In an ideal society, the artist's standpoint would be esoteric, and the layman's exoteric. Nowadays, of course, owing to the process of universal levelling which has been carried so far that it is invading even the department of sex, it is hard to find such distinctions as the artist's and the layman's standpoint in art sharply and definitely juxtaposed. And this fact accounts for a good deal of the decrease in æsthetic pleasure, which is so characteristic of the age. In fact, it accounts for the decrease of pleasure in general, for only where there are sharp differences can there be any great pleasure. Pessimism and melancholia can arise only in inartistic ages, when a process of levelling has merged all the joys of particular standpoints into one. Let me give you a simple example, drawn from modern life and the pictorial arts, in order to show you to what extent the standpoint of the people or of the layman has become corrupted by the standpoint of the artist, and vice-versâ. Strictly speaking, artists in search of scope for their powers should prefer Hampstead Heath or the Forest of Fontainebleau[47] to the carefully laid-out gardens of our parks and of Versailles. Conversely, if their taste were still uncorrupted, the public ought to prefer the carefully arranged gardens of our parks and of Versailles to Hampstead Heath or the Forest of Fontainebleau. Some of the public, of course, still do hold the proper views on these points, but their number is rapidly diminishing, and most of them assume the airs of artists now, and speak with sentimental enthusiasm about the beautiful ruggedness of craggy rocks, the glorious beauty of uncultivated Nature, and the splendour of wild scenery.[48] [Illustration: The Marriage of Mary. By Raphael. (Brera, Milan.)] Artists, on the other hand, having become infected by the public's original standpoint--the desire for order--either paint pictures like Raphael's "Marriage of Mary,"[49] his "Virgin and Child attended by St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas of Bari,"[50] and Perugino's "Vision of St. Bernard,"[51] in which the perfectly symmetrical aspect and position of the architecture is both annoying and inartistic, owing to the fact that it was looked at by the artist from a point at which it was orderly and arranged before he actually painted it, and could not therefore testify to his power of simplifying or ordering--but simply to his ability to avail himself of another artist's power, namely, the architect's; or else, having become infected by the public's corrupt standpoint--the desire for disorder and chaos as an end in itself-- they paint as Ruysdael, Hobbema and Constable painted--that is to say, without imparting anything of themselves, or of their power to order and simplify, to the content of the picture, lest the desire for disorder or chaos should be thwarted.[52]