There exists a school of æstheticism which laughs contemptuously at the mere sight of this superscription. Art having a mission! What utter nonsense. A person must be a rank Philistine to connect with the idea of art the conception of a non-artistic mission, be it social or otherwise. Has a work of art any other mission than to give pleasure by beauty? It strives to attain no goal that lies outside of itself. It is its own object, and whoever assigns to it another, sins against the sanctity of art.

This is, in short, the theory of art for art’s sake: l’art pour l’art. I deem this theory false and a hallmark of crass ignorance, for psychology and the history of civilisation and art, the history of all arts, prove irrefutably the vanity and worthlessness of the concept that denies to art any other task and mission than that of being beautiful.

Certainly art is, in the main, a purely subjective activity, in which the artist wishes solely to satisfy himself, without thinking of any person or thing external to himself. The psychological roots of all artistic creation are, in fact, an exceptional sensitiveness and feeling on the part of the artist. We know that every moderately strong impression which man—and, moreover, not only man, but also every living creature, however low in the scale—receives from the external world, excites in him processes, which, in the case of man and the higher animals, attain consciousness as emotion or passion. The emotion imperiously urges in towards liberation through movements, that is to say, muscular activity, which, in many cases, is accompanied by glandular activity, e.g. tears, secretion of saliva, perspiration, etc. To men of the average type the usual forms of manifesting their emotion suffice. If they have wept in sorrow, laughed for joy, cursed or clenched their fist in anger, they are pacified. Their emotion has spent itself and become exhausted, and their physical life once more flows in its accustomed channels.

However, if, instead of the average man, we have before us a creature of exceptional sensitiveness and emotionality, the psychical processes assume another shape. This creature feels all phenomena more acutely; they arouse in him more violent passions; his emotions are deeper and more lasting. Their normal forms of expression do not suffice to lull them. They take possession of his soul, organise themselves, show a tendency to become compelling ideas, and oppress it with psycho-motorial incitements or impulses until it has freed itself from them by acts which stand in proper ratio to the number or violence of the emotions. A being whose excessive emotionality is of an angry, malicious nature attains relief only through deeds of destruction. Such is the case with most sub-species of born criminals. Should the exceptionally strong emotions not be of a destructive nature, they find their outlet otherwise by artistic creations, which, therefore, are a liberation and solution of emotion that has become overmastering.

But this simple, as it were, normal case, in which the work of art actually fulfils a purely subjective mission, and aims at no other object than to relieve the artist’s nervous system and to unburden his mind of a compelling idea—this case is actually met with only in the earliest ages of mankind. Art for art’s sake—the art which is practised purely for the relief and satisfaction of the artist—is that of the cave-man of the quaternary period. The artist who adorned the walls of the Caves of Mouthe[1] with figures of animals; who scratched the famous mammoth on the tusk of La Madeleine in the Dordogne; the draughtsman of Bruniquel, of Schaffhausen; the author of the rock-pictures in Sweden, probably did not trouble himself as to whether he was producing any effect on others. In all likelihood he did not work for society. His psychology is disclosed to us by the subjects he treated. He was an enthusiastic hunter, endowed with a particularly lively intuition and manual dexterity. On the days when he could not go hunting, either because bad weather prevented him doing so, or external compulsion—perhaps an accident met with in the chase—confined him to his cave, he thought longingly of his favourite occupation. The beasts that composed his usual booty lived in his imagination. His grotto was peopled with the monsters of the forest and plain of primitive times. He saw the mammoth with its stiff mane, the grisly cave-bear, the aurochs and giant-elk, the shaggy, thick-set horse of Solutré; he pursued, fought, slew them. He felt all the keen joys of these mighty deeds, and became so strongly excited that he could not refrain from realising the lively pictures of his fancy, by drawing them on bones, tusks, or rocks, or carving them on stags’ horns and elephants’ teeth. It would not gainsay this psychology of primitive human art, if the artists in remote ages (as the latest pre-historic investigations seem to attest) connected superstitious ideas with the imitation of their animals of the chase, perhaps believed by such means they cast a spell on the animals portrayed, and facilitated their capture. A superstition like this would, in its turn, become a source of fresh emotions which also seek outward expression.

