The Art of People

And the men of labour spent their strength in daily struggling forbread to maintain the vital strength they labour with: so living ina daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working butto live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome life,and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread.'--DANIELDEFOE.I know that a large proportion of those here present are eitheralready practising the Fine Arts, or are being specially educated tothat end, and I feel that I may be expected to address myselfspecially to these. But since it is not to be doubted that we areALL met together because of the interest we take in what concernsthese arts, I would rather address myself to you ALL as representingthe public in general. Indeed, those of you who are speciallystudying Art could learn little of me that would be useful toyourselves only. You are already learning under competent masters--most competent, I am glad to know--by means of a system which shouldteach you all you need, if you have been right in making the firststep of devoting yourselves to Art; I mean if you are aiming at theright thing, and in some way or another understand what Art means,which you may well do without being able to express it, and if youare resolute to follow on the path which that inborn knowledge hasshown to you; if it is otherwise with you than this, no system andno teachers will help you to produce real art of any kind, be itnever so humble. Those of you who are real artists know well enoughall the special advice I can give you, and in how few words it maybe said--follow nature, study antiquity, make your own art, and donot steal it, grudge no expense of trouble, patience, or courage, inthe striving to accomplish the hard thing you have set yourselves todo. You have had all that said to you twenty times, I doubt not;and twenty times twenty have said it to yourselves, and now I havesaid it again to you, and done neither you nor me good nor harmthereby. So true it all is, so well known, and so hard to follow.But to me, and I hope to you, Art is a very serious thing, andcannot by any means be dissociated from the weighty matters thatoccupy the thoughts of men; and there are principles underlying thepractice of it, on which all serious-minded men, may--nay, must--have their own thoughts. It is on some of these that I ask yourleave to speak, and to address myself, not only to those who areconsciously interested in the arts, but to all those also who haveconsidered what the progress of civilisation promises and threatensto those who shall come after us: what there is to hope and fearfor the future of the arts, which were born with the birth ofcivilisation and will only die with its death--what on this side ofthings, the present time of strife and doubt and change is preparingfor the better time, when the change shall have come, the strife belulled, and the doubt cleared: this is a question, I say, which isindeed weighty, and may well interest all thinking men.Nay, so universally important is it, that I fear lest you shouldthink I am taking too much upon myself to speak to you on so weightya matter, nor should I have dared to do so, if I did not feel that Iam to-night only the mouthpiece of better men than myself; whosehopes and fears I share; and that being so, I am the more emboldenedto speak out, if I can, my full mind on the subject, because I am ina city where, if anywhere, men are not contented to live wholly forthemselves and the present, but have fully accepted the duty ofkeeping their eyes open to whatever new is stirring, so that theymay help and be helped by any truth that there may be in it. Norcan I forget, that, since you have done me the great honour ofchoosing me for the President of your Society of Arts for the pastyear, and of asking me to speak to you to-night, I should be doingless than my duty if I did not, according to my lights, speak outstraightforwardly whatever seemed to me might be in a small degreeuseful to you. Indeed, I think I am among friends, who may forgiveme if I speak rashly, but scarcely if I speak falsely.The aim of your Society and School of Arts is, as I understand it,to further those arts by education widely spread. A very greatobject is that, and well worthy of the reputation of this greatcity; but since Birmingham has also, I rejoice to know, a greatreputation for not allowing things to go about shamming life whenthe brains are knocked out of them, I think you should know and seeclearly what it is you have undertaken to further by theseinstitutions, and whether you really care about it, or onlylanguidly acquiesce in it--whether, in short, you know it to theheart, and are indeed part and parcel of it, with your own will, oragainst it; or else have heard say that it is a good thing if anyone care to meddle with it.If you are surprised at my putting that question for yourconsideration, I will tell you why I do so. There are some of uswho love Art most, and I may say most faithfully, who see forcertain that such love is rare nowadays. We cannot help seeing,that besides a vast number of people, who (poor souls!) are sordidand brutal of mind and habits, and have had no chance or choice inthe matter, there are many high-minded, thoughtful, and cultivatedmen who inwardly think the arts to be a foolish accident ofcivilisation--nay, worse perhaps, a nuisance, a disease, a hindranceto human progress. Some of these, doubtless, are very busy aboutother sides of thought. They are, as I should put it, soARTISTICALLY engrossed by the study of science, politics, or whatnot, that they have necessarily narrowed their minds by their hardand praiseworthy labours. But since such men are few, this does notaccount for a prevalent habit of thought that looks upon Art as atbest trifling.What is wrong, then, with us or the arts, since what was onceaccounted so glorious, is now deemed paltry?The question is no light one; for, to put the matter in its clearestlight, I will say that the leaders of modern thought do for the mostpart sincerely and single-mindedly hate and despise the arts; andyou know well that as the leaders are, so must the people be; andthat means that we who are met together here for the furthering ofArt by wide-spread education are either deceiving ourselves andwasting our time, since we shall one day be of the same opinion asthe best men among us, or else we represent a small minority that isright, as minorities sometimes are, while those upright menaforesaid, and the great mass of civilised men, have been blinded byuntoward circumstances.That we are of this mind--the minority that is right--is, I hope,the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have mettogether to further are necessary to the life of man, if theprogress of civilisation is not to be as causeless as the turning ofa wheel that makes nothing.How, then, shall we, the minority, carry out the duty which ourposition thrusts upon us, of striving to grow into a majority?If we could only explain to those thoughtful men, and the millionsof whom they are the flower, what the thing is that we love, whichis to us as the bread we eat, and the air we breathe, but aboutwhich they know nothing and feel nothing, save a vague instinct ofrepulsion, then the seed of victory might be sown. This is hardindeed to do; yet if we ponder upon a chapter of ancient ormediaeval history, it seems to me some glimmer of a chance of doingso breaks in upon us. Take for example a century of the ByzantineEmpire, weary yourselves with reading the names of the pedants,tyrants, and tax-gatherers to whom the terrible chain which long-dead Rome once forged, still gave the power of cheating people intothinking that they were necessary lords of the world. Turn then tothe lands they governed, and read and forget a long string of thecauseless murders of Northern and Saracen pirates and robbers. Thatis pretty much the sum of what so-called history has left us of thetale of those days--the stupid languor and the evil deeds of kingsand scoundrels. Must we turn away then, and say that all was evil?How then did men live from day to day? How then did Europe growinto intelligence and freedom? It seems there were others thanthose of whom history (so called) has left us the names and thedeeds. These, the raw material for the treasury and the slave-market, we now call 'the people,' and we know that they were workingall that while. Yes, and that their work was not merely slaves'work, the meal-trough before them and the whip behind them; forthough history (so called) has forgotten them, yet their work hasnot been forgotten, but has made another history--the history ofArt. There is not an ancient city in the East or the West that doesnot bear some token of their grief, and joy, and hope. From Ispahanto Northumberland, there is no building built between the seventhand seventeenth centuries that does not show the influence of thelabour of that oppressed and neglected herd of men. No one of them,indeed, rose high above his fellows. There was no Plato, orShakespeare, or Michael Angelo amongst them. Yet scattered as itwas among many men, how strong their thought was, how long itabided, how far it travelled!And so it was ever through all those days when Art was so vigorousand progressive. Who can say how little we should know of manyperiods, but for their art? History (so called) has remembered thekings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered thepeople, because they created.I think, then, that this knowledge we have of the life of past timesgives us some token of the way we should take in meeting thosehonest and single-hearted men who above all things desire theworld's progress, but whose minds are, as it were, sick on thispoint of the arts. Surely you may say to them: When all is gainedthat you (and we) so long for, what shall we do then? That greatchange which we are working for, each in his own way, will come likeother changes, as a thief in the night, and will be with us beforewe know it; but let us imagine that its consummation has comesuddenly and dramatically, acknowledged and hailed by all right-minded people; and what shall we do then, lest we begin once more toheap up fresh corruption for the woeful labour of ages once again?I say, as we turn away from the flagstaff where the new banner hasbeen just run up; as we depart, our ears yet ringing with the blareof the heralds' trumpets that have proclaimed the new order ofthings, what shall we turn to then, what MUST we turn to then?To what else, save to our work, our daily labour?With what, then, shall we adorn it when we have become wholly freeand reasonable? It is necessary toil, but shall it be toil only?Shall all we can do with it be to shorten the hours of that toil tothe utmost, that the hours of leisure may be long beyond what menused to hope for? and what then shall we do with the leisure, if wesay that all toil is irksome? Shall we sleep it all away?