one of the
chief of human activities; but it often is denied by those who do not
understand how it can be applied to art. We cannot make artists
directly; no government office can determine their training; still less
can any critic tell them how they ought to practise their art. But we
can all aim at a state of society in which they will be encouraged to do
their best, and at a state of mind in which we ourselves shall learn to
know good from bad and to prefer the good. At present we have neither
the state of society nor the state of mind; and we can attain to both
not by connoisseurship, not by an anxiety to like the right thing or at
least to buy it, but by learning the difference between good and bad
workmanship and design in objects of use. Anyone can do that, and can
resolve to pay a fair price for good workmanship and design; and only so
will the arts of use, and all the arts, revive again. For where the
public has no sense of design in the arts of use, it will have none in
the "fine arts." To aim at connoisseurship when you do not know a good
table or chair from a bad one is to attempt flying before you can walk.
So, I think, professors of art at Oxford or Cambridge should be chosen,
not so much for their knowledge of Greek sculpture, as for their success
in furnishing their own houses. What can they know about Greek sculpture
if their own drawing-rooms are hideous? I believe that the notorious
fallibility of many experts is caused by the fact that they concern
themselves with the fine arts before they have had any training in the
arts of use. So, if we are to have a school of art at Oxford or
Cambridge, it should put this question to every pupil: If you had to
build and furnish a house of your own, how would you set about it? And
it should train its pupils to give a rational answer to that question.
So we might get a public knowing the difference between good and bad in
objects of use, valuing the good, and ready to pay a fair price for it.

At present we have no such public. A liberal education should teach the
difference between good and bad in things of use, including buildings.
Oxford and Cambridge profess to give a liberal education; but you have
only to look at their modern buildings to see that their teachers
themselves do not know a good building from a bad one. They, like all
the rest of us, think that taste in art is an irrational mystery; they
trust in the expert and usually in the wrong one, as the i