thorns, the sacrificial lamb. The Virgin Mary would have a heart of radiant fire, with perhaps a white dove perched on top of it. The saints and martyrs wore halos of light about their heads, so as not to be mistaken for ordinary beggars, or for patients in the last stages of tuberculosis. One should hardly need to state that all this art was propaganda; it was permitted on that basis alone.

The significance of all this to social revolutionists lies in the fact that they also plan an art revolution. What the Christians did to Pagan art, the Socialists now seek to do to bourgeois art; metaphorically speaking, to smash the idols and burn the temples dedicated to the worship of individual and class aggrandizement, and to set up new art standards, based on the abolition of classes, and the assertion of brotherhood and solidarity. Just as the stone which was rejected of the Pagan builders became the cornerstone of the Christian temple, so those things which are despised and rejected of plutocratic snobbery will become the glory of revolutionary art; the very phrases of contempt will become battle-cries-the great unwashed, the vulgar herd, the common man. The revolutionary artist, clasping the toiling masses to his bosom

"Over-correction?" suggests Mrs. Ogi.

"Partly that; but also the longing for solidarity, the enlargement of the personality through mass feeling." "But beauty came back into art,' says Mrs. Ogi.

"Yes, and that is an interesting story; a drama of the conflict between God and Mammon, and the triumph of what I am calling Mammonart. I have pondered a title for the drama-something like this: Christianity as a Social Success; or the admission of the Martyr to the Four Hundred!"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE INS AND THE OUTS

There are two types of human temperament and attitude which manifest themselves in the world's art product: the Art of Beauty and the Art of Power.

The Art of Beauty is produced by ruling classes when they are established and safe, and wish to be entertained, and to have their homes and surroundings set apart from

the common mass. I do not mean that simple and primitive people do not produce beauty of a naïve sort; but for such art to develop and mature, it must be taken up by the privileged classes, patronizing and encouraging the artist, and making his work a form of class distinction. The fact that the men who produce this art have come from the people is a fact of no significance; for the ruling classes take what they want where they find it, and shape it to their own class ends. The characteristics of the Art of Beauty, whether in painting, or sculpture, or music, or words, or actions, are those of rest and serenity, pleasure in things as they actually exist; also clarity of form-because the leisure-class artist has time to study technique, and knows what he wants to do.

In every human society there is one group which controls, and another which struggles for control; the "ins" versus the "outs," the "haves" versus the "have-nots." In every well-developed civilization this latter class will be strong enough to have its art, which is apt to be crude and instinctive, full of surging, half-expressed and halfrealized emotion. Such art lays stress upon substance, rather than form; it aims, or at any rate tends, to arouse to action; and so we call it the Art of Power.

This is the art which is generally described as "propaganda" by established criticism; the distinction being, as we have previously explained, itself a piece of propaganda. The Art of Beauty is equally propaganda; it is the gasbarrage of the "haves," and the essence of its deadliness lies in the fact that it looks so little like a weapon. But to me it seems clear enough that when a leisure-class artist portrays the graces and refinements of the civilization which maintains him, when he paints the noble features, and quotes the imaginary golden words of rulingclass ladies and gentlemen, he is doing the best he knows how to protect those who give him a living. Nor is he, as a rule, without some awareness of the harsh and rough and dangerous forces which surround him, besieging the ivory tower, or the temple, or the sacred grove, or wherever it is that he keeps his working tools. But even where the artist is instinctive and naïve, the class which employs him knows what he is doing; it knows what is “safe and sane," and "of sound tendency"; it approves of such art, and pays its money to maintain such art.

Unless the society is stagnant, like China, its social life is marked by changes of power. The revolutionary classes succeed, and replace the old rulers; whereupon we note at once a change in their art. Those who were dissatisfied now find peace; those whose emotions overwhelmed them now find themselves able to order their thoughts; those who were interested in what they had to say now achieve triumphs of technique; in short, those who were producing an Art of Power now begin to produce an Art of Beauty. And so we are in position to understand what happened to Christian art, when the martyrs and the saints broke into "good society.'

The Roman Empire fell about five hundred years after Christ, and for another five hundred years the Italian peninsula was a battle-ground of invading barbarian hordes. When finally things settled down, the land was held by a great number of feudal princes and plundering groups, having their lairs in castles and walled cities. Christianity was the official religion, and abbots and bishops and popes were robber chiefs commanding armies. In between their military campaigns they took their pleasures like other princes; and among their pleasures were those of art.

