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knowledge, desire for novelty or self-expression have broken with those traditions resulting from the unconscious sway of spontaneous æsthetic preference.

These traditions, representing the satisfaction of the æsthetic instinct through universal and long practice, are the stuff of every artistic style. The individual artist, however great, merely selects among the forms habitual in his youth and alters them, even as the mechanical inventor or the philosopher alters and developes the appliances or the systems of his predecessors. One of the earliest results of the historical and critical work of archæologists and connoisseurs' has been the recognition of the kinship between the masterpiece and the 'schoolwork' from which it arises and which arises from it; how many persons could tell a Giorgione, for instance, from a Cariani, or a Botticelli from a Bottacini? And the far harder problem of what difference of individual temperament lends to the masterpiece its irresistible vividness and harmony, its inexhaustible richness-this, the problem of artistic genius, allows us to guess (though itself unsolved) that the greatest innovator does not create out of nothing, but transmutes already existing forms into something possessing the familiarity of the old and the fascination of the new.

Hence we see that the most sovereign art has always arisen when genius has not been wearied in the search for novelty nor wasted in the making of things appealing only to the idle and superfine. We must not be misled, like Tolstoi, by the aesthetic anarchy resulting from that rush of inventions and reforms, that confusion of historically and geographically alien habits and standards, which has marked the last hundred years. Such moments of ferment and disintegration are necessarily rare and passing; and their artistic chaos or sterility is abnormal and of little consequence. The history of art shows, on the contrary, that even barbarism has not atrophied or interfered with the aesthetic instinct. We see that in any civilisation which was widespread, homogeneous and stable, the most consummate works of art could be enjoyed by every one, because the forms embodied in, say, the Egyptian temple or the Gothic cathedral, the Greek statue or Japanese painting, were the forms familiar in every craft, through an unbroken succession of kindred works of every degree

of excellence. Applying the conceptions of recent æstheticians, we perceive that the art of any time or country was the common property of all the men thereof, simply because the craftsmen had the habit not merely of those general relations of proportion and dimension whose Einfühlung is agreeable to the normal human being, but also of those more special forms into which the men of different places and periods have been wont to project, by æsthetic sympathy, the modes of acting and willing most favourable to their well-being.

That such æsthetic well-being, whatever its precise psychological and physiological explanation, is of a very deep-seated, highly-organised and far-spreading kind, has been, I trust, made evident to the reader of these pages. Dependent on all our habits of movement, of resistance, and of effort; commensurate with our experience of balance and volition; irradiated through our innermost bodily life, it is no wonder that æsthetic well-being should be associated with our preference for order, temperance, for aspiring and harmonious activity; or that philosophers, from Plato to Schopenhauer, should have guessed that the contemplation of beauty was one of the moral needs of the human creature.

Evolutional speculation may indeed add that this harmonious vitalising of the soul, this rhythmical cooperation of so many kinds of feeling and doing, this sympathising projection of man's modes into nature, and this repercussion of nature's fancied attributes in man's own life, have answered some utility by unifying consciousness and rhythmically heightening vitality. And, in the light of these theories, the irresistible instinct will be justified, by which all times and peoples, despite the doubts of philosophers and the scruples of ascetics, have invariably employed art as the expression of religion and bowed before beauty as a visible manifestation of the divine.

Such are the main problems which the new science of aesthetics has undertaken to solve; and such a few of the answers which it is already enabled to foreshadow.

VERNON LEE.

Art. V.-RETALIATION AND SCIENTIFIC TAXATION. 1. Tariff Reform. I. Economic Notes on Insular Free Trade. II. Speech delivered at Sheffield (October 1, 1903). III. Speech delivered at Bristol (November 13, 1903), together with Letter to the Rt Hon. J. Chamberlain, M.P. (September 16, 1903). By the Rt Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. London: Longmans, 1904.

2. Imperial Union and Tariff Reform. Speeches delivered from May 15 to November 4, 1903, by the Rt Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P.; with an Introduction. London: Grant Richards, 1903.

3. Trade and the Empire. Four Speeches by the Rt Hon. H. H. Asquith, K.C., M.P. London: Methuen, 1903. 4. The Prime Minister's Pamphlet. By Julian Sturgis. London: Longmans, 1903.

5. Elements of the Fiscal Problem. By L. G. Chiozza Money. London: King, 1903.

6. The Fiscal Dispute made Easy. A Book for both Parties. By W. H. Mallock. London: Nash, 1903.

7. The Free Trader. Published for the Free Trade Union. Numbers 1-35. London, 1903-4.

8. The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times. By W. Cunningham, D.D. Two vols. Part I: The Mercantile System. Part II: Laissez-faire. Cambridge: University Press, 1903.

