TO SCIENCE AND MORALITY 103 



climate holds good here. ' Effeminat anixnos amoenitas nimia, 

 nee dubie aliquid ad corrumpendum vigorem potest regio. 

 Non tantum corpori sed etiam moribus salubrem locum eligere 

 debemus.' ' Excessive delightfulness emasculates our mental 

 disposition ; nor is there any doubt that the place we live in 

 can do something to undermine the vital forces. Not merely 

 for our body, but also for our moral character, we ought to 

 select a wholesome residence.' 



IV 



The conclusion we thus reach is that if art, on its formal 

 and technical side, partakes of the scientific spirit in all that 

 concerns its mental content and influence upon our nature, it 

 no less certainly partakes of the ethical spirit. Yet art has 

 its privileges and rights and independence. It is not really a 

 sub-species of Science, nor is it really a sub-species of Ethic. 

 To describe it by such terms would be to strain language and 

 to confuse thought. 



All that we are justified in saying on this point is that art 

 cannot ignore morality, any more than it can ignore truth. 

 To claim unqualified independence for it would show a radical 

 misconception of its nature. 



It would be still more foolish to maintain that vice is the 

 natural soil of artistic genius, or the manure which stimulates 

 it to productive energy. Owing to the primal cult of beauty, 

 the method of sensuous presentation, and the purpose of 

 communicating pleasure, which we have recognised as proper 

 to art owing to these conditions of its being, art may indeed 

 appear to have little or nothing to do with virtue ; and there 

 have undoubtedly been periods of the world's history when 

 it has flourished in the midst of much licentiousness. 



The Italian Renaissance was one of these periods. A 

 thorough-going inquiry into all the aspects of that complex 

 era exposes the historian to misconception. He has to face 

 the reproach of regarding art and beauty as flowers of vice 

 and corruption, simply because he dwells upon the patent 

 fact that Italy reached her highest point of artistic develop- 



