Utilitarianism? Why, certainly. Utility is the primary law of every society, of every living organism. The lowest living creature of one cell could not support itself for a single instant, unless all its parts were continually working with the object of promoting its existence, of serving the demands of its life—in short, making themselves useful to the whole. When men came to observe that they possessed among them beings who had stronger emotions than the rest, and made these emotions evident by creations which were calculated to make a deep impression on other men, they, according to the standing rule—I might say, according to the biological rule—of society, made haste to place these exceptional natures, these artists, in the service of the great interests of society. Whoever can still entertain a doubt that art has always performed a task which was by no means æsthetic, even if fulfilled by æsthetic means, let him cast a glance at the history of the arts. Let him read the poems of antiquity, gaze on the sculptures and paintings of the Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks. Let him listen to the far-off, and doubtless sadly distorted echo of ancient music in the Hymn to Apollo, restored by over-daring scholarship. Where will he find a work—a single work—which corresponds with the psychological scheme of the origin of artistic creation and with the definitions of the party of “Art for art’s sake”? Where is the work that has been achieved purely for self-satisfaction, for the relief of the artist’s nerves? Where is the work that is only to serve beauty? I cannot see it; but what I do see is that all known works serve some purpose of society. They glorify the gods, the kings, the commonwealth. They extol the dignity of belief, of government, of the mother-country. Homer shows the heroes of the Hellenic race in the bloody apotheosis of their exploits. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides unfold on the stage the myths and sagas of their ancestors. On the Acropolis, in the Parthenon, gleam the gods of the mother-country, the guardians of the commonwealth, shaped by the magic chisel of Phidias. The Stoa, the Poikile, the Stadium, are peopled with the monuments of athletes, warriors, archons, legislators, of all great men who are the people’s pride, and are to serve them as models. Tyrtæus chants his sublime marches to excite the warriors to fight for their country. The singer of the Hymn to Apollo composes his cantatas to make the temple service more impressive. I am well aware that, besides these monuments, there are the little lyric poems of the Anthology, the charming little Tanagra figures, that is to say, very individual revelations, which sing the joys and sorrows of a single soul, which seize the graceful movements and gait of young women who had enraptured a single kneader of the clay. But these pretty little things, although _chef d’œuvres_ of their kind, are not, however, to be compared with the triumphant