--Yes, andnever wake up again, I should hope, in that case.What shall we do then? what shall our necessary hours of labourbring forth?That will be a question for all men in that day when many wrongs arerighted, and when there will be no classes of degradation on whomthe dirty work of the world can be shovelled; and if men's minds arestill sick and loathe the arts, they will not be able to answer thatquestion.Once men sat under grinding tyrannies, amidst violence and fear sogreat, that nowadays we wonder how they lived through twenty-fourhours of it, till we remember that then, as now, their daily labourwas the main part of their lives, and that that daily labour wassweetened by the daily creation of Art; and shall we who aredelivered from the evils they bore, live drearier days than theydid? Shall men, who have come forth from so many tyrannies, bindthemselves to yet another one, and become the slaves of nature,piling day upon day of hopeless, useless toil? Must this go onworsening till it comes to this at last--that the world shall havecome into its inheritance, and with all foes conquered and nought tobind it, shall choose to sit down and labour for ever amidst grimugliness? How, then, were all our hopes cheated, what a gulf ofdespair should we tumble into then?In truth, it cannot be; yet if that sickness of repulsion to thearts were to go on hopelessly, nought else would be, and theextinction of the love of beauty and imagination would prove to bethe extinction of civilisation. But that sickness the world willone day throw off, yet will, I believe, pass through many pains inso doing, some of which will look very like the death-throes of Art,and some, perhaps, will be grievous enough to the poor people of theworld; since hard necessity, I doubt, works many of the world'schanges, rather than the purblind striving to see, which we call theforesight of man.Meanwhile, remember that I asked just now, what was amiss in Art orin ourselves that this sickness was upon us. Nothing is wrong orcan be with Art in the abstract--that must always be good formankind, or we are all wrong together: but with Art, as we of theselatter days have known it, there is much wrong; nay, what are wehere for to-night if that is not so? were not the schools of artfounded all over the country some thirty years ago because we hadfound out that popular art was fading--or perhaps had faded out fromamongst us?As to the progress made since then in this country--and in thiscountry only, if at all--it is hard for me to speak without beingeither ungracious or insincere, and yet speak I must. I say, then,that an apparent external progress in some ways is obvious, but I donot know how far that is hopeful, for time must try it, and provewhether it be a passing fashion or the first token of a real stiramong the great mass of civilised men. To speak quite frankly, andas one friend to another, I must needs say that even as I say thosewords they seem too good to be true. And yet--who knows?--so wontare we to frame history for the future as well as for the past, sooften are our eyes blind both when we look backward and when we lookforward, because we have been gazing so intently at our own days,our own lines. May all be better than I think it!At any rate let us count our gains, and set them against lesshopeful signs of the times. In England, then--and as far as I know,in England only--painters of pictures have grown, I believe, morenumerous, and certainly more conscientious in their work, and insome cases--and this more especially in England--have developed andexpressed a sense of beauty which the world has not seen for thelast three hundred years. This is certainly a very great gain,which is not easy to over-estimate, both for those who make thepictures and those who use them.Furthermore, in England, and in England only, there has been a greatimprovement in architecture and the arts that attend it--arts whichit was the special province of the afore-mentioned schools to reviveand foster. This, also, is a considerable gain to the users of theworks so made, but I fear a gain less important to most of thoseconcerned in making them.Against these gains we must, I am very sorry to say, set the factnot easy to be accounted for, that the rest of the civilised world(so called) seems to have done little more than stand still in thesematters; and that among ourselves these improvements have concernedcomparatively few people, the mass of our population not being inthe least touched by them; so that the great bulk of ourarchitecture--the art which most depends on the taste of the peopleat large--grows worse and worse every day. I must speak also ofanother piece of discouragement before I go further. I daresay manyof you will remember how emphatically those who first had to do withthe movement of which the foundation of our art-schools was a part,called the attention of our pattern-designers to the beautiful worksof the East. This was surely most well judged of them, for theybade us look at an art at once beautiful, orderly, living in our ownday, and above all, popular. Now, it is a grievous result of thesickness of civilisation that this art is fast disappearing beforethe advance of western conquest and commerce--fast, and every dayfaster. While we are met here in Birmingham to further the spreadof education in art, Englishmen in India are, in their short-sightedness, actively destroying the very sources of that education--jewellery, metal-work, pottery, calico-printing, brocade-weaving,carpet-making--all the famous and historical arts of the greatpeninsula have been for long treated as matters of no importance, tobe thrust aside for the advantage of any paltry scrap of so-calledcommerce; and matters are now speedily coming to an end there. Idaresay some of you saw the presents which the native Princes gaveto the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his progress throughIndia. I did myself, I will not say with great disappointment, forI guessed what they would be like, but with great grief, since therewas scarce here and there a piece of goods among these costly gifts,things given as great treasures, which faintly upheld the ancientfame of the cradle of the industrial arts. Nay, in some cases, itwould have been laughable, if it had not been so sad, to see thepiteous simplicity with which the conquered race had copied theblank vulgarity of their lords. And this deterioration we are now,as I have said, actively engaged in forwarding. I have read alittle book, {3} a handbook to the Indian Court of last year's ParisExhibition, which takes the occasion of noting the state ofmanufactures in India one by one. 