for
a publisher or a producer. This was the case with some of
Meredith's earlier novels; later Meredith, as a publisher's
reader, turned down some of Shaw. The same inhospitality
met some of the plays of Ibsen and some of the symphonies of
Tschaikowsky.

ART AND MORALS. Attention has already been called to the
fact that objects of art are powerful vehicles for social
propaganda. Indeed some works become famous less for their
intrinsic beauty than for their moral force.[1] The effectiveness
of art forms as instruments of propaganda lies in the fact,
previously noted, that the ideas presented, with all the accouterments
of color, form, and movement, are incomparably
effective in stimulating passion; ideas thus aroused in the
beholder have the vivid momentum of emotion to sustain them.
There is only rhetorical exaggeration in the saying, "Let me
sing a country's songs, and I care not who makes its laws."
Plato was one of the first to recognize how influential art
could be in influencing men's actions and attitudes. So keenly
did he realize its possible influence, that in constructing his
ideal state he provided for the rigid regulation of all artistic
production by the governing power, and the exile of all poets.
He felt deeply how insinuatingly persuasive poets could become
with their dangerous "beautiful lies." Artists have,
indeed, not infrequently been revolutionaries, at least in the
sense that the world which they so ecstatically pictured makes
even the best of actual worlds look pale and paltry in comparison.
The imaginative genius has naturally enough been
discontented with an existing order that could not possibly
measure up to his ardent specifications. Shelley is possibly
the supreme example of the type; against his incorrigible
construction of perfect worlds in imagination he set the real
world in which men live, and found it hateful.

[Footnote 1: The classic instance of a work that certainly was notable
in its early history for its propaganda value is _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.
An extreme instance of a book famous almost exclusively for its vivid
propaganda is Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_.]

In consequence of this discontent which the imaginative
artist so often expresses with the real world, and the power of
his enthusiastic visions to win the loyalties and affections of
men, many moralists and statesmen have, like Plato, regarded
the creative artist with suspicion. They have half believed
the lyric boas