146 LITEKAKY VALUES 



observe that I succeed much better by provoking 

 them to condemn it themselves than by taking the 

 lead and seeming to try to impose a judgment of my 

 own every time. In the long run, if a critic does 

 this (or an artist either), he always wearies and of- 

 fends his readers. They like to feel themselves more 

 severe than the critic. I leave them that pleasure. 

 For me, it is enough it I represent and depict things 

 faithfully, so that every one may profit from the in- 

 tellectual substance and the good language, and be in 

 a position to judge for himself the other, wholly 

 moral parts. There, however, I am careful not to 

 be crucial." Trench art is less moral than English 

 art, not because it preaches less, but because it is 

 more given to levity and trifling, because it exagger- 

 ates the part one element plays in life, and because 

 it draws less inspiration from fundamental ethical 

 ideas. It may at times be guilty of indifferentism, 

 but against very little English or American art can 

 this charge be made. 



Th% great distinction of art is that it aims to see 

 life steadily and to see it whole. This is its high 

 and unique service ; it would enable us to live in the 

 whole and in the spirit of the whole ; not in the part 

 called morality, or philosophy, or religion, or beauty, 

 but in the unity resulting from the fusion and trans- 

 formation of these varied elements. It affords the 

 one point of view whence the world appears harmo- 

 nious and complete. The moralist, the preacher, 

 seizes upon a certain part of the world, and makes 

 much of that ; the philosopher seizes upon another 