Besides the hunter there was also the warrior, who liked to portray his conquered enemies, and the sensualist, who sought delight in carving female busts, the types of which, to our taste, seem very ugly, but may have appeared alluring to him.

These savage forefathers who adorned the caves of the early stone age with works of art not invariably crude; who woke the echo of the forest valleys with plaintive or yearning melodies; who excited themselves by sensuous dances in the moonlight nights of spring; who formed, in symbolic and allegorical songs, their mystic impressions of the great phenomena of the weather and sky;—these savage forefathers were the first, but at the same time last, purely subjective artists, the only real believers in the dogma of “art for art’s sake.”

In order to find them once more in our own times, we must seek them in the nursery or the Board School class-room. The artist of primitive times survives by atavism in the child. But he substitutes for the rock-wall of the cave and the mammoth’s tooth his slate, copy-book, school-books, often enough his desk and form, which he adorns with drawings that, if not particularly finished, are, nevertheless, always full of expression, and recognisable. The child does not give way to his artistic wantonness in order to please others. He hides it, moreover, mostly for obvious reasons, from the eyes of strangers; he only draws to portray symbolically that which has made a strong impression on him. He always notes down the important, distinguishing features which have struck him in the phenomenon. This fierce mustache, the circle drawn across which represents the head, is for the little draughtsman the characteristic of manly dignity; this right-angled broken stroke, which bristles up over a row of men, is the formidable bayonet that marks the soldier; this disproportionately big stick in another man’s hand is the dreaded badge that embodies the schoolmaster’s power. The young artist has obeyed genuine impulses. His art forms really spring out of the deep grounds of his emotion.

With advancing civilisation, however, this state of things quickly changes. The artist soon notices that he is differently conditioned to the rest, the average men; that his feelings are keener, their manifestation more expressive than with the latter. He becomes conscious of his superiority, fancies himself something in regard to it, and cultivates it. Other men find æsthetic pleasure in his creations, and encourage him by flattering applause which easily rises to admiration. That calls forth an energetic metamorphosis in the inmost processes of his work, in its causes and aims. What was once organic necessity now becomes craftsmanship; uncontrollable inspiration is replaced by custom and by style. The artist becomes his own imitator. In years of cool, methodical, routine work, he simply calls to mind the moment when the feverish workings of his brain powerfully drove him into the paths of art. He observes all rites of the creator by impulse, but they are now only an attitude which he has learnt. In theory he is still inspired by impulse; practically, he is a professional craftsman who performs the day’s work imposed on him by intelligent volition. He is still always in search of self-satisfaction whilst engaged on works of art, but it is of another nature than that of the unsophisticated artist. The unconscious aim of his efforts is not to find relief from an emotional tension: he strives after the voluptuous feeling of flattered amour propre; he grows ambitious, very often, indeed, only vain. He thinks of his public. He anticipates his success. The thought of approbation takes the place of the effort to deliver himself from a painfully obsessing conception.

This also is always the psychology of the born artist, who is one because his organisation forces him to it. Beside him, however, swarms the innumerable crowd of imitation artists, of average, and very average men, who would never of themselves have thought of becoming artists—men who would never have discovered art of themselves, if they had not had before their eyes the example of the original artists, their successes, their recognition by civilised society. These individuals pursue art, not to deliver themselves from an obsessing conception, but as a means of attaining privileges, gold, and honours. For them art is an avocation like any other, a trade learnt, which is to bring them, not to subjective psychological, but to practical and social ends. They try by a sort of mimicry to become like the original artists, but they belong to another species. Nevertheless, it is not permissible to neglect them in this consideration, for, for one thing, they constitute the vast majority of artists, from the moment when the pursuit of art has become a differentiated activity, the habitual and exclusive occupation of a separate class of society; and then the productions of these imitators are always modelled after works done through organic necessity. They are, to a certain extent, the small change of originally great values; they would like to be changed for them, and everything which is to be said of any particular problem of art, necessarily finds its application to the imitations as well as to the original pictures.

