upations for which men can be paid. The
artist and the saint do what they have to do, not to make a living, but
in obedience to some mysterious necessity. They do not produce to
live--they live to produce. There is no place for them in a social
system based on the theory that what men desire is prolonged and
pleasant existence. You cannot fit them into the machine, you must make
them extraneous to it. You must make pariahs of them, since they are not
a part of society but the salt of the earth.

In saying that the mass of mankind will never be capable of making
delicate aesthetic judgments, I have said no more than the obvious
truth. A sure sensibility in visual art is at least as rare as a good
ear for music. No one imagines that all are equally capable of judging
music, or that a perfect ear can be acquired by study: only fools
imagine that the power of nice discrimination in other arts is not a
peculiar gift. Nevertheless there is no reason why the vast majority
should not become very much more sensitive to art than it is; the ear
can be trained to a point. But for the better appreciation, as for the
freer creation, of art more liberty is needed. Ninety-nine out of every
hundred people who visit picture galleries need to be delivered from
that "museum atmosphere" which envelops works of art and asphyxiates
beholders. They, the ninety-nine, should be encouraged to approach works
of art courageously and to judge them on their merits. Often they are
more sensitive to form and colour than they suppose. I have seen people
show a nice taste in cottons and calicoes, and things not recognised as
"Art" by the custodians of museums, who would not hesitate to assert of
any picture by Andrea del Sarto that it must be more beautiful than any
picture by a child or a savage. In dealing with objects that are not
expected to imitate natural forms or to resemble standard masterpieces
they give free rein to their native sensibility. It is only in the
presence of a catalogue that complete inhibition sets in. Traditional
reverence is what lies heaviest on spectators and creators, and museums
are too apt to become conventicles of tradition.

Society can do something for itself and for art by blowing out of the
museums and galleries the dust of erudition and the stale incense of
hero-worship. Let us try to remember that art is not something to be
come at by dint of study; let us try to think of it as something to be
enjoyed as one enjoys