refer scientific knowledge, or
ethical suasion, or those particular kinds of ugliness admired by some
Realists and some Post-Impressionists.

But I was a little disconcerted when my Post-Impressionist artist
concluded with the remark: "I have never yet found anyone who could
tell me what he meant by beauty."

Certainly I had not asked him for an exact definition, or any
definition of Beauty in the abstract. I should have been satisfied if,
for the moment, he had taken it on trust, as most of us take the law
of gravity, the postulates of Euclid, and the evidence of our senses.
I was not dismayed because a single Post-Impressionist thought that
"beautiful" is a word that has no meaning; but because the reply came
so pat upon his lips;--he was repeating, parrot-like, a current view;
he was adopting the fashionable attitude of scorn towards what is
regarded as an ancient tyranny, long since indicted and exploded. This
bland acceptance of the meaninglessness and the inefficacy of beauty
is habitual to most young professionals who wield pen or pencil. They
have learnt it from Mr. Shaw, forgetting that when Mr. Shaw demands
complete freedom for the writer he also demands objective truth; or
they have learnt it from Mr. Roger Fry, forgetting that even Mr. Fry
demands some kind of subjective truth. Every young artist like my
acquaintance at the Grafton Gallery, every young novelist like Mr.
Gilbert Cannan,[1] is encouraged by the intellectuals to accept
formlessness and anarchy as evidence of a magnanimous and enlightened
spirit.

But it is not necessary to expose this falsity in its crude and most
violent forms. For we may find it expressed in an almost academic way,
with philosophical aloofness, a show of nice reasoning, and a kind of
Epicurean sweetness in a Romanes lecture delivered by Mr. Arthur James
Balfour and published under the title _Criticism and Beauty_. It is
worth while to study so responsible a writer, for we may be sure that
he will weigh his words, that he will not over-state his case, or be
led away by passion or fanaticism. And it is assuredly interesting to
examine the argument for anarchy as stated and defended by a
Conservative statesman.

Indeed, it is hard to believe that the author of this essay is the
same Mr. Balfour whom we know as the leader of the Conservative party.
A statesman ostensibly so consistent in upholding order and authority
in the Church, in adhering to time-honoured standards of g