I would be very sorry if any reader should take up this volume under the impression it is a plea for Cubism or any other “ism” in either art or life. If it is a plea for anything, it is for _tolerance and intelligent receptivity_, for an attitude of sympathetic appreciation toward _everything that is new and strange and revolutionary in life_. Not that we will necessarily end by accepting the new and the strange and the revolutionary, but we cannot get the good there may be in them unless our attitude is one of sympathetic as well as critical receptivity. * * * * * It is something more than a mere coincidence that the upheaval in the art world has paralleled the upheaval in the political world. The exhibitions of extreme modern pictures were first held in England just when extreme radical theories were gaining the ascendency. The International Exhibition in America followed hot in the footsteps of the split in the Republican party and the triumph of the Democratic along lines so progressive as to seem almost socialistic. The artists who organized the exhibition did not realize it, but they were animated by precisely the same motive that animated the organizers of the Progressive party--an irresistible desire for a change. * * * * * Youth gazes curiously at the experiment--painting, poem, play--from which age turns in anger. Cubist paintings interest the young; they irritate the old. Nothing keeps a man young so effectually as a vivid and sympathetic interest in _every_ new and seemingly revolutionary movement. * * * * * People who looked at the cubist paintings and laughed did so through ignorance; the sad part was that many frankly said they did not care to understand; not a few insisted the paintings were quite without meaning, utterly devoid of sense. In other words, the public, day after day and week after week, struggled and paid to see works that were _meaningless_! Painters, sculptors, critics, argued and fought over canvases _devoid of significance_! A paradox! For if _devoid of significance_, why should the world of artists, critics, writers, argue, swear, and fight over them? The question answers itself; the trouble is the works _do_ possess a significance, a significance far beyond the merits of any particular one, far beyond the merits of cubism itself; they are significant of the spirit of change that is within and about us, the spirit of unrest, of the striving, of the searching for greater and more beautiful things. Cubism will pass away, but the spirit of change will not pass away. One enthusiasm will follow another enthusiasm so long as men possess ambition. Already there are signs that Cubism is passing. Some of the men are calling themselves Neo-Cubists and Post-Cubists, and they are painting in very different manner.