Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/20

 it should be supreme and independent, and have no relation whatever to the national soul—a costly trinket to be picked up where it may be found, and idly played with; that above all qualities it must exhibit light and facile workmanship; that it has nought to do with virtue, vice, honour or dishonour; that it is to serve mainly as an excitement of sensation. One of the faction lately declared that the pleasure which music, architecture, poetry, painting, or sculpture should communicate, would be exactly that which a glass of good wine would give to the senses.

Let me say at once that this view of Art, while it undoubtedly has a seductiveness in its 'modernity,' fails altogether to recommend itself to my mind. Modernity has certainly the merit of freshness, and since every new generation has the right—and is even bound in some sort—to judge the past, there is an initial wisdom in its activity, but there must be great care taken that inexperience does not misunderstand the old questions and overlook the seriousness of any rejection it decides upon. The fact of its contempt for precedents invites supervision and care ere justifying the destructive course; and when these are acting it will be seen that many of the hasty judgements proposed would have been disastrous, and that modernity itself has been on its trial and found wanting. The doctrine supported by it in this day seems indeed insidiously degrading. We are in a world in which all things act and re-act on one another, and Art can never be indifferent and hold itself aloof from the vital movement; if it will not take part in the march forward to a great end, but sever itself