New canons of taste, new standards, are continually
being evolved; there is a general widening and multiplying of notions.
This, I think, ought to make us careful as to the words we employ, and
ready to coin new ones whenever a new idea is to be expressed. If we
enlarge our concepts, we should likewise enlarge our vocabulary. When I
spoke of beauty, I used the word in its narrow classical meaning, a
meaning which may be out of fashion, but which has the great advantage
that it happens to be irrevocably fixed and defined for us by what the
ancients themselves have handed down in the way of art and criticism.
This particular beauty, I say, is irreconcilable with that other beauty
of which you spoke."
"How so?" asked the millionaire.
"There resides, for example, in Hellenic sculpture a certain
ingredient--what shall we call it? Let us call it the factor of
strangeness, of mystery! It is a vague emanation which radiates from
such works of art, and gives us a sense of their universal
applicability to all our changing moods and passions.
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