The purpose of the graphic arts, then, has remained the same as it ever was. It is to determine the values "ugly" and "beautiful" for those who wish to know what is ugly and what is beautiful. The fact that painters and sculptors have grown so tremulous and so little self-reliant as to claim only the right to imitate, to please and to amuse, does not affect this statement in the least; it is simply a reflection upon modern artists and sculptors. Since, however, these values beautiful and ugly are themselves but the outcome of other more fundamental values which have ruled and moulded a race for centuries, it follows that the artist who would accentuate or determine the qualities beautiful or ugly, must bear some intimate relation to the past and possible future of the people. Place the Hermes of Praxiteles and especially the canon of Polycletus in any part of a cathedral of the late Gothic, and you will see to what extent the values which gave rise to Gothic Art were incompatible with, and antagonistic to, those which reared Praxiteles and Polycletus. Now, if you want a still greater contrast, place an Egyptian granite sculpture inside a building like le Petit Trianon, and this intimate association between the Art and the values of a people will begin to seem clear to you. You may ask, then, why or how such an art as Ruler-art can please? Since it introduces something definitely associated with a particular set of values, and commands an assent to these values, how is it that one likes it? The reply is that one does not necessarily like it. One often hates it. One likes it only when one feels that it reveals values which are in sympathy with one's own aspirations. The Ruler-art of Egypt, for instance, can stir no one who, consciously or unconsciously, is not in some deep secret sympathy with the society which produced it; and as an example of this sympathy--if you wish to know why the realism which comes from poverty[31] tends to increase and flourish in democratic times, it is only because there is that absence of particular human power in it which is compatible with a society in which a particular human power is completely lacking. For it is absolute nonsense to speak of _l'art pour l'art_ and of the pleasure of art for art's sake as acceptable principles.[32] I will show later on how this notion arose. Suffice it to say, for the present, that this is the death of Art. It is separating Art from Life, and it is relegating it to a sphere--a Beyond--where other things, stronger than Art, have already been known to die. The notion of art for art's sake can only arise in an age when the purpose of Art is no longer known, when its relation to Life has ceased from being recognized, and when artists have grown too weak to find the realization of their will in their works. [27] _G. E._, p. 120. [28] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 105. [29] _Z._, II, XXXIV.