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rule, more wick than the real men and women we meet daily. 
This is all because their art has enabled them to vitalize the 
common stock of essential things which are ever around us. All 
great nations, or communities, have produced men who could do 
this. It is the very test of their quality. A nation, poorly 
equipped mentally and spiritually, has no fire wherewith to 
produce the glowing flame of Art. A nation, however materially 
successful, like the United States, for example, cannot boast of 
having produced a single song such as Robert Burns wrote at his 
best, or a building such as our comparatively poor ancestors 
built in every city. 
We here, in all the millions of Lancashire, are producing 
nothing really essential, and we have to be fed and clothed, body 
and mind, from the outside. No, the real things can only be 
shown to us by the seers, the prophets, the artists, the God- 
gifted. Besides the pleasure which all noble work gives to those 
who can appreciate it, surely its highest value is shown by the 
fact that it teaches us to know and to love Nature and Humanity 
the more. Imagine what a new world has been opened to us by 
the poetry of Wordsworth, and by the work of Turner, not to 
speak of the more subtle marvels revealed to this generation by 
Wagner, probably the greatest genius of our time. So it is not 
easy to sum up our obligations to the arts for what they have 
made of our life upon earth. The possibilities of using all these 
riches is the problem of education. Our materialism may be a 
grim necessity. Our cities, their works and warehouses, 
railways and ship canals, all our paved streets and our gas and 
water works are necessary for our work and our comfort. They 
are not, however, the ends of life, but the means of life. Having 
got our machine, there remains the highest of duties—to foster 
the growth of noble men and women, and I know no way of 
helping in that but by a constant appeal to the highest known 
standards of beauty in literature or the fine arts. Just as in 
matters of justice, or in relation to our daily actions, surely the 
appeal to the highest standards known is our safest guide. 
In the small experiment I now propose to lay before you, let 
me say how difficult I have found it to procure the examples I 
require. The general demand does not lie in this way, and most 
of the slides have had to be specially made. The series is by no 
means a complete one. It is subject to endless change, 
correction, and amendment as examples turn up. Properly 
speaking the exhibits should be lectured upon in small groups, 
and in detail. Also, it must be said that excepting the slides 
from sculpture, nearly all the rest are one-sided and imperfect. 
The main charm of a picture is often its colour, that subtle 
quality so seldom perceived and never quite understood. Then 
the great pictures themselves do not photograph well; for this 
