As to literature, fiction as it is called, when a peaceful and happy society has been some time afoot, will probably die out for want of material. The pabulum of the modern novel in its various dressings is mostly provided by the anomalies and futilities of a society of inequality wielded by a conventional false sense of 309 duty, which produces the necessary imbroglio wherewith to embarrass the hero and heroine through the due number of pages. Literature, however, need by no means die; for we can neither limit nor foresee the development of the great art of poetry which has changed so little in essentials since the Homeric epics.
We must also note the difference (not generally considered) between literature as a fine art and the numberless useful books which are adjuncts, or tools rather, for other occupations, physical science in all its branches amongst the number. Science again will be freed from the utilitarian chains which commerce has cast over it, and, cultivated once more for its own sake, and not merely as a servant of profit-making industrialism, may be expected to develop in a manner at present undreamed of.
To return again to the subject of art proper. Of ancient Music we know little in spite of Aristotle and Boetius. Modern music begins at the close of the Middle Ages with the birth of counterpoint; its great development has been during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and 310 has been in its earlier period synchronous with the most degraded period of all the other arts. Classical music (technically so-called) would seem to have reached its zenith about the middle of the present century; but the great revolution in dramatic music, effected by Wagner during the second half of the century, has occupied the field for the present, though what future developments it may have we cannot foresee. Of one thing, however, we may be very certain, that under a quite changed social