What can emphatically be said is that artists must subordinate themselves to the welfare of life as a whole.  And this is not so great a loss, for only that art is of the deepest beauty which expresses noble and wholesome feelings.  The trouble with the artist is apt to be that he becomes so absorbed in the solution of the practical difficulties attendant upon his art that he cares primarily for triumphs of technique, irrespective of the worth of the feelings which that technique is to express.  Indeed, there is actually a sort of scorn of beauty in certain studies and studios; the “literary” or “artistic” point of view is taken to mean a regard only for skill of execution, rather than for that beauty of whose realization the skill should be but the means.  There is, indeed, a beauty of words and rhythms, of brushwork, of modeling; but if the poet does not love beautiful thoughts and acts, no verbal power can make his product great; and if the artist paints trivial or vulgar subjects he wastes his genius.  Too much poetry that is sensual, flippant, drearily pessimistic, morbid, or obscure, is included in anthologies because cleverly wrought, with a sense for form and cadence.  Too many stories, too many pictures, are applauded by critics, though in subject and tone they are contemptible.  As proofs of human skill these works may excite such admiration as we give to a juggler’s feats; as practice in handling a stubborn medium they may be valuable.  But the artist who does not have a sane and high sense of what is really noble and beautiful in life prostitutes the talents by which he ought to serve the world.  Often one feels as Emerson felt when he wrote of another, “I say to him, if I could write as well as you, I would write a good deal better.”  The bald truth is that artists are seldom competent to be final judges of art; they are too much behind the scenes, concerned too constantly with problems of method.  The final judgment as to beauty can come only from one who combines a delicate appreciation of technique with a wide insight into life and a sane perspective of its values.  For lack of such a criticism of art, the average man wanders distracted through our art-museums, with their hodge-podge of beautiful and ugly pictures, wades through the ingeniously clever stories and sensationally original but often meaningless or trivial verses in the magazines, goes to a concert and joins others in applauding some brilliant display of vocal gymnastics, some instrumental pyrotechnics, while his heart is thirsting for high and noble feelings, for something to elevate and inspire his life.  The great poets, the great painters, the great dramatists and novelists, have been high-souled men as well as artists, lovers of the really beautiful in life as well as masters of their medium.  Their art has no conflict with morality; it is rather its greatest stimulus and stay.  To the lesser brood with the gift of melody, of rhythm, with an eye for color or form, but without a true perspective of human values, we must repeat sadly, or even sternly, the poet’s reproof:  “Can’st thou from heaven, O child Of light, but this to declare?”