rit
when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do not
understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged works of
genius, which they honor only on the score of authority. The crucial
test is the fact that bad work--Fichte's philosophy, for example--if
it wins any reputation, also maintains it for one or two generations;
and only when its public is very large does its fall follow sooner.

Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye that sees
it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the value of all
masterly work in art and science is conditioned by the kinship and
capacity of the mind to which it speaks. It is only such a mind as
this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits
that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is
a sealed cabinet of mystery,--an unfamiliar musical instrument from
which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none
but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good
light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the
impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind
to understand it.

A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its beauty; a
thoughtful work, a mind that can really think, if it is to exist and
live at all. But alas! it may happen only too often that he who gives
a fine work to the world afterwards feels like a maker of fireworks,
who displays with enthusiasm the wonders that have taken him so much
time and trouble to prepare, and then learns that he has come to the
wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one and all inmates
of an asylum for the blind. Still even that is better than if his
public had consisted entirely of men who made fireworks themselves; as
in this case, if his display had been extraordinarily good, it might
possibly have cost him his head.

The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of kinship. Even
with the sense of beauty it is unquestionably our own species in the
animal world, and then again our own race, that appears to us the
fairest. So, too, in intercourse with others, every man shows a
decided preference for those who resemble him; and a blockhead will
find the society of another blockhead incomparably more pleasant
than that of any number of great minds put together. Every man must
necessarily take his chief pleasure in his own work, because it is the
mirror of his own