Christian. The Circean poison, whether drunk from the clearest crystal or the coarsest clay, alike intoxicates and makes beasts of men.  Be assured that every nude figure or nudity introduced in a poem, picture, or piece of sculpture, merely on physical grounds, and only for effect, is vicious.  And, where it is boldly introduced and forms the central idea, it ought never to have a sense of its condition:  it is not nudity that is sinful, but the figure’s knowledge of its nudity,(too surely communicated by it to the spectator,) that makes it so.  Eve and Adam before their fall were not more utterly shameless than the artist ought to make his inventions.  The Turk believes that, at the judgment-day, every artist will be compelled to furnish, from his own soul, soul for every one of his creations.  This thought is a noble one, and should thoroughly awake poet, painter, and sculptor, to the awful responsibilities they labour under.  With regard to the sensualist,—­who is omnivorous, and swine-like, assimilates indifferently pure and impure, degrading everything he hears or sees,—­little can be said beyond this; that for him, if the artist be without sin, he is not answerable.  But in this responsibility he has two rigid yet just judges, God and himself;—­let him answer there before that tribunal.  God will acquit or condemn him only as he can acquit or condemn himself.

Kalon. But, under any circumstance, beautiful nude flesh beautifully painted must kindle sensuality; and, described as beautifully in poetry, it will do the like, almost, if not quite, as readily.  Sculpture is the only form of art in which it can be used thoroughly pure, chaste, unsullied, and unsullying.  I feel, Christian, that you mean this.  And see what you do!—­What a vast domain of art you set a Solomon’s seal upon! how numberless are the poems, pictures, and statues—­the most beautiful productions of their authors—­you put in limbo!  To me, I confess, it appears the very top of prudery to condemn these lovely creations, merely because they quicken some men’s pulses.

Kosmon. And, to me, it appears hypercriticism to object to pictures, poems, and statues, calling them not works of art—­or fine art—­because they have no higher purpose than eye or ear-delight.  If this law be held to be good, very few pictures called of the English school—­of the English school, did I say?—­very few pictures at all, of any school, are safe from condemnation:  almost all the Dutch must suffer judgment, and a very large proportion of modern sculpture, poetry, and music, will not pass.  Even “Christabel” and the “Eve of St. Agnes” could not stand the ordeal.