tudy
not only the worms which you see, but microscopic creatures which you can
barely see, and transformations from one set of creatures into others,
which no one has ever beheld, and which you, most assuredly, will never
behold. And the same with art. Where there has been true science, art
has always been its exponent.

Ever since men have been in existence, they have been in the habit of
deducing, from all pursuits, the expressions of various branches of
learning concerning the destiny and the welfare of man, and the
expression of this knowledge has been art in the strict sense of the
word.

Ever since men have existed, there have been those who were peculiarly
sensitive and responsive to the doctrine regarding the destiny and
welfare of man; who have given expression to their own and the popular
conflict, to the delusions which lead them astray from their destinies,
their sufferings in this conflict, their hopes in the triumph of good,
them despair over the triumph of evil, and their raptures in the
consciousness of the approaching bliss of man, on viol and tabret, in
images and words. Always, down to the most recent times, art has served
science and life,--only then was it what has been so highly esteemed of
men. But art, in its capacity of an important human activity,
disappeared simultaneously with the substitution for the genuine science
of destiny and welfare, of the science of any thing you choose to fancy.
Art has existed among all peoples, and will exist until that which among
us is scornfully called religion has come to be considered the only
science.

In our European world, so long as there existed a Church, as the doctrine
of destiny and welfare, and so long as the Church was regarded as the
only true science, art served the Church, and remained true art: but as
soon as art abandoned the Church, and began to serve science, while
science served whatever came to hand, art lost its significance. And
notwithstanding the rights claimed on the score of ancient memories, and
of the clumsy assertion which only proves its loss of its calling, that
art serves art, it has become a trade, providing men with something
agreeable; and as such, it inevitably comes into the category of
choreographic, culinary, hair-dressing, and cosmetic arts, whose
practitioners designate themselves as artists, with the same right as the
poets, printers, and musicians of our day.

Glance backward into the past, and you will see