nish on the physical plane the counterpart of what is so sadly
lacking on the spiritual: amusements which do good to the individual
and no harm to his fellows.

Of course, in our state neither of original sinfulness nor of
degeneracy, but of very imperfect development, it is still useless and
absurd to tell people to make use of intellectual and moral resources
which they have not yet got. It is as vain to preach to the majority
of the well-to-do the duty of abstinence from wastefulness, rivalry,
and ostentation as it is vain to preach to the majority of the
badly-off abstinence from alcohol; without such pleasures their life
would be unendurably insipid.

But inevitable as is such evil in the present, it inevitably brings
its contingent of wretchedness; and it is therefore the business of
all such as _could_ become the forerunners of a better state of things
to refuse to follow the lead of their inferiors. Exactly because the
majority is still so hopelessly wasteful and mischievous, does it
behove the minority not merely to work to some profit, but to play
without damage. To do this should become the mark of Nature's
aristocracy, a sign of liberality of spiritual birth and breeding, a
question of _noblesse oblige_.

IV.

And here comes in the immense importance of Art as a type of pleasure:
of Art in the sense of aesthetic appreciation even more than of
aesthetic creation; of Art considered as the extracting and combining
of beauty in the mind of the obscure layman quite as much as the
embodiment of such extracted and combined beauty in the visible or
audible work of the great artist.

For experience of true aesthetic activity must teach us, in proportion
as it is genuine and ample, that the enjoyment of the beautiful is not
merely independent of, but actually incompatible with, that tendency
to buy our satisfaction at the expense of others which remains more or
less in all of us as a survival from savagery. The reasons why genuine
aesthetic feeling inhibits these obsolescent instincts of rapacity and
ruthlessness, are reasons negative and positive, and may be roughly
divided into three headings. Only one of them is generally admitted to
exist, and of it, therefore, I shall speak very briefly, I mean the
fact that the enjoyment of beautiful things is originally and
intrinsically one of those which are heightened by sharing. We know it
instinctively when, as children, we drag our comrades and elders to
the wind