These are then the origins and stages of development of art. At the outset, it is actually what the school of “art for art’s sake” asserts of it: a subjective purpose, a satisfaction of an organic need on the part of the artist. Soon, however, the artist ceases to confine himself to satisfying himself in relieving himself; he also seeks to please others. In the most secret and mysterious moments of creation, the thought of other men is present in his mind; considerations as to effect and success are mixed with his productive emotions. Substitute mere craftsmanship for inspiration, then these considerations become more and more dominant, and when art has once become a regular ordinary business, and the imitators, the mere echoes and reflections, have once become the majority among those who practise it, then the artist has his eyes continually fixed on his tribunal, viz., society. In the moment his work of art is germinating, it is strongly influenced by consideration of the known or the supposed taste of the society whose applause the artist courts, and the work undergoes a development more or less remote from the form it would have acquired under the pure influence of emotion, its primary source.

Society naturally sees what place it occupies in the artist’s mind, what share it has in his creations, and how important to him its verdict is. It promptly perceives its advantage. It takes possession of the artist, forces its tastes on him, and insists on his working, not for himself, but for it. Henceforward it has in him a paid servant; he has to conform his special energy to the general plan of the society organism of which he is a part, and, in this way, a manifestation which was originally a purely subjective performance becomes a social performance.

Art, engendered by individual emotion and transfigured into a social work, shares this lot which we have no right to call a degradation, with innumerable other main instincts, strivings, desires. It is the peculiarity of civilisation that it subdues to itself human emotions, and applies them as motive powers for the purpose of creating results which are not always, which are not even frequently, the natural purpose of these emotions. The whole existence of society, every organisation, every civilisation, rests on the application of this method; in fact, every attitude and action of man is affected by an emotion at its base. Without emotion, man is a sluggish mass, with which nothing can be done. In order to get anything from him, he must first have his mind excited, and after that we must be able to direct this excitement. All usages and regulations are merely a collection of channels dug in order to act as conduits to the emotions, and to utilise their force in regular employment. By the help of the emotions of love, society has been enabled to create marriage, which does not serve for the satisfaction of the instinct, but should guarantee economic security for the wife and children. With the emotion of sympathy—this preliminary condition of every social structure—with this fount of pity, altruism, and solidarity, mankind has created the political order, the State, with all its burdensome tyranny, which seems no longer to have anything at all in common with sympathy, which is, nevertheless, its emotional root. With the emotion of mysticism and superstition, society has produced practical morality and all its constraint; with self-love and vanity, patriotism and its caricature, Chauvinism; with the wicked impulses to destruction and murder, the professional qualities of the soldier, still indispensable for the security of the political organism. In short, the whole work of civilisation consists in making itself master of individual emotions, diverting them from their natural goals, applying them to the good of the whole body. The State society is a machine that is moved only by the emotions of individuals. Social life is simply the product of a very complex and skilfully conducted work of primitive emotions. If, therefore, any one exclaims slightingly at the mention of the social productions of art: “That’s common, rank utilitarianism!” we are justified in shrugging our shoulders. Utilitarianism? Why, certainly. Utility is the primary law of every society, of every living organism. The lowest living creature of one cell could not support itself for a single instant, unless all its parts were continually working with the object of promoting its existence, of serving the demands of its life—in short, making themselves useful to the whole.

When men came to observe that they possessed among them beings who had stronger emotions than the rest, and made these emotions evident by creations which were calculated to make a deep impression on other men, they, according to the standing rule—I might say, according to the biological rule—of society, made haste to place these exceptional natures, these artists, in the service of the great interests of society.

