Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts
concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that,
while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the
whole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: and
by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice
or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets
evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and
honour. Al art is either infection or education. It _must_ be one or
other of these.
This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which
understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I
assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly,
and with contumely denied; and that by high authority: and I hold it
one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts
among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and
artists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed
into the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs
could have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is
written in the history of all great nations; it is the one sentence
always inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant
voice in which they speak to us out of their dust.
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