a clown whose heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is
not yet born. Let all who love Beauty pity them. Though they
themselves love not Beauty, yet let them pity themselves. Who
taught them the trick of tyranny?

There are many other things that one might point out. One might
point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve
no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but
suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and
naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great and
individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV., by creating
the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist, and
made things monstrous in their monotony of repetition, and
contemptible in their conformity to rule, and destroyed throughout
all France all those fine freedoms of expression that had made
tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique form. But
the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It
is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man
should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be.
The future is what artists are.

It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here
is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is
perfectly true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human
nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and that is why one
proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme
is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that
could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly
the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that
could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions