When moderns talk of the "vitality" of their most lauded writer, what they mean is finally the size of his muscles, physical energy, or, at the most, strong emotions; not vigour of mind. Well, let us on no account make the opposite mistake and revile the large muscle and energetic feelings: they are admirable things. Let us point out, however, that vitality of emotion undisciplined by vitality of thought leads nowhere, is often disruptive and cannot build. But to build is our highest duty and our peculiar form of freedom--we who have realized that there is no freedom without power. As for the old freedom--it is only the slaves who are not already tired of it. 29 _Decadence_ The decisive thing, determining whether an artist shall be major or minor, is very often not artistic at all, but moral. Yes, though it shock our modern ears, let this be proclaimed! The more "temperament" an artist has, the more character he requires to govern it, to make it fruitful for him, if he would not have it get beyond control, and wreck both him and itself. And, consequently, the great artists show, as a rule, less "temperament" than the minor; they appear more self-contained and less "artistic." Indeed, they smile with the hint of irony at the merely "artistic." It is, perhaps, when the traditions of artistic morality and discipline have broken down, when the "temperament" has, therefore, become unfettered and lawless, that decadence in art is born. The sincerity of the artist, his chief virtue, is gone--the sincerity which commands him to create only under the pressure of an artistic necessity, which tells him, in other words, to produce nothing which is not genuine. Without sincerity, severity and patience, nothing great in art can be created. And it is precisely in these virtues that the decadent is lacking. A love of beauty is his only credential as an artist, but, undisciplined, it degenerates very soon into a love of mere effect. An effect of beauty at all costs, whether it be the true beauty or not! That becomes his object. Without a root in any soil, he aspires to the condition of the water lily, and, in due time, becomes a full-blown æsthete. Is it because he is incapable of becoming anything else? Has he in despair grown "artistic" simply because he is not an artist? Is Decadence the most subtle disguise of impotence? And are decadents those who, if they had submitted to an artistic discipline of sincerity, would never have written at all? Of some of them this is true, but of others it is not; and in that lies the tragedy of Decadence. Wilde himself was, perhaps, a decadent by misadventure; for on occasion he could rise above decadence into sincerity. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" proves that. He was the victim of a bad æsthetic morality, to which, it is true, he had a predisposition. And if this is true of him, it is true, also, of his followers. A baleful artistic ethic still rules, demoralizing