Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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What the artist does intentionally, life often does for us fortuitously in other relationships.

It may be questioned whether a man has ever been able to form an adequate conception of his mother's face in its relation to others, till after long years of absence he has returned to it, and, whether he will or no, there flashes on him the consciousness of its beauty, nobility, weariness, or age as compared with that of others; a thing which was not possible to him, when it rose for him every morning as the sun, and mingled itself with all the experiences of his day.

What is true of the personal mother is yet more true of the man's native land. It has shaped all his experiences; it has lain as the background to all his consciousness; it has modified his sensations and emotions. He can no more pass a calm, relative judgment on it, than an artist can upon the work he is creating, or a child at the breast can analyze the face above it. The incapacity of peoples to pass judgments on the surroundings from which they have never been separated is familiar to every traveller. The mayor of the little German town does not take you to see the costumes of the peasants, nor the old church, nor the Dürer over the altar; but drags you away to see the new row of gas-lamps in the village street. The costumes, the church, the picture are unique in Europe and the world; better gas-lamps flame before every butcher's shop in London and Paris; but the lamps are new and have cost him much; he cannot view them objectively. The inhabitant of one of the rarest and fairest towns in the colonies or on earth does not boast to you of his oaks and grapes, or ask you what you think of his mountain, or explain to you the marvellous mixture of races in his streets; but he is anxious to know what you think of his docks and small public buildings. He has not the emotional detachment necessary for the forming of a large critical judgment. A certain distance is necessary to the seeing of great wholes clearly. It is not by any chance that the most scientific exposition of American Democracy is the work of a Frenchman, that the best history of the French Revolution is by an Englishman, or that the finest history of English literature is the work of a Frenchman. Distance is essential for a keen, salient survey, which shall take in large outlines and mark prominent characteristics.