erhaps it is a widespread consciousness of this that
produces all great movements; and perhaps the history of their decline
and fall is nothing more than a history of its gradual decay and
disappearance. Great movements seem to arise when men become aware
suddenly that the universe has a soul: the first artists of a movement
are the men who perceive most clearly this soul in every part of the
universe; they are called Primitives. They are men driven to art by the
intolerable necessity of expressing what they feel; they break silence
only because they have something to say; and their one object is to say
it as completely and intelligibly as possible. Primitives stand in a
class by themselves because they have perceived more clearly than others
the reality that lies beneath the superficial, and because, having no
other end in view, they have expressed it more completely.

Great movements are alike in their beginnings; whether they are
Buddhist or Byzantine, Greek or Egyptian, Assyrian or Mexican, their
primitives have two qualities in common, profundity and directness. And
in their histories, so far as we may judge from the scanty records of
ancient civilizations, all have a general resemblance. Always, as the
sense of reality decays, the artist labours to conceal under technical
proficiency the poverty of his emotional experience. For the inspired
artist technique was nothing but a means; for his hungry successors it
becomes an end. For the man who has little to say the manner of saying
it gains consequence, and in a manner which has been elaborated into an
intricate craft the greatest emotions cannot be expressed. The circle is
vicious. With the exaltation and elaboration of craftsmanship expression
first falls into neglect and then becomes impossible. Those who are not
content to marvel at cleverness, but still ask emotion of art, must be
satisfied with such as craftsmen can supply. If pictures no longer
express feeling they may at least provoke it. If painting is to be a
mere question of pattern-making, at least let the patterns be pretty.
Sensuous beauty and cunning delineation become rivals for the throne
whence expression has been ousted. So, with occasional irregularities,
the path winds down the hill. Skill itself declines, and the sense of
beauty runs thin. At the bottom, for what once was art--the expression
of man's most holy emotions--smart tradesmen offer, at fancy prices,
mechanical prettiness, cheap sentime