c merit of the work against its
immoral tendencies, taking all other accessory circumstances into
account, in order to decide the real weight of each of these elements.
The corrupting action should also be carefully considered, which
experience proves to have been exerted on the public by certain
so-called works of art, or artistic exhibitions, as for example
certain _cafes chantants_, etc.

=Pathological Art.=--The progressively pathological nature of certain
productions of modern art constitute without any doubt a vicious
feature; a fact of special importance in the sexual question. Witness
what I have said concerning the poet Baudelaire. Erotic art ought not
to become a hospital for perverts and sexual patients, and should not
lead these individuals to regard themselves as interesting specimens
of the human race. It should not make heroes of them, for in acting
thus, it only confirms their morbid state, and often contaminates
healthy-minded people.

A great number of novels, and even modern pictures, deserve the
reproach of being pornographic works. In these are described, or
painted, beings that we meet in hospitals for nervous diseases, or
even in lunatic asylums, but more often phantoms which only exist in
the pathological mind of the author. No doubt, art should not allow
itself to be instructed in morality by pedagogues and ascetics; but,
on the other hand, artists ought not to forget the high social mission
of their art, a mission which consists in elevating man to the ideal,
not in letting him sink into a bog.

=The Moral Effect of Healthy Art.=--Art has great power, for man is
directed by sentiment much more than by reason. Art should be healthy;
it should rise toward the heavens and show the public the road to
Olympus--not the Olympus of superstition, but that of a better
humanity. It is not necessary for this that it should diminish the
energy of its eternal theme--love. No truly moral man would wish to
eliminate the seasoning of eroticism whenever artistic necessity
requires it, but art should never prostitute itself in the service of
venal obscenity and degeneration.

As to the manner in which it attains its object, while holding to its
fundamental principles, that is its own affair, the business of the
true artist. I cannot, however, in my capacity as a naturalist,
refrain from giving a little modest advice to certain modern artists;
that when they wish to take for the subject of their works the the