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Page 16
And so it was ever through all those days when Art was so vigorous
and progressive. Who can say how little we should know of many
periods, but for their art? History (so called) has remembered the
kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the
people, because they created.
I think, then, that this knowledge we have of the life of past times
gives us some token of the way we should take in meeting those
honest and single-hearted men who above all things desire the
world's progress, but whose minds are, as it were, sick on this
point of the arts. Surely you may say to them: When all is gained
that you (and we) so long for, what shall we do then? That great
change which we are working for, each in his own way, will come like
other changes, as a thief in the night, and will be with us before
we know it; but let us imagine that its consummation has come
suddenly and dramatically, acknowledged and hailed by all right-
minded people; and what shall we do then, lest we begin once more to
heap up fresh corruption for the woeful labour of ages once again?
I say, as we turn away from the flagstaff where the new banner has
been just run up; as we depart, our ears yet ringing with the blare
of the heralds' trumpets that have proclaimed the new order of
things, what shall we turn to then, what MUST we turn to then?
To what else, save to our work, our daily labour?
With what, then, shall we adorn it when we have become wholly free
and reasonable? It is necessary toil, but shall it be toil only?
Shall all we can do with it be to shorten the hours of that toil to
the utmost, that the hours of leisure may be long beyond what men
used to hope for? and what then shall we do with the leisure, if we
say that all toil is irksome? Shall we sleep it all away?--Yes, and
never wake up again, I should hope, in that case.
What shall we do then? what shall our necessary hours of labour
bring forth?
That will be a question for all men in that day when many wrongs are
righted, and when there will be no classes of degradation on whom
the dirty work of the world can be shovelled; and if men's minds are
still sick and loathe the arts, they will not be able to answer that
question.
Once men sat under grinding tyrannies, amidst violence and fear so
great, that nowadays we wonder how they lived through twenty-four
hours of it, till we remember that then, as now, their daily labour
was the main part of their lives, and that that daily labour was
sweetened by the daily creation of Art; and shall we who are
delivered from the evils they bore, live drearier days than they
did? Shall men, who have come forth from so many tyrannies, bind
themselves to yet another one, and become the slaves of nature,
piling day upon day of hopeless, useless toil? Must this go on
worsening till it comes to this at last--that the world shall have
come into its inheritance, and with all foes conquered and nought to
bind it, shall choose to sit down and labour for ever amidst grim
ugliness? How, then, were all our hopes cheated, what a gulf of
despair should we tumble into then?
In truth, it cannot be; yet if that sickness of repulsion to the
arts were to go on hopelessly, nought else would be, and the
extinction of the love of beauty and imagination would prove to be
the extinction of civilisation. But that sickness the world will
one day throw off, yet will, I believe, pass through many pains in
so doing, some of which will look very like the death-throes of Art,
and some, perhaps, will be grievous enough to the poor people of the
world; since hard necessity, I doubt, works many of the world's
changes, rather than the purblind striving to see, which we call the
foresight of man.
Meanwhile, remember that I asked just now, what was amiss in Art or
in ourselves that this sickness was upon us. Nothing is wrong or
can be with Art in the abstract--that must always be good for
mankind, or we are all wrong together: but with Art, as we of these
latter days have known it, there is much wrong; nay, what are we
here for to-night if that is not so? were not the schools of art
founded all over the country some thirty years ago because we had
found out that popular art was fading--or perhaps had faded out from
amongst us?
As to the progress made since then in this country--and in this
country only, if at all--it is hard for me to speak without being
either ungracious or insincere, and yet speak I must. I say, then,
that an apparent external progress in some ways is obvious, but I do
not know how far that is hopeful, for time must try it, and prove
whether it be a passing fashion or the first token of a real stir
among the great mass of civilised men. To speak quite frankly, and
as one friend to another, I must needs say that even as I say those
words they seem too good to be true. And yet--who knows?--so wont
are we to frame history for the future as well as for the past, so
often are our eyes blind both when we look backward and when we look
forward, because we have been gazing so intently at our own days,
our own lines. May all be better than I think it!
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