DEMOCRATIC ART 253 



who devotes his substance and his time to support and, if 

 possible, to save an erring brother. 



This piercing through gauds and trimmings, this unmasking 

 and unbaring of appearances, this recognition of divinity in 

 all things, is the secret of Democratic Art. It is not altogether 

 different from what Jesus meant when he said : ' Inasmuch 

 as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto 

 me.' Nor does the supreme doctrine of redemption through 

 self-sacrifice and suffering lose in significance if we extend it 

 from One, imagined a pitiful and condescending God, to all 

 who for a worthy cause have endured humiliation, pain, an 

 agonising death. Not to make Christ less, but to make him 

 the chief of a multitude, the type and symbol of triumphant 

 heroism, do we think of the thousands who have died on 

 battle-fields, in torture-chambers, at the stake, from lingering 

 misery, as expiators and redeemers, in whom the lamp of the 

 divine spirit shines clearly for those who have the eyes 

 to see. 



VI 



The most perplexing branch of our inquiry has to be 

 affronted, when we ask the question ; What kind of literature 

 and art is demanded by Democracy ? How is Art to prove 

 its power by satisfying the needs and moral aspirations of the 

 people who are sovereign in a democratic age ? 



The conditions under which art exists at the present time 

 render a satisfactory answer to this question well-nigh im- 

 possible. In the past epochs, Greek, Mediaeval. Italian, 

 Elizabethan, Louis XIV., Persian, Japanese, the arts had a 

 certain unconscious and spontaneous rapport with the nations 

 which begat them, and with the central life-force of those 

 nations at the moment of their flourishing. Whether that 

 central energy was aristocratic, as in Hellas ; or monarchic, 

 as in France ; or religious, as in mediaeval Europe ; or intel- 

 lectual, as in Renaissance Italy ; or national, as in Elizabethan 

 England ; or widely diffused like a fine gust of popular in- 

 telligence, as in Japan ; signified comparatively little. Art 

 expressed what the people had of noblest and sincerest, and 



