But how?
By finding the few who can live the life of communion, the few who
can show forth the true significance of the race. By saving our most
precious thoughts and ideals, and adding them to the similar thoughts
and ideals of others, by putting the instruments of education in their
proper places, by separating and saving in the world of literature and
art the expressions of beauty which are valuable to the coming race,
as distinguished from those that are merely sold for a price. By the
making solitary, which is making sacred.
For instance, I would have the famous and wonderful pictures now
foiling and dwarfing one another in our vulgar galleries, distributed
over the Western world. I wish their enfranchisement. Each great
picture should be given a room to itself, like the Sistine Madonna,
not only a room but a temple like that of the Iverskaya at Moscow, not
only a temple but a fair populous province. The great pictures should
be objects of pilgrimages, and their temples places of prayer. In the
galleries, as is obvious, the pictures are at their smallest, their
glory pressed back into themselves or overlapped or smudged by the
confusing glory of others. Out in the wide world, enshrined in
temples, these pictures would become living hearts, they would have
arms dealing out blessings, they would outgrow again till their
influence was as wide as the little kingdoms in which they were
enshrined.
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