as contemptible vulgarism by the middle class, those who invariably are ill-at-ease in the presence of great art until it has been approved by authority, those whom Dante rejected from Heaven and Hell alike, who blow neither hot nor cold, the Laodiceans.
Be damned to these last and all their tribe! There exists a small number of people who care intensely for the major and the minor arts and they are always being accused of "not caring really" for the lively ones, of pretending to care, or of running away from "the ancient wisdom and austere control" of Greek architecture or from the intense passion of Dante, the purity of Bach, the great totality of what humankind has created in art. It is claimed, and here the professional lowbrow agrees, that these others cannot care for the lively arts, unless they romanticize them and find things in them which aren't there—at least not for the "real" patrons of those arts.
Aren't they there, these secondary qualities? I take for example a sport instead of an art. Nothing about baseball interests me except the newspaper reports of the games, so I speak without prejudice. In the days of Babe Ruth I took the sun in the bleachers once and saw that heavy hitter do exactly what he had to do on his first appearance for the day—a straight, business-like home run, much appreciated by the crowd, as any expert well-timed job is appreciated by Americans. The game that day went against the Yankees; they were two runs behind in the ninth and with two men on base, Ruth came up again. Again he hit a home run. And the crowd roaring its joy in victory exhaled two sighs, for the dramatic quality of the blow and for the lovely spiralling of the ball in its flight over the fence. "A beauty—a beauty"—you heard the expression a thousand times—and "He knows when to hit them." They would have roared too if he had hit a single which, muffed, would have brought in the winning run. But they would not have said, "a beauty"—and as far as I am concerned that is proof enough that the appreciation of aesthetic qualities is universal. It isn't, thank Heaven, always put into words.
Take as another instance the fame of the Rath Brothers. They are acrobats who do difficult things, but there are others doing much the same sort of thing without approaching the réclame of these two. Their appearance of ease is a delight, there is no strain, no swelling muscles, no visible exploitation of strength. The Hellenic philosopher who held that the arrow shot from the bow is never in motion, but at rest from second to second at the succeeding