Whoever can still entertain a doubt that art has always performed a task which was by no means æsthetic, even if fulfilled by æsthetic means, let him cast a glance at the history of the arts.

Let him read the poems of antiquity, gaze on the sculptures and paintings of the Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks. Let him listen to the far-off, and doubtless sadly distorted echo of ancient music in the Hymn to Apollo, restored by over-daring scholarship. Where will he find a work—a single work—which corresponds with the psychological scheme of the origin of artistic creation and with the definitions of the party of “Art for art’s sake”? Where is the work that has been achieved purely for self-satisfaction, for the relief of the artist’s nerves? Where is the work that is only to serve beauty? I cannot see it; but what I do see is that all known works serve some purpose of society. They glorify the gods, the kings, the commonwealth. They extol the dignity of belief, of government, of the mother-country. Homer shows the heroes of the Hellenic race in the bloody apotheosis of their exploits. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides unfold on the stage the myths and sagas of their ancestors. On the Acropolis, in the Parthenon, gleam the gods of the mother-country, the guardians of the commonwealth, shaped by the magic chisel of Phidias. The Stoa, the Poikile, the Stadium, are peopled with the monuments of athletes, warriors, archons, legislators, of all great men who are the people’s pride, and are to serve them as models. Tyrtæus chants his sublime marches to excite the warriors to fight for their country. The singer of the Hymn to Apollo composes his cantatas to make the temple service more impressive. I am well aware that, besides these monuments, there are the little lyric poems of the Anthology, the charming little Tanagra figures, that is to say, very individual revelations, which sing the joys and sorrows of a single soul, which seize the graceful movements and gait of young women who had enraptured a single kneader of the clay. But these pretty little things, although chef d’œuvres of their kind, are not, however, to be compared with the triumphant creations prompted by religious belief and patriotism, whose superhuman splendour fills the centuries.

If we go from pagan antiquity to the Christian Middle Ages and the free-thinking or the openly atheistic Renaissance, the rôle of art remains unchanged. For whom does the artist work? Only for the Church and the palace. The pope, the bishop, the abbot demand of him the decoration of the cathedral and monastery. The priest under the vaulted arch, the monk in his refectory—these must have before their eyes images to remind them of the doctrines of which they are preachers and servants. The people, when they enter God’s house, must be caught hold of by the representations of suffering and martyrdoms, of beneficent and comforting miracles, of the horrors of hell and the bliss of paradise, and be strengthened in their faith, seeing with their eyes and touching with their hands what religion teaches. The king’s castle, the palace of the great vassals, plume themselves on the works of arts that are consecrated to the glory of their ancestors, of their rank, or, simply, of the dominant system. Here the stately tombs of kings or knights, here the statues showing the ancestor as hero or demi-god. Here the pictures of battles and sieges, of butcheries and victories. Here the painted memorials of great state ceremonies, triumphal entries, receptions of ambassadors, conclusions of advantageous treaties, famous meetings of mighty lords. The object of all this art is always to flatter the vanity of the great, to impose on the populace a high notion of their wealth and power, to make it feel, by all possible means of expression, the superiority of its leaders. We must go down to the Italian Renaissance in order to discover, by the side of religious, dynastic, aristocratic, and political art—for historical art was always designed to serve a political idea or arrangement—in order to discover, I say, by the side of this prescriptive art, the beginning of a purely æsthetic art. When Mantegna paints the “Muses on Olympus,” or Leonardo the “Mona Lisa,” they are no longer desirous of kindling faith or strengthening subjects in obedience, but they want to enrich and brighten existence. But whose existence? That of a wealthy and distinguished patron, of him who has placed the order with them. It is not before the Renaissance that we see the artist gradually emancipate himself from the rule that sternly dictates to him the choice of his theme, and even, up to a certain point, the method of his treatment. He then acquired to some degree the freedom to follow his own power of imagination, and could hope to get a return for his creations, even if he did not serve a dogma or a policy, even if he did not glorify a saint, a king, or a nobleman; if he simply tried to move a man’s soul by revealing the secret movements of a human soul.

