Excitement has worn the senses so that their report grows
dull and feeble. Imagination runs on other lines and requires
stimulants; there is no stillness of mind in which the perception of
beauty and harmony and fitness can grow up.
There are others--may they be few--in whose minds there is little room for
anything but success. Utilitarians in social life, their determination
is to get on, and this spirit pervades all they do; it has the making of
the hardest-grained worldliness: to these art has nothing to say. But
there are others to whom it has a definite message, and their response
to it corresponds to various schools or stages of art. There are some
who are daring and explicit in their taste; they resent the curb, and
rush into what is extravagant with a very feeble protest against it from
within themselves. Beside them are simpler minds, merely exuberant, for
whom there can never be enough light or colour in their picture of life.
If they are gifted with enough intelligence to steady their joyful
constitution of mind, these will often develop a taste that is fine and
true. In the background of the group are generally a few silent members
of sensitive temperament and deeper intuition, who see with marvellous
quickness, but see too much to be happy and content, almost too much to
be true.
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