"We want new blood," said the
proprietors. The difficulty was how to combine new blood with the old
spirit, and Horace Jewdwine solved their problem, presenting the
remarkable combination of an old head upon comparatively young
shoulders. He was responsible, authoritative, inspired by a high and
noble seriousness. He had taken his Aristotle with a high and noble
seriousness; and in the same spirit he had approached his Kant, his
Hegel and his Schopenhauer in succession. He was equipped with the
most beautiful metaphysical theory of Art, and had himself written
certain _Prolegomena to AEsthetics_.
Metaphysics had preyed on Jewdwine like a flame. He was consumed with
a passion for unity. The unity which Nature only strives after,
blindly, furiously, ineffectually; the unity barely reached by the
serene and luminous processes of Thought--the artist achieves it with
one stroke. In him, by the twin acts of vision and creation, the
worlds of Nature and the Idea are made one. He leaps at a bound into
the very heart of the Absolute. He alone can be said to have attained,
and (this was the point which Jewdwine insisted on) attained only by
the sacrifice of his individuality.
Thus Jewdwine in his _Prolegomena to AEsthetics_.
As that work could be regarded only as a brutal and terrific challenge
to the intellect, the safer course was to praise it, and it was
unanimously praised. Nobody was able to understand a word of it except
the last chapter on "Individualism in Modern Art.
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