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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: image of the great statesman who was ruling Athens at the time,
Phidias was flung into prison and there, in the common gaol of
Athens, died, the supreme artist of the old world.
And do you think that this was an exceptional case? The sign of a
Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art, and this cry
was raised by the Athenian people against every great poet and
thinker of their day - AEschylus, Euripides, Socrates. It was the
same with Florence in the thirteenth century. Good handicrafts are
due to guilds, not to the people. The moment the guilds lost their
power and the people rushed in, beauty and honesty of work died.
And so, never talk of an artistic people; there never has been such
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