Abstract

Parker's Nature of the Fine Arts

The article focuses on the book "The Nature of the Fine Arts," by H. Parker. The book is throughout, in spite of its great erudition and really profound thought, rendered fallacious as argument and unsatisfactory as treatise by the want of a distinct and unvarying term for its starting point. Parker undertakes to establish that there is no scientific element in taste, therefore no theory, and therefore practically no teaching of Art. Parker draws between the views of Plato, Greek philosopher, and some of the moderns in regard to Art are interesting as intellectual history, but of no value as art study; for neither Plato nor the moderns he mentions had any known capacity to deal with Art as a phenomenon; nor have the opinions of any of the ancients a satisfactory relation to the question, as seen from the modem point of view.