We see then that, through long centuries, art had the sole task to serve the great institutions of society: religion, monarchy, or one’s native country under another form of government, the dominant castes. The mechanism by which art was held in bondage was the simplest and most naïve: the artist had no other customer for his works except the powers that be. These bound him by his necessity to eat daily, or nearly so. The Church, the king, the republic, the city, the ruler, gave the artist commissions, and paid him. If he found no patron in the castle or palace, he had no gold or honour to hope for from any other quarter. Now neither the Church, nor the Government, nor the privileged classes were in the habit of throwing their money out of the window. The money they expended had to bring them profit. They wanted the artist in their pay to become a champion for their cause, in exactly the same way as the cross-bowmen of their body-guard, their judge, their herald, steward, aye, their jailer and executioner. Art, in those days, preached the fear of God and his servants, submission to the king and the State, respect for nobles and officials. The ruling powers made the artist suggest to the people all that was favourable to them. Art was the school of the good subject, the artist the main prop of priestly and monarchical-aristocratic society. The common herd, the million, found none of their human emotions satisfied in art; the voices that rang out of these works only cried to them: “Pray, obey, tremble.”

The Netherlanders, a free people, were the first to know an art other than the traditional one. In Flanders and Holland, writers, and especially painters, began to speak no longer exclusively of God and the saints, the king and the great, but of the humble, obscure, and nameless multitude. Genre painting revived for the first time since ancient days. It told the everyday life of the middle and lower classes, their somewhat gross joys, their somewhat commonplace sorrows; it showed the ale-house and the mill, the sitting-room and the retail shop. This was not edifying, it is true. The philosophy of this art is low; it hardly widens the spiritual horizon, and is of poor comfort amid the narrowness and bitterness of real life. And yet this art was a forerunner. It denoted a turning-point, the beginning of great and important things. One great king, Lewis XIV., was not deceived about it. With the sharpened keen feeling of the mighty for everything that can encroach on their superhuman dignity, he perceived at once that this new art offended against his kingly majesty. How? There are painters who dare to treat of plebeian subjects! What should that mean? Does art perhaps even fancy that it can be other than a continual homage to the greatness and omnipotence of kings? And, with an annihilating wave of his hand, he banished from his august presence these daring little pictures, these democratic works of Teniers, Ostade, Dirk Hals, and Gerard Dow, whilst uttering the historic words: “Enlevez-moi ces grotesques.”

But time stands not still; development is achieved. Modern democracy appears, and transposes all the conditions of existence of society and its members. Art cannot escape the general revolution. It experiences its influence spiritually and economically; changes its judgment hall and its mart. We do not realise the tremendous meaning of this change. The court that decided as to the worth of the artist and his work was formerly the small circle of possible patrons—princes of the Church, the great, the courtiers. To-day this court is criticism, professional criticism. In earlier times it was enough for the artist to please a few people, perhaps only one individual, if the latter happened to be a magnate. He had not to trouble himself about the crowd; moreover, the crowd followed docilely the lead from above. When Dante said:

What did grido mean? What was fama? It was the opinion of a court, that of Rome or Pisa, perhaps of Ravenna. We must go to Aretino to discover a specimen of an art critic who was neither a Mæcenas like Leo X. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even a painter like Vasari, but merely an audacious spirit who arrogated to himself the right of dealing out praise and blame, and conferring glory in the name of something absolutely novel, in the name of public opinion.

