That movement is still young.  But I think it would be safe to say that already it has produced as much good art as its predecessor.  Cezanne, of course, created far greater things than any Impressionist painter; and Gaugin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Rousseau, Picasso, de Vlaminck, Derain, Herbin, Marchand, Marquet, Bonnard, Duncan Grant, Maillol, Lewis, Kandinsky, Brancuzi, von Anrep, Roger Fry, Friesz, Goncharova, L’Hote, are Rolands for the Olivers of any other artistic period.[23] They are not all great artists, but they all are artists.  If the Impressionists raised the proportion of works of art in the general pictorial output from about one in five hundred thousand to one in a hundred thousand, the Post-Impressionists (for after all it is sensible to call the group of vital artists who immediately follow the Impressionists by that name) have raised the average again.  To-day, I daresay, it stands as high as one in ten thousand.  Indeed, it is this that has led some people to see in the new movement the dawn of a new age; for nothing is more characteristic of a “primitive” movement than the frequent and widespread production of genuine art.  Another hopeful straw at which the sanguine catch is the admirable power of development possessed by the new inspiration.  As a rule, the recognition of a movement as a movement is its death.  As soon as the pontiffs discovered Impressionism, some twenty years after its patent manifestation, they academized it.  They set their faces against any sort of development and drove into revolt or artistic suicide every student with an ounce of vitality in him.  Before the inspiration of Cezanne had time to grow stale, it was caught up by such men as Matisse and Picasso; by them it was moulded into forms that suited their different temperaments, and already it shows signs of taking fresh shape to express the sensibility of a younger generation.[24]

This is very satisfactory but it does not suffice to prove that the new movement is the beginning of a new slope; it does not prove that we stand now where the early Byzantines stood, with the ruins of a civilisation clattering about our ears and our eyes set on a new horizon.  In favour of that view there are no solid arguments; yet are there general considerations, worth stating and pondering, though not to be pushed too violently.  He who would cast the horoscope of humanity, or of any human activity, must neither neglect history nor trust her overmuch.  Certainly the neglect of history is the last mistake into which a modern speculator is likely to fall.  To compare Victorian England with Imperial Rome has been the pastime of the half-educated these fifty years. “Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,” is about as much Latin as it is becoming in a public schoolman to remember.  The historically minded should travel a little further with their comparison (to be sure, some have done so in search of arguments against Socialism), on their way, they will not have