‘WE have just passed through a long period of error in art, caused by the knowledge of physical and mechanical chemistry, and by the study of nature. Artists having lost their savagery, and no longer able to rely upon instinct, one might better say imagination, have strayed off on so many different paths to find the productive elements they no longer have the strength to create; and now they cannot work except in disorderly crowds, feeling frightened, almost lost, if left to themselves.’—GAUGUIN, Letters. Trans. Ruth Pielkova.
‘I have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus it is composed of less ingenuous instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense. I have seen in the Lion Tribe that the sense of smell is connected with part of the substance of the brain which comes down from the nostrils.’—LEONARDO DA VINCI, Note-books.
‘The eyes in the Lion Tribe have a larger part of the head for their sockets, and the optic nerves communicate at once with the brain; but the contrary is to be seen in Man, for the sockets of the eyes are but a small part of the head, and the optic nerves are very fine and long.’—Ibid.
We must have the eyes, the nose, of the Lion, the Lion’s acuity of sense, and with these, the Sun of Man’s reason.
Remember the ‘animal full of genius’, of whom Baudelaire wrote. (See page 4.) —E. S.
‘… of this great personage Pan we have a very particular description in the ancient writers, who unanimously agree to represent him … hairy all over, half a man and half a beast….
‘Since the chief thing to which he applied himself was the civilising of mankind … it should seem that the first principle of science must be received from that nation to which the gods were by Homer said to resort twelve days every year for the conversation of its wise and just inhabitants.’—MARTIN SCRIBLERUS, On the Origin of Sciences.
‘… In all the western parts of the world there was a great and memorable era in which they’ (the beast-philosophers) ‘began to be silent…. Men’s heads became too much puzzled to receive the simpler wisdom of these ancient Sylvans.’—Ibid.