Gently! That is by no means proved. The fight has ceased only because it has become objectless. Who nowadays waxes warm against Manet? The man, you know, is dead, not only as a human being, but also as an artist. He no longer troubles any one. He no longer exercises any bad influence. He no longer even poisons popular taste, for it is sufficient to observe the visitors to the Luxembourg, to see that they pass by the “Olympia” with laughter, and shrugging of the shoulders, or else with astonishment and shakes of the head. If a belated corybant raises a shout of “Hail, Manet!” he is merrily allowed to shout. It is superfluous to shout him down, for nobody listens to him. The truth is that the taste for Manet is not in the least changed. People find the “Olympia” every whit as repulsive nowadays as it was thirty years ago; but they no longer say so with a loud voice and with the veins about their temples swollen, because, generally, people no longer stop before its mouldy ugliness. If you examine very carefully, you will generally find that the various appraisements of particular works in a new generation do not originate from later generations regarding it differently than did contemporaries, but from their generally no longer viewing it with the same eyes. Let us only bear in mind always that the vast majority of mankind have no feeling of their own for artistic beauty. They act as if they had some feeling only because they know that a feeling for art is pronounced to be a mark of higher culture. We cannot rate too highly the part played in art idiocy by sham culture, pose, and self-deception—or, shall we say, more indulgently, by auto-suggestion? Honest confession of obtuseness to art is hardly found in any but the two poles of humanity—on the extreme summit and at the lowest antipode. A man must be either a rustic lout or an overtopping genius like Prince Bismarck, to confess that he can make nothing of the fine arts. The culture-Philistine never has this courage. He always pretends that he finds luxurious enjoyment in the contemplation of art. This culture-Philistine always repeats what has been said to him; he admires where the Baedeker-star prescribes admiration. And he is, in many cases, not even dishonest. He persuades himself that he feels what he regards it as his duty as an educated man to feel; and he really comes to feel it in the end, thanks to this self-persuasion. All the effects of art depend on suggestion, so far as they are not concerned with the most absolutely primitive and undifferentiated sensual excitations. On one who has a genuine feeling for art the work of art itself conveys the suggestion, which is followed by feelings of pleasure. On the average men, whose blunt nerves take no impression from the work of art itself, the Baedeker-star—the label—exercises this suggestion. If a work of art has once got the reputation of excellence, either because it deserves it, or because it acquired it from a dishonest, busy, bold,