Book Excerpt: ork of man is perfection, this perfection has beenblemished and man is impelled to recapture it in the sublime. Yetinstead of analyzing this impulse, Miss Reynolds appears to take itfor granted. Nor does she consider how perfection is to be achievedin taste, preferring to conclude with a diatribe in the manner ofRousseau on the depravity of the times and the corrupting effect ofthe arts. (For this and many of the following comments I am indebtedto Mr. Ralph Cohen of the College of the City of New York.)The ...
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Book Excerpt: ork of man is perfection, this perfection has beenblemished and man is impelled to recapture it in the sublime. Yetinstead of analyzing this impulse, Miss Reynolds appears to take itfor granted. Nor does she consider how perfection is to be achievedin taste, preferring to conclude with a diatribe in the manner ofRousseau on the depravity of the times and the corrupting effect ofthe arts. (For this and many of the following comments I am indebtedto Mr. Ralph Cohen of the College of the City of New York.)The cause of some of the ambiguities in her discussion may perhaps betraced to a rather careless use of terms. At one time "instinct"or "impulsion," the moral force driving man toward perfection, is apotentiality developed by cultivation, and at another a force thatis created by cultivation. Although the sublime is the apex of hermathematically-definite program and is a moral quality attained bythe few, every human being has his point of sublimity in the idea ofa Supreme Being. On the one handRead More
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