aesthetic matters. Ah! If they only knew how infinitely barbarous they
seem to us in their naive contempt of our barbarism, and in what we
regard as their infantine concern with things as they are. How far have
we not gone past all that--we of the oldest settled Western country, who
have so veneered our lives that we no longer know of what wood they are
made! Whom generations have so soaked with the preserve "good form" that
we are impervious to the claims and clamour of that ill-bred
creature--life! Who think it either dreadful, or 'vieux jeu', that such
things as the crude emotions and the raw struggles of Fate should be even
mentioned, much less presented in terms of art! For whom an artist is
'suspect' if he is not, in his work, a sportsman and a gentleman? Who
shake a solemn head over writers who will treat of sex; and, with the
remark: "Worst of it is, there's so much truth in those fellows!" close
the book.

Ah! well! I suppose we have been too long familiar with the
unprofitableness of speculation, have surrendered too definitely to
action--to the material side of things, retaining for what relaxation our
spirits may require, a habit of sentimental aspiration, carefully
divorced from things as they are. We seem to have decided that things
are not, or, if they are, ought not to be--and what is the good of
thinking of things like that? In fact, our national ideal has become the
Will to Health, to Material Efficiency, and to it we have sacrificed the
Will to Sensibility. It is a point of view. And yet--to the philosophy
that craves Perfection, to the spirit that desires the golden mean, and
hankers for the serene and balanced seat in the centre of the see-saw, it
seems a little pitiful, and constricted; a confession of defeat, a
hedging and limitation of the soul. Need we put up with this, must we
for ever turn our eyes away from things as they are, stifle our
imaginations and our sensibilities, for fear that they should become our