Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/73

 What ails him in that department is simply fear of punishment, which is to say, fear of his neighbours. He has, in safe privacy, the morals of a variety actor. Beauty fevers and enrages him for another and quite different reason. He cannot comprehend it, and yet it somehow challenges and disturbs him. If he could snore through good music he would not object to it; the trouble with it is that it keeps him awake. So he believes that it ought to be put down, just as he believes that political and economic ideas which disturb him and yet elude him ought to be put down. The finest art is safe from him simply because he has no contact with it, and is thus unaware of it. The fact, in this great Republic, saves the bacon of Johann Sebastian Bach. His music remains lawful because it lies outside the cognizance of the mob, and of the abandoned demagogues who make laws for the mob. It has thus something of the quality of the colours beyond violet and of the concept of honour. If, by some abominable magic, it could be brought within range, it would at once arouse hostility. Its complexity would puzzle and dismay; its lack of utilitarian purpose would affright. Soon there would be a movement to proscribe