9. National Progress in Wealth and Trade since 1882. By A. L. Bowley. London: King, 1904.

10. Fifty Years of Progress and the New Fiscal Policy. By Lord Brassey. London: Longmans, 1904.

11. British Industries. Edited by W. J. Ashley. London: Longmans, 1903.

12. Imperial Preferential Trade from a Colonial Point of View. By Adam Shortt. Toronto: Morang, 1904. Now that Mr Chamberlain has allowed colonial preference to fall into the background, and has committed to his Tariff Commission the duty of formulating a model protectionist budget, the most immediately important thing before the country in the fiscal controversy is to understand the position of the Prime Minister. In the early days of Mr Chamberlain's new propaganda, and even at the time of his later speeches, the desire to ascertain

the precise extent to which Mr Balfour accompanied, or might be expected ultimately to accompany him, pushed aside any effort that might otherwise have been made to ascertain what Mr Balfour's own convictions and policy were. For this, no doubt, his declaration that he was without settled convictions-though recently explained as made in a restricted sense-was largely responsible. This phase has, however, now passed away; Mr Balfour has developed decided convictions, and it is well that the country should understand what they really are.

Mr Balfour limits his official policy to negotiation and retaliation, and in propounding the doctrine of retaliation he proceeds on distinctive lines. At Sheffield he limited retaliation to cases of outrageous unfairness towards British trade on the part of foreign nations. At Bristol he advanced considerably beyond his Sheffield lead; and on March 7, in Parliament, he incorporated in the exposition of his views not only all that he said at Bristol, but also the more comprehensive acceptance of colonial preference, retaliation, and the principle of taxing food embodied in his speech in the House of Commons on May 28, 1903. In his Economic Notes' Mr Balfour argued that international commerce ought to flow in a volume proportionate to the growing numbers and wealth of the population, but that hostile tariffs had prevented it from doing so; and he wanted to know whether we were to be permitted to take our fair share in the growing industrial progress of the world. His answer was:—

'I see no satisfactory symptoms. The highly developed industrial countries, like Germany, America, and France, give no sign of any wish to relax their protectionist system. The less developed protectionist communities, like Russia, and some of our own self-governing colonies, are busily occupied in building up protected interests within their borders—a process which is doubtless costly to them, but is not on that account the less injurious to us.'

At Bristol Mr Balfour returned to this aspect of the situation, and put a series of questions to opponents of fiscal reform. Are we to see,' he asked, 'one neutral country after another absorbed in the general stream of protection, while we are not to lift a finger to prevent it?' With regard to the consumer, he inquired whether his

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interests are 'promoted by permitting a form of foreign bounty-fed competition by which the capital of our manufactures and the skill of our workmen are alike threatened?' In this description, it may be assumed, dumping is included. His next inquiry was whether opponents of tariff reform do not think it worth while, even at the possible cost of a temporary rise of price to the consumer, to save home industries, which it is easy to destroy but not easy to build up?' Next he inquired whether taxation is never, under any circumstances, to be imposed except for revenue purposes?'-a proposition that no sane human being has ever made. Finally, he asked, 'If our colonies give us preferential treatment, do they [the opponents of fiscal reform] or do they not mean to allow them to be penalised for their patriotism by any foreign power?' The Government, Mr Balfour said, answered all these questions in one way.

Such is Mr Balfour's expansion of the Sheffield 'lead.' Retaliation is to be a weapon not merely against 'outrageous unfairness' by high-tariff countries; it is to be used against neutral countries that propose to build up industries behind tariffs, and, for anything that appears to the contrary, against colonies that adopt such a policy; it is to be used against all forms of bounty-exceptional railway rates or shipping rates, as well as direct bounties, and the manipulations of Kartells and Trusts; it is to be employed against Germany or any other Power that differentiates against colonies that give the mothercountry a preference; and it is not to remain unused merely because it may involve the possible cost of a temporary rise of price to the consumer.' This is not the Sheffield policy, nor anything like it. The idea underlying it is revealed in the Economic Notes.'

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"The effect of any artificial stimulus to manufactures in a country like the United States of America, or Russia, or Canada, is to antedate the period when their food supplies will be required for internal consumption. Protection of manufactures diverts the supply of capital and labour from agriculture to manufactures. It diminishes the relative number of those who grow corn, and increases the relative number of those who eat it without growing it.'

In the interests of cheap food Mr Balfour wishes to keep foreign countries and colonies out of manufacturing

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