But in art, as elsewhere, culture is a means to
an actual, present end, and the pre-Raphaelite sentiment that dictates
mere reproduction of what was once a genuine expression is as sterile as
servile imitation of exotic modes of thought, dress, and demeanor is
universally felt to be. The past--the antique, the renaissance, the
classic, and romantic ideals are to be used, not adopted; in the spirit
of Goethe, at once the most original of modern men and the most
saturated with culture, exhibited in his famous saying: "Nothing do I
call my own which having inherited I have not reconquered for myself."
It would indeed be a singular thing were the field of aesthetics the only
one uninvaded by the scientific spirit of the time. The one force
especially characteristic of our era is, I suppose, the scientific
spirit. It is at any rate everywhere manifest, and it possesses the best
intellects of the century. _A priori_ one may argue about its hostility,
essential or other, to the artistic, the constructive spirit; but to do
so is at the most to beat the air, to waste one's breath, to Ruskinize,
in a word.
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