A living painter has said, that the longer he works, the more does be
realise how very little anybody except the trained artist actually
perceives in the natural objects constantly before him; how blind men
are to impressions of colour and light and form, which would be full
of interest and delight, if people only knew how to see them. Are not
most of us just as blind to the thousand lights and shades in the
men and women around us? We live in the world as we live among
fellow-inmates in a hotel, or fellow-revellers at a masquerade. Yet
this, to bring knowledge of ourselves and others "home to our business
and our bosoms," is one of the most important parts of culture.

Some prejudice is attached in generous minds to this wisdom of the
world as being egotistical, poor, unimaginative, of the earth earthy.
Since the great literary reaction at the end of the last century, men
have been apt to pitch criticism of life in the high poetic key. They
have felt with Wordsworth:--

"The human nature unto which I felt
That I belonged, and reverenced with love,
Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit
Diffused through time and space, with aid derived
Of evidence from monuments, erect,
Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest
In earth, the widely-scattered wreck sublime
Of vanished nations."

Then again, there is another cause for the passing eclipse of interest
in wisdom of the world. Extraordinary advances have been made in
ordered knowledge of the various stages of the long prehistoric