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ART 79

hand, Spencer detected in the works themselves
"fundamental vices," "the grossest absurdities/'
"gratuitous contradictions of Nature," impossible
light and shade, and no end of technical defects in
what he was pleased to call " physioscopy."

Art-criticism is probably now more emancipated
from authority than it was when Spencer promulgated
his heresies and Ruskin wrote his Modern Painters^
and doubtless many experts will admit that some of
the philosopher's strictures are justified. More will
probably maintain that in his intellectual criticism
Spencer was blind to artistic genius. In his criticism,
for instance, of Guide's "Phoebus and Aurora," to
which he allowed beauty in composition and grace in
drawing, he applied commonplace physical criteria to
show that "absurdity was piled upon absurdity,"
"The entire group—the chariot and horses, the
hours and their draperies, and even Phoebus himself™
are represented as illuminated from without: are
made visible by some unknown source of light--some
other sun! Stranger still is the next thing to he
noted. The only source of light indicated in the
composition—the torch carried by the flying hoy—
radiates no light whatever. Not even the face of
its bearer immediately behind it is illumined by it!
Nay, this is not all. The crowning absurdity h that
the non-luminous flames of this torch are themselves
illuminated from elsewhere ! " And so on*

All this is dismally intellectual, and reminds m of
the medical man's discovery that Botticelli's " Venus/*
in the Uffizi at Florence, is sufferingfrom consumption,
and should not be riding across the sea in an open
shell, clad so scantily.



	ART 79 hand, Spencer detected in the works themselves "fundamental vices," "the grossest absurdities/' "gratuitous contradictions of Nature," impossible light and shade, and no end of technical defects in what he was pleased to call " physioscopy." Art-criticism is probably now more emancipated from authority than it was when Spencer promulgated his heresies and Ruskin wrote his Modern Painters^ and doubtless many experts will admit that some of the philosopher's strictures are justified. More will probably maintain that in his intellectual criticism Spencer was blind to artistic genius. In his criticism, for instance, of Guide's "Phoebus and Aurora," to which he allowed beauty in composition and grace in drawing, he applied commonplace physical criteria to show that "absurdity was piled upon absurdity," "The entire group—the chariot and horses, the hours and their draperies, and even Phoebus himself™ are represented as illuminated from without: are made visible by some unknown source of light--some other sun! Stranger still is the next thing to he noted. The only source of light indicated in the composition—the torch carried by the flying hoy— radiates no light whatever. Not even the face of its bearer immediately behind it is illumined by it! Nay, this is not all. The crowning absurdity h that the non-luminous flames of this torch are themselves illuminated from elsewhere ! " And so on* All this is dismally intellectual, and reminds m of the medical man's discovery that Botticelli's " Venus/* in the Uffizi at Florence, is sufferingfrom consumption, and should not be riding across the sea in an open shell, clad so scantily.