Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.

     ‘Listen,’ he says.  ’There never was an artistic period.

     ’There never was an art-loving nation.

’In the beginning man went forth each day—­some to do battle, some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the field—­all that they might gain and live or lose and die.  Until there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd.

’This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren—­who cared not for conquest and fretted in the field—­this designer of quaint patterns—­this deviser of the beautiful—­who perceived in nature about him curious curvings—­as faces are seen in the fire—­this dreamer apart, was the first artist.’

     ’And when from the field and from afar, there came back the
     people, they took the gourd—­and drank from it.’

Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had traced on it.

     ‘They drank at the cup,’ he says, ’not from choice, not from a
     consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there
     was none other.’

So gradually there came the great ages of art.

     ‘Then’, he says, ’the people lived in marvels of art—­and ate and
     drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and
     drink out of, and no bad building to live in.’

And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in the matter.

But then a strange thing happened.  There arose a new class

’who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of the sham.  Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and charmed them, for it was after their own heart....  And Birmingham and Manchester arose in their might—­and Art was relegated to the curiosity shop.’

I do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the people were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at all, how came they to imitate it?  One imitates only that which one values.  Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and you cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.

But Whistler’s account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as we can check it.  We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had seen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him starve.  And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples, is not a dreamer apart.  The separation between the artist and other men is modern and a result of modern specialization.  In many primitive societies most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that reason are interested