hole lives in hard labor to
satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of
human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.

Not only is enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in
war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of
people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs
rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians)
or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme for every
word.[1]

[Footnote 1: Tolstoy: _What is Art?_ pp. 1-2 (written in 1898).]

Tolstoy's point in thus emphasizing the immense energies
devoted to artistic enterprises is to lead us to consider what is
the end of all this labor. He points out scathingly the ugliness,
frivolity, and crudity of much that passes for drama in
the theater, for music in the concert hall, and for literature
between covers. He pleads for a simple art that shall express
with sincerity the genuine emotions of the great mass of men.

Whatever be our estimate of Tolstoy's sweeping condemnation
of so much of what has come to be regarded as classic
beauty, the point he makes about the commercialization of
art is incontrovertible. If art is an industry, the good is
determined, as it were, by popular vote. The many must be
pleased rather than the discriminating. While, as has been
noted, aesthetic appreciation is fairly general, appreciation of
the subtler forms of art requires training. The glaring, the
conspicuous, the broad effect, is more likely to win rapid
popular approval than the subtle, the quiet, and the fragile.
That taste is readily educable is true. But when immediate
profits are the end, one cannot pause to educate the public.
And publishing and the theater are two conspicuous instances
of the conflicts that not infrequently arise between standards
of economic return and standards of aesthetic merit. Even
where there is no deliberate selection of the worse rather than
the better, commercial standards operate to put the novel in art
at a discount. As already pointed out, we tend to appreciate
forms and ideas to which we are accustomed. In consequence,
where commercial demands make immediate widespread
appreciation necessary, the untried, the odd, the radical
innovation in music, literature, or drama, is a questionable
venture. There are notable instances of works which, though
eventually recognized as great, had to go begging at first