It will be found, as a
matter of fact, that this latter element in the motives of our choice
works as a rule negatively rather than positively, while the positive
and active force in our appreciations remains, as it ought to remain,
our own inviolable and quite personal bias. The winnowed taste of the
ages, acquired by us as a sort of second nature, warns us what to
avoid, while our own nerves and palate, stimulated to an ever
deepening subtlety, as our choice narrows itself down, tells us what
passionately and spontaneously we must snatch up and enjoy.
It will be noted that in what we have tried to indicate as the only
possible starting-point for adventurous criticism, there has been a
constant assumption of a common ground between sensitive people; a
common sensual and psychic language, so to speak, to which appeals may
be made, and through which intelligent tokens may be exchanged. This
common ground is not necessarily--one is reluctant to introduce
metaphysical speculation--any hidden "law of beauty" or "principle of
spiritual harmony." It is, indeed, as far as we can ever know for
certain, only "objective" in the sense of being essentially human; in
the sense, that is, of being something that inevitably appeals to
what, below temperamental differences, remains permanent and
unchanging in us.
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