iently for
the evidence upon which those conclusions are based.

But there is a danger in lingering too long in the intellectual
regions; the other regions of the human spirit may be called the
aesthetic and the mystical regions. To take the aesthetic region next,
the duty of the philosopher is to realize at the outset that the
perception of beauty is essentially an individual thing, and that the
canons of what are called good taste are of all things the most
shifting. In this region the danger of dogmatism is very great, because
the more that a man indulges the rapturous perception of the beauty
that appeals to himself, the more likely he is to believe that there is
no beauty outside of his own perceptions. The duty of a man who wishes
to avoid egotism in this region is to try and recognize faithful
conception and firm execution everywhere; to realize that half, and
more than half, of the beauty of everything is the beauty of age,
remoteness, and association. There is no temptation so strong for the
aesthetic nature, as to deride and contemn the beauty of the art that
we have just outgrown. To take a simple case. The Early Victorian
upholsterers derided the stiffness and austerity of Queen Anne
furniture, and the public genuinely admired the florid and rococo forms
of Early Victorian art. A generation passed, and Early Victorian art
was relentlessly derided, while the Queen Anne was reinstalled. Now
there are signs of a growing tolerance among connoisseurs of the Early
Victorian taste again. The truth is that there is no absolute beauty in
either; that the thing to aim at is progress and development in art,
and that probably the most dangerous and decadent sign of all is the
reverting to the beauty of a previous age rather than striking out a
new line of our own. The aim then of the man who would avoid aesthetic
egotism should be, not to lay down canons of what is or what is not
good art, but to try to recognize, as I have said, faithful conception
and firm execution wherever he can discern it; and, for himself, to
express as vividly as he can his own keenest and acutest perceptions of
beauty. The only beauty that is worth anything, is the beauty perceived
in sincerity, and here again the secret lies in resolutely abstaining
from laying down laws, from judging, from condemning. The victory
always remains with those who admire, rather than with those who
deride, and the power of appreciating is worth any amount of the p