78 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
anything he pleases or that he can get another to like. Art as Master of Revels and Dispenser of Delights cannot attain its utmost unless unfettered by conventionalities. To naysay the free access of artist to patron is to mutilate art, kill inspiration, and cut off humanity from choice springs of enjoyment.
For society to concede any such claim would be sheer folly. What madness, when we are all the time besetting the individual with our theologies and religions and ideals, and can scarcely keep him in order at that, to let the irresponsible artist get at him and undo our work ! Why give art carte blanche when there is scarcely a speculation abroad regarding the other world which has not been shaped by considerations of this world's discipline ? When sober Reason has scarcely won Lehrfreiheit it is over-early to emancipate the Artistic Imagination. 1
By whom art shall be supervised is another question. All attempts to lodge the supervision of art in any man or board have done more harm than good. By brutal suppression they consecrate the established order and turn artists into sycophants or revolutionists. It may be best that the fate of the artist's work be decided by the ten thousand influential, subject to an appeal to the million uninfluential. Then let the indefinite public ban without ruth or scruple whatever gives moral offense. In this way it is possible to enforce the amenableness of art to society without asserting its amenableness to law.
EDWARD ALSWORTH Ross. STANFORD UNIVERSITY, California.
1 In France, where " Hands off ! " has been the maxim, the demoralization trace- able to anti-social art has given rise to a strong movement for social control. The Beringer Bill, which is likely to become a law, punishes not only the publication or sale of an immoral book or picture but even the possession of it.
