AN AGE OF MEDIOCRITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13286, 19 September 1906, Page 9

AN AGE OF MEDIOCRITY.

Sib William B. Richmond, R.A., has declared that this is an age of mediocrity. "I am forced to the conclusion," he says in " Great Thoughts," " that people do not want the higher offorts of thought, or imagination in my department of life." It was not always thus:

"Take. Homer, for example. I ask. Would Homer's poetry have lasted from nine centuries before Christ, and have exercised such an enormous influence on the lihman mind, if it had ivt represented the very best? Or would Dante, or Khnkcsperc, or Milton, or sonic five or >ix oilier people that 0110 could mention, have become immortal if they had not striven to reach the high-water mark of excellence? The fact of their immortality proves that they dealt with subjects which were not merely fashionable or passing, but which were everlasting true." That things used to go more slowly wo know, added Sir W. ?>■ Richmond. "It took soma 2CO years for the Norman style of architecture l:> fade out into the Perpendicular. But now- things chaugo in a week. There is no stability nowaday.-." MATERIALISM AND PHILANTHROPY. The present condition of things Sir W. B. Richmond attributes to the fact that we have grown so materialistic that wo are only able to describe some passing phase of the moment. Everything we produce is ephemeral : •' No doubt wc moderns are philanthropic. There never wc, an age in which so much was given away. But everything seems to be regarded from a materialistic standpoint. . . . This is not a sensual age; it is a weak ago. If anything, I should say the age is not sensual enough., It* is not an age of strenuous fight, in which great crimes go along with great virtues, like the times, say, of Era Angolico, when the streets of Florence ran blood. But it is an age of mediocrity. The worst forms of crime committed nowadays are produced by the love of wealth, by the endeavour to become rich at all costs. It is a pushing age. People thrust one another aside. Everything is done for the immediate advantage of the ego. " Only tho concerns of the moment are thought of, and therefore this is bound to be an age, of mediocrity."

THE RETURN OF GREAT TIMES. "Do you think we are never going to have great times again?" Sir W. 15. Richmond was asked: "Things may get worse, and then I think they will B ci oe.t-cr. 1 think, a., I said in mv letter to the press the other day, that there is a natural lull in the procession of creat men- Nature asks time- to repair her°jj \ficr such a vigorous epoch as we 1.a.-o had after a century which ha-, produced such men as MacanUy. Uallam, Mill. Gladatcne Disraeli. Wagner, Brahms, Keats. Shellev Teniivron. Browning, turner. Watt.., Millais Rossetti. Leigliton, and Borne-Jones, ve are tutt'eriug from exhaustion. We are i',,., Ivinif fallow, and something will some day arouse us from our Mote of torpor." What that will 1"-- Sir AY. 15. Itic-nniond could not say. "Auyilung big that will touch the seme of the nation. Only some magical touch, something affectmg everybody, can recall us- from an age of materialism to an age of idealism."