ourselves cannot be trusted with ornament, as a drunkard cannot be
trusted with strong drink. We must learn to see things plain before we
can see them at all, or enjoy them for their own real qualities and not
for what we think we see in them. A man whose taste is for bad poetry
can only improve it by reading good, plain prose. He must become
rational before he can enjoy the real beauties of literature. And so we
need to become rational before we can enjoy art, whether in pictures or
in objects of use. The unreason of our painting has the same cause as
the unreason of our objects of use; and the cause is in us, not in the
artist. We think of taste as something in its nature irrational. It is
no more so than conscience is. Indeed, there is conscience in all good
taste as in all the good workmanship that pleases it. But where the
public has not this conscience, the artist will not possess it either.
At best he will have only what he calls his artistic conscience--that is
to say, a determination to follow his own whims rather than the taste of
the public. But where the public knows what it likes, and the artist
makes what he likes, there is more than a chance that both will like the
same thing, as they have in the great ages of art. For a real liking
must be a liking for something good. It is Satan who persuades us that
we like what is bad by filling our mind with sham likings, which are
always really the expression of our egotism disguised.

Professionalism in Art

Professionalism is a dull, ugly word; but it means dull, ugly things, a
perversion of the higher activities of man, of art, literature,
religion, philosophy; and a perversion to which we are all apt to be
blind. We know that in these activities specialization is a condition of
excellence. As Keats said to Shelley, in art it is necessary to serve
both God and Mammon; and as Samuel Butler said, "That is not easy, but
then nothing that is really worth doing ever is easy." The poet may be
born, not made; but no man can start writing poetry as if it had never
been written before. In every art there is a medium, and the poet, like
all other artists, learns from the poets of the past how to use his
medium. Often he does this unconsciously by reading them for delight. He
first becomes a poet because he loves the poetry of others. And the
painter becomes a painter because he loves the pictures of others. Each
of them is apt to begin--