Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/179

Rh believes this theory of æsthetics, though he may advocate it or be driven into its acceptance. An argument can be made on that side, granting certain premises. Even then it is a dispute about terms. The claim may serve for metaphysicians, not for those whose vocations relate to the expression of artistic ideas in what is called tangible form. Go back to Berkeley and his forebears, if you like. Deny the existence of all things,—for that is what you must do if you deny the actuality of beauty, else you are instantly routed. Your only safe claim is that naught but soul exists, and this not the general soul, but your own soul, your Ego. You think, therefore you are; everything else is, for all that I can prove, the caprice of your own dream. Some of our modern transcendentalists, vaunting their Platonic allegiance to ideal beauty, affected Its supporters. indifference to its material emblems. The modern impressionists, after all the most ardent and ingenuous of technicists, are unwittingly their direct successors. Now, the transcendentalists often were speculators, and not, as they deemed themselves, artists and poets. Having little command over the beautiful, they took refuge in discrediting it. I speak of certain of the followers: their chief was Argus-eyed. In Emerson Emerson's own view. the true poet constantly broke loose. He, too, looked inward for the ideal beauty, that purest discovery of the soul, but in song he always recognized its visible reality:—