and its age will be
inevitable and intimate. In that case, an aesthetic judgment will imply
some sort of judgment about the general state of mind of the artist and
his admirers. In fact, anyone who accepts absolutely my second
hypothesis with all its possible implications--which is more than I am
willing to do--will not only see in the history of art the spiritual
history of the race, but will be quite unable to think of one without
thinking of the other.

If I do not go quite so far as that, I stop short only by a little.
Certainly it is less absurd to see in art the key to history than to
imagine that history can help us to an appreciation of art. In ages of
spiritual fervour I look for great art. By ages of spiritual fervour I
do not mean pleasant or romantic or humane or enlightened ages; I mean
ages in which, for one reason or another, men have been unusually
excited about their souls and unusually indifferent about their bodies.
Such ages, as often as not, have been superstitious and cruel.
Preoccupation with the soul may lead to superstition, indifference about
the body to cruelty. I never said that ages of great art were
sympathetic to the middle-classes. Art and a quiet life are incompatible
I think; some stress and turmoil there must be. Need I add that in the
snuggest age of materialism great artists may arise and flourish? Of
course: but when the production of good art is at all widespread and
continuous, near at hand I shall expect to find a restless generation.
Also, having marked a period of spiritual stir, I shall look, not far
off, for its manifestation in significant form. But the stir must be
spiritual and genuine; a swirl of emotionalism or political frenzy will
provoke nothing fine.[8] How far in any particular age the production of
art is stimulated by general exaltation, or general exaltation by works
of art, is a question hardly to be decided. Wisest, perhaps, is he who
says that the two seem to have been interdependent. Just how dependent I
believe them to have been, will appear when, in my next chapter, I
attempt to sketch the rise, decline, and fall of the Christian slope.

III

ART AND ETHICS

Between me and the pleasant places of history remains, however, one ugly
barrier. I cannot dabble and paddle in the pools and shallows of the
past until I have answered a question so absurd that the nicest people
never tire of asking it: "What is the moral justification of art?" Of
course