That is the only real art there is, the only art which will be an
instrument to the progress of the world, and not a hindrance. Nor
can I seriously doubt that in your hearts you know that it is so,
all of you, at any rate, who have in you an instinct for art. I
believe that you agree with me in this, though you may differ from
much else that I have said. I think assuredly that this is the art
whose welfare we have met together to further, and the necessary
instruction in which we have undertaken to spread as widely as may
be.

Thus I have told you something of what I think is to be hoped and
feared for the future of art; and if you ask me what I expect as a
practical outcome of the admission of these opinions, I must say at
once that I know, even if we were all of one mind, and that what I
think the right mind on this subject, we should still have much work
and many hindrances before us; we should still have need of all the
prudence, foresight, and industry of the best among us; and, even
so, our path would sometimes seem blind enough. And, to-day, when
the opinions which we think right, and which one day will be
generally thought so, have to struggle sorely to make themselves
noticed at all, it is early days for us to try to see our exact and
clearly mapped road. I suppose you will think it too commonplace of
me to say that the general education that makes men think, will one
day make them think rightly upon art. Commonplace as it is, I
really believe it, and am indeed encouraged by it, when I remember
how obviously this age is one of transition from the old to the new,
and what a strange confusion, from out of which we shall one day
come, our ignorance and half-ignorance is like to make of the
exhausted rubbish of the old and the crude rubbish of the new, both