Confessions and Criticisms

not, perhaps, aware that a large class of persons still exist who hold fiction to be unjustifiable, save in so far a

y drama as to vindicate the wisdom and integrity of the Decalogue: if he fail to do this, or if

not lie and steal: no god will help." And although, for the sake of his own private interests of the moment, a man will occasionally violate the moral law, yet, with mankind at large, the necessity of vindicating the superior advantages of right over wrong is acknowledged not only in the interests of civilized society, but because we feel that, however hosti

. The real record of life-its terror, its beauty, its pathos, its depth-seems to have been missed. We may admit that the tale is in harmony with what we have been taught ought to happen; but the lessons of our private experience have not authenticated our moral formulas; we have seen the evil exalted and the good brought low; and we inevitably desire that our "fiction" shall tell us, not what ought to happen, but what, as a matter of fact, does happen. To put this a little differently: we feel that the God of the orthodox moralist is not the God of human nature. He is nothing but the moralist himself in a highly sublimated state, but betraying, in spite of that sublimation,

indles in direct proportion as the moralized deity expatiates; in fact, that they are incompatible. And he will also confess (if he h

the conclusion throws upon the nature of art itself. It should be obvious, however, that upon a true definition of art the whole argument must ultimately hinge: for we can neither deny that art exists, nor affirm that it can

nds toward us as a race. Our nature not being the private possession of any one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, it follows that it cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but only as a whole; and, manifestly, the only Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul, or George Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be he who he may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our finiteness, and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in Scripture under the symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being accomplished-as any one may perceive who reads aright the progressive enlightenment of conscience and intellect which history, through many vicissitudes, displays. We find, therefore, that art is, essentially, the imaginative expression of a divine life in man. Art depends for its worth and veracity, not upon its adherence to literal fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfect shadow. And it can have nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the way either of condemning the one or vindicating the other; it can only treat them as elements in its picture-as factors in human destiny. For the notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a claim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting virtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring ou

lves. Shakspeare, Homer, Phidias, Raphael, were no Pharisees-at least in so far as they were artists; nor did any one ever find in their works any countenance for that inhuman assumption-"I am holier than thou!" In the world's darkest hours, art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the nobler life that was in eclipse. Civilizations arise and vanish; forms of religion hold sway and are forgotten; learning and science advance and gather strength; but true art was as great and as beautiful three thousand years ago as it is to-day. We are prone to confound the man with the artist, and to suppose that he is artistic by possession and inheritance, instead of exclusively by dint of what he does. No artist worthy the name ever dreams of putting himself into his work, but only what is infinitely distinct from and other than himself. It

ist make believe that the wicked are punished and the good are rewarded in this world? Does he not know, on the contrary, that whatsoever is basest in our common life tends irresistibly to the highest places, and that the selfish element in our nature is on the side of public order? Evil is at present

e learned from sea and sky, mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and beast; and from the broad human life of races, nations, and firesides; a lesson that is not obvious and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the creative depths as to emerge only to a