'Art manufactures,' you wouldcall them; but, indeed, all manufactures are, or were, 'artmanufactures' in India. Dr. Birdwood, the author of this book, isof great experience in Indian life, a man of science, and a lover ofthe arts. His story, by no means a new one to me, or othersinterested in the East and its labour, is a sad one indeed. Theconquered races in their hopelessness are everywhere giving up thegenuine practice of their own arts, which we know ourselves, as wehave indeed loudly proclaimed, are founded on the truest and mostnatural principles. The often-praised perfection of these arts isthe blossom of many ages of labour and change, but the conqueredraces are casting it aside as a thing of no value, so that they mayconform themselves to the inferior art, or rather the lack of art,of their conquerors. In some parts of the country the genuine artsare quite destroyed; in many others nearly so; in all they have moreor less begun to sicken. So much so is this the case, that now forsome time the Government has been furthering this deterioration. Asfor example, no doubt with the best intentions, and certainly infull sympathy with the general English public, both at home and inIndia, the Government is now manufacturing cheap Indian carpets inthe Indian gaols. I do not say that it is a bad thing to turn outreal work, or works of art, in gaols; on the contrary, I think itgood if it be properly managed. But in this case, the Government,being, as I said, in full sympathy with the English public, hasdetermined that it will make its wares cheap, whether it make themnasty or not. Cheap and nasty they are, I assure you; but, thoughthey are the worst of their kind, they would not be made thus, ifeverything did not tend the same way. And it is the same everywhereand with all Indian manufactures, till it has come to this--thatthese poor people have all but lost the one distinction, the oneglory that conquest had left them. Their famous wares, so praisedby those who thirty years ago began to attempt the restoration ofpopular art amongst ourselves, are no longer to be bought atreasonable prices in the common market, but must be sought for andtreasured as precious relics for the museums we have founded for ourart education. In short, their art is dead, and the commerce ofmodern civilisation has slain it.What is going on in India is also going on, more or less, all overthe East; but I have spoken of India chiefly because I cannot helpthinking that we ourselves are responsible for what is happeningthere. Chance-hap has made us the lords of many millions out there;surely, it behoves us to look to it, lest we give to the people whomwe have made helpless scorpions for fish and stones for bread.But since neither on this side, nor on any other, can art beamended, until the countries that lead civilisation are themselvesin a healthy state about it, let us return to the consideration ofits condition among ourselves. And again I say, that obvious as isthat surface improvement of the arts within the last few years, Ifear too much that there is something wrong about the root of theplant to exult over the bursting of its February buds.I have just shown you for one thing that lovers of Indian andEastern Art, including as they do the heads of our institutions forart education, and I am sure many among what are called thegoverning classes, are utterly powerless to stay its downwardcourse. The general tendency of civilisation is against them, andis too strong for them.Again, though many of us love architecture dearly, and believe thatit helps the healthiness both of body and soul to live amongbeautiful things, we of the big towns are mostly compelled to livein houses which have become a byword of contempt for their uglinessand inconvenience. The stream of civilisation is against us, and wecannot battle against it.Once more those devoted men who have upheld the standard of truthand beauty amongst us, and whose pictures, painted amidstdifficulties that none but a painter can know, show qualities ofmind unsurpassed in any age--these great men have but a narrowcircle that can understand their works, and are utterly unknown tothe great mass of the people: civilisation is so much against them,that they cannot move the people.Therefore, looking at all this, I cannot think that all is well withthe root of the tree we are cultivating. Indeed, I believe that ifother things were but to stand still in the world, this improvementbefore mentioned would lead to a kind of art which, in thatimpossible case, would be in a way stable, would perhaps stand stillalso. This would be an art cultivated professedly by a few, and fora few, who would consider it necessary--a duty, if they could admitduties--to despise the common herd, to hold themselves aloof fromall that the world has been struggling for from the first, to guardcarefully every approach to their palace of art. It would be a pityto waste many words on the prospect of such a school of art as this,which does in a way, theoretically at least, exist at present, andhas for its watchword a piece of slang that does not mean theharmless thing it seems to mean--art for art's sake. Its fore-doomed end must be, that art at last will seem too