There are, then, three determining attitudes
toward conventions: we may accept them and
passively conform; or we may keep and mould
them; or we may gloriously smash them, and go
on. Those who passively accept are negligible--
senza infamia e senza lodo. Neither infamy nor
praise is theirs; they are the neutrals in the clash
of forces that press outward the frontiers of art.
It is the other two that will concern us here:
those who accept, but in accepting transmute
and re-create; those who reject, and in rejecting
strike out for unpath'd waters, undream'd
shores. And to the first we may now come.

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