tive to criticism. They may
think that they are upholding the cause of art; but they are upholding
the cause of stupidity, that common enemy of art and of criticism.

The Artist and his Audience

According to Whistler art is not a social activity at all; according to
Tolstoy it is nothing else. But art is clearly a social activity and
something more; yet no one has yet reconciled the truth in Whistler's
doctrine with the truth in Tolstoy's. Each leaves out an essential part
of the truth, and they remain opposed in their mixture of error and
truth. The main point of Whistler's "Ten o'clock" is that art is not a
social activity. "Listen," he cries, "there never was an artistic
period. There never was an art-loving nation. In the beginning man went
forth each day--some to battle, some to the chase; others again to dig
and to delve in the field--all that they might gain and live or lose and
die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest,
whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the
women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd. This
man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren, who cared not for
conquest and fretted in the field, this designer of quaint patterns,
this deviser of the beautiful, who perceived in Nature about him curious
curvings, as faces are seen in the fire--this dreamer apart was the
first artist."

Then, he says, the hunters and the workers drank from the artists'
goblets, "taking no note the while of the craftsman's pride, and
understanding not his glory in his work; drinking at the cup not from
choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because,
forsooth, there was none other!" Luxury grew, and the great ages of art
came. "Greece was in its splendour, and art reigned supreme--by force of
fact, not by election. And the people questioned not, and had nothing to
say in the matter." In fact art flourished because mankind did not
notice it. But "there arose a new class, who discovered the cheap, and
foresaw fortune in the manufacture of the sham." Then, according to
Whistler, a strange thing happened. "The heroes filled from the jugs and
drank from the bowls--with understanding.... And the people--this
time--had much to say in the matter, and all were satisfied. And
Birmingham and Manchester arose in their might, and art was relegated
to the curiosity shop."

Whistler does not explain wh