sentiment, that I do not believe it useful to generalize opinions, to teach admirations. To force admiration is almost as wicked as to force an entrance. It is for each man to procure himself the emotion he needs, and the morality which suits him. Apuleius's ass wanted to crop roses, because by so doing he would resume the human form. It is a very good idea to crop roses. It is one way to achieve freedom. 1901. [1] At the Hôtel de Bourgogne, while at Giénégaud his rival Pradon's play was received with great applause. [2] Bayle. And Racine, recognizing his adversary's craft, said: "The whole difference between me and Pradon is that I know how to write." [3] In another essay, _Women and Language_, I have considered the lie as the mark of man as opposed to the animal. The superiority of a race, of a group of living beings, is in direct ratio to its power of falsehood--that is to say, reaction against reality. The lie is only the psychological form of the Vertebrate's reaction against its environment. Nietzsche, anticipating science, says: "The lie is a condition of life." [4] There is a presentiment of this in Montesquieu's remark, recently published; it is conformity that constitutes beauty _Æsthetics_. Father Buffier has defined beauty as the assembling of the commonest elements. When his definition is explained, it is excellent. Father Buffier says that beautiful eyes are those resembling the greatest number of other eyes; the same with the mouth, the nose, etc. It is not that there are not a great many more ugly noses than beautiful ones, but that the former are of many different sorts, and that each sort of ugly noses is much smaller in number than the beautiful sort. It is as if, in a crowd of a hundred men, there were ten dressed each in a different colour; it is the green that would predominate. THE VALUE OF EDUCATION