SIGNS OF CHANGE 329 



as a surprise: there were but a few men in the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries able to foresee 

 the value that science would have a couple of 

 centuries later, and it may be there are few among 

 us to-day who can foresee or even imagine any great 

 coming change in the estimate in which art is now 

 held. But there will be no surprise. Three genera- 

 tions — a short hundred years — is time enough to 

 accustom men to anything new in their lives. It is 

 not yet a century since the doctrine of evolution was 

 accepted by the leading thinkers of Europe. 



Just at present there is a mighty turmoil in the 

 artistic world — mainly in painting and music. Fierce 

 revolts against the art of the past — the old ever- 

 lasting standards and conventions as the revolters 

 call them; new schools and societies and groups of 

 artists are occupied in doing the old things in new 

 ways. But unless this ferment can be taken as a 

 sign that artists themselves are beginning to feel 

 the unsatisfactoriness of art, and in their subconscious 

 minds are becoming antagonistic to it (which is 

 hardly credible), it is all nothing, and the new move- 

 ments that "come like shadows, so depart," are not 

 worth mention in an inquiry of this kind. 



If there are any signs of a change, they are in the 

 minds of those who are outside of the artistic world. 

 And outside of the scientific world as well, seeing 

 that in both cases the reflex effects of their vocation 

 on their minds is to distort the judgment. I refer 

 to those only who are outside of both fields, whose 

 reasoning and aesthetic faculties are balanced, whose 



