100 ON THE RELATION OF ART 



nations. In proportion as it excludes them, it is illusory, 

 phantasmal, perishable, partial to a race or moment. 



Nevertheless, there is no denying the fact that art, through 

 this appeal to sensibility, no less than through the pursuit of 

 pleasure as an aim, contains an element of weakness, from 

 which morality and science are free. There are ignoble 

 pleasures, and sensibility is sometimes morbid. Art, if she 

 chooses, can provide the former and can gratify the latter, 

 without quitting the domain of beauty. She can turn herself 

 at will from an Egeria or a Pythia into a Circe or a Siren. 



Art, again, has nothing in herself to discipline the moral 

 nature of her servants. They bring to her the spirits which 

 they had, and she responds to them or fails to touch them. 



A great artist never works from a consciously scientific or 

 a consciously ethical point of view. He has no didactic pur- 

 pose ; he does not aim at proving anything. He is satisfied 

 with making something ; and this something may be of very 

 various sorts in regard to truth and goodness. It remains 

 certain, however, that he is unable to make anything without 

 exercising the spirit which is in him ; and this spirit involves 

 principles which are proper to both science and morality. 



Architecture, to begin with, rests upon geometrical propor- 

 tions. Music, which Sir Thomas Browne styled ' a sensible 

 fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of 

 God,' is dependent upon mathematical ratios. The figurative 

 arts seek after correctness of design, correctness of perspec- 

 tive, correctness of tone. They need truth of delineation, 

 'conformity to what is real,' 'exact apprehension of facts.' 

 So far as they are imitative, veracity is one of their cardinal 

 virtues. To this extent, then, art partakes of the scientific 

 spirit. 



When we come to consider the function of the arts in 

 history, their social and educational importance, together with 

 the thoughts and feelings they express, the point of contact 

 between them and morality is even more apparent. I have 

 elsewhere insisted on the fact that no work of art is abso- 

 lutely unqualified by moral tone of one sort or another, seeing 

 that all such works are the products of a moralised person- 



