supposed to have no voice in what
clearly to him is a matter of taste." So to Whistler art has no more to
do with the life of the ordinary man than astronomy or mathematics. His
mention of engineering is an unfortunate slip, for, although we are not
engineers we all knew, when the Tay Bridge broke down and threw hundreds
of passengers into the water, that it was not a good bridge. We are all
concerned with engineering in spite of our ignorance of it, because we
make use of its works. Whistler assumes that we make no use of works of
art except as objects of use; and since pictures, poems, music are not
objects of use, we can have no concern with them whatever--which is
absurd.

But here comes Tolstoy, who tells us that all works of art are merely
objects of use and are to be judged therefore by the extent of their
use. A work of art that few can enjoy fails as much as a railway that
few can travel by. "Art," Tolstoy says, "is a human activity, consisting
in this--that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs,
hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people
are infected by these feelings and also experience them." So it is the
essence of a work of art that it shall infect others with the feelings
of the artist. Now certainly a work of art is a work of art to us only
if it does so infect us, but Tolstoy is not content with that. The
individual is not to judge the work of art by its infection of himself.
He is to consider also the extent of its infection. "For a work to be
esteemed good and to be approved of and diffused it will have to satisfy
the demands, not of a few people living in identical and often unnatural
conditions, but it will have to satisfy the demands of all those great
masses of people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious
life."

The two views are utterly irreconcilable. According to Whistler the
public are not to judge art at all because they have no concern with it,
and it flourishes most when they do not pretend to have any concern with
it. According to Tolstoy the individual is to judge it, not by the
effect it produces on him, but by the effect it produces on others, "on
all those great masses of people who are situated in the natural
conditions of laborious life."

Now, if we find ourselves intimidated by one or other of these views, if
we seem forced to accept one of them against our will, it is a relief
and liberation from the tyranny of W