if his ego is provoked by the ego in a
particular audience, then he begins to tell of what he wants or of what
they want. The audience may demand of him that he shall please them by
indulging their particular vanities, appetites, sentimental desires,
that he shall present life to them as they wish it to be; and if he
yields to that demand it is because of the demands of his own particular
ego. There is a transaction between him and that audience, in its
essence commercial. His art is the particular supplying some kind of
goods to the particular, not the universal pouring itself out to the
universal.

The function of the audience is not to demand but to receive. It should
not allow its own expectations to hinder its receptiveness; to that
extent Whistler is right. Art happens as the beauty of the universe
happens; and it is the business of the audience to experience it, not to
dictate how it shall happen. It has been said: It is not we who judge
works of art; they judge us. The artist speaks and we listen; but still
he speaks to us and by listening wisely we help him to speak his best,
for man is a social being; and all life, in so far as it is what it
wishes to be, is a fellowship. Never is it so completely a fellowship as
in the relation between an artist and his audience. There Tolstoy is
right, but the fellowship has to be achieved by both the artist and the
audience. There is no body of simple peasants, any more than there are
rich or cultured people, to whom he must address himself or whose
demands he must satisfy. Art that tries to satisfy any particular demand
is of use neither to the flesh nor to the spirit. It is neither meat nor
music. But where all is well with it, the spirit in the artist speaks to
the spirit in his audience. There is a common quality in both, with
which he speaks and they listen; and where this common quality is found
art thrives.

Wilfulness and Wisdom

There are people to whom the war was merely the running amuck of a
criminal lunatic; and they get what pleasure they can from calling that
lunatic all the names they can think of. To them the Germans are
different in kind from all other peoples, utterly separated from the
rest of us by their crimes. We could learn nothing from them except how
to crush them; and, having done so, we shall need to learn nothing
except how to keep them down. But such minds never learn anything from
experience, because they be