Helmholtz,[1] and others, but we may properly extend the inquiry into the nature and powers of this aesthetic perception somewhat further. For it is to this fundamental difference between biological and physical sciences that I will especially invite your attention.
Sir John Lubbock,[2] quoting from Oldfield,[3] mentions that certain Australians "were quite unable to realize the most vivid artistic representations. On being shown a picture of one of themselves, one said it was a ship, another a kangaroo, not one in a dozen identifying the portrait as having any connection with himself."
These human beings, therefore, with brains very similar to our own, and, as is held by some persons, potentially capable of similar cultivation with ourselves, were unable to recognize the outlines of even such familiar objects as the features of their own race. Was there any fault in the drawing of the artist? Probably not. Or in the eye of the savage? Certainly not, for that is an optical instrument of tolerably simple structure, which cannot fail to form on the retina an accurate image of the object to which it is directed. Where, then, is the error? It is in the want of capacity of the brain of the individual (or rather the race in this instance) to appreciate the resemblance between the outline, the relief, the light and shade of the object pictured, and the flat representation in color: in other words, a want of "artistic tact" or æsthetic perception.
A higher example of a similar phenomenon I have myself seen: many of you too have witnessed it, for it is of daily occurrence. It is when travelers in Italy, having penetrated to the inmost chamber of the Temple of Art, even the hall of the Tribune at Florence, stand in presence of the most perfect works of art which it has been given to man to produce, and gaze upon them with the same indifference that they would show to the conceptions of mediocre artists exhibited in our shops.
Perhaps they would even wonder what one can find to admire in the unrivaled collection which is there assembled.
There is surely wanting in the minds of such persons that high, æsthetic sense, which enables others to enter into spiritual harmony with the great artists whose creations are before them.
Creations I said, and I use the word intentionally. If there is one power of the human soul which, more nearly than any other, ap-
- ↑ "I do not mean to deny that, in many branches of these sciences, an intuitive perception of analogies and a certain artistic tact play a conspicuous part. In natural history.... it is left entirely to this tact, without a clearly definable rule, to determine what characteristics of species are important or unimportant for purposes of classification, and what divisions of the animal or vegetable kingdom are more natural than others." ("Relation of the Physical Sciences to Science in General." Smithsonian Report, 1871, p. 227.)
- ↑ "Prehistoric Times," p. 440.
- ↑ "On the Aborigines of Australia." Transactions of Ethnological Society, New Series, vol. iii.
