XI - RICHARD WAGNER

Summary

People commonly speak and write as if they thought that works of art and imagination, and all products of what they call genius, sprang by inspiration from nowhere, and were the independent creations of their originators. They can understand how natural laws work elsewhere; that a plant will not grow unless the seed is put where it can germinate, and that it requires light and heat and moisture and nourishment to bring it to mature perfection. But they seem to think it is quite different with art, and things which grow in the human mind; as if it was a pure matter of chance whether a genius made his appearance; and that everything depends upon such a chance, and nothing upon previous experience and development. But in truth it is quite the other way, and the matter is obvious enough when it is considered with a little attention. Primeval savages did not find out how to draw horses and elks and men and such familiar objects all of a sudden, just as the thought struck them; but they began thousands upon thousands of years ago to find out that certain lines and curves scratched upon bone, or clay, or stone, looked rather like men or beasts, and in the course of succeeding ages they improved step by step upon their first crude efforts, and by helping and criticising one another in a rough way, got their pictures more and more like the objects they were meantto represent.