Time and labour spent on art—Lives stunted in its service—Morality sacrificed to and anger justified by art—The rehearsal of an opera described 1 CHAPTER II Does art compensate for so much evil?—What is art?—Confusion of opinions—Is it “that which produces beauty”?—The word “beauty” in Russian—Chaos in æsthetics 9 CHAPTER III Summary of various æsthetic theories and definitions, from Baumgarten to to-day 20 CHAPTER IV Definitions of art founded on beauty—Taste not definable—A clear definition needed to enable us to recognise works of art 38 CHAPTER V Definitions not founded on beauty—Tolstoy’s definition—The extent and necessity of art—How people in the past have distinguished good from bad in art 46 CHAPTER VI How art for pleasure has come into esteem—Religions indicate what is considered good and bad—Church Christianity—The Renaissance—Scepticism of the upper classes—They confound beauty with goodness 53 CHAPTER VII An æsthetic theory framed to suit this view of life 61 CHAPTER VIII Who have adopted it?—Real art needful for all men—Our art too expensive, too unintelligible, and too harmful for the masses—The theory of “the elect” in art 67 CHAPTER IX Perversion of our art—It has lost its natural subject-matter—Has no flow of fresh feeling—Transmits chiefly three base emotions 73 CHAPTER X Loss of comprehensibility—Decadent art—Recent French art—Have we a right to say it is bad and that what we like is good art?—The highest art has always been comprehensible to normal people—What fails to infect normal people is not art 79 CHAPTER XI Counterfeits of art produced by: Borrowing; Imitating; Striking; Interesting—Qualifications needful for production of real works of art, and those sufficient for production of counterfeits 106 CHAPTER XII Causes of production of counterfeits—Professionalism—Criticism—Schools of art 118 CHAPTER XIII Wagner’s “Nibelung’s Ring” a type of counterfeit art—Its success, and the reasons thereof 128 CHAPTER XIV Truths fatal to preconceived views are not readily recognised—Proportion of works of art to counterfeits—Perversion of taste and incapacity to recognise art—Examples 143 CHAPTER XV =The quality of art, considered apart from its subject-matter=—The sign of art: infectiousness—Incomprehensible to those whose taste is perverted—Conditions of infection: Individuality; Clearness; Sincerity 152 CHAPTER XVI =The quality of art, considered according to its subject-matter=—The better the feeling the better the art—The cultured crowd—The religious perception of our age—The new ideals put fresh demands to art—Art unites—Religious art—Universal art—Both co-operate to one result—The new appraisement of art—Bad art—Examples of art—How to test a work claiming to be art 156 CHAPTER XVII