art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and
falsifies. Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it
loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise. The modern who
paints too cleverly produces a picture of a cow which might be the
earthquake at San Francisco. And the journalist who reports a speech too
cleverly makes it mean nothing at all.

THE WORSHIP OF THE WEALTHY

There has crept, I notice, into our literature and journalism a new way
of flattering the wealthy and the great. In more straightforward times
flattery itself was more straight-forward; falsehood itself was more
true. A poor man wishing to please a rich man simply said that he was
the wisest, bravest, tallest, strongest, most benevolent and most
beautiful of mankind; and as even the rich man probably knew that he
wasn't that, the thing did the less harm. When courtiers sang the
praises of a King they attributed to him things that were entirely
improbable, as that he resembled the sun at noonday, that they had to
shade their eyes when he entered the room, that his people could not
breathe without him, or that he had with his single sword conquered
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The safety of this method was its
artificiality; between the King and his public image there was really no
relation. But the moderns have invented a much subtler and more
poisonous kind of eulogy. The modern method is to take the prince or
rich man, to give a credible picture of his type of personality, as that
he is business-like, or a sportsman, or fond of art, or convivial, or
reserved; and then enormously exaggerate the value and importance of
these natural qualities. Those who praise Mr. Carnegie do not say that
he is as wise as Solomon and as brave as Mars; I wish they did. It would
be the next most honest thing to giving their real reason for praising
him, which is simply that he has money. The journalists who write about
Mr. Pierpont Morgan do not say that he is as beautiful as Apollo; I wish
they did. What they do is to take the rich man's superficial life and
manner, clothes, hobbies, love of cats, dislike of doctors, or what not;
and then with the assistance of this realism make the man out to be a
prophet and a saviour of his kind, whereas he is merely a private and
stupid man who happens to like cats or to dislike doctors. The old
flatterer took for granted that the King was an ordinary man, and set to
work to make him out extraord