seems motionless, or even to move down and backwards. Men
attribute to these blind and dumb periods a special value, for
they judge them by outward results, thinking only of material
well-being. They hail some technical advance, which can help
nothing but the body, as a great achievement. Real spiritual
gains are at best under-valued, at worst entirely ignored.

The solitary visionaries are despised or regarded as abnormal and
eccentric. Those who are not wrapped in lethargy and who feel
vague longings for spiritual life and knowledge and progress, cry
in harsh chorus, without any to comfort them. The night of the
spirit falls more and more darkly. Deeper becomes the misery of
these blind and terrified guides, and their followers, tormented
and unnerved by fear and doubt, prefer to this gradual darkening
the final sudden leap into the blackness.

At such a time art ministers to lower needs, and is used for
material ends. She seeks her substance in hard realities because
she knows of nothing nobler. Objects, the reproduction of which
is considered her sole aim, remain monotonously the same. The
question "what?" disappears from art; only the question "how?"
remains. By what method are these material objects to be
reproduced? The word becomes a creed. Art has lost her soul.
In the search for method the artist goes still further. Art
becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists,
and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work.
For since the artist in such times has no need to say much, but
only to be notorious for some small originality and consequently
lauded by a small group of patrons and connoisseurs (which
incidentally is also a very profitable business for him), there