238 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



of the race by an entire era of evolution. It is not 

 without significance that in the four principal forms 

 of activity through which public opinion in the West 

 is influenced most directly and on the largest scale, 

 namely, in art, literature, philosophy, and religion, 

 all the principal revolutionary and developmental 

 movements in recent times have a common meaning 

 which is related to this fact. They are all best 

 summed up as movements which represent the 

 effort of the male mind to reach consciously, through 

 slow, laborious, and painful stages and by an 

 entirely different road, the position which is already 

 woman's by inborn inheritance. 



In the recent leading article, the Times, in com- 

 menting on a letter of Sir Martin Conway in its 

 columns, called attention to a remarkable change 

 which has been silently taking place under our 

 eyes over a long period in the standards of art in 

 the West. 1 The chief aspect of this change was 

 pointed out to consist in the fact that, to summar- 

 ize Sir Martin Con way's words, we are gradually 

 losing sense of all the formative arts (meaning 

 thereby arts like painting and sculpture) as a 

 means of expression, the products of such arts 

 coming to be regarded merely as decorative objects ; 

 while, on the other hand, the greatest living art of 



1 Times, 23 March 1914. 



