consciously by most people who
are interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only
imperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation
of the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them
and the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the
artists are often confused in their practice of it.

The first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great
liveliness, by Whistler in his _Ten O'clock_, and has had great
influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and
upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no
concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There
is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental
one; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.

Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.

'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period.

'There never was an art-loving nation.

'In the beginning man went forth each day--some to do battle,
some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the
field--all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until
there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose
pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with
the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a
gourd.

'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared
not for conquest and fretted in the field--this designer of
quaint patterns--this deviser of the beautiful--who perceived in
nature about him curious curvings--as faces are seen in the
fire--this dreamer apart, was the first artist.'

'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the
people, they took the gourd--and drank from it.'

Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had
traced on it.

'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a
consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there
was none other.'

So gradually there came the great ages of art.

'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art--and ate and
drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and
drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'

And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in
th