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Show 126 to the level of the spectator. This was the perspective of a man on the mountain, but not a man who had conquered it. It was a perspective which gave the mountains due respect, even in a modern and materialistic world. Whymper's was a good secular answer to Ruskin's criticism. That was as far as it went. MUIR AND THE ARTISTS While British Victorian mountaineers were intent on showing the importance of impressions gained along the way to the summit, Muir wished to go beyond their fragmented perspective, and assert that the whole ascent was greater than the parts. In his originally published narrative he dramatized his search for the right relationship between men and mountains. Even if the reader missed the spiritual message, he would at least know that mountaineering had an aesthetic dimension. The narrative contrasted his own ascent of Ritter to the activity of two artists whom he brought to Tuolumne Meadows. Thus it invited the reader to contrast Muir's way against the limited aesthetic perspective of the artists. Before the artists arrived on the scene, Muir was already disposed to think of the Sierra as an aesthetic whole, at the same time as he recognized that "Few portions of the California Alps are, strictly speaking, picturesque." This was because the whole range was "one grand picture, not clearly divisible into smaller ones." Even while he pursued his lonely way, |