e possessed of tails
and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to
forget that not every step has been an advance and to entertain an
illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further
forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of
ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science
and in material things has become more and more rapid, we have come to
expect a similar pace in art and letters, to imagine that the art of the
future must be far finer than the art of the present or than that of the
past, and that the art of one decade, or even of one year, must
supersede that of the preceding decade or the preceding year, as the
1913 model in automobiles supersedes the model of 1912. More than ever
before "To have done is to hang quite out of fashion," and the only
title to consideration is to do something quite obviously new or to
proclaim one's intention of doing something newer. The race grows madder
and madder. It was scarce two years since we first heard of "Cubism"
when the "Futurists" were calling the "Cubists" reactionary. Even the
gasping critics, pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown away all
impedimenta of traditional standards in the desperate effort to keep up
with what seems less a march than a stampede.

But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy
feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art
were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should
scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a sign of
anaemia that we have become founders of museums and conservers of old
buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some
doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive
it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No
cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the
builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its
superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he
contemptuously dismissed all mediaeval art as "Gothic" and barbarous, and
was as ready to tear down an old facade as to build a new one. Even the
most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo in
his calm destruction of three frescoes by Perugino to make room for his
own "Last Judgment." He, at least, had the full courage of his
convictions, and