"_Now the Maudle and Postlethwaite school are not concerned with anything of the kind. They merely desire to make a sort of brightly polished mirror of their minds, capable of reflecting all sorts of beautiful effects, and this is an essentially effeminate thing to do, because it exalts the appreciation of sensation above all other aims; that is the pursuit of artistic luxury, and it is, as you say, quite inconsistent with good citizenship. But I do not think that my own theory is in the least inconsistent with good citizenship. I have no admiration for the citizenship the end of which is to make a comfortable corner for oneself at the expense of others; I do not at all believe that every man of ideals is bound to take a part in the administration of the community. We can easily have too many administrators; and that ends in the dismal slough of municipal politics. After all, we must nowadays all be specialists, and a man has as much right to specialise in beauty as he has to specialise in Greek Grammar. In fact a specialist in Greek Grammar has as his ultimate view the clearer and nicer appreciation of the shades of Greek expression, and is merely serving a high ideal of mental refinement. It seems to me purely conventional to accept as valuable the work of a commentator on Sophocles, because it is traditionally respectable, and to say that a commentator on sunsets, as I once heard a poet described, is an effeminate dilettante. It is the motive that matters. Personally, I think that a man who has drifted into writing a commentary on Sophocles, because he happens to find that he can earn a living that way, is no more worthy of admiration than a man who earns his living by billiard-marking. Neither are necessary to the world. But the commentator and the billiard-marker are alike admirable, if they are working out a theory, if they think that thus and thus they can best help on the progress of the world._
"_My own desire is, so to speak, to be a commentator on life, in one particular aspect. I think the world would be all the better if there were a finer appreciation of what is noble and beautiful, a deeper discrimination of motives, a larger speculation as to the methods and objects of our pilgrimage. I think the coarseness of the intellectual and spiritual palate that prevails widely nowadays is not only a misfortune, I think it is of the nature of sin. If people could live more in the generous visions of poets, if they could be taught to see beauty in trees and fields and buildings, I think they would be happier and better. Most people are obliged to spend the solid hours of the day in necessary work. The more sordid that work is, the more advisable it is to cultivate a perception of the quality of things. Every one has hours of recreation in every day; the more such hours are filled with pleasant, simple, hopeful, beautiful thoughts, the better for us all._