EDITOR'S TABLE. 



555 



expense. But no. When at length 

 the i^iece is finished, and the per- 

 former, all trembling and bathed in 

 perspiration, rises from the piano 

 manifestly expecting your applause, 

 you see that it is all veiy serious. 

 The same thing happens in concerts 

 where they play pieces by Liszt, Ber- 

 lioz, Brahms, Eichard Strauss, and 

 numberless composers of the new 

 school." 



It stinkes us that there is much 

 truth also in the following: "To say 

 that a work of art is good, and that 

 nevertheless it is incomprehensible 

 to the majority, is as if we were to 

 say of a certain food that it is good, 

 but that most men should be careful 

 not to eat it. The majority of men 

 may not like decayed cheese or 

 ' high ' game, dainties much esteemed 

 by persons whose taste is perverted ; 

 but bread and fruits are only good 

 when they please the majority of 

 men ; and it is the same in art. A 

 perverted art may not please the 

 majority of men, but good art must 

 perforce please everybody." 



We must add a passage which con- 

 tains a most powerful an-aignment 

 of the absurdities and wrongs which 

 are every day being pei'j^etrated in 

 the name of art. Regarding art as 

 an organ of human pi'ogress, the 

 author points out the disastrous con- 

 sequences which flow from its per- 

 verted action : 



"The first of these consequences 

 is too conspicuous to escape notice. 

 It is the vast expenditure of human 

 labor upon things that are not only 

 useless but, as a rule, pernicious. 

 To think that children, haudsome, 

 full of life, wuth every natural en- 

 dowment necessary for happiness, 

 are condemned from the moment 

 they leave the cradle, some to prac- 

 tice scales six, eight, ten hours' a day, 

 others to dance on tiptoe, others to 

 do singing exercises, others to draw 

 from the antique, from the nude, 



and others again to compose phrases 

 destitute of meaning according to a 

 particular system of rhetoric ! From 

 year to year these unhappy victims 

 go on wasting in these murderous 

 occupations all their physical and 

 intellectual forces, all their aptitude 

 for the comprehension of life. We 

 often say, What a lamentable specta- 

 cle to see little acrobats twisting their 

 legs round their neck ! But is it not 

 a still more sinister exhibition to see 

 children of ten giving concerts, and 

 little collegians of the same age who 

 know by heart all the exceptions in 

 the Latin grammar ? In such pur- 

 suits they not only waste their phys- 

 ical and mental forces, but they un- 

 dergo a jirocess of moral depravation 

 which renders them incapable of any 

 kind of service useful to human be- 

 ings. Accepting in society the posi- 

 tion of purveyors of amusement to 

 the rich, they lose the sentiment of 

 human dignity. A hunger for praise 

 develops in them to so monstrous an 

 extent that they suffer through life 

 from this diseased condition, and ex- 

 pend their whole moral being in the 

 effort to appease an insatiable crav- 

 ing. Yet there is something more 

 ti^agic still, namely, that men who 

 sacrifice their whole life to art, and 

 who are lost for all other purposes, 

 not only do nothing to advance their 

 art, but even cause it immense dam- 

 age; the reason being that in their 

 academies and colleges and conserva- 

 tories all they learn is to counterfeit 

 art, so that they become henceforth 

 incapable of conceiving true art or 

 of doing aught except helping to 

 crowd the world with the counterfeit 

 works of an art divorced from Na- 

 tui-e." 



Before finishing his book Count 

 Tolstoi finds time to say a needful 

 word or two about those men of sci- 

 ence who forget the social function 

 of science as completely as some art- 

 ists or would-be artists forget the 