delicate a thingfor even the hands of the initiated to touch; and the initiated mustat last sit still and do nothing--to the grief of no one.Well, certainly, if I thought you were come here to further such anart as this I could not have stood up and called you FRIENDS; thoughsuch a feeble folk as I have told you of one could scarce care tocall foes.Yet, as I say, such men exist, and I have troubled you with speakingof them, because I know that those honest and intelligent people,who are eager for human progress, and yet lack part of the humansenses, and are anti-artistic, suppose that such men are artists,and that this is what art means, and what it does for people, andthat such a narrow, cowardly life is what we, fellow-handicraftsmen,aim at. I see this taken for granted continually, even by many who,to say truth, ought to know better, and I long to put the slur fromoff us; to make people understand that we, least of all men, wish towiden the gulf between the classes, nay, worse still, to make newclasses of elevation, and new classes of degradation--new lords andnew slaves; that we, least of all men, want to cultivate the 'plantcalled man' in different ways--here stingily, there wastefully: Iwish people to understand that the art we are striving for is a goodthing which all can share, which will elevate all; in good sooth, ifall people do not soon share it there will soon be none to share; ifall are not elevated by it, mankind will lose the elevation it hasgained. Nor is such an art as we long for a vain dream; such an artonce was in times that were worse than these, when there was lesscourage, kindness, and truth in the world than there is now; such anart there will be hereafter, when there will be more courage,kindness, and truth than there is now in the world.Let us look backward in history once more for a short while, andthen steadily forward till my words are done: I began by sayingthat part of the common and necessary advice given to Art studentswas to study antiquity; and no doubt many of you, like me, have doneso; have wandered, for instance, through the galleries of theadmirable museum of South Kensington, and, like me, have been filledwith wonder and gratitude at the beauty which has been born from thebrain of man. Now, consider, I pray you, what these wonderful worksare, and how they were made; and indeed, it is neither inextravagance nor without due meaning that I use the word 'wonderful'in speaking of them. Well, these things are just the commonhousehold goods of those past days, and that is one reason why theyare so few and so carefully treasured. They were common things intheir own day, used without fear of breaking or spoiling--norarities then--and yet we have called them 'wonderful.'And how were they made? Did a great artist draw the designs forthem--a man of cultivation, highly paid, daintily fed, carefullyhoused, wrapped up in cotton wool, in short, when he was not atwork? By no means. Wonderful as these works are, they were made by'common fellows,' as the phrase goes, in the common course of theirdaily labour. Such were the men we honour in honouring those works.And their labour--do you think it was irksome to them? Those of youwho are artists know very well that it was not; that it could notbe. Many a grin of pleasure, I'll be bound--and you will notcontradict me--went to the carrying through of those mazes ofmysterious beauty, to the invention of those strange beasts andbirds and flowers that we ourselves have chuckled over at SouthKensington. While they were at work, at least, these men were notunhappy, and I suppose they worked most days, and the most part ofthe day, as we do.Or those treasures of architecture that we study so carefullynowadays--what are they? how were they made? There are greatminsters among them, indeed, and palaces of kings and lords, but notmany; and, noble and awe-inspiring as these may be, they differ onlyin size from the little grey church that still so often makes thecommonplace English landscape beautiful, and the little grey housethat still, in some parts of the country at least, makes an Englishvillage a thing apart, to be seen and pondered on by all who loveromance and beauty. These form the mass of our architecturaltreasures, the houses that everyday people lived in, the unregardedchurches in which they worshipped.And, once more, who was it that designed and ornamented them? Thegreat architect, carefully kept for the purpose, and guarded fromthe common troubles of common men? By no means. Sometimes,perhaps, it was the monk, the ploughman's brother; oftenest hisother brother, the village carpenter, smith, mason, what not--'acommon fellow,' whose common everyday labour fashioned works thatare to-day the wonder and despair of many a hard-working'cultivated' architect. And did he loathe his work? No, it isimpossible. I have seen, as we most of us have, work done by suchmen in some out-of-the-way hamlet--where to-day even few strangersever come, and whose people seldom go five miles from their owndoors; in such places, I say, I have seen work so delicate, socareful, and so inventive, that nothing in its way could go further.And I will assert, without fear of contradiction, that no humaningenuity can produce work such as this without pleasure being athird party to the brain that conceived and the hand that fashionedit. Nor are such works rare. The throne of the great Plantagenet,or the great Valois, was no more daintily carved than the seat ofthe village mass-john, or the chest of the yeoman's good-wife.So, you see, there was much going on to make life endurable in thosetimes. Not every day, you may be sure, was a day of slaughter andtumult, though the histories read almost as if