not otherwise have believed; and
secondly, it makes us think of subjects we should not otherwise have
thought of, intruding them amidst our ordinary thoughts in a confusing
and familiar manner. We cannot with any certainty affirm the advantage
or the harm of such accidental pieties, for their effect will be very
different on different characters: but, without any question, the art,
which makes us believe what we would not have otherwise believed, is
misapplied, and in most instances very dangerously so. Our duty is to
believe in the existence of Divine, or any other, persons, only upon
rational proofs of their existence; and not because we have seen
pictures of them.[8]

[Footnote 8: I have expunged a sentence insisting farther on this point,
having come to reverence more, as I grew older, every simple means of
stimulating all religious belief and affection. It is the lower and
realistic world which is fullest of false beliefs and vain loves.]

52. But now observe, it is here necessary to draw a distinction, so
subtle that in dealing with facts it is continually impossible to mark
it with precision, yet so vital, that not only your understanding of the
power of art, but the working of your minds in matters of primal moment
to you, depends on the effort you make to affirm this distinction
strongly. The art which realises a creature of the imagination is only
mischievous when that realisation is conceived to imply, or does
practically induce a belief in, the real existence of the imagined
personage, contrary to, or unjustified by the other evidence of its
existence. But if the art only represents the personage on the
understanding that its form is imaginary, then the effort at realisation
is healthful and beneficial.

For instance, the Greek design of Apollo crossing the sea to Delphi,
which is one of the most interesting of Le Normant's series, so far as
it is only an expression, under the symbol of a human form, of what may
be rightly imagined respecting the solar power, is right and ennobling;
but so far as it conveyed to the Greek the idea of there being a real
Apollo, it was mischievous, whether there be, or be not, a real Apollo.
If there is no real Apollo, then the art was mischievous because it
deceived; but if there is a real Apollo, then it was still more
mischievous,[9] for it not only began the degradation of the image of
that true god into a decoration for niches, and a device for seals; but
prevented an