[120]. A. M. Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem: A Study in Human Evolution (1922), pp. 457, 472.
[121]. Dupréel, La Légende Socratique (1922), p. 428. Dupréel considers (p. 431) that the Protagorean spirit was marked by the idea of explaining the things of thought, and life in general, by the meeting, opposition, and harmony of individual activities, leading up to the sociological notion of convention, and behind it, of relativity. Nietzsche was a pioneer in restoring the Sophists to their rightful place in Greek thought. The Greek culture of the Sophists grew out of all the Greek instincts, he says (The Will to Power, section 428): “And it has ultimately shown itself to be right. Our modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent, Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean. To say that it is Protagorean is even sufficient, because Protagoras was himself a synthesis of Heraclitus and Democritus.” The Sophists, by realizing that many supposed objective ideas were really subjective, have often been viewed with suspicion as content with a mere egotistically individualistic conception of life. The same has happened to Nietzsche. It was probably an error as regards the greatest Sophists, and is certainly an error, though even still commonly committed, as regards Nietzsche; see the convincing discussion of Nietzsche’s moral aim in Salter, Nietzsche the Thinker, chap. XXIV.
[122]. I may here, perhaps, remark that in the General Preface to my Studies in the Psychology of Sex I suggested that we now have to lay the foundation of a new casuistry, no longer theological and Christian, but naturalistic and scientific.
[123]. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, vol. I (1918); vol. II (1922).
[124]. In an interesting pamphlet, Pessimismus? Spengler has since pointed out that he does not regard his argument as pessimistic. The end of a civilisation is its fulfilment, and there is still much to be achieved (though not, he thinks, along the line of art) before our own civilisation is fulfilled. With Spengler’s conception of that fulfilment we may, however, fail to sympathise.
[125]. See, for instance, W. L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 1, p. 201, and S. H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 119.
[126]. Beauty is a dangerous conception to deal with, and the remembrance of this great saying may, perhaps, help to save us from the degrading notion that beauty merely inheres in objects, or has anything to do with the prim and smooth conventions which make prettiness. Even in the fine art of painting it is more reasonable to regard prettiness as the negation of beauty. It is possible to find beauty in Degas and Cézanne, but not in Bouguereau or Cabanel. The path of beauty is not soft and smooth, but full of harshness and asperity. It is a rose that grows only on a bush covered with thorns. As of goodness and of truth, men talk too lightly of Beauty. Only to the bravest and skilfullest is it given to break through the briers of her palace and kiss at last her enchanted lips.
[127]. Ruskin was what Spinoza has been called, a God-intoxicated man; he had a gift of divine rhapsody, which reached at times to inspiration. But it is not enough to be God-intoxicated, for into him whose mind is disorderly and ignorant and ill-disciplined the Gods pour their wine in vain. Spinoza’s mind was not of that kind, Ruskin’s too often was, so that Ruskin can never be, like Spinoza, a permanent force in the world of thought. His interest is outside that field, mainly perhaps psychological in the precise notation of a particular kind of æsthetic sensibility. The admiration of Ruskin cherished by Proust, himself a supreme master in this field, is significant.
[128]. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, chap. V, “Art and Morals.” Aristotle could have accepted the almost Freudian view of Croce that art is the deliverer, the process through which we overcome the stress of inner experiences by objectifying them (Æsthetics as Science of Expression, p. 35). But Plato could not accept Croce, still less Freud.
[129]. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1859), vol. II, p. 442. For a careful and detailed study of Schopenhauer’s conception of art, see A. Fauconnet, L’Esthétique de Schopenhauer (1913).