it were so; but everyday the hammer chinked on the anvil, and the chisel played about theoak beam, and never without some beauty and invention being born ofit, and consequently some human happiness.That last word brings me to the very kernel and heart of what I havecome here to say to you, and I pray you to think of it mostseriously--not as to my words, but as to a thought which is stirringin the world, and will one day grow into something.That thing which I understand by real art is the expression by manof his pleasure in labour. I do not believe he can be happy in hislabour without expressing that happiness; and especially is this sowhen he is at work at anything in which he specially excels. A mostkind gift is this of nature, since all men, nay, it seems all thingstoo, must labour; so that not only does the dog take pleasure inhunting, and the horse in running, and the bird in flying, but sonatural does the idea seem to us, that we imagine to ourselves thatthe earth and the very elements rejoice in doing their appointedwork; and the poets have told us of the spring meadows smiling, ofthe exultation of the fire, of the countless laughter of the sea.Nor until these latter days has man ever rejected this universalgift, but always, when he has not been too much perplexed, too muchbound by disease or beaten down by trouble, has striven to make hiswork at least happy. Pain he has too often found in his pleasure,and weariness in his rest, to trust to these. What matter if hishappiness lie with what must be always with him--his work?And, once more, shall we, who have gained so much, forego this gain,the earliest, most natural gain of mankind? If we have to a greatextent done so, as I verily fear we have, what strange fog-lightsmust have misled us; or rather let me say, how hard pressed we musthave been in the battle with the evils we have overcome, to haveforgotten the greatest of all evils. I cannot call it less thanthat. If a man has work to do which he despises, which does notsatisfy his natural and rightful desire for pleasure, the greaterpart of his life must pass unhappily and without self-respect.Consider, I beg of you, what that means, and what ruin must come ofit in the end.If I could only persuade you of this, that the chief duty of thecivilised world to-day is to set about making labour happy for all,to do its utmost to minimise the amount of unhappy labour--nay, if Icould only persuade some two or three of you here present--I shouldhave made a good night's work of it.Do not, at any rate, shelter yourselves from any misgiving you mayhave behind the fallacy that the art-lacking labour of to-day ishappy work: for the most of men it is not so. It would take long,perhaps, to show you, and make you fully understand that the would-be art which it produces is joyless. But there is another token ofits being most unhappy work, which you cannot fail to understand atonce--a grievous thing that token is--and I beg of you to believethat I feel the full shame of it, as I stand here speaking of it;but if we do not admit that we are sick, how can we be healed? Thishapless token is, that the work done by the civilised world ismostly dishonest work. Look now: I admit that civilisation doesmake certain things well, things which it knows, consciously orunconsciously, are necessary to its present unhealthy condition.These things, to speak shortly, are chiefly machines for carrying onthe competition in buying and selling, called falsely commerce; andmachines for the violent destruction of life--that is to say,materials for two kinds of war; of which kinds the last is no doubtthe worst, not so much in itself perhaps, but because on this pointthe conscience of the world is beginning to be somewhat pricked.But, on the other hand, matters for the carrying on of a dignifieddaily life, that life of mutual trust, forbearance, and help, whichis the only real life of thinking men--these things the civilisedworld makes ill, and even increasingly worse and worse.If I am wrong in saying this, you know well I am only saying what iswidely thought, nay widely said too, for that matter. Let me givean instance, familiar enough, of that wide-spread opinion. There isa very clever book of pictures {4} now being sold at the railwaybookstalls, called 'The British Working Man, by one who does notbelieve in him,'--a title and a book which make me both angry andashamed, because the two express much injustice, and not a littletruth in their quaint, and necessarily exaggerated way. It is quitetrue, and very sad to say, that if any one nowadays wants a piece ofordinary work done by gardener, carpenter, mason, dyer, weaver,smith, what you will, he will be a lucky rarity if he get it welldone. He will, on the contrary, meet on every side with evasion ofplain duties, and disregard of other men's rights; yet I cannot seehow the 'British Working Man' is to be made to bear the whole burdenof this blame, or indeed the chief part of it. I doubt if it bepossible for a whole mass of men to do work to which they aredriven, and in which there is no hope and no pleasure, withouttrying to shirk it--at any rate, shirked it has always been undersuch circumstances. On the other hand, I know that there are somemen so right-minded, that they will, in despite of irksomeness andhopelessness, drive right through their work. Such men are the saltof the earth. But must there not be something wrong with a state ofsociety which drives these into that bitter heroism, and the mostpart into shirking, into the depths often of half-conscious self-contempt and degradation? Be sure that there is, that the blindnessand hurry of civilisation, as it now is, have to answer a heavycharge as to that enormous