d been passed in
strong emotion, have in reality subdued themselves, though capable of
the very strongest passions, into a calm as absolute as that of a deeply
sheltered mountain lake, which reflects every agitation of the clouds in
the sky, and every change of the shadows on the hills, but is itself
motionless.

75. Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought
upon the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in
our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness.
Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits
and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not
only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether
he is, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or only
with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, between the
work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as those which
you find continually disappointing expectation in the lives of men of
modern literary power; the same conditions of society having obscured or
misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, both in our
literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with any of us as
to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of Shakespeare and
Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to analyse the moral laws
of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, and painters.

76. Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you
enable yourselves to distinguish, by the truth of your own lives, what
is true in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good
has its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either
literature or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their
mistaken aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and
that, if there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come
of a sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled
by conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange
than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are
part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond our
judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And it is
sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable effect
of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might permit
yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be a