Christian. [as he enters] Forbear, Kalon!  These I know for your dear fiends, Kosmon and Sophon.  The moment of discoursing with them has at last arrived:  May I profit by it!  Kalon, fearful of checking your current of thought, I stood without, and heard that which you said:  and, though I agree with you in all your definitions of poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture; yet certainly all things in or of man, or the world, are not, however equally beautiful, equally worthy of being used by the artist.  Fine art absolutely rejects all impurities of form; not less absolutely does it reject all impurities of passion and expression.  Everything throughout a poem, picture, or statue, or in music, may be sensuously beautiful; but nothing must be sensually so.  Sins are only paid for in virtues; thus, every sin found is a virtue lost—­lost—­not only to the artist, but a cause of loss to others—­to all who look upon what he does.  He should deem his art a sacred treasure, intrusted to him for the common good; and over it he should build, of the most precious materials, in the simplest, chastest, and truest proportions, a temple fit for universal worship:  instead of which, it is too often the case that he raises above it an edifice of clay; which, as mortal as his life, falls, burying both it and himself under a heap of dirt.  To preserve him from this corruption of his art, let him erect for his guidance a standard awfully high above himself.  Let him think of Christ; and what he would not show to as pure a nature as His, let him never be seduced to work on, or expose to the world.

Kosmon. Oh, Kalon, whither do we go!  Greek art is condemned, and Satire hath got its death-stroke.  The beautiful is not the beautiful unless it is fettered to the moral; and Virtue rejects the physical perfections, lest she should fall in love with herself, and sin and cause sin.

Christian. Nay, Kosmon.  Nothing pure,—­nothing that is innocent, chaste, unsensual,—­whether Greek or satirical, is condemned:  but everything—­every picture, poem, statue, or piece of music—­which elicits the sensual, viceful, and unholy desires of our nature—­is, and that utterly.  The beautiful was created the true, morally as well as physically; vice is a deformment of virtue,—­not of form, to which it is a parasitical addition—­an accretion which can and must be excised before the beautiful can show itself as it was originally made, morally as well as formally perfect.  How we all wish the sensual, indecent, and brutal, away from Hogarth, so that we might show him to the purest virgin without fear or blushing.

Sophon. And as well from Shakspere.  Rotten members, though small in themselves, are yet large enough to taint the whole body.  And those impurities, like rank growths of vine, may be lopped away without injuring any vital principle.  In perfect art the utmost purity of intention, design, and execution, alone is wisdom.  Every tree—­every flower, in defiance of adverse contingencies, grows with perfect will to be perfect:  and, shall man, who hath what they have not, a soul wherewith he may defy all ill, do less?