DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM (?)
"Abominably revolting," "hideous," "filthy," "disgusting,"
"atrocious"--such are usually the words of observers in describing
these shocking mutilations. Nevertheless they always apply the word
"ornamentation" to them, with the implication that the savages look
upon them as beautiful, although all that the observers had a right to
say was that they pleased the savages and were approved by fashion.
What is worse, the philosophers fell into the pitfall thus dug for
them. Darwin thinks that the mutilations indulged in by savages show
"how different is the standard of _taste_"; Humboldt (III., 236)
reflects on the strange fact that nations "attach the idea of beauty"
to whatever configuration nature has given them; and Ploss (I., 48)
declares bluntly that there is no such thing as an absolute standard
of beauty and that savages have "just as much right" to their ideas on
the subject as we have to admire a madonna of Raphael. This view,
indeed, is generally held; it is expressed in the old saw, _De
gustibus non est disputandum_. Now it is true that it is _unwise_ to
dispute about tastes _conversationally_; but scientifically speaking,
that old saw has not a sound tooth in it.
If a peasant who has never had an opportunity to cultivate his musical
sense insisted that a certain piano was exquisitely in tune and had as
beautiful a tone as any other piano, whereas an expert musician
declared that it had a shrill tone and was terribly out of tune, would
anybody be so foolish as to say that the peasant had as much right to
his opinion as the musician? Or if an Irish toper declared that a
bottle of Chambertin, over which French epicures smacked their lips,
was insipid and not half as fine as the fusel-oil on which he daily
got drunk, would not everybody agree that the Irishman was no judge of
liquors, and that the reason why he preferred his cheap whiskey to the
Burgundy was that his nerves of taste were too coarse to detect the
subtle and exquisite bouquet of the French wine? In both these
examples we are concerned only with simple questions of sense
perception; yet in the matter of personal beauty, which involves not
only the senses, but the imagination, the intellect, and the subtlest
feelings, we are asked to believe that any savage who has never seen a
woman but those of his own race has as much right to his opinion as a
Ruskin or a Titian, who have given their whole life to the study of
beauty!
If an astronomer--to take another illustration--were told that _de
astronomia non est disputandum_, and that the Namaquas, who believe
that the moon is made of bacon, or the Brazilian tribes who think that
an eclipse consists in an attempt on the part of a monstrous jaguar to
swallow the sun--have as much right to their opinion as he has, he
would consider the person who advanced such an argument either a wag
or a fool.
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