Well-fed, self-satisfied society quails at every change, at all blame, derision, and comment; it distrusts the foremost, daring representatives of science, literature, and art. Society strives jealously to retain the right not only to point out the road for talent, but even to regulate the measure, the degree of its development, and its manifestation. In this society of ours anything that is common and conventional is shielded by all kinds of rights and privileges, while anything that is new and original is bound to awaken animosity and censure, has to go through a severe struggle under the pressure of wide-spread cant and hypocrisy. Try to create anything ingenious in any of the regions of science and literature, try to present in graphic or plastic form the most original, striking conception, but only forget or refuse to surround it with the conventional layer of triviality and vulgarity so dear to the heart of society, you will be “done for,” you will not even obtain a hearing, you will be called a charlatan, if nothing worse than that. Why is that so? Was it society that has shown the way to all great discoveries? No; it has always delayed them, has always put brakes on them. Has society, in its collective form, ever evoked any of the great manifestations of art or literature? No; society was always eager to worry, to persecute men of talent, though it erects monuments to them after their death. How did society come to display such arrogance and presumption? It was tempted that way only by the unchristian conviction that “the aim justifies the means.” * * * * * Can there be anything more exasperating than the conversation we hear sometimes— “Have you been to the _Salon_?” “No; we did not happen to go there this year, but last year we were there more than once.” There is irony here as well as truth, for in the majority of cases, you will find in the _Salon_ the same number of pictures nearly of the same quality, treating on nearly the same subjects, and, most assuredly, painted nearly in the same style. “Have you seen the new play of Sardou?” “Just imagine, could not possibly get to see it yet, had to go to the country; but then to-morrow we go to the _Comédie Française_ to see that new thing of Dumas’. They say both plays are very much alike in conception, as well as in plot.” And this is perfectly true; they are doubtlessly more or less alike. Whose fault is this, then, if not the authors’? Ask the playwrights, whether they would dare to represent the action in such a way as it has been suggested to them by real life, with its logical conclusion, made unavoidable by the march of events, omitting, for once, the long-established, hackneyed, conventional termination?