Life as a Fine Art. 419 



actual needs and conditions of a growing society, will be 

 most speedily and productively effective. 



A wise opportunism such as I have attempted to outline 

 does not involve the abatement by one jot or tittle from the 

 ideal end the true service and betterment of man. "Art 

 is great," says Ruskin, " in exact proportion to the love of 

 beauty shown by the painter, provided that love of beauty 

 forfeit no atom of truth." This is true also of that highest 

 of all arts, the art of right living ; it must forfeit no atom 

 of truth ; it must not flinch from its high ideal. Fullness 

 of life being the end which the philosophy of evolution and 

 the art-impulse as applied to life alike have in view, it is 

 evident that no course of action which in its final outcome 

 and totality of effect detracts from this end, which pro- 

 duces a surplus of pain rather than of pleasure, can be 

 deemed ideally right. The surgery of revolution may at 

 times be necessary in the social as the surgeon's knife is to 

 the individual organism ; but no plea of instant allegiance 

 to an abstract ideal of truth and justice can justify this re- 

 sort to militant methods, unless it appears with indubitable 

 clearness that only thus can the totality of life in society be 

 finally increased. All surgery involves an atrophy or loss 

 of vital tissue, and is therefore to be avoided except when 

 it becomes absolutely necessary for the salvation of the 

 organism or the prolongation of life. The wise opportun- 

 ism advocated by the social philosophy of evolution rests 

 upon the doctrine of relativity, which holds good both in 

 morals and in sociology, and is by no means to be confound- 

 ed with the temporizing expediency of a false conservatism, 

 which adheres to the conventional from a servile fear of 

 change. In recognizing fullness of life in society and the 

 individual as its true object, and in conforming its action to 

 this end, it is dedicating itself to the service of ideal truth. 

 And in declining to be led hither and thither by those at- 

 tractive will-o'-the-wisps, the a priori schemes of social re- 

 formers, based upon alleged laws of absolute ethics, it is giv- 

 ing evidence at once of its wisdom and of its consistency. 



Evolution preaches no gospel of dilettantism good for 

 the rich and prosperous, but blind to the evils of society, 

 the struggles of the vicious and the poor. For vice and 

 crime this philosophy has indeed no palliation, save that 

 involved in the recognition that they are inheritances from 

 man's brute ancestry ; no easy or sovereign remedy to pro- 

 pose ; only the slow natural process of amelioration by edu- 



