far more dangerous than Philistinism because it is more intelligent and more pliant.  It has a specious air of being on the side of the artist.  It has the charm of its acquired taste, and it can corrupt because it can speak with an authority unknown in Philistia.  Because it pretends to care about art, artists are not indifferent to its judgments.  Culture imposes on people who would snap their fingers at vulgarity.  With culture itself, even in the low sense in which I have been using the word, we need not pick a quarrel, but we must try to free the artist and the public too from the influence of cultivated opinion.  The liberation will not be complete until those who have already learned to despise the opinion of the lower middle-classes learn also to neglect the standards and the disapproval of people who are forced by their emotional limitations to regard art as an elegant amenity.

If you would have fine art and fine appreciation of art, you must have a fine free life for your artists and for yourselves.  That is another thing that Society can do for art:  it can kill the middle-class ideal.  Was ever ideal so vulnerable?  The industrious apprentice who by slow pettifogging hardness works his way to the dignity of material prosperity, Dick Whittington, what a hero for a high-spirited nation!  What dreams our old men dream, what visions float into the minds of our seers!  Eight hours of intelligent production, eight hours of thoughtful recreation, eight hours of refreshing sleep for all!  What a vision to dangle before the eyes of a hungry people!  If it is great art and fine life that you want, you must renounce this religion of safe mediocrity.  Comfort is the enemy; luxury is merely the bugbear of the bourgeoisie.  No soul was ever ruined by extravagance or even by debauch; it is the steady, punctual gnawing of comfort that destroys.  That is the triumph of matter over mind; that is the last tyranny.  For how are they better than slaves who must stop their work because it is time for luncheon, must break up a conversation to dress for dinner, must leave on the doorstep the friend they have not seen for years so as not to miss the customary train?

Society can do something for art, because it can increase liberty, and in a liberal atmosphere art thrives.  Even politicians can do something.  They can repeal censorious laws and abolish restrictions on freedom of thought and speech and conduct.  They can protect minorities.  They can defend originality from the hatred of the mediocre mob.  They can make an end of the doctrine that the State has a right to crush unpopular opinions in the interests of public order.  A mighty liberty to be allowed to speak acceptable words to the rabble!  The least that the State can do is to protect people who have something to say that may cause a riot.  What will not cause a riot is probably not worth saying.  At present, to agitate for an increase of liberty is the best that any ordinary person can do for the advancement of art.