“Imagine,” he answered gravely, “that you dock your horse’s tail. You are either horribly deficient in feeling for a perfectly proportioned horse, or you imitate what you believe—goodness knows why—to be the refined custom of docking horses’ tails, without considering the question of proportion at all.”
“Yes,” I said; “but what makes so many people do it, if there isn’t something in it, either useful or ornamental?”
“Because people as a rule do not love proportion; they love the grotesque. You have only to look at their faces, which are very good indications of their souls.”
“You have begged the question,” I said. “Who are you to say that the perfect horse is not the horse——?”
“With the imperfect tail?”
“Imperfect? Again, you’re begging.”
“As Nature made it, then. Oh!” he went on with vehemence, “think of the luxury of having your own tail. Think of the cool swish of it. Think of the real beauty of it! Think of the sheer hideousness of all that great front balanced behind by a few scrub hairs and a wriggle! It became ‘smart’ to dock horses’ tails; and smart to wear ‘aigrettes.’ ‘Smart’—‘neat’—‘efficient’—for all except the horse and the poor egrets.”
“Your argument,” I said, “is practically nothing but æsthetics.”
He fixed his eyes upon my hat.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I admit that neither on horse nor on man would long tails go at all well with that bowler hat of yours. Odd how all of a piece taste is! From a man’s hat, or a horse’s tail, we can reconstruct the age we live in, like that scientist, you remember, who reconstructed a mastodon from its funny-bone.”