THE NEW ERA 118 



The possibility of them seems to grow fainter as the 

 intellectual part of man grows stronger. And since 

 the proper ordering of this planet does essentially 

 depend upon growth in wisdom — that is to say, upon 

 intellectual development — the artistic consequence has 

 to be faced. Isolated great artists may arise in any 

 age or clime, but the artistic future in general must 

 consist in raising the sentiment for art, the power of 

 appreciating art, in the mass of the people. That 

 would be an immeasurably greater service than a new 

 galaxy of artistic geniuses. 



Politically we have already, within the last half- 

 century, passed beyond any of the older civilizations. 

 No one would think of comparing with us the demo- 

 cracy of ancient Rome, with its dominating patricians, 

 its dependent plebeians, its subject women, and its 

 immense army of slaves ; especially as it had not 

 even become a full democracy when it frivolously sold 

 all its power of self-government to emperors and rich 

 men who built princely baths and circuses for it. 

 The Eastern civilizations do not, of course, come into 

 comparison at all, for they were absolute autocracies. 

 The Greek democracy is the only earlier civilization 

 that might be recalled to challenge comparison with 

 ours, and we need not fear it. The main body of the 

 workers (slaves) and the women had no rights. The 

 "voters," moreover, showed in their political life 

 every defect that there is in modern politics, on a 

 smaller scale. Grave as are the defects of our modern 

 democracies, the machinery of self-government which 

 has been won by the struggles of the nineteenth 

 century is better than that of any earlier civilization, 

 and is capable, if people would use it wisely and 

 firmly, of evolving into an ideal democracy. 



