(1) Mechanical improvements were applied first to those grades of art which offered most scope to the commercial element (and are now still so applied to a greater extent). (2) Even if, in the beginning, lower tastes were not in a majority, any widening of the circle of those interested would inevitably bring in a large percentage of the artistically uneducated. (3) Each widening of the circle would involve a lowering of taste, and also increase the commercial inducement to cater for the lower grade. (4) This being so, those with better tastes become an even smaller minority, and (though they probably would be _actually_ better off) they become _relatively_ at a disadvantage economically. Though they might now have to pay less than they had to before for something, they nevertheless still have to pay more than those who belong to the majority. (5) Furthermore, the low grade is more accessible, easier to experience, more frequently offered than the better thing. (6) Therefore, since (especially the large numbers whose tastes are on the border line) we unconsciously tend to follow the easy way, unless we deliberately seek to improve or maintain our taste, it will degenerate. It is necessary to remember that art is usually regarded as a recreation and, in spite of the saying that we take our pleasures sadly, we do often take a short view, and are satisfied to find that artistic recreation for the day which is first to hand, without thought of the morrow. (7) In art-matters we are mostly conservative. Neither do we readily set ourselves apart from our fellows. The history of any “best seller” will prove this. Up to a point it is read by those who have discovered that they might like it; after that it is read chiefly “because everybody else is reading it”. It is wrong to attribute this tendency to a mere desire to be “in the swim”; much more often it is because readers, unconsciously classing themselves as average, argue that the book which interests the average man will interest them. To a large extent this applies to all popular art. Few people care to “waste their time” experimenting when it is so much easier to fall in line with the crowd. The only wonder is how the popularity of the “best seller” and its kind begins: once that has happened the rest is a normal process. (8) The average man, being thus willing to follow the dictates of the majority, is seldom likely to look elsewhere for his artistic experiences. And so the tastes of the majority are more firmly established--and the tastes of to-day form the tastes of to-morrow. I would not describe this as a vicious circle. Rather is it a vicious spiral, the circumference of which ever increases. How can this state of affairs be altered?