There is the closest possible relation in principle between the idea of art and that of democracy. The former, like the latter, exalts the inner self-reliance of the individual, saying “look in thy heart and write,” or paint, or sing, or whatever the mode of expression may be. The artist, in the act of creation, is always free, he is attending to, bringing to clearness and realizing that which is revealed to him alone, unfolding his highest individuality in the service of the whole, precisely as each citizen is called to do in a real democracy. And in fact there is nothing more democratic than a community of artists, just because of their preoccupation with what is intrinsic and individual. Moreover the art spirit, accustomed to cherish individuality, tends to make us impatient of social conditions that are hostile to it. It hates repression and demands democracy as the basis of tolerable living. If we find that our fellow citizens lack self-expression our own life participates in their degradation. It is hardly imaginable that a real artist should be a formalist or a snob. The fact that we are so largely content with products that have no art or individuality in them really indicates a lack of higher freedom in ourselves, a low sense of personality and a domination by lifeless conventions. If artists and lovers of art are often conservative as regards projects of social improvement, this may perhaps be ascribed to the need of sensitive natures for tranquillity, or to their sense of the value of conventions as a foundation for perfected works. It is true that art culture requires leisure, but not more than we all ought to have, or than the majority, even now, do have. And idleness is hostile to it, because spiritually unhealthy. A man who is in the habit of doing an honest day’s work, manual or intellectual, will be in a better state to appreciate music or painting, other things equal, than one who is not. His whole being is more normal, more ethical, better prepared for a higher life. And so private wealth is often more a hindrance than a help. If there be truth in the idea that only a minority can share the life of art, which is questionable, at any rate this minority, in a democratic society, will be one not of wealth or exceptional leisure, or even of education, but of intrinsic sensibility. There are those who think that something wholly new is to be looked for in an art of democracy, and I suppose that in fact a larger human spirit will be found in the ideals it expresses or implies, just as every social product must reflect the spirit of the age. I do not see, however, that the general conceptions and methods of art, as the great tradition brings them to us, require any change. Certainly art will never be commonplace or uniform, but always select, distinctive, and as various as life—even as democracy itself is a larger expression of human nature, and not the vulgarizing thing that its opponents have tried to make it out.