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Page 57
That was the natural course of things then; men could do no
otherwise when they built than give some gift of beauty to the
world: but all is turned inside out now, and when men build they
cannot but take away some gift of beauty, which nature or their own
forefathers have given to the world.
Wonderful it is indeed, and perplexing, that the course of
civilisation towards perfection should have brought this about: so
perplexing, that to some it seems as if civilisation were eating her
own children, and the arts first of all.
I will not say that; time is big with so many a change; surely there
must be some remedy, and whether there be or no, at least it is
better to die seeking one, than to leave it alone and do nothing.
I have said, are you satisfied? and assumed that you are not, though
to many you may seem to be at least helpless: yet indeed it is
something or even a great deal that I can reasonably assume that you
are discontented: fifty years ago, thirty years ago, nay perhaps
twenty years ago, it would have been useless to have asked such a
question, it could only have been answered in one way: We are
perfectly satisfied: whereas now we may at least hope that
discontent will grow till some remedy will be sought for.
And if sought for, should it not, in England at least, be as good as
found already, and acted upon? At first sight it seems so truly;
for I may say without fear of contradiction that we of the English
middle classes are the most powerful body of men that the world has
yet seen, and that anything we have set our heart upon we will have:
and yet when we come to look the matter in the face, we cannot fail
to see that even for us with all our strength it will be a hard
matter to bring about that birth of the new art: for between us and
that which is to be, if art is not to perish utterly, there is
something alive and devouring; something as it were a river of fire
that will put all that tries to swim across to a hard proof indeed,
and scare from the plunge every soul that is not made fearless by
desire of truth and insight of the happy days to come beyond.
That fire is the hurry of life bred by the gradual perfection of
competitive commerce which we, the English middle classes, when we
had won our political liberty, set ourselves to further with an
energy, an eagerness, a single-heartedness that has no parallel in
history; we would suffer none to bar the way to us, we called on
none to help us, we thought of that one thing and forgot all else,
and so attained to our desire, and fashioned a terrible thing indeed
from the very hearts of the strongest of mankind.
Indeed I don't suppose that the feeble discontent with our own
creation that I have noted before can deal with such a force as
this--not yet--not till it swells to very strong discontent:
nevertheless as we were blind to its destructive power, and have not
even yet learned all about that, so we may well be blind to what it
has of constructive force in it, and that one day may give us a
chance to deal with it again and turn it toward accomplishing our
new and worthier desire: in that day at least when we have at last
learned what we want, let us work no less strenuously and
fearlessly, I will not say to quench it, but to force it to burn
itself out, as we once did to quicken and sustain it.
Meantime if we could but get ourselves ready by casting off certain
old prejudices and delusions in this matter of the arts, we should
the sooner reach the pitch of discontent which would drive us into
action: such a one I mean as the aforesaid idea that luxury fosters
art, and especially the Architectural arts; or its companion one,
that the arts flourish best in a rich country, i.e. a country where
the contrast between rich and poor is greatest; or this, the worst
because the most plausible, the assertion of the hierarchy of
intellect in the arts: an old foe with a new face indeed: born out
of the times that gave the death-blow to the political and social
hierarchies, and waxing as they waned, it proclaimed from a new side
the divinity of the few and the subjugation of the many, and cries
out, like they did, that it is expedient, not that one man should
die for the people, but that the people should die for one man.
Now perhaps these three things, though they have different forms,
are in fact but one thing; tyranny to wit: but however that may be,
they are to be met by one answer, and there is no other: if art
which is now sick is to live and not die, it must in the future be
of the people for the people, and by the people; it must understand
all and be understood by all: equality must be the answer to
tyranny: if that be not attained, art will die.
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