And thus he
began to feel that modern art was an essentially artificial thing,
a luxury existing for a few leisurely people, and no longer based
on a deep universal instinct. He thought that art was wounded to
death by competition and hurry and vulgarity and materialism, and
that it must die down altogether before a sweet natural product
could arise from the stump.
Then, too, Morris was not an individualist; he cared, one may
think, about things more than people. A friend of his once
complained that, if he were to die, Morris would no doubt grieve
for him and even miss him, but that it would make no gap in his
life, nor interrupt his energy of work. He cared for movements, for
classes, for groups of men, more than he cared for persons. And
thus the idea came to him, in a mournful year of reflection, that
it was not only a mistake, but of the nature of sin, to isolate
himself in a little Paradise of art of his own making, and to allow
the great noisy, ugly, bewildered world to go on its way. It was a
noble grief. The thought of the bare, uncheered, hopeless lives of
the poor came to weigh on him like an obsession, and he began to
turn over in his mind what he could do to unravel the knotted
skein.
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