The inner emotions which Christianity cultivated were free to those who sought them in monks' cells and hermits' caves, but they could not be purchased nor rented out, and they wilted in the atmosphere of palaces and courts. So gradually we find Italian religious art undergoing a change. The saints become gentlemen of refinement wearing scholars' robes; Jesus becomes a heavenly prince, in spotless linen garments and a golden crown, casting benevolent looks upon the clergy; the Virgin Mary becomes the favorite mistress of a duke or abbot or popeor perhaps the painter's own mistress. This latter arrangement is common, for business reasons easy to understand. The lady is at hand, and has nothing to do while the painter is painting; he gets the service of a model free, he flatters his lady love's vanity, and at the same time he keeps her safe from other painters. So the poison of luxury creeps into what is supposed to be religious art; and we see the symbols of martyrdom and holy sacrifice employed to glorify the vanities and cloak the vices of the predatory classes.

But the soul of man never dies; it goes on struggling for justice and brotherhood, in spite of all betrayal and persecution. So inside the church and outside comes a long line of heroic souls, fighting to restore the primitive simplicity and honesty of the faith. The struggle between the "ins" and the "outs," the "haves" and the "have-nots," takes the form of heresy and schism, of mendicant and preaching orders and Protestant sects. Young and obscure servants of God arise, denouncing the corruption of the church machine. Some retire to monasteries, spurning the wicked world; others take literally the words of Jesus, and go out upon the road without scrip or cloak, preaching to whoever will hear them, and living on charity. They are denounced and excommunicated, their followers are slaughtered by the tens and hundreds of thousands; but the movement persists, and when the leaders die they are canonized, and become in their turn themes for artists-to be "idealized," and dressed in spotless raiment, and made fit for stained glass_windows and the art galleries of prelates and princes. St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, putting on beggar's clothing and being publicly disinherited by his father; Savonarola in the fifteenth century, persuading the rich to throw their jewels into the flames, and being publicly hanged in Florence; Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, preaching against the sale of indulgences and nailing his theses to the church door; George Fox in the eighteenth century, crying out against priestly corruption in the streets, and jailed time after time; Bishop Brown in the twentieth century, kicked out of the Episcopal church for repudiating dogma and defending Communism-such are the figures which have kept the Christian religion alive, and such are the themes of vital religious art.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HEAVEN OF ELEGANCE

It was in Italy first that the language of the people became the language of culture, replacing Latin; and the two greatest writers of this age afford us an interesting contrast between the Art of Beauty and the Art of Power.

The favorite ruling-class poet and novelist of

medieval Italy was the illegitimate son of a merchant, who was recognized by his father and given the best education of his time. He chose as his mistress the natural daughter of a king; with this married lady he carried on an intrigue for many years, and wrote to her long epic poems about Greek heroes, weaving into the poems elaborate acrostics and secret codes. The first letters of the linės, taken according to certain numerical systems, made three other separate poems; other letters, chosen according to other systems, spelled the names of other lady loves. In such ways the skillful artists of the Italian courts were accustomed to beguile their leisure, wrung from the toil of a wretched enslaved peasantry.

This poet rose to fame, and became the darling of the ruling classes. He was sent as an ambassador on various important missions to popes and princes; he became the favorite of a queen, and did not reject her favor even when she turned into a murderess. He learned to write beautiful Italian prose, a great service to his country. He used his skill to compose a collection of short stories dealing with the sojourn in a country villa of a number of Italian ladies and gentlemen of wealth and charm, the occasion being an outbreak of the plague in Florence. These ladies and gentlemen did not feel impelled by their religion to nurse the suffering; they were of too great importance to be risked in such crude fashion, so they retired, and passed their time listening to charmingly narrated tales of sexual promiscuity.

I do not mean to imply that there is nothing but smut in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio. We shall find it a rule throughout history that leisure-class ladies and gentlemen do not spend their entire time in trying new sexual combinations. They have to eat, and so their artists give us delightful, appetizing accounts of banquets. They have to drink, and so their artists give us an entire lore of intoxicating liquors. They have to cover their nakedness, so we have a complicated art of dress, a mass of subtlety constantly changing, and affording traps to catch the feet of the unwary, so that the sacred inner circles may be protected from those individuals who have disgraced themselves by doing useful work, or by having parents or grandparents who did useful work.

Also, the ladies and gentlemen have palaces to live in,