These things are good in their way, but they are very
elementary. Our men of intellect become scientific
researchers, historians, erudite persons. How
few living writers there are who unite intellect with
emotion! The truth is that we do not believe
in emotion; we think it a thing to play with, a thing
to grow out of, not a thing to live by. If a person
discourses or writes of his feelings we think him a
sentimentalist, and have an uneasy suspicion that
he is violating the canons of good taste. The
result is that we are a sensible, a good-humoured,
and a vulgar nation. When we are dealing with
art, we have no respect for any but successful artists.
If the practice of art results in fame and money,
we praise the artist in a patronising way; when the
artist prophesies, we think him slightly absurd until
he commands a hearing, and then we worship him, because
his prophecies have a wide circulation. If the
artist is unsuccessful, we consider him a mere dilettante.
Then, too, art suffers grievously from having been
annexed by moralists, who talk about art as the handmaid
of religion, and praise the artist if he provides
incentives for conduct of a commercial type. It
would be better for art if it were frankly snubbed
rather than thus unctuously encouraged. We look
upon it all as a matter of influence, for the one
thing that we desire is to be felt, to affect other
people, to inspire action. The one thing that
we cannot tolerate is that a man should despise and
withdraw from the busy conventional world. If
he ends by impressing the world we admire him, and
people his solitude with ugly motives. The fact
is that there was never a more unpromising soil for
artists than this commonplace, active, strenuous century
in which we live. The temptations we put in the
artist’s way are terribly strong; when we have
done our work, we like to be amused by books and plays
and pictures, and we are ready to pay high prices
to the people who can give our heavy souls small sensations
of joy and terror and sorrow. And wealth is a
fierce temptation to the artist, because it gives him
liberty, freedom of motion, comfort, things of beauty
and consideration. The result is that too many
of the artists who appear among us fall victims to
the temptations of the world, and become a kind of
superior parasite and prostitute, believing in their
dignity because they are not openly humiliated.
But the true artist, like the true priest, cares only for the beautiful quality of the thought that he pursues. The true priest is the man who loves virtue, disinterestedness, truth, and purity with a kind of passion, and only desires to feed the same love in faithful hearts. He seeks the Kingdom of God first; and if the good things of the world are strewn, as they are apt to be strewn, in the path of the virtuous person, he is never for a moment seduced into believing that they are the object of his search. His desire is that souls should glow and thrill with high, sacred, and tender emotions, which are their own surpassing reward.