tinent, overlaps it, so
to speak, at both ends. But it has not gone very far even in Europe; and
for generations, I conceive, political and social issues will draw away
much of the creative talent that might have been available for Art. In
the end, one may suppose, something like a stable order will arise; an
order, that is, in which people will feel that their institutions
correspond sufficiently with their inner life, and will be able to
devote themselves with a free mind to reflecting their civilisation in
Art.

But will their civilisation be of a kind to invite such reflection? It
will be, if the present movement is not altogether abortive, a
civilisation of security, equity, and peace; where there is no
indigence, no war, and comparatively little disease. Such society,
certainly, will not offer a field for much of the kind of Art that has
been or is now being produced. The primitive folk-song, the epic of war,
the novel or play inspired by social strife, will have passed
irrecoverably away. And more than that, it is sometimes urged, there
will be such a dearth of those tense moments which alone engender the
artistic mood, that Art of any kind will have become impossible. If that
were true, it would not, in my opinion, condemn the society. Art is
important, but there are things more important; and among those things
are justice and peace. I do not, however, accept the view that a
peaceable and just society would necessarily also be one that is
uninspired. That view seems to me to proceed from our incurable
materialism. We think there is no conflict except with arms; no rivalry
except for bread; no aspiration except for money and rank. It is my own
belief that the removal of the causes of the material strife in which
most men are now plunged would liberate the energies for spiritual
conflict; that the passion to know, the passion to feel, the passion to
love, would begin at last to take their proper place in human life; and
would engender the forms of Art appropriate to their expression.

To return to America, what I am driving at is this. America may have an
Art, and a great Art. But it will be after she has had her social
revolution. Her Art has first to touch ground; and before it can do
that, the ground must be fit for it to touch. It was not till the tenth
century that the seed of Mediaeval Art could be sown; it was not till the
thirteenth that the flower bloomed. So now, our civilisation is not ripe
for its o