The real weakness of the best of the new Primitives is that their quaintness does not arise out of a universal world of wonder, but rather out of a world without wonder; it comes not from simplicity, but from satiety. The shepherds who watched the first sketches of Giotto were surprised that he could draw a face, and therefore still more surprised that he could draw a beautiful face. But the modern Giotto is tired of beautiful faces, and feels that there might yet be a surprise in the drawing of ugly faces. The modern painter, in the phrase I have already quoted, is trying to surprise himself. To judge by some of the society beauties he paints, we might sav chat he is trying to frighten himself. And there would be this degree of serious truth in it, that this typical sort of modern artist, whatever else he is, is primarily a self-tormentor. At the best he is pinching himself to see if he is awake, not having about him the real white daylight of wonder to keep him wide-awake. At the worst he is sticking pins all over himself to find the one live spot, as the witchfinders of a livelier age did it to find the one dead spot. I am not sure that even the old picture of the live people brought to death is more horrible than the new picture of such dead people brought to life. Anyhow, it is surely obvious that there is no permanent progress that way; that we cannot really be rejuvenated by becoming more and more jaded, or making mere insensibility a spur to sensations. Still less, of course, do we so come any nearer to our problem of the revival of popular art. If the mob does not always enter into the feelings of gen

iuses, at least it cannot be asked to enter into all the feelings of lunatics, or men whose methods are as individual and isolated as the maniacs of an asylum. The real solution does not lie that way, but exactly the opposite way. It does not lie in increasing the number of artists who can startle us with complex things, but by increasing the number of people who can be startled by common things. It lies in restoring relish and receptivity to human society; and that is another question and a more important one.

It is enough to say here that it not only means making more Giottos, but also making more shepherds. It might be put defiantly by saying that the great modern need is to uneducate the people. I do not mean merely uneducate the populace; I mean more especially uneducate the educated. It might be put much more truly by saying, as we have to say at the end of so many entirely rationalistic inquiries, that what the modern world wants is religion or something that will create a certain ultimate spirit of humility, of enthusiasm, and of thanks. It is not even to be done merely by educating the people in the artistic virtues of insight and selection. It is to be done much more by educating the artists in the popular virtues of astonishment and enjoyment. It is not to be achieved by the artist leaving the crowd further and further behind in his wild-goose chase, nor even by the crowd running hard enough to keep up with the artist; but rather by the artist turning round and looking at the crowd, and realizing that it is rather more interesting than a whole flock of wild geese.