Yet there are undoubtedly a number of physiognomic and other
peculiarities which savages admire while we consider them ugly; and
some, again, which we admire and they dislike. Have we a right to
consider them inferior to us in taste because they fail to admire what
we adore?
Certainly; beyond the shadow of a doubt. It takes genius to fully
appreciate genius; it takes a refined taste to appreciate refined
beauty. This is what the savage lacks.
Look at any one of the fine arts. Why does the savage prefer his
monotonous drumming and ear-piercing war-songs to a soft, beautiful,
dreamy Chopin nocturne? Because he _cannot understand_ the nocturne.
Why does he prefer his painted, clumsy, coarse-featured squaw to a
civilised woman with delicate contours, refined features, graceful gait?
Because he _does not understand_ the beauty of the latter. It is too
subtle for his coarse nerves, his feeble imagination. The smiles and
manifold expressions that chase one another across her lovely features,
like the subtly-interwoven melodies in a symphonic poem, are the visible
signs of thoughts and emotions which he has never experienced, and
therefore cannot understand. It is like giving him a page of Sanskrit to
read.
It is for this reason that a negro never falls in love with a white
woman, and that a peasant prefers his plump, crude country-girl to the
fair, delicate city visitor. He requires more vigorous arms, broader
features, than the city girl possesses, to make an impression on his
callous nerves of touch and sight. And it is fortunate for the peasant
girl that her lover does lack taste, else she would soon find him a
fickle deserter.
The savage, in a word, prefers his style of “beauty” to ours for the
same reason that he prefers a piece of raw liver and a glass of oil to
the subtle flavours of French cookery and French wines. His senses are
too coarse, his mind too vulgar, to perceive the poetry of refined
features. Everything must be loud and exaggerated to make an impression
on him—loud music, loud and glaring red and yellow colours, loud and
coarse features.
This doctrine that differences of taste are merely due to differences in
the degree of æsthetic culture, and that there is such a thing as an
absolute standard of human beauty, derives further support from the
facts (1) that the ideal of beauty set up by the æsthetic Greeks two
thousand years ago corresponds so remarkably with that of modern
artistic minds; (2) that _e.g._ a Japanese student in the United States
soon learns to prefer American female beauty to the Japanese variety;
(3) that an English, Italian, or American audience who at first admire
_Norma_ and find _Lohengrin_ tiresome, can in a few seasons be so
educated as to prefer _Lohengrin_ and actually scorn _Norma_; but not
_vice versâ_, in either case (2) or (3).
Mr. Ruskin takes a similar view regarding differences of taste when he
says that “respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking
with disgust on the white face, no importance whatever is to be attached
to the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty
whatsoever (these ideas being only received by minds under some certain
degree of cultivation), and whose disgust arises naturally from what
they suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill-health.”
That this consideration of health does affect the negro’s judgment
regarding the beauty of the white complexion, is also shown by what Mr.
Winwood Reade told Mr. Darwin, namely, that the negro’s “horror of
whiteness may be attributed ... partly to the belief held by most
negroes that demons and spirits are white, and partly to their thinking
it a sign of ill-health.”
But of all the theoretical truths emphasised in the _Modern Painters_
none is so important as this: “That not only changes of opinion take
place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from
_variation_ of opinion to _unity_ of opinion,—that whatever may be the
difference of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there
will be unity of taste among the experienced; and that, therefore, the
result of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of
preference in some sort common to all, and which are part of our
nature.”
Let us now see what are those principles of Beauty that may be
considered independent of a more or less crude and undeveloped taste.
Some are negative, some positive.