Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/205

 critical faculties which make expression of the emotions important and interesting. It has often been argued that epochs of high civilisation are unfavourable to poetry and the fine arts, and a well-known passage of Macaulay argues the point at some length. Whether such an epoch as that of a hundred years hence be probably fertile in art or no, assuredly appreciation of the fine arts will be widespread and acute. Of course you can never account for the extraordinary phenomenon called genius, and while it is no doubt true that genius, like everything else, is the product of its age, yet genius consistently transcends its age. The number of minds in a thousand able to bring a reasonable degree of competent appreciation to the writings of Shakespeare is much greater now than when Shakespeare wrote. There never was a time when a great writer, or a great painter (despite what happened to Whistler) was in less danger of public neglect than the present. And the next century will be yet more critical than this. Every one of the fine arts will be more generally and more subtly appreciated than now. The existing masterpieces of antiquity will be even more reverently enjoyed than now, and the lessons they embody will be more completely assimilated. It remains to be answered, whether the next century will be fertile in new masterpieces of literature and art.