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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should
not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work
of art in question. This is, of course, quite obvious in the case
of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and women. But
it is equally true of what are called educated people. For an
educated person's ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art
has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what
Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past
is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real
perfection depends. A temperament capable of receiving, through an
imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and
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