Hopes and Fears for Art | Page 8

running down to the
broad river, could have imagined a whole county or more covered over
with hideous hovels, big, middle-sized, and little, which should one day
be called London.
Sirs, I say that this dead blank of the arts that I more than dread is

difficult even now to imagine; yet I fear that I must say that if it does
not come about, it will be owing to some turn of events which we
cannot at present foresee: but I hold that if it does happen, it will only
last for a time, that it will be but a burning up of the gathered weeds, so
that the field may bear more abundantly. I hold that men would wake
up after a while, and look round and find the dulness unbearable, and
begin once more inventing, imitating, and imagining, as in earlier days.
That faith comforts me, and I can say calmly if the blank space must
happen, it must, and amidst its darkness the new seed must sprout. So it
has been before: first comes birth, and hope scarcely conscious of itself;
then the flower and fruit of mastery, with hope more than conscious
enough, passing into insolence, as decay follows ripeness; and
then--the new birth again.
Meantime it is the plain duty of all who look seriously on the arts to do
their best to save the world from what at the best will be a loss, the
result of ignorance and unwisdom; to prevent, in fact, that most
discouraging of all changes, the supplying the place of an extinct
brutality by a new one; nay, even if those who really care for the arts
are so weak and few that they can do nothing else, it may be their
business to keep alive some tradition, some memory of the past, so that
the new life when it comes may not waste itself more than enough in
fashioning wholly new forms for its new spirit.
To what side then shall those turn for help, who really understand the
gain of a great art in the world, and the loss of peace and good life that
must follow from the lack of it? I think that they must begin by
acknowledging that the ancient art, the art of unconscious intelligence,
as one should call it, which began without a date, at least so long ago as
those strange and masterly scratchings on mammoth-bones and the like
found but the other day in the drift-- that this art of unconscious
intelligence is all but dead; that what little of it is left lingers among
half-civilised nations, and is growing coarser, feebler, less intelligent
year by year; nay, it is mostly at the mercy of some commercial
accident, such as the arrival of a few shiploads of European dye-stuffs
or a few dozen orders from European merchants: this they must
recognise, and must hope to see in time its place filled by a new art of
conscious intelligence, the birth of wiser, simpler, freer ways of life
than the world leads now, than the world has ever led.

I said, TO SEE this in time; I do not mean to say that our own eyes will
look upon it: it may be so far off, as indeed it seems to some, that many
would scarcely think it worth while thinking of: but there are some of
us who cannot turn our faces to the wall, or sit deedless because our
hope seems somewhat dim; and, indeed, I think that while the signs of
the last decay of the old art with all the evils that must follow in its
train are only too obvious about us, so on the other hand there are not
wanting signs of the new dawn beyond that possible night of the arts, of
which I have before spoken; this sign chiefly, that there are some few at
least who are heartily discontented with things as they are, and crave
for something better, or at least some promise of it--this best of signs:
for I suppose that if some half-dozen men at any time earnestly set their
hearts on something coming about which is not discordant with nature,
it will come to pass one day or other; because it is not by accident that
an idea comes into the heads of a few; rather they are pushed on, and
forced to speak or act by something stirring in the heart of the world
which would otherwise be left without expression.
By what means then shall those work who long for reform in the arts,
and who shall they seek to kindle into eager desire for possession of
beauty, and better still, for the development of the faculty that creates
beauty?
People say to me often enough: If