body of the former, but under the pressure of other than the innate and organic law of the thing.  For every true original artist is much more possessed by the genius of his work than possessing it.  Unless, indeed, a man be inspired by a power stronger than his individual understanding or any conscious purpose, his hand can never reach the cunning of any process truly creative.  And so in all cases the temper and idiom of a people’s religious culture will give soul and expression to their art; or, they have no religious culture, then there will not be soul-power enough in them to produce any art at all.[6]

[6] On this subject Schlegel has some of the wisest and happiest sayings that I have met with.  For example:  “All truly creative poetry must proceed from the inward life of a people, and from religion, the root of that life.”  And again:  “Were it possible for man to renounce all religion, including that which is unconscious, or independent of the will, he would become a mere surface without any internal substance.  When this centre is disturbed, the whole system of the mental faculties and feelings takes a new shape.”  Once more, speaking of the Greeks:  “Their religion was the deification of the powers of Nature and of earthly life; but this worship, which, among other nations, clouded the imagination with hideous shapes, and hardened the heart to cruelty, assumed among the Greeks a mild, a grand, and a dignified form.  Superstition, too often the tyrant of the human faculties, here seems to have contributed to their freest development.  It cherished the arts by which itself was adorned, and its idols became the models of beauty.  But, however highly the Greeks may have succeeded in the Beautiful and even in the Moral, we cannot concede any higher character to their civilization than that of a refined and ennobling sensuality.  Of course this must be understood generally.  The conjectures of a few philosophers, and the irradiations of poetical inspiration, constitute an occasional exception.  Man can never altogether turn aside his thoughts from infinity, and some obscure recollections will always remind him of the home he has lost.”

As I am on the subject of Art considered as the offspring of Religion or the religious Imagination, I am moved to add a brief episode in that direction.  And I the rather do so, forasmuch as Artistic Beauty is commonly recognized as among the greatest educational forces now in operation in the Christian world.  On this point a decided reaction has taken place within my remembrance.  The agonistic or argumentative modes, which were for a long time in the ascendant, and which proceeded by a logical and theological presentation of Christian thought, seem to have spent themselves, insomuch as to be giving way to what may be called the poetical and imaginative forms of expression.  It is not my purpose to discuss whether the change be right or for the better, but merely to note it