"I must in plain words say of the Decorative Arts, of all the arts, that it is not merely that we are inferior in them to all who have gone before us, but also that they are in a state of anarchy and disorganization, that makes a sweeping change necessary and certain."[3]
There can be no doubt, therefore, that what Nietzsche saw was a plain fact to very many thinking men besides; but, in tracing the conditions to precise and definite causes, Nietzsche by far excelled any of his contemporaries.
Before proceeding, however, to examine the more general causes that he suggests, I should like to pause here a moment, in order to dispose of one particular cause which, although of tremendous importance for us moderns, can scarcely be regarded as having been active for a very long period. I refer to the manner in which Nietzsche accounts for a good deal that is incompetent and futile, in the Art of the present day only, by pointing to a psychological misapprehension which is, alas, but all too common. I should not have broken my general narrative with the consideration of this particular cause, had it not been that I feel sure it will help laymen, and artists as well, to account for much that will still remain obscure, even after the more general causes have been discussed.
[1] Benedetto Croce, Æsthetic (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p. 308, and Monsieur Bénard's critical survey of Hegel's Æsthetik in Cours d'Esthétique, Vol. V. p. 493.
[2] On this point see Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, Vol. V, "Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums," pp. 346-47.
[3] The Decorative Arts, an address delivered before the Trades Guild of Learning, p. 11.
Nietzsche recognized that this age is one in which Will is not merely diseased, but almost paralyzed. Everywhere he saw men and women, youths and girls, who are unable to resist a stimulus, however slight; who react with excessive speed in the presence of an irritant, and who bedeck this weakness and this irritability with all the finest gala dresses and disguises that they can lay their hands on.[4]