It is all very well to point to men like Goethe, Heydenreich, Schelling, Hegel, Hogarth and Reynolds--all of whom certainly did a good deal to brace the self-respect of artists; but it is impossible to argue that any one of them took up either such a definite or such a determined attitude against the fifteen others whom I have mentioned, as could materially stem the tide of democratic Art which was rising in Europe. And if in the latter half of the nineteenth century we have Ruskin telling us that "the art which makes us believe what we would not otherwise have believed, is misapplied, and in most instances very dangerously so";[7] and if we find that his first principle is, "that our graphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce something which shall look as like Nature as possible,"[8] and that, in extolling the Gothic, he says it was "the love of natural objects for their own sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained by artistic laws";[9] we realize how very slight the effect of those exceptional spirits, headed by Goethe, must have been. [1] See his evidence before the Joint Committee on the Stage Censorship.--Daily Press, September 24th, 1909. [2] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 19: "Man believes the world itself to be overcharged with beauty,--he forgets that he is the cause of it. He alone has endowed it with beauty.... In reality man mirrors himself in things; he counts everything beautiful which reflects his likeness.... Is the world really beautiful, just because man thinks it is? Man has humanized it, that is all." [3] _Æsthetic_ (Douglas Ainslie's translation), p. 259. See also B. Bosanquet, _A History of Æsthetic_, pp. 15-18. [4] _Sämmtliche Werke_, Vol. V, "Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums," pp. 346, 347. [5] Dr. Max Schasler (_Kritische Geschichte der Æsthetik_, p. 73) agrees that the understanding of Art in classical antiquity seems to be quite barbaric in its stupidity ("_von einer geradezu barbarischen Bornirtheit_"); but he adds that this may be an argument in favour of the antique; for it may prove the unconsciousness of the artists and the absolute unity of the artistic life and of artistic appreciation in antiquity. [6] Aristotle was, of course, studied and commentated to a very great extent during these fifteen centuries; but in all the branches of science save Æsthetic. Where his Poetic was examined, the philological or literary-historical interest was paramount. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas do not differ materially from Plotinus and Plato. [7] _Lectures on Art_ (1870), p. 50. [8] _Aratra Pentelici_ (1870), p. 118. It is true that this is followed by a restriction; but what does this restriction amount to? Ruskin says: "We must produce what shall look like Nature to people who know what Nature is." [9] _On the Nature of the Gothic_ (Smith, Elder, 1854), p. 19. 2. A Thrust parried. Police or Detective Art defined.