531
Different Feelings Towards Art.—From the time when we begin to live as a hermit, consuming and consumed, our only company being deep and prolific thoughts, we expect from art either nothing more, or else something quite different from what we formerly expected—in a word, we change our taste. For in former times we wished to penetrate for a moment by means of art into the element in which we are now living permanently: at that time we dreamt ourselves into the rapture of a possession which we now actually possess. Indeed, flinging away from us for the time being what we now have, and imagining ourselves to be poor, or to be a child, a beggar, or a fool, may now at times fill us with delight.