Dwell
much in the air, glean the secrets of dawns, listen when the white rain
whispers over woodland, translate the tinkle of summer seas where they kiss
your rocky shores; get behind the sunset; think not of what colors you will
mix when you try to paint it, but let the pageant sink into your soul like
a song. Do not drag your art everywhere. Forget it sometimes and develop
your individuality. You have learned to draw tolerably; now learn to think.
Believe me, the painting people do not think enough.
"Truly I am content to die in the face of the folly I read and see around
me. Know you what certain obscure writers are now about in magazines? They
are vindicating the cosmic forces, whitewashing Mother Nature after
Huxley's Romanes lecture! He told the truth, and Nature loved him for it;
but now come hysterical religious ciphers who squeak boldly forth in print
that Nature is the mother of altruism, that self-sacrifice is her first
law! One genius observes that 'tis their cruelty and selfishness have
arrested the progress of the tiger and the ape! Poor Nature! Never a word
of shotguns in all this drivel, of course. Cruelty and selfishness!
Qualities purely and solely human--qualities resulting from conscious
intelligence alone. You and I are selfish, not the ape; you and I are
cruel, not the tiger. He at least learns Nature's lessons and obeys her
dictates; we never do and never shall.
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