音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.86]Passage 48 The One Way to Become an Artist

[00:07.43]Pupils in all the schools in this country are now exposed to all kinds of temptations

[00:14.10]which blunt their feelings.

[00:16.29]I constantly feel discouraged in addressing them

[00:20.56]because I know not how to tell them boldly what they ought to do,

[00:25.81]when I feel how practically difficult it is for them to do it.

[00:31.28]If you paint as you ought, and study as you ought,

[00:35.77]depend upon it the public will take no notice of you for a long while.

[00:42.55]If you study wrongly, and try to draw the attention of the public upon you,

[00:48.02]—supposing you to be clever students—you will get swift reward;

[00:53.82]but the reward does not come fast when it is sought wisely;

[00:58.74]it is always held aloof for a little while;

[01:02.46]the right roads of early life are very quiet ones,

[01:06.73]hedged in from nearly all help or praise.

[01:10.34]But the wrong roads are noisy, —vociferous everywhere with all kinds of demand upon you for art

[01:19.09]which is not properly art at all;

[01:21.50]and in the various meetings of modern interests, money is to be made in every way;

[01:27.95]but art is to be followed only in one way.

[01:32.33]Our Schools of Art are confused by the various teaching and various interests

[01:38.46]that are now abroad among us.

[01:41.09]Everybody is talking about art, and writing about it, and more or less interested in it;

[01:48.85]everybody wants art, and there is not art for everybody,

[01:53.89]and few who talk know what they are talking about;

[01:58.59]thus students are led in all variable ways,

[02:02.97]while there is only one way in which they can make steady progress,

[02:08.10]for true art is always and will be always one.

[02:13.58]Whatever changes may be made in the customs of society,

[02:18.17]whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures we may supply,

[02:25.18]Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias;

[02:32.29]two thousand years hence, it will be, in all its principles,

[02:37.43]and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same.

[02:43.01]Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to the very utmost.

[02:49.58]There is but one right way of doing any given thing required of an artist;

[02:55.70]there may be a hundred wrong, deficient, or mannered ways,

[03:00.19]but there is only one complete and right way.