In valuing nature or art, trust to your own native sense wrote Charles E. Montague:
The assumption is commonly made, or implied, that in presence of some reputedly beautiful thing there is one right way of feeling, or thinking, and that there are many wrong ways. The opposite is the truth. No wrong way exists, so long as it is a vehement personal way of somebody’s own. Any such human experience is the ultimate unit of critical truth; you cannot get higher authority than that sincere assurance for any valuation of any visible thing. The only way you can fail, as a spectator of nature or art, is to say things, and try to believe them, just because some aesthetic pundit or critical mandarin has said them before. That way humbug lies, and boredom too. (Quoted from The Right Place: A Book of Pleasures, by C. E. Montague, Chatto and Windus, London, 1924, p. 222.)
For a brief biography of C. E. Montague, click here.
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