Inæsthetic

The Oriental inæsthetic incuriousness for things, old stones, wild scenery, &c., is increased by political reasons and fears.

It’s a bad habit I have acquired abroad. Our salon in Vienna was always full of diplomats of all sorts; and moreover, what has one in Ireland but politics? We don’t read; we don’t paint; we are all utterly ignorant and inæsthetic. We are exactly fifty years behind England in culture.

Compare a series of photographs of art with a series of photos from the nude, and you have proof enough that the beauty of the human body is an ideologic creation. Take away the egoistic sentiment of the race, and the sexual delirium, and man would appear very inferior in harmonic plentitude to most of the mammifers, the monkey, his brother, is, frankly inæsthetic.