amount of pleasureless work--work thattries every muscle of the body and every atom of the brain, andwhich is done without pleasure and without aim--work which everybodywho has to do with tries to shuffle off in the speediest way thatdread of starvation or ruin will allow him.I am as sure of one thing as that I am living and breathing, and itis this: that the dishonesty in the daily arts of life, complaintsof which are in all men's mouths, and which I can answer for it doesexist, is the natural and inevitable result of the world in thehurry of the war of the counting-house, and the war of thebattlefield, having forgotten--of all men, I say, each for theother, having forgotten, that pleasure in our daily labour, whichnature cries out for as its due.Therefore, I say again, it is necessary to the further progress ofcivilisation that men should turn their thoughts to some means oflimiting, and in the end of doing away with, degrading labour.I do not think my words hitherto spoken have given you any occasionto think that I mean by this either hard or rough labour; I do notpity men much for their hardships, especially if they be accidental;not necessarily attached to one class or one condition, I mean. Nordo I think (I were crazy or dreaming else) that the work of theworld can be carried on without rough labour; but I have seen enoughof that to know that it need not be by any means degrading. Toplough the earth, to cast the net, to fold the flock--these, andsuch as these, which are rough occupations enough, and which carrywith them many hardships, are good enough for the best of us,certain conditions of leisure, freedom, and due wages being granted.As to the bricklayer, the mason, and the like--these would beartists, and doing not only necessary, but beautiful, and thereforehappy work, if art were anything like what it should be. No, it isnot such labour as this which we need to do away with, but the toilwhich makes the thousand and one things which nobody wants, whichare used merely as the counters for the competitive buying andselling, falsely called commerce, which I have spoken of before--Iknow in my heart, and not merely by my reason, that this toil criesout to be done away with. But, besides that, the labour which nowmakes things good and necessary in themselves, merely as countersfor the commercial war aforesaid, needs regulating and reforming.Nor can this reform be brought about save by art; and if we wereonly come to our right minds, and could see the necessity for makinglabour sweet to all men, as it is now to very few--the necessity, Irepeat; lest discontent, unrest, and despair should at last swallowup all society--If we, then, with our eyes cleared, could but makesome sacrifice of things which do us no good, since we unjustly anduneasily possess them, then indeed I believe we should sow the seedsof a happiness which the world has not yet known, of a rest andcontent which would make it what I cannot help thinking it was meantto be: and with that seed would be sown also the seed of real art,the expression of man's happiness in his labour,--an art made by thepeople, and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and theuser.That is the only real art there is, the only art which will be aninstrument to the progress of the world, and not a hindrance. Norcan I seriously doubt that in your hearts you know that it is so,all of you, at any rate, who have in you an instinct for art. Ibelieve that you agree with me in this, though you may differ frommuch else that I have said. I think assuredly that this is the artwhose welfare we have met together to further, and the necessaryinstruction in which we have undertaken to spread as widely as maybe.Thus I have told you something of what I think is to be hoped andfeared for the future of art; and if you ask me what I expect as apractical outcome of the admission of these opinions, I must say atonce that I know, even if we were all of one mind, and that what Ithink the right mind on this subject, we should still have much workand many hindrances before us; we should still have need of all theprudence, foresight, and industry of the best among us; and, evenso, our path would sometimes seem blind enough. And, to-day, whenthe opinions which we think right, and which one day will begenerally thought so, have to struggle sorely to make themselvesnoticed at all, it is early days for us to try to see our exact andclearly mapped road. I suppose you will think it too commonplace ofme to say that the general education that makes men think, will oneday make them think rightly upon art. Commonplace as it is, Ireally believe it, and am indeed encouraged by it, when I rememberhow obviously this age is one of transition from the old to the new,and what a strange confusion, from out of which we shall one daycome, our ignorance and half-ignorance is like to make of theexhausted rubbish of the old and the crude rubbish of the new, bothof which lie so ready to our hands.But, if I must say, furthermore, any words that seem like words ofpractical advice, I think my task is hard, and I fear I shall offendsome of you whatever I say; for this is indeed an affair ofmorality, rather than of what people call art.However, I cannot forget that, in my mind, it is not possible todissociate art from morality, politics, and religion. Truth inthese great matters of principle is of one, and it is only in formaltreatises that it can be split up diversely. I must also ask you toremember how I have already said, that though my mouth alone speaks,it speaks, however feebly and disjointedly, the thoughts of many menbetter than myself. And further, though when things are tending tothe best, we shall still, as