"Why, there's the iceman! there's the laundress!" He
rebelled when they told him this was wicked: he said it was all a
part of God's world, that the business of the artist was to
interpret life; he wished they would let him enter the pulpit, take
the Prior's place, and preach a sermon that would make them all sit
up.
The philosophy of aesthetics has never been more truly or more
succinctly stated than in these lines:
Or say there's beauty with no soul at all--
(I never saw it--put the case the same--)
If you get simple beauty and nought else,
You get about the best thing God invents:
That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,
Within yourself, when you return him thanks.
Contemplation of beautiful objects in nature, art, and literature,
which perhaps at first sight have no significance, gradually awakens
in our own hearts a dawning sense of what Beauty may mean; and thus
enlarges and develops our minds, and makes them susceptible to the
wonder and glory of life.
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