How wrong that was the history
of the decades immediately following the establishment of the world
republic witnesses. Once the world was released from the hardening
insecurities of a needless struggle for life that was collectively
planless and individually absorbing, it became apparent that there was
in the vast mass of people a long, smothered passion to make things. The
world broke out into making, and at first mainly into aesthetic
making. This phase of history, which has been not inaptly termed the
'Efflorescence,' is still, to a large extent, with us. The majority
of our population consists of artists, and the bulk of activity in
the world lies no longer with necessities but with their elaboration,
decoration, and refinement. There has been an evident change in the
quality of this making during recent years. It becomes more purposeful
than it was, losing something of its first elegance and prettiness and
gaining in intensity; but that is a change rather of hue than of nature.
That comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder education. For the
first joyous exercises of fancy we perceive now the deliberation of a
more constructive imagination. There is a natural order in these things,
and art comes before science as the satisfaction of more elemental needs
must come before art, and as play and pleasure come in a human life
before the development of a settled purpose.
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