Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>
> That Frick, only apparently the quote is by Jay Gould. The quality of the
> Frick art collection is mainly due to Frick having hired Bernard Berenson,
> giving him an unlimited budget, and directing him to go to Europe and buy
> good stuff. Frick may not have known from art, but he was able to find out
> who did.
>
This raises an analogous case to a thread occasionally debated on this list -- that is the intermittend complaint that people reach conclusions about books without having read them. I've yet to get anyone to explicitly admit the nearly self-evident fact that intellectual life _has_ to be based on thousands of decisions re books one has not read. In fact, intellectual life would come to a screeching halt unless everyone involved, more or less consciously, regularly made decisions of the sort, "A notes that B notes that C notes that D is nor worth reading and that E is intellgent and writes well but is entirely mistaken."
Thought _begins_ with accepting the authority of others, then proceeding further within the framework established by acceptance of that authority.
My position is that anyone who denies this is either (a) lying or (b) doesn't really know very much.
Carrol