longs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting
of Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but
for him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was
blessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy
of deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in
the natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way
of life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art
would satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of
Pericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century
in France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he
condemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.

We can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the
tyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own
experience of art. The fact that we _can_ enjoy and experience a work
of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and
experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art
is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his
own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art,
in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the
primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and
always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the
public, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.

According to him the proper aim of art is to do good.

'The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time
unintelligible to a great number of people is extremely unjust,
and its consequences are ruinous to art itself.'

The word _unjust_ implies that the aim of art is to do good. The artist
sins if he does not try to do good to as many people as possible, and I
sin if I am ready to enjoy and encourage a work of art which most people
do not enjoy.

But as a matter of fact a work of art is good to me, not morally good
but good as a work of art, if I enjoy it. In my estimate of the work of
art I can ask only if it is a work of art to me, not if it is one to
other people. I may wish and try to make them enjoy it, but if I do that
is as a result of my own enjoyment of it. I can't begin by asking
whether other people enjoy it; I must begin with my own experience of
it, for I have nothing else to go by.

And s