overnment,
and in trusting the judgment of men "trained in the tradition of
politics," might have been expected to hold views somewhat similar in
matters of art. We should have expected him to believe in the
existence, not perhaps of artistic canons, but of artistic standards;
to be convinced that in aesthetics there is an aesthetic right and
wrong; to attach weight to the judgment of men of "trained
sensibility." But it is not so. He holds in the most extreme form the
ancient doctrine that _seeming_ is _being_. Art, as such, has for him
nothing to do with truth. He recognises no valid standard of
excellence. The only excellence in a work of art is to afford aesthetic
pleasure, and the pleasure which a boy derives from a blood-curdling
adventure-book or the public from a popular melodrama is, in Mr.
Balfour's view, no less "aesthetic" than the pleasure which another may
derive from contemplating a statue by Michelangelo. There is no
universal standard; no criterion; no excellence in art except such as
each man accepts for himself.

Mr. Balfour does, indeed, make a proper distinction between art as
"technical dexterity" and art as related to the "sublime," the
"beautiful," the "pathetic," the "humorous," the "melodious," and
admits that it is possible to apply an "objective test" to technical
skill--to decide that this line scans, that this rhyme is flawless,
that these bars in music are in such-and-such a key. But he will allow
no objective grounds of excellence to art in the more important sense.
If you say that this poem is beautiful or sublime, you are asserting
what is only true for you, a mere personal preference which others
need not be expected to share. Not only do men of "trained
sensibility" differ from the uncultured, but they differ equally from
one another. He cites the evidence of Greek music to show how widely
the cultured of one nation and epoch may differ from the cultured of
other nations and epochs. Having laid it down as an axiom that our
aesthetic judgments are "for the most part immediate, and, so to speak,
intuitive," and observing that the fastidious differ among themselves,
and that their delight in fine objects is no more intense than the
delight of the vulgar in coarser themes, he proceeds to the conclusion
that there can be no valid right or wrong in taste, no absolute
standard of beauty. He even maintains that art is not based upon any
special faculty for perceiving the true. "I can find no