Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/22

 nature of the disorder, and should be able to explain the cause. To do this I must demonstrate how in all times there have been evils that have been inherent in the society in which Art has arisen, that a proportion of these have grown and accumulated about her while she has been overcoming other ills, and that she has often, like Herakles, perished from the poison robe craftily furnished by the vanquished.

What is eternally precious is the sublimated message that purifying time has left of the artist's soul. To discover this refined element, and with it to chasten their own developing faculties, is what all true sons of Art have to do; they may then erect their own temple on the sure platform of Truth.

Men impatient for personal éclat, pecuniary profit, or immediate honour, more than for the advancement of a great purpose, have their minds entangled by the delusive surroundings of the art of the past; they take the baser conditions of life which are chronicled in the histories of the eminent, not as the survivals of barbarism or the accidents of the epoch, but as the mark of the divine afflatus.

Above all interest to idlers is the desire to pass without effort as the crowned genius; it is easy to adopt the faults of the great, and triflers do not fail in this imitation. It may be that they note the facility which the finished master after a life of painstaking delighted in, and the liberties he took to express his purpose: facility in the hands of shallow followers naturally means emptiness, and liberty being without purpose is naught but license. Those who, in these days, begin