in art, at the present
time, is because we refer everything to conventional ethical standards.
We are always arraigning people at the bar of morality, and what we
judge them mainly by is their strength or weakness of will. Blake
thought differently. He always maintained that men would be judged for
their intellectual and artistic perception, by their good or bad taste.

But surely it is all a deep-seated mistake; one might as well judge
people for being tall or short, ugly or beautiful. The only thing for
which I think most people would consent to be judged, which is after
all what matters, is whether they have yielded consciously to mean,
prudent, timid, conventional motives in life. It is not a question of
success or failure; it is rather whether one has acted largely, freely,
generously, or whether one has acted politely, timidly, prudently.

In the Gospel, the two things for which it seems to be indicated that
men will be judged are, whether they have been kind, and whether they
have improved upon what has been given them. And therefore the judgment
seems to depend rather upon what men desire than upon what they effect,
upon attitude rather than upon performance. But it is all a great
mystery, because no amount of desiring seems to give us what we desire.
The two plain duties are to commit ourselves to the Power that made us,
and to desire to become what He would have us become; and one must also
abstain from any attempt to judge other people--that is the
unpardonable sin.

In art, then, a man does his best if, like Goethe, he works his own
situation into art for the consolation of gods and men. His own
situation is the only thing he can come near to perceiving; and if he
draws it faithfully and beautifully, he consoles and he encourages.
That is the best and noblest thing he can do, if he can express or
depict anything which may make other men feel that they are not alone,
that others are treading the same path, in sunshine or cloud; anything
which may help others to persevere, to desire, to perceive. The worst
sorrows in life are not its losses and misfortunes, but its fears. And
when Goethe said that it was for the consolation of gods as well as of
men, he said a sublime thing, for if we believe that God made and loved
us, may we not sympathise with Him for our blindness and hopelessness,
for all the sad sense of injustice and perplexity that we feel as we
stumble on our way; all the accusing cries, all the de