200 JSSSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



sacrament. The artist's calling and genius are 

 sacred, and the men of old spoke with strict accu- 

 racy when they called the poet holy, and directed 

 that he be venerated as a prophet. 



Heavy, then, is the sentence on our time of boasted 

 " enlightenment," and on those minds of prostituted 

 power who stand for the ministers of art in it, if 

 belief in this elevating truth has become as good as 

 dead and well-nigh impossible. Art will never get 

 its own, nor do its proper work in the discipline of 

 life, until the sense of its sacred character comes 

 once more into the general judgment, and masses 

 of men look upon it as the few great spirits have 

 looked who have been its true masters and inter- 

 preters. But art cannot be kept sacred except by 

 the consistency of its contents with its sacred nor- 

 mal character, and with the Ideal which, as embod- 

 ied beauty, it shares with truth and good. It is 

 hollow and trivial enough, if its soul of deep thought 

 and reverent imagination is lost, and if men descend 

 to the folly of taking its formal technique for its 

 real quality. The power of art lies in the artist's 

 flashing insight into beauty, truth, and good. It is 

 the power of thought ; but of thought that swifter 

 than the sage's, and more sure of its symbols, utters 

 itself directly in its proper sensible forms. Never- 

 theless, its genuine contents are such as the sage and 

 the man of science will surely verify in proportion 



