For the world does believe that there have been “artistic periods,” that there have been “art-loving nations,” that in some mysterious manner the master does stand in “relation to the moment at which he occurs.” And the world is right; though it does not necessarily follow that Whistler was wrong in the particular views he had in mind when he uttered his epigrammatic propositions. * * * * * In one sense it is undoubtedly true that the master does seem to stand apart, “a mounment of isolation,” that he does seem to happen without any causal connection with either parents or country, time or place,--for who could have foretold the greatness of Shakespeare from an acquaintance with those obscure individuals his father and mother, or from a knowledge of Stratford and its environs? Who could have predicted the triumphs of Napoleon from a study of his Corsican forbears, or the strange genius of Lincoln from his illiterate progenitors and humble surroundings, or the elemental force of Walt Whitman from his ancestry and American conditions? No one; and yet there is the profound conviction that each of these men, like every great man,--prophet, king, statesman warrior, poet, or painter,--appeared, not miraculously, but as the inevitable result of irresistible forces; that the brilliant man is, after all, the son of his parents and the child of his times. In the mystery of generation two stupidities fused in the alembic of maternity produce a genius. * * * * * The occasion does not create, but calls forth its master. Every war has its great general, every crisis its great leader, and in the world of art great artists respond to meet the requirements of the hour. The bent of a nation determines the occupations of her sons,--towards war and conquest, towards peace and industry, towards things artistic or things commercial, all as the case may be. It is not the birth of the poet that turns the nation from commerce to poetry; it is rather the imperceptible development of the nation itself in the direction of the ideal that calls into activity--not being--the poet. Neither race nor nation can by its fiat create a poet; but it can by its encouragement stimulate his activity and rouse him to his best. It could not create a Keats; but it might have urged him on to even greater heights than he attained,--for who can doubt that his clear, pure crystalline song was stifled for lack of appreciation? * * * * *