Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 36))

The confession does more honor to his amiability than to his understanding. We are inclined,
however, to suspect his sincerity. It is very well to use pretty phrases like “the floodtide of human
genius,” but are we to understand that human judgment is therefore a thing to be stifled and
suppressed ? Suppose he were confronted with something of this sort:
Fd rather sit on you proper
Than say medicine dropper,
You dirty old stopper.
I don’t mean you; that’s Bill’s hat; in it is a tomcat. No, I am not a tomcat, I am a tomboy. She
said she would teach me to paint. I love fresh air and flowers, sunset and winter. No, sir; she was right
and I was dead. . . . The doctors are pluperfect Perfecto, but they can’t fool me. Rivers run rubies
and rubies run red. Tra-la, you heard what I said. I’m a riddle, you’re not; I’m a drunkard, you’re a
sot. Riddle-de-rot.
This inspiring passage occurs in the report of a case in one of the current medical journals,
and of course the reporter has his own peculiar opinion of what it indicates. Not being a modern
art critic but only a psychiatrist, he talks of “distractability” and “flight of ideas,” nor does he
hesitate to put a label on what he conceives to be a psychosis. But what would M. de Zayas say ?
Would he dare to deal with the matter in such a disrespectful way ? Oh, no. Having devoted
his whole life to art he might possibly perceive that the poet’s method and manner were somewhat
different from the method and manner of, say, a Shakespeare, or a Milton, or a Whitman; but
that, he would tell us, indicated a commendable freedom from “school prejudices.” For the
rest, as a modern, he would not dare to declare the passage either good or bad, for fear of checking
that delicate floodtide of human genius which in these modern days appears to be so feeble and
so easily controlled by the Canutes of criticism.
The old-fashioned critic was bad enough. He had but one theory for all modern manifes-
tations of art—the theory of insanity. The new-fashioned critic is no better, for he makes it a
matter of conscience to approach all things with the innocence of an imbecile. His only merit
lies in the singular skill with which he plays his part.
PLATO’S DIALOGUES—PHILEBUS
Protarchus: But what pleasures are those, Socrates, which a person
deeming to be true, would rightly think so ?
Socrates: Those which relate to what are called beautiful colors, and
to figures, and to the generality of odors, and to sounds, and to whatever
possesses wants unperceived and without pain, yet yields a satisfaction palpable,
and pleasant, and unmixed with pain.
Prot. : How, Socrates, speak we thus of these things ?
Soc.: What I am saying is not, indeed, directly obvious. I must there-
fore try to make it clear. For I will endeavor to speak of the beauty of figures,
not as the majority of persons understand them, such as those of animals,
and some paintings to the life; but as reason says, I allude to something
straight and round, and the figures, formed from them by the turner’s lathe,
both superficial and solid, and those by the plumb-line and angle-rule, if you
understand me. For these, I say, are not beautiful for a particular purpose,
as other things are; but are by nature ever beautiful by themselves, and
possess certain peculiar pleasures, not at all similar to those from scratching;
and colors possessing this character are beautiful and have similar pleasures.
But do we understand ? or how ?
Prot.: I endeavor to do so, Socrates; but do you endeavor likewise to
speak still more clearly.
Soc.: I say then that sounds gentle and clear, and sending out one pure
strain, are beautiful, not with relation to another strain, but singly by themselves,
and that inherent pleasures attend them.