316 The Evolution of Art. 



do phases of military and religious life that we have ceased to admire 

 yet when they were painted they were an inspiration to the beholders 

 living in environments totally different from ours. In our day real- 

 ism takes a form less disagreeable to us, though perhaps not less ob- 

 jectionable on that account. After all, we must not quarrel with the 

 artist, but with the people or civilization whose habits he depicts. In 

 the future, Art will ally itself to Science, interpreting and explaining 

 the latter combining the highest art with the highest scientific truth. 

 The most finished work of art will always be a noble human character. 



ME. ELLSWORTH WARNER : 



I think the lecturer has not dwelt sufficiently upon the relation of 

 art to morality. In the discussion of the evolution of art before an 

 ethical association that point ought not to be slighted. Does the 

 development of the artistic feeling conduce to the higher evolution of 

 man as a moral being f Viewing art historically, were those ages 

 most distinguished for its development remarkable also for purity of 

 morals? In Greece, for example, the over-development of the art- 

 feeling was certainly coincident with the fostering of a love of pleas- 

 ure rather than a sense of duty. The Puritan period, in which, what- 

 ever may have been its faults, the idea of duty was paramount, was 

 not an art period. The field of art, as it appears to me, is narrowing 

 by the application of mechanical devices in the production of the 

 beautiful. If recent reports of success in photographing colors are 

 correct, a great step will be taken toward the disuse of the pencil and 

 the brush. 



DR. LEWIS GL. JANES: 



I have greatly enjoyed the lecture of Mr. Taylor, and heartily agree 

 with him in his main positions. I was particularly glad to hear his 

 characterization of our modern realism in literature. I can not 

 refrain, however, from protesting against the association of the name 

 of Walt Whitman with those of Tolstoi, Ibsen and Zola, I presume, 

 should be classed with them, though I have never read a page of Zola 

 myself. I have read Walt Whitman, and his realism virile and opti- 

 mistic, full of the healthy, natural flavor of the woods and fields it 

 seems to rue, should not be confounded with the morbid pessimism of 

 the realistic novelists, which smacks rather of the over-heated, ill-ven- 

 tilated study. I confess that I can not always see poetry in Whitman's 

 productions, but his realism seems to me expressive of an ideal totally 

 different from that of Tolstoi and Ibsen. If he exalts the sense-life in 

 man, it is because he sees in it that which is healthful, natural, and 

 good. Whitman is the prophet of Democracy ; his protest is against 