aforesaid, need our best men to lead usquite right; yet even now surely, when it is far from that, theleast of us can do some yeoman's service to the cause, and live anddie not without honour.So I will say that I believe there are two virtues much needed inmodern life, if it is ever to become sweet; and I am quite sure thatthey are absolutely necessary in the sowing the seed of an ART WHICHIS TO BE MADE BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE, AS A HAPPINESS TOTHE MAKER AND THE USER. These virtues are honesty, and simplicityof life. To make my meaning clearer I will name the opposing viceof the second of these--luxury to wit. Also I mean by honesty, thecareful and eager giving his due to every man, the determination notto gain by any man's loss, which in my experience is not a commonvirtue.But note how the practice of either of these virtues will make theother easier to us. For if our wants are few, we shall have butlittle chance of being driven by our wants into injustice; and if weare fixed in the principle of giving every man his due, how can ourself-respect bear that we should give too much to ourselves?And in art, and in that preparation for it without which no art thatis stable or worthy can be, the raising, namely, of those classeswhich have heretofore been degraded, the practice of these virtueswould make a new world of it. For if you are rich, your simplicityof life will both go towards smoothing over the dreadful contrastbetween waste and want, which is the great horror of civilisedcountries, and will also give an example and standard of dignifiedlife to those classes which you desire to raise, who, as it isindeed, being like enough to rich people, are given both to envy andto imitate the idleness and waste that the possession of much moneyproduces.Nay, and apart from the morality of the matter, which I am forced tospeak to you of; let me tell you that though simplicity in art maybe costly as well as uncostly, at least it is not wasteful, andnothing is more destructive to art than the want of it. I havenever been in any rich man's house which would not have looked thebetter for having a bonfire made outside of it of nine-tenths of allthat it held. Indeed, our sacrifice on the side of luxury will, itseems to me, be little or nothing: for, as far as I can make out,what people usually mean by it, is either a gathering of possessionswhich are sheer vexations to the owner, or a chain of pompouscircumstance, which checks and annoys the rich man at every step.Yes, luxury cannot exist without slavery of some kind or other, andits abolition will be blessed, like the abolition of otherslaveries, by the freeing both of the slaves and of their masters.Lastly, if, besides attaining to simplicity of life, we attain alsoto the love of justice, then will all things be ready for the newspringtime of the arts. For those of us that are employers oflabour, how can we bear to give any man less money than he candecently live on, less leisure than his education and self-respectdemand? or those of us who are workmen, how can we bear to fail inthe contract we have undertaken, or to make it necessary for aforeman to go up and down spying out our mean tricks and evasions?or we the shopkeepers--can we endure to lie about our wares, that wemay shuffle off our losses on to some one else's shoulders? or wethe public--how can we bear to pay a price for a piece of goodswhich will help to trouble one man, to ruin another, and starve athird? Or, still more, I think, how can we bear to use, how can weenjoy something which has been a pain and a grief for the maker tomake?And now, I think, I have said what I came to say. I confess thatthere is nothing new in it, but you know the experience of the worldis that a thing must be said over and over again before any greatnumber of men can be got to listen to it. Let my words to-night,therefore, pass for one of the necessary times that the thought inthem must be spoken out.For the rest I believe that, however seriously these words may begainsayed, I have been speaking to an audience in whom any wordsspoken from a sense of duty and in hearty goodwill, as mine havebeen, will quicken thought and sow some good seed. At any rate, itis good for a man who thinks seriously to face his fellows, andspeak out whatever really burns in him, so that men may seem lessstrange to one another, and misunderstanding, the fruitful cause ofaimless strife, may be avoided.But if to any of you I have seemed to speak hopelessly, my wordshave been lacking in art; and you must remember that hopelessnesswould have locked my mouth, not opened it. I am, indeed, hopeful,but can I give a date to the accomplishment of my hope, and say thatit will happen in my life or yours?But I will say at least, Courage! for things wonderful, unhoped-for,glorious, have happened even in this short while I have been alive.Yes, surely these times are wonderful and fruitful of change, which,as it wears and gathers new life even in its wearing, will one daybring better things for the toiling days of men, who, with freerhearts and clearer eyes, will once more gain the sense of outwardbeauty, and rejoice in it.Meanwhile, if these hours be dark, as, indeed, in many ways theyare, at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and finegentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, andbeaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellowstrying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready againstto-morrow's daylight--that to-morrow, when the civilised world, nolonger greedy, strifeful, and destructive, shall have a new art, aglorious art, made by the people and for the people, as a happinessto the maker and the user.