Kosmon. But how may this purity be attained?  I see every where close round the pricks; not a single step may be taken in advance without wounding something vital.  Corruption strews thick both earth and ocean; it is only the heavens that are pure, and man cannot live upon manna alone.

Christian. Kosmon, you would seem to mistake what Sophon and I mean.  Neither he nor I wish nature to be used less, or otherwise than as it appears; on the contrary, we wish it used more—­more directly.  Nature itself is comparatively pure; all that we desire is the removal of the factitious matter that the vice of fashion, evil hearts, and infamous desires, graft upon it.  It is not simple innocent nature that we would exile, but the devilish and libidinous corruptions that sully nature.

Kalon. But, if your ideas were strictly carried out, there would be but little of worth left in the world for the artist to use; for, if I understand you rightly, you object to his making use of any passion, whether heroic, patriotic, or loving, that is not rigidly virtuous.

Christian. I do.  Without he has a didactic aim; like as Hogarth had.  A picture, poem, or statue, unless it speaks some purpose, is mere paint, paper, or stone.  A work of art must have a purpose, or it is not a work of fine art:  thus, then, if it be a work of fine art, it has a purpose; and, having purpose, it has either a good or an evil one:  there is no alternative.  An artist’s works are his children, his immortal heirs, to his evil as well as to his good; as he hath trained them, so will they teach.  Let him ask himself why does a parent so tenderly rear his children.  Is it not because he knows that evil is evil, whether it take the shape of angels or devils?  And is not the parent’s example worthy of the artist’s imitation?  What advantage has a man over a child?  Is there any preservative peculiar to manhood that it alone may see and touch sin, and yet be not defiled?  Verily, there is none!  All mere battles, assassinations, immolations, horrible deaths, and terrible situations used by the artist solely to excite,—­every passion degrading to man’s perfect nature,—­should certainly be rejected, and that unhesitatingly.

Sophon.—­Suffer me to extend the just conclusions of Christian.  Art—­true art—­fine art—­cannot be either coarse or low.  Innocent-like, no taint will cling to it, and a smock frock is as pure as “virginal-chaste robes.”  And,—­sensualism, indecency, and brutality, excepted—­sin is not sin, if not in the act; and, in satire, with the same exceptions, even sin in the act is tolerated when used to point forcibly a moral crime, or to warn society of a crying shame which it can remedy.

Kalon. But, my dear Sophon,—­and you, Christian,—­you do not condemn the oak because of its apples; and, like them, the sin in the poem, picture, or statue, may be a wormy accretion grafted from without.  The spectator often makes sin where the artist intended none.  For instance, in the nude,—­where perhaps, the poet, painter, or sculptor, imagines he has embodied only the purest and chastest ideas and forms, the sensualist sees—­what he wills to see; and, serpent-like, previous to devouring his prey, he covers it with his saliva.