The Spirit of the Age [pp. 419-425]

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
high talent, but the tragedies of Soph ocles do not keep their place on the
stage, and can not be adapted to mod ern tastes.
In the age of Pericles, the chisel, and
in that of Leo X. the brush, attracted a
large proportion of the brightest talent.
The young, ambitious, and educated
Italians had for a long time little chance
to obtain fame or power save by pictures
or prayers. The bishops and cardinals
offered great rewards for paintings that
would ornament their churches and stim ulate the faith or excite the fear of their
flocks. It is not strange that under such
circumstances a large proportion of the
national talent found its way into the
studio; and the phrase "the old masters" implies that for a long time and
for many people no mastery was con sidered so enviable as that of a great
painter. When the church had been
weakened by the Teutonic revolt, painting declined, and the world believed for
a time that Protestantism was hostile to
art, whose only true patron according to
many was the Catholic Church. But
time has exposed the error; Rome has
not recovered her ecclesiastical supremacy, and yet the fine arts never before
flourished as they do now. Painting has
to - day more students, more masters,
more connoisseurs, more patrons, a larger revenue, and more independence
than ever before.
Our poets have no right to complain
because, unlike their predecessors, they
do not receive most of the homriage in
the world of letters. They are not hurt
by the fame of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, or Mill. They can look
back at the positions of Virgil, Tasso,
or Spenser without envy. They have a
larger circle of readers, a quicker recognition of merit, and a better income from
their works. The improvement is due
to the materialistic influence. The inventors, the industrial laborers, and the
scientists have increased education,
wealth, comfort, leisure, and social re finement. With these the appreciation
and encouragement of poetry and the
other intellectual arts have kept and
will keep pace. Former centuries had
many individuals whom our age can not
equal in their lines of merit, such as
Demosthenes, Shakspeare, and Cervan tes, but we have Goethe, Byron, Thack eray, and others, to place alongside even
of those. The comparison, however,
should be made not with individuals ex ceptional in character, but with repre sentative classes; and as to these, a con siderable superiority might be allowed
in a few branches of the fine arts to
the age of Pericles, without detracting
materially from the general intellectual
preponderance of our time.
Our age is not wrong in its tenden cies, nor will the next one be, when it
carries them much farther. Every al leged offense that we have committed
against the spiritual element of our nature will be repeated with tenfold frequency and with increased energy by
the next generation. There is no possibility that progress will turn back; no
probability that the course which we
now consider progressive and beneficial
will in the next century be generally regarded as reactionary and pernicious.
Can industrial art sink back to the weak
and degraded position which it held in
I750o? Hardly. Its power is increasing
at least five and perhaps ten per cent.
annually. It must go on until humanity
reaches its dotage. Can science decline or ceaseto advance? Surely, never. These two will carry the world with
them. Respect for evidence as the sole
basis for belief in regard to matters of
history or science, and familiarity with
the rules which entitle it to weight, are
among the distinguishing characteristics
of high culture, and of course they will
not be discarded. Ancient literature is
stationary, and its relative importance
must decline. In no department is there
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