And it proves that the wealthy class of to-day is quite as ignorant
about how to enjoy itself as about how to rule other people.
That it cannot make its government govern or its education educate we
may take as a trifling weakness of oligarchy; but pleasure we do look
to see in such a class; and it has surely come to its decrepitude
when it cannot make its pleasures please.
The Garden of the Sea
One sometimes hears from persons of the chillier type of culture
the remark that plain country people do not appreciate the beauty
of the country. This is an error rooted in the intellectual pride
of mediocrity; and is one of the many examples of a truth in the idea
that extremes meet. Thus, to appreciate the virtues of the mob
one must either be on a level with it (as I am) or be really
high up, like the saints. It is roughly the same with aesthetics;
slang and rude dialect can be relished by a really literary taste,
but not by a merely bookish taste. And when these cultivated cranks
say that rustics do not talk of Nature in an appreciative way,
they really mean that they do not talk in a bookish way.
They do not talk bookishly about clouds or stones, or pigs or slugs,
or horses or anything you please. They talk piggishly about pigs;
and sluggishly, I suppose, about slugs; and are refreshingly horsy
about horses. They speak in a stony way of stones; they speak
in a cloudy way of clouds; and this is surely the right way.
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