the young artist at the moment when he should be disciplining himself; and turning, perhaps, some one with the potentiality of greatness into a minor artist. By neglecting the harder virtues, the decadents have made minor art inevitable and great art almost impossible. The old tradition of artistic discipline must be regained, then, or a new and even more severe tradition inaugurated. A text-book of morality for artists is now overdue. When it has been written, and the new discipline has been hailed and submitted to by the artists, who can say if greatness may not again be possible? 30 _Decadence Again_ How is the dissolution of the tradition of artistic discipline to be explained? To what cause is it to be traced? Perhaps to the more general dissolution of tradition which has taken place in modern times. When theological dogmas and moral values are thrown into the melting-pot, and the discipline of centuries is dissolved into anarchy, it is natural that artistic traditions should perish along with them. Decadence follows free-thought: it appears at the time when the old values lie deliquescent and the new values have not yet risen, the dry land has not yet appeared. But this does not happen always: the old traditions of morality, theology, politics and industry are overthrown, the beginnings of a new tradition appear tentatively, everything fixed has vanished, the wildest hopes and the most chilling despair are the common possession of one and the same generation--but, throughout, the artistic tradition is held securely and confidently, it remains the one thing fixed in a world of dissolution. Then an art arises greater even than that of the eras of tradition. The pathos of the dying and the inexpressible hope of the newly born find expression side by side; all chains are broken, and the world appears suddenly to be immeasurable. Is this what happened at the Renaissance? 31 _Wilde_ The refined degeneracy of Oscar Wilde might be explained on the assumption that he was at once over--and under--civilized: he had acquired all the exquisite and superfluous without the necessary virtues. These "exquisite" virtues are unfortunately dangerous to all but those who have become masters of the essential ones; they are qualities of the body more than of the mind; they are developments and embellishments of the shell of man. In acquiring them, Wilde ministered to his body merely, and, as a consequence, it became more and more powerful and subtle--far more powerful and subtle than his mind. Eventually this body--senses, passions and appetite--actually became the intellectual principle in him, of which his mind was merely a drugged and stupefied slave! 32 _Wilde and the Sensualists_