I do not, of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies,
tumults, factions, and all those other phenomena which are supposed
to make History interesting; nor would I deny that the strange mixture
of the problems of life and the problems of Mathematics, continually
inducing conjecture and giving an opportunity of immediate verification,
imparts to our existence a zest which you in Spaceland can hardly comprehend.
I speak now from the aesthetic and artistic point of view when I say that life
with us is dull; aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed.
How can it be otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes,
historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but
a single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and obscurity?
It was not always thus. Colour, if Tradition speaks the truth,
once for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient
splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages.
Some private individual--a Pentagon whose name is variously reported--
having casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colours
and a rudimentary method of painting, is said to have begun by decorating
first his house, then his slaves, then his Father, his Sons, and Grandsons,
lastly himself.
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