he Age of Phidias; that never again would men
give shape to figures fit to be put, let us say, beside the Elgin
Marbles. As some nineteen centuries passed by, another art came to its
finest flowering in the Italian Cinquecento, when Raphael, Da Vinci, and
Michael Angelo added color to form. They agreed that never again would
paintings be produced fit to be classed with the Sistine Madonna.
Another two centuries passed, and the Bachs began the great music which
these three modern artists thought of as the reigning art of our time.
Here came their question, "What is to be the next and coming art that
shall compare with the Greek period, with the Cinquecento, and with
modern music?" One thought it would be the theatre. He wrote, I believe,
a pamphlet to prove this. I do not recall the guess of either of the
others; but I venture to make my own guess.

Art is knowledge in its applications; and to apply our experience and
our knowledge to the shaping of a higher social justice is also an art.
It is an art already showing itself in the field of politics and social
reconstruction; a politics, enriched and ennobled by ideals of
citizenship, freed at last from that party machinery whose boss has
been the puppet of business men fighting for monopoly privilege. It
will be a politics not for the few or the favored; not alone for the
strong and successful; but a politics for the common weal, for the
common and inclusive good of every citizen according to his good will
and honest endeavor.

Here is a sphere for art as much nobler than that of sculptor or painter
as the destinies of human life and society are higher than those of any
inanimate object, even though carved by Phidias or painted by Raphael.
It is, above all, an art that should touch by its inspiration the
gallantry of the whole student class. The very breath of it is the
shaping and directing of those conditions out of which may emerge a
society in which the spirit of justice and equal opportunity will be
realized at least so far that it will be no longer a mockery among
honest men.

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS

U. S. A

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Conflict between Private Monopoly
and Good Citizenship, by John Graham Brooks

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFLICT--MONOPOLY AND CITIZENSHIP ***

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