They were generally foisted on the public
by some coterie that was trying to exalt itself in exalting some one
else, and not unfrequently they had no other inception than desire on the
part of some member of the coterie to find a job for a young sculptor to
whom his daughter was engaged. Statues so begotten could never be
anything but deformities, and this is the way in which they are sure to
be begotten, as soon as the art of making them at all has become widely
practised.
I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a
very little moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to
decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they
cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living
organism--better dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art
young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new
thing, working out its own salvation from effort to effort in all fear
and trembling.
The Erewhonians five hundred years ago understood nothing of all this--I
doubt whether they even do so now. They wanted to get the nearest thing
they could to a stuffed man whose stuffing should not grow mouldy.
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