Here there is nothing to surprise us.  But what does, at first sight, seem odd is that art should apparently be indifferent, not only to political systems, but to social conditions as well.  Barbarism or Civilization:  it is all one to art.  Old-fashioned historians, who had a pleasant, tidy way of dealing with the past, used to plot out from that wilderness four great periods of civilization:  the Athenian (from 480 B.C. to the death of Aristotle, 322), the first and second centuries of the Roman Empire, Italy in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and from the end of the Fronde, 1653, to the Revolution.  For my part, I should be inclined to subtract from these the Roman period, and add, if only I knew more about it, the age of Sung.  But accepting, by way of compromise, all five, we find that three—­the Greek, Chinese, and Italian—­were rich in visual art, whereas Rome was utterly barren and the eighteenth century not extraordinarily prolific.  To make matters worse, we see in the dark and early middle ages a steady flow of first-rate art from societies more or less barbarous, while lately we have learnt that black and naked savages can create exquisitely.

Are we, then, to assume that there is no connection between art and civilization?  I think not.  A connection there is, but, as was to be expected, an unessential one.  The essential quality in art is invariable, and what gives the Parthenon its significance is what gives significance to a nigger’s basket-work box.  There is such a thing as civilized art, but its civility lies in adventitious and subsidiary qualities—­in the means, not in the end.  It seems to me we do mean something when we say that Phidias, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, Raphael, Racine, Moliere, Poussin, Milton, Wren, Jane Austen and Mozart are highly civilized artists, and that the creators of the Gothic cathedrals and the author of the Chanson de Roland, Villon, Webster, Rembrandt, Blake, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Whitman, Turner, Wagner and the Congolese fetish-makers are not.  But, whatever we may mean, assuredly we do not mean that one set is superior to the other.  They differ widely; but they differ in the means by which they compass the same end.  It is absurd to argue that civilization is either favourable or unfavourable to art; but it is reasonable to suppose that it may be the one or the other to a particular artist.  Different temperaments thrive in different atmospheres.  How many mute, inglorious Miltons, Raphaels, and Mozarts may not have lost heart and gone under in the savage insecurity of the dark ages?  And may not the eighteenth century, which clipped the wings of Blake, have crushed the fluttering aspirations of a dozen Gothically-minded geniuses and laughed some budding Wagner out of all idea of expressing his ebullient personality?