to hinder him from doing what he will, good or evil. And as, on the
one hand, I believe that art made by the people and for the people
as a joy both to the maker and the user would further progress in
other matters rather than hinder it, so also I firmly believe that
that higher art produced only by great brains and miraculously
gifted hands cannot exist without it: I believe that the present
state of things in which it does exist, while popular art is, let us
say, asleep or sick, is a transitional state, which must end at last
either in utter defeat or utter victory for the arts.

For whereas all works of craftsmanship were once beautiful,
unwittingly or not, they are now divided into two kinds, works of
art and non-works of art: now nothing made by man's hand can be
indifferent: it must be either beautiful and elevating, or ugly and
degrading; and those things that are without art are so
aggressively; they wound it by their existence, and they are now so
much in the majority that the works of art we are obliged to set
ourselves to seek for, whereas the other things are the ordinary
companions of our everyday life; so that if those who cultivate art
intellectually were inclined never so much to wrap themselves in
their special gifts and their high cultivation, and so live happily,
apart from other men, and despising them, they could not do so:
they are as it were living in an enemy's country; at every turn
there is something lying in wait to offend and vex their nicer sense
and educated eyes: they must share in the general discomfort--and I
am glad of it.

So the matter stands: from the first dawn of history till quite
modern times, art, which nature meant to solace all, fulfilled its
purpose; all men shared in it; that was what made life romantic, as