From that time it is professional criticism which suggests to the multitude, and imposes on the mighty, its judgment on the artist. But the criticism is disinterested, or at least can be so. It does not expect of the work of art a direct personal advantage, its own glorification, the vindication of its spiritual and material influence. Its measure, therefore, grows larger and broader. It brings to its office philosophical and æsthetic considerations, which the popes and kings could not know when they gave commissions to the artists, their protégés. In order to secure success, the artist must now please the critic—many critics—and the latter pass a verdict on him with perceptions, with taste and spiritual prepossessions that very seldom are those of the bishops and great men.

And as the artist has got another tribunal, he also comes before the public under other material and spiritual conditions, and seeks in other ways a market for his work.

In feudal times, as we have seen, the church and palace were the places for works of art. They were seen there under circumstances little favourable for a purely æsthetic appreciation. In the cathedral people were intimidated by the significance of the vast space, the acts of faith, and the perfume of incense; in the castle, by the magnificent garments of the officials, and the weapons of the guard. It was in 1673 that a “Salon,” i.e., a regular art-exhibition, was opened in Paris; and besides the “Salon” public museums were opened everywhere, to which every one had access without invitation or introduction. The artist was now quite independent; he could work without waiting for orders. He no more needed, in order to become known, to crave humbly a visit to his possibly poverty-stricken studio. Here was a definite place where he could exhibit his work to thousands of spectators—connoisseurs, judges, possible buyers. From that time he worked with an eye to the great public which was sure not to be lacking at his regular rendezvous. If the professional critic became his judge, the mass of people became his Mæcenas. Universal suffrage has dethroned Church and royalty, and remains the artist’s only patron.

I say expressly—the only. It still happens that the State, i.e., a high official, perhaps a monarch, orders works, assigns to the artist the task of adorning churches and palaces, perhaps even public places and walks, or even creating a monument of political import. But who receives these commissions? The artist pointed out by public opinion, i.e., the democratic crowd acting under the suggestion of the critics, who also belong to the crowd. The artist who has gained the advantage of an officially favoured position otherwise than by popular acclamation, who owes it to the whim of a ruler, the mere favouritism of a bishop or some other great personage, is nowadays not esteemed, but despised. He may receive some alms in the shape of money; he may collect ridiculous titles and wretched tags of coloured ribbons, but he will be branded with the name of court-artist, and this name excludes him irredeemably from fame.

The literary man in earlier times lived by the favour of a protector, whom alone he had to trouble about pleasing. Nowadays he lives, through newspapers and books, by the public at large. The dramatic poet had, for his productions, only the subsidised theatre, the theatre royal, which imposed on him its regulations. To-day this theatre is insignificant as compared with the free and independent stage, and the poet need know no other care and consideration than that of getting a good grip on his public. Then the artist had nothing to hope for, unless he served religion, the monarchy, or the aristocracy. Now subjects from these spheres have actually become laughing-stocks—pompiers, as they are termed with an expression of contempt; and the artist, if he would become rich and famous, must fish for his subjects in other streams of thought. This is so true that there are rulers who, from feeling that art is making itself independent of them, and will no longer serve as the herald of their thoughts, try even to produce works of art, and would impress their works on the admiration of the multitude, which, nevertheless, does not admire.

The great revolution is consequently accomplished; art now works only for the masses. It is still always the State that commissions; it is still always the few rich who buy; but it is really universal suffrage that imposes on them its own inclinations. But we do not believe that that new Mæcenas, the people at large, has other habits of mind or ways of acting than had the Mæcenas of the past. The people too, exactly like the priests and kings of old, demands that art should please and flatter it. But it further demands something else, something more than pleasure and obsequiousness—viz., a high satisfaction, a corrective of an evil of which it is perhaps not clearly conscious, but which, nevertheless, it feels strongly. And I will now try to point out this evil.

One of the most striking phenomena of modern life is specialisation applied to all departments. Every one tills merely a very little bit of field or rather he ploughs only one and the same furrow. This is true of mental craftsmen. It is still more true of handicraftsmen. What existence does such a man lead nowadays? There is no longer one who fabricates an entire chair. One always makes the arms, another the legs, a third the back, a fourth the cane-work. A knife goes through a dozen hands, a needle, I believe, through thirty. In order to attain that extreme skill which competition demands of him and which he must supply, if he would earn his bread, the workman continually repeats the movement, becomes a machine, less than a machine, a tiny part of a machine, a single wheel, a single screw. His being shrivels up, his soul suffers. All development is denied him; all his faculties, except the one he is always employing, become crippled, and disappear. The man gradually sinks almost to the low level of a polypus, which is only an organ of a hydramedusa.

Whence comes the strange fascination that the foremost men of the Italian Renaissance exercise on us? The reason is that they were complete men. All their faculties were fully developed—all that offered a possibility in them was developed to the utmost. Nothing human was alien to them. With marvellous freedom they circumscribed the whole circle of human knowledge and faculties. Then the learned man was an universal scholar; his knowledge was encyclopædic. The poets were at the same time men of action. Men of rank were artists and writers, and the artists were all they wished to be. Michael Angelo painted, modelled, built the cupola of St Peter’s, and wrote charming verses. Benvenuto Cellini handled the spatula as well as the mallet, the crayon as well as the pen, and the sword as well as all these tools. Macchiavelli governed as wonderfully as he wrote, and Leonardo painted the “Last Supper” between a musical composition, a treatise on mechanics, a plan of a fortification, the model of a triumphal car, and the plan of a canal for the purpose of irrigation. Count Castiglione’s “Cortegiano” shows us the ideal of the man at the time of the Renaissance. He was probably the fairest flower ever produced by the human plant. The modern man may envy him; he can never be his peer, but must shrivel up in his narrow corner. Hypertrophy of a single, often subordinate faculty, atrophy of all the rest—such is the lot to which he is ruthlessly condemned. And there is no change possible in respect of it; no herb grown can prove an antidote to that bane. Division of labour gives to the whole advantages too great to be dispensed with out of consideration for the individual. Division of labour is the true condition of all progress, though in this case, as in so many others, progress exacts a heavy, very heavy, price for its services.

Every one is painfully aware of this reverse side of progress; many consciously take themselves to task for it. Why has the madhouse philosophy which extols the superman been able to subjugate spirited youth? Because it meets the longing for a fuller life of the personality. And anarchism? What is the secret that makes it attractive to true consciences and loving hearts? Nothing except that anarchy seems to promise unchecked development of the individuality. In all these nonsensical, wild, and criminal movements there is some little revolt against the pinching and tightening in of the personality entailed by the modern conditions of labour, and this is the ingredient that recruits adherents among those unaccustomed to rigorous examination of their thoughts. And when the workmen demand an eight-hours’ day, what do they want? To find time to go and drink at the public house, to be able to idle, as the ill-wishers who calumniate them assert? No; they want to have a few hours in which to cease to be mechanical tools, in which they may again be men, and participate in the great life of the community.

But by what means can we give back to men what division of labour and specialisation—these irrefragable consequences of contemporary progress—have taken from them? By what means can we remake beings developed from them harmonic? Perhaps in a very distant future science will effect this necessary, demanded, and longed for miracle. Perhaps mankind will once more see these workers who earn their bread during a part of the day by handicraft, and during the rest of the time linger on the highest summits of human thought and knowledge; a Socrates, who is a stonemason; a Spinoza, who polishes spectacle glasses. But, as I have said before, that will be feasible only in a very remote future, for science is not easily accessible; the way leading to it is long and rough, and the full life through science is possible only to men of a higher spiritual development than the average people nowadays.

But if science is no longer the usual companion of the man of the masses, and, unfortunately, will not be so for a long time, art, on the other hand, admits him to familiar intercourse. No tedious initiation is requisite for it, nor any hard labours which the majority cannot perform. It is sufficient to have eyes and ears, and a human heart in one’s breast. After an apprenticeship, which may be very short; after some habituation which one easily acquires by intercourse with beautiful works, almost every one arrives so far that, even if he cannot appreciate the technical and philosophical merits of a work of art with consciousness, yet he can feel its charm and be susceptible of emotions from it.

Art it is, then, which can give to modern humanity what it most needs—the means of attaining the full life. Here lies, unless I am deceived, the greatness, the lofty mission of art in a democratic society which rests on a civilisation, the marks of which, the real condition of which, are severe specialisation and division of labour carried to an extreme.

Art raises man out of industrialism and introduces him to a higher world. In this artist-created world the man who is bundled together stretches himself straight; the shrivelled broadens out; the fraction of a man becomes complete. Here he who belongs to his machine or observation-instrument becomes once more a free man and citizen of the world—a man participating in the life of the community, and enjoying with the rest all the beauties of heaven and earth, all the greatness of heart and soul of the pick of men. Through art a person imprisoned in his daily avocation comes into communion with all civilisation. Here is the paradise to which the astronomer descends from his constellations, to which the miner ascends from his pit, in order to participate in the same joys and raptures, to bring to flower whatever potentialities they possess. The mission of art in society present and future is, in short, to liberate the prisoner of subdivided labour, to restore the dignity of manhood to the being degraded into a little wheel of a machine.

But art, which is to fulfil this new and lofty mission, cannot, manifestly, be conventional art. On this theocracy, monarchy, and aristocracy have stamped the character that suited them. The multitude at the present day find no sort of joy in works which depict to them the bliss of paradise and the torments of hell, which extol some paste-board king with crown and sceptre, which offer for their admiration the greatness of blue-blooded privileged beings. Like the patrons of earlier times, the people, who now represent Mæcenas of old, are interested in art only for themselves. The sources of their emotions in art are the emotions of their own lives. In the work of art that is to attract them, they must find themselves again, but, as formerly the priest and king did, magnified and ennobled. The work of art must show him his own likeness, but a beautiful one; it must raise the people in their own eyes, and teach them to respect themselves.

This the common realism has not comprehended, which broke in on art with a din, and dared to call upon the democracy. The genuine people has never had a mind to realism of this sort, but has always dismissed it roughly. The rough proof of a hateful and tedious reality, such as the pictures of Courbet or Bastien Lepage, has never attracted any but the superfine, and this only, by the well-known psychological law of contrast, whereby an impression that is the exact opposite of the usual impression can impart a pleasurable feeling for a short time. The rich and luxurious like to see works of ugliness and misery; the poor and afflicted do not like them. It is the same in regard to literature. Reluctant protests have frequently become loud, in these socialistic days, against the realism which a party organ offers its readers. The working class do not wish to know anything about this realism which professes to be modern and democratic, yet is, in reality, only wretched and repulsive. It coops them up in the narrowness of their everyday existence, but their wish is to get out of it.

Pictures such as Millet’s, sculptures such as Constantin Meunier’s—works which seek to show the dignity and beauty of the occupations of the masses, which constitute a hallowing of work, an apotheosis of the tragedies and idylls, of all the sweet and bitter emotions of the people’s life—these works, to my thinking, exhibit the type of future art.

Some great genius will, perhaps, find another formula. What one may, however, say for certain is this, that the art of the future will not be realistic in the narrow sense of the word. But it will not be mystical and æsthetic either. The people will never interest themselves in half-tone angels of boundless length, in violet-hued Virgins with lilies in their hands in a conventional bush, in enigmatical, mysterious verses. And esoteric art will never give the people what they need, viz., the liberating ideal. The art of the cultivator of the Ego, the dilletante, of the snobs of a Talmi-aristocracy, presumes to demand the future for itself. Is that to be an art of the future, an art of progress? One can only laugh at the notion. The art of the future will be no “little chapel,” but a mighty cathedral, wide enough to admit the whole of mankind. And that will be exactly its vocation: to be the hallowed place wherein mankind will rise again to the childship of God for which religion has educated them in past stages of evolution.