for the others I have no hard words.  To art they take their most profound and subtle emotions, their most magnanimous ideas, their dearest hopes; from art they bring away enriched and purified emotion and exaltation, and fresh sources of both.  In art they imagine that they find an expression of their most intimate and mysterious feelings; and, though they miss, not utterly but to some extent, the best that art has to give, if of art they make a religion I do not blame them.

In the days of Alexander Severus there lived at Rome a Greek freed man.  As he was a clever craftsman his lot was not hard.  His body was secure, his belly full, his hands and brain pleasantly busy.  He lived amongst intelligent people and handsome objects, permitting himself such reasonable emotions as were recommended by his master, Epicurus.  He awoke each morning to a quiet day of ordered satisfaction, the prescribed toll of unexacting labour, a little sensual pleasure, a little rational conversation, a cool argument, a judicious appreciation of all that the intellect can apprehend.  Into this existence burst suddenly a cranky fanatic, with a religion.  To the Greek it seemed that the breath of life had blown through the grave, imperial streets.  Yet nothing in Rome was changed, save one immortal, or mortal, soul.  The same waking eyes opened on the same objects; yet all was changed; all was charged with meaning.  New things existed.  Everything mattered.  In the vast equality of religious emotion the Greek forgot his status and his nationality.  His life became a miracle and an ecstasy.  As a lover awakes, he awoke to a day full of consequence and delight.  He had learnt to feel; and, because to feel a man must live, it was good to be alive.  I know an erudite and intelligent man, a man whose arid life had been little better than one long cold in the head, for whom that madman, Van Gogh, did nothing less.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 23:  Need I say that this list is not intended to be exhaustive?  It is merely representative.]

[Footnote 24:  Let us hope that it will.  There certainly are ominous signs of academization amongst the minor men of the movement.  There is the beginning of a tendency to regard certain simplifications and distortions as ends in themselves and party badges.  There is some danger of an attempt to impose a formula on the artist’s individuality.  At present the infection has not spread far, and the disease has taken a mild form.]

[Footnote 25:  Of course there are some good artists alive who owe nothing to Cezanne.  Fortunately two of Cezanne’s contemporaries, Degas and Renoir, are still at work.  Also there are a few who belong to the older movement, e.g. Mr. Walter Sickert, M. Simon Bussy, M. Vuillard, Mr. J.W.  Morrice.  I should be as unwilling to omit these names from a history of twentieth century art as to include them in a chapter devoted to the contemporary movement.]