Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TASTE?"AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE "?LAW-BREAKING ETHICS AND ART On questions of Taste, it has long ago been decided that no guiding rule is to be formulated, which shall establish once and for all that view which is sound and that which is unsound. No strict canon is to be laid down which shall settle what is good to admire in Art and what is not. " Other times, other manners," and it is equally true to say?other times, other tastes If we are to consider Art as a means whereby humanity is raised in the scale of evolution, towards the millennium, whosecoming is doubted only by the dull and atrabilious, we must admit that the first thing necessary is, that we should be in perfect sympathy with it. Mahommed's notion of forcing a faith upon a people under the shadow of crossing swords may have been proved effective in his day. In our times the bare mention of compulsion is quite sufficient to throw liberty-loving people into a state of revolt; besides which, questions of faith are dependent upon submission of intellect to will, while Taste is purely a matter of personal conviction of what is pleasing or otherwise. No amount of abuse, the severest castigation with the pen, can force a people to Delight in any specific form of Art. No arguments will avail against questions of Taste. To have, in one's own mind, a clear idea of what is beautiful, is absolutely essential to anartist, but this is the outcome of purely subjective impressions, and does not, as in the case of Religion, imply the acceptance of some precept. In Art every man is a judge unto himself of what is good or bad. Art which holds no beauty for him, can have no beneficial effect upon him; and, even though it is incomprehensible, its danger is by no means inconsiderable, since it